Just over 100 Days into 2024: What Beacon Hill Has Accomplished

Now that we’re in mid-April, we’re just over 100 days into 2024 and just over 100 days until July 31, i.e., the last day of the formal period of the legislative session.

So what’s happened in 2024 so far?

74 bills have been signed into law in 2024:

  • 44 are about just 1 town.
  • 17 are about just 1 city.
  • 12 are about just 1 person

That totals 73 out of the 74 being about 1 town, 1 city, or 1 person. (Some are about 1 person in 1 city or 1 person in 1 town, or 1 person in 1 county, of course.)

And that 1 bill left over? Perhaps something promising?

It’s about 2 towns.

We have a lot of work to do.

Tell the Public Safety Committee: Families Belong Together

We know that policies that tear apart families — whether through deportation or through incarceration — are bad for communities.

Even though the impacts of deportation have fallen out of the news cycle in the past few years, the work of disentangling state and local law enforcement remains no less important, and given the routine demonization of immigrant communities by too many politicians, we must continue to assert, in words and in policies, that all are welcome here.

But deportation isn’t the only driver of family separations. Our carceral system also does that, and restrictive rules around visitation exacerbate the indignities and inequities of the system.

Fortunately, there are proposed bills to address both of these issues. They both face a deadline of next Monday, April 8, and you still have time to act.

Send an email to the Public Safety Committee about the Safe Communities Act
Send an email to the Public Safety Committee about the Prison Visitation bill

Support the Safe Communities Act

Longstanding state and local involvement in deportations discourages immigrants from seeking police and court protection from domestic violence, endemic wage theft, and unsafe working conditions. Many immigrants—and their children—fear that seeking help from local authorities will result in deportation and family separation.

It has become increasingly clear that the ability of the federal government to protect our rights is limited, and we don’t know what the future will bring. The Massachusetts Safe Communities Act (S.1510 and H.2288) would end voluntary police and court involvement in deportations, and ensure that in Massachusetts, everyone can seek help, protection and medical care without fear of deportation.

The Massachusetts Joint Committee on Public Safety and Homeland Security has until April 8th to take action on the bill this session. Use our form to quickly send an email to committee members. They need to hear from you!

Email the Committee

Support the Visitation Bill

In December, the Keeping Families Connected coalition celebrated the historic No Cost Calls bill that eliminates the cost of phone calls for people who are incarcerated. This has already had a huge positive impact on individuals and families across the state. Let’s keep up the momentum to Keep Families Connected through supporting in-person visits. The Prison Visitation bill would lift many restrictions on visiting loved ones who are incarcerated, and make staying connected through in-person visits more accessible. You can learn more about the Visitation bill here.

The Public Safety Committee extended the deadline until April 8 to report this bill favorably out of committee. You can help by calling or emailing the members of the committee to tell them you support improved access to visits and want them to give the bills a favorable report.

Email the Committee

Testimony on the Affordable Homes Act (Bonding Committee)

Green affordable housing

Tuesday, April 2, 2024

Chair Kennedy, Chair Finn, and Members of the Joint Committee on Bonding, Capital Expenditures, and State Assets:

My name is Jonathan Cohn, and I am the policy director at Progressive Massachusetts. We are a statewide, multi-issue, grassroots membership organization focused on fighting for policy that would make our Commonwealth more equitable, just, sustainable, and democratic. 

Massachusetts faces a growing affordable housing crisis. To rent the average 2-bedroom apartment in Massachusetts requires an income equal to $37.97 per hour, more than twice the minimum wage. Home ownership has become increasingly out of reach, as the state’s median home price has passed $600,000. The high cost of housing has led to displacement, and in a growing number of municipalities, the local workforce can no longer afford to live there.

We are glad to see that Governor Healey recognizes the need to use a variety of tools to address our housing crisis and strongly support the comprehensive approach in the Affordable Homes Act, H.4138.

