Governor’s Council

Governor's Council

2020

Cities and Towns in District 6: Cambridge, Everett, Lynn, Lynnfield, Malden, Marblehead, Medford, Melrose, Nahant, Reading, Saugus, Somerville, Stoneham, Swampscott, Wakefield, Winchester + parts of Boston (East Boston, Charlestown, North End, West End, Downtown, Beacon Hill, and parts of the South End and Allston/Brighton)

State Senators’ Districts