We were delighted to see the inclusion of key provisions like the following:

  • Creating a five-year housing plan (which should focus not only on supply but also on affordability to different income levels)
  • Enabling cities and towns to pass inclusionary zoning ordinances by simple majority—a vital tool for increasing affordable housing supply and diversifying communities
  • Making it easier to use public land for housing development
  • Establishing an Office of Fair Housing
  • Launching a Social Housing pilot program
  • Authorizing $150M for public housing decarbonization and $115 million for sustainable and climate-resilient affordable housing
  • Permitting Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) of <900 SF to be built by-right in single-family zoning districts in all communities and prohibiting the parking mandates and owner-occupancy requirements many municipalities use to make ADUs harder to build
  • Enabling cities and towns to pass real estate transfer fees as a tool to raise money for affordable housing production and preservation
  • Creating a process to enable individuals to seal eviction records

All of these are essential to a three-pronged approach to the housing crisis: protecting tenants, increasing housing production, and investing more in affordable housing. We can do all three, and this bill does.

However, we would like to outline how to make some of these provisions more accessible and effective as well as some additional measures to consider including.

Real Estate Transfer Fee Local Option

Cities and towns across Massachusetts want to take action to address the housing crisis, but they are often unable to do so without state approval. Seventeen communities have now requested the ability to use this tool, beginning with Provincetown in 2010. In the years since this initial request, circumstances have only become more dire, and more cities and towns have passed such home rule petitions or are actively considering doing so.

Our housing crisis is simply too great to leave funding and financing tools on the table. All communities must be able to use this tool that will allow us to generate additional resources for desperately needed local affordable housing.

To ensure that the transfer fee language in the bill can best meet the needs of diverse cities and towns, we urge the following:

  • Setting the Right Threshold: Home sale prices vary greatly across Massachusetts, with rural communities and Gateway cities often having property values well below $1 million. They should still be able to benefit from this tool. Similarly, communities should be able to set higher thresholds if that is best for local needs and market conditions.
  • Maintaining Flexibility: Communities should be able to determine whether buyers or sellers of a property bear fees and should be able to create local exemptions that best apply to their community.
  • Applying Fees to the Full Transaction: Allowing municipalities to apply fees to the full amount of transactions, rather than only the amount in excess of a threshold, will allow communities with higher needs and sales prices to generate more desperately needed revenue.

Sealing Eviction Records

Having an eviction record is creating a devastating barrier for tenants looking for housing. Records are created as soon as a case is filed and are publicly available forever–– regardless of the outcome. These records impact people’s ability to obtain housing, credit, and employment, harming many and disproportionately impacting women and people of color.

Regardless of whether one does anything wrong or is actually evicted, being party to an eviction or housing case is being unfairly held against tenants when they try to rent a new place. Even winning in court hurts tenants.

We are delighted to see eviction sealing language in this bill, but we would recommend several steps to ensure that tenants can best be protected:

  1. Ensuring that dismissals, cases that tenants win, and no-fault evictions be automatically sealed by the court as opposed to a petition process which involves extra steps for the court and all parties.

  2. Ensuring that in non-payment cases, tenants can seal after 14 days of paying a judgment and after 4 years if they were unable to pay because of an economic hardship or other good cause reasons.
  1. Ensuring that in a fault eviction, where one must wait 7 years to seal, that an intervening eviction which prevents one from sealing can only be a fault eviction and not just any type of eviction case, such as a no-fault eviction.

  2. Clarifying that the court has the direction to consider disability and domestic violence issues in fault cases and to adjust the sealing process accordingly.

Additional Measures to Include

We join with over 240 organizations to call for the inclusion of Access to Counsel in the Affordable Homes Act. 9 out of 10 tenants are unrepresented in eviction court, leading to higher rates of displacement and community instability. Evictions negatively affect people’s physical and mental health, and result in job loss and decreased school attainment for children. Guaranteeing legal representation to all tenants facing evictions would have a major positive impact.

We also urge you to use this opportunity to repeal the ban on rent control and enable municipalities to enact local rent control ordinances to stabilize housing costs and prevent no-cause evictions. We have been seeing a growing interest in rent control across the Commonwealth, with multiple municipalities filing home rule petitions to be able to take action. Rent control is an essential tool to combat displacement, and cities and towns should be able to pass such policies as fit their local housing situation.

Cities and towns that want to take action should be able to do so, and we urge you to include a Tenant Opportunity to Purchase local option (along the lines of S.880/H.1350), which would enable cities and towns to pass laws allowing tenants to join together to match a third-party offer when their homes are being sold.

We also urge you to use this bill to establish a statewide Foreclosure Prevention Program to require servicers to participate in pre-foreclosure mediation with homeowners to explore alternatives to foreclosures, an idea put forth in S.653 and H.942.

We also urge you to take additional steps to increase our supply of affordable housing, such as by funding and writing into statute the Small Properties State Acquisition Fund, which would provide subsidies for nonprofit acquisition of homes from the market, and by including funding for the production of affordable homeownership units that can be kept affordable in perpetuity. We also urge you to add an affordability requirement to the Housing Development Incentive Program (HDIP) so that public subsidies to development address the need for affordable housing stock.

Lastly, A Technical Correction

We stand with the Massachusetts AFL-CIO in asking you to address a major concern about Section 35 of the bill. As written, this section would remove the application of prevailing wage laws to certain private development projects on public land. We hope that this was a drafting error and such language can be removed. The state should be using public land to both advance housing goals and create good-paying jobs, and these are not in conflict.

Thank you for all your work on this important bill and vital topic.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Cohn

Policy Director

Progressive Massachusetts

A Budget is a Moral Document

Yesterday, the Ways & Means Committee, aka the budget writers, in the MA Legislature held a hearing about priorities for the next fiscal year.

A budget is more than just numbers: it’s a moral document. It shows what we, as a commonwealth, value and what society we wish to build together.

If you want a budget that reflects core progressive values, then write to your legislators in support of key investments in education and economic security.

Here’s what a budget that reflects our values would do:

  • Incorporate key provisions of the Cherish Act, such as increasing investment in public colleges and universities, ensuring that students are able to graduate without debt, strengthening student supports, and guaranteeing good pay and benefits for all faculty and staff
  • Fully fund the Student Opportunity Act to keep the promise made to our students in 2019 of a high-quality public education for all and increased funding to high-need school districts, and ensure that we are not underfunding needs due to an outdated calculation of inflation
  • Fully fund School Meals for All because universal school meals have proven a policy success and hungry children can’t learn
  • Continue the state’s operational grants to child care providers to offset their operating costs, including higher educator pay, and implement other recommendations from a recent early education & child care commission
  • Provide funding for an Access to Counsel program because no tenant facing eviction should go without legal representation
  • Increase cash assistance grant levels for low-income families because we must ensure that everyone’s basic needs are met

Email your legislators

Testimony: Investing in Our Commonwealth and Our Shared Prosperity

Tuesday, March 26, 2024

Chair Michlewitz, Chair Rodrigues, and Members of the Joint Committee on Ways and Means:

My name is Jonathan Cohn, and I am the Policy Director at Progressive Massachusetts, a statewide grassroots advocacy group fighting for a more equitable, just, sustainable, and democratic commonwealth. Thank you for your work on the FY 2025 budget.

In the following, we outline several key priority areas for the budget to ensure that it builds on recent progress in investing in our commonwealth.

Strengthening Our Commitment to Public Higher Education

Our public colleges and universities are essential vehicles for economic mobility of our commonwealth’s residents and economic vitality of the commonwealth itself. Studies have shown that college graduates are more likely to be healthier, earn significantly more on average, and are less likely to face job loss during an economic recession, and graduates of our public colleges and universities are more likely to stay in Massachusetts to live and work, contributing to our commonwealth and common wealth.

However, our state has been disinvesting from public higher education for the last two decades, with funding for public higher education still below its (inflation-adjusted) value in 2001. When the state reduces funding to public colleges and universities, the result is higher tuition and fees, and a growing debt burden faced by students and families.

The published in-state tuition and fees increase at public 4-year institutions in MA increased 135 percent from 2001 to 2021 after adjusting for inflation, and for two-year institutions, 81 percent, but real Median Household Income in Massachusetts only increased by 8 percent. Just between 2009 and 2021, the average student debt rose 52% for four-year graduates and 62% for community college graduates. When we close off opportunities like that for our students, we are all worse off. 

As you craft the FY 2025 budget, we urge you to incorporate key provisions of the Cherish Act and the Debt-Free Future Act, such as

  • Instituting fair and adequate minimum funding levels for public higher education
  • Ensuring that students are able to graduate from our public colleges and universities debt-free
  • Ensuring that adjunct faculty and part-time staff are eligible for state health care and retirement benefits
  • Reducing wage disparities on campuses
  • Increasing funding for student supports
  • Investing in green and healthy buildings on campus

Fully Funding Our Public Schools

The passage of the Student Opportunity Act in 2019 was a major win for education justice in the commonwealth. We are very appreciative of recent comments that the Legislature will fully fund the Student Opportunity Act’s fourth year of implementation, keeping the law on track to be fully funded by the 2026-2027 school year. Importantly, maintaining that commitment includes fixing the Chapter 70 inflation calculation glitch that, if left unsolved, could permanently reduce school aid and prevent the Commonwealth from meeting the real-dollar targets in the Student Opportunity Act.

Full Funding for School Meals for All

We also urge you to support full funding in support of School Meals for All (Line Items 1596-2422 and 7053-1925).

The research on universal school meals is clear: participation in school meals improves academic achievement, attendance, and student behavior at school; decreases childhood food insecurity; leads to children eating more fruits, vegetables, and milk; and reduces visits to the school nurse.

With the implementation of School Meals for All, more than an additional 100,000 students participated in school lunch in October 2023 compared to October 2019 in schools not previously serving universal free meals. This program has been a success all around, and we must ensure it continues to be so.

Advancing the Common Start Vision

As a member of the Common Start coalition, we would also like to amplify the common Start coalition’s asks:

  • $510 million to continue operational grants to child care providers (line item 3000-1045)
  • Increased funding that makes substantial progress towards the Economic Review Commission’s recommendation of raising early education and care financial assistance reimbursement rates (line items 3000-1041 & 3000-1042)
  • $75 million to increase access to child care financial assistance (line item 3000-4060)
  • $20 million for the Head Start Supplemental Grant (line item 3000-5000)

The Governor, Senate Leadership, and House Leadership have all expressed a commitment to strengthening our child care and early education system, and these investments would help to do that.

Access to Counsel

Without legal representation, many tenants risk becoming homeless. Indeed, most tenants are unrepresented and face eviction alone. It doesn’t have to be that way, and an Access to Counsel program is a proven solution.

We urge the House and Senate Committees on Ways and Means to include in your respective FY25 budgets $3.5 Million (Line-item 0321-1800) to start a Access to Counsel program in tandem with the full Access to Council bill language in S.864/H.4360, which provides the framework for a statewide program.

Increasing Assistance to Families in Deep Poverty

We also urge you to include a 20% increase in cash assistance grant levels (line items 4403-2000 and 4408-1000.

The maximum grant for a family of 3 with no income is only $783 a month, far below even half the federal poverty level – known as Deep Poverty – which is currently $1,076 for a family of 3.  The maximum grant for an elder or person with a disability is only $401 a month.  In January, Governor Healey cut the 10% grant increase that the Legislature had scheduled to go into effect in April.

Deep poverty hurts kids.  It causes health and emotional damage, toxic stress, impaired school performance, and homeless and housing instability. We must do right by our neediest families.

A budget is a moral document, and we urge you to include such investments to advance a vision of a commonwealth that works for all residents.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Cohn

Policy Director

Progressive Massachusetts

Universal School Meals: Good Politics and Good Policy

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, schools were able to offer meals to all students at no charge through the pandemic-related child nutrition waivers offered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). 

Massachusetts chose to extend it and then last year voted to make it permanent, using funding from the Fair Share Amendment.

A new report by the Food Research and Action Center highlights the positive impacts of universal school meals. As the report notes, the research is clear: participation in school meals improves academic achievement, attendance, and student behavior at school; decreases childhood food insecurity; leads to children eating more fruits, vegetables, and milk; and reduces visits to the school nurse.

As the chart below shows, breakfast participation in Massachusetts went up by 25% from 2018-2019 numbers, and lunch participation went up by 16% from 2018-2019 numbers.

We will continue to see these benefits from universal school meals — a reminder that they are both good politics and good policy.

Say No to Uber and Lyft’s Power Grab

Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Chair Friedman, Chair Peisch, and Members of the Special Joint Committee on Initiative Petitions:

My name is Jonathan Cohn, and I am the policy director at Progressive Massachusetts. We are a statewide, multi-issue, grassroots membership organization focused on fighting for policy that would make our Commonwealth more equitable, just, sustainable, and democratic. 

We would like to submit testimony to go on record in opposition to

  • Initiative Petition No. 23-25, H4256, An Act defining and regulating the relationship between network companies and app-based drivers for purposes of the General and Special Laws,
  • Initiative Petition No. 23-29, H4257, An Act establishing that app-based drivers are not employees, and network companies are not employers, for certain purposes of the General Laws,
  • Initiative Petition No. 23-30, H4258, An Act defining and regulating the relationship between network companies and app-based drivers for certain purposes of the General Laws,
  • Initiative Petition No. 23-31, H4259, An Act establishing that app-based drivers are not employees, and network companies are not employers, for certain purposes of the General Laws,
  • Initiative Petition No. 23-32, H4260 An Act Establishing that App-Based Drivers Are Not Employees, and Network Companies Are Not Employers, for Certain Purposes of the General Laws.

Massachusetts has very clear standards for determining independent contractor standards (the “ABC test”), and Big Tech companies like Uber and Lyft have been in flagrant violation of them.

As a reminder, those three parts are (1) that the work is done without the direction and control of the employer, (2) that the work is performed outside the usual course of the employer’s business, and (3) that the work is done by someone who has their own, independent business or trade doing that kind of work. None of these apply to gig economy work. For example, there would be no Uber and Lyft without their drivers; the claim that their companies are merely an app is a clear fallacy intended to evade the law.

Knowing that they are in violation of the law, these companies want to change it, rather than adhere to it. They are planning to spend possibly hundreds of millions of dollars to ensure that the law does not apply to them and that they, themselves, can rewrite it in order to bolster their own profits and power over workers. Indeed, they have already spent $6.6 million, most of that on signature collection for the five different versions they are putting forth. They apparently have the money to go all-out for this question but not, as they would have you believe, enough to do right by their workers.

These measures would deny app-based gig workers a living wage, benefits, legal rights, and anti-discrimination protections. The impact of these laws extends beyond just the gig economy sector itself. The ability to define away terms like “employee” and “independent contractor” sets a dangerous precedent, enabling companies across sectors to gut labor rights. Will we see restaurants claiming that the “restaurant” is only the physical building and physical infrastructure, relegating all employees to independent contractor status? Or hospitals claiming that the “hospital” is just the brick-and-mortar building, rather than the doctors, nurses, aides, and other health care workers that make it run? The list goes on.

That is not the future we want to live in, and we hope it is not one you want to live in either.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Cohn

Policy Director

Progressive Massachusetts

LTE: High rents have young people putting Boston in the rearview mirror

Jonathan Cohn, “High rents have young people putting Boston in the rearview mirror” (letter), Boston Globe, March 15, 2024.

Last year, the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce said that Massachusetts needed to cut taxes on businesses and the rich because otherwise people would flee the state. They won a generous tax package, but cutting the tax on the estates of multimillionaires and the tax on day traders and speculators won’t change the minds of young people about where to live.

Indeed, the chamber’s own new study (“ ‘Alarming’: 1 in 4 young people eye leaving Boston,” Business, March 13) shows that one of the main reasons young people consider moving away is that rent is far too high. It’s the fourth-highest in the country.

Zoning reforms that the chamber supports can make a small dent, but we also need to invest more money in affordable housing and to strengthen tenant protections. Boston has proposals to do both, with home rule petitions to create a real estate transfer fee to fund affordable housing and stabilize rents. Other municipalities do so as well, and the governor’s housing bond bill has language around the former. I’d welcome the chamber’s support for such clear solutions to an urgent problem facing the region.

Jonathan Cohn

Policy director

Progressive Massachusetts

Happy Sunshine Week! (Don’t Mind the Clouds…)

Happy Sunshine Week!

Sunshine Week is an annual collaboration among groups in the journalism, civic, government, and private sectors that shines a light on the importance of public records and open government. We could use some of that sunshine in Massachusetts.

We are supporting two bills this session that would advance such a vision of open government:

  • H.3040 / S.2024: An Act to Modernize Participation in Public Meetings, which would phase in a requirement for hybrid meeting access for state and local public meetings and provide grants to municipalities to boost technical capacity
  • S.1963: An Act to provide sunlight to state government, which would promote transparency in state government by removing the Governor’s exemption from public records law and requiring committee votes and legislative testimony (with appropriate redactions) to be public

Find out if your legislators are currently on board with these bills, and then write to them to urge them to support such basic measures to expand civic participation and promote good government.

Email your legislators
 
Sunshine Week Statistic: Roll Call Votes This Session

Has the legislative session felt somewhat slow to you? Well, one statistic that stands out is the sharp decline in roll call votes (i.e., formal yea / nay votes during a debate): in the MA House, state representatives have taken only about half the number of recorded votes this session as in recent ones.

So much of the legislative process occurs behind closed doors, and recorded votes are a critical opportunity for legislators to show the public where they stand. When the House refuses to bring up votes until they are unanimous and when legislators withdraw their amendments without discussion or debate, we lose out on opportunities to make progress on the many critical challenges facing the commonwealth.


Total Number of Roll Call Votes by Session

Line Item Veto Override: a vote taken by the Legislature to reject the Governor’s veto of a specific budget appropriation. Since veto overrides require a 2/3 vote, this recorded votes are mandatory; the Legislature cannot take a voice vote (i.e., call of yea’s and nay’s).

Quorum call: a vote that is simply a call of the roll for attendance reasons and to ascertain if sufficient legislators are present
 

“Cutting Through the Noise” | The Grassroots Connector

Jonathan Cohn, “Cutting Through the Noise,” Grassroots Connector, March 13, 2024.

Let me tell you a secret about your state legislature (and I’m certain it’s true of any). Your legislators don’t hear from constituents all that often. Yes, they’ll get calls about constituent services requests, and if you live in especially active districts, their inboxes may get flooded some days. But most legislators do not hear about policy from their constituents on a regular basis.

If we want better and bolder policy, we need to change that. And that’s one of many reasons we’ve been hosting phone banks at the relaunched Activist Afternoons in Cambridge on the first and third Sundays of the month.

We have been calling constituents in key legislative districts to ask them to call their legislators about important issues (and we can patch them through to an office immediately if they’re interested!) This year, we have been making calls about the Real Estate Transfer Fee, a proposal to enable cities and towns to levy a small fee on high-end real estate transactions in order to raise much-needed revenue for affordable housing. We are also backing the Gas Moratorium bill, which would put a pause on gas infrastructure expansion so that we aren’t entrenching unsustainable fossil fuels.

Odds are, you get too many emails with different action alerts (and too many fundraising emails), so it’s easy for things to get lost in the mix. That’s why these calls help. Many times, the voters we call are aware of the issues and eager to take action. But sometimes they aren’t aware but happy to learn of how they can make a difference. And too many people assume that their legislators are doing good work off in the distance when, in fact, they need to hear from constituents regularly. Calls from constituents urge them to pay attention to things they may have overlooked and give them positive reinforcement when they are doing good work. Phone bankers cut through the noise and make taking action easier for the people they call.

What is also exciting about these phone banks is that every time we train a new phone banker, or build the skill and comfort level of a returning phone banker, we are helping future campaigns, especially critical ones in the fall. Since we are calling a favorable list (our own list from Progressive Mass), people can have their first phone banking experiences with friendly voters, get used to the rhythm of phone banking, and relieve initial fears about talking to people they don’t know.

With Activist Afternoons, we also recognize that activism is always more fun when it’s social. We get to share our experiences on calls—celebrating wins, laughing at bizarre calls or answering machines, and enjoying each other’s company. And with our every-other Sunday regularity, people know that they can drop in when their schedule frees up. We’ll be there waiting — you just need to come with a good attitude, a phone, and a laptop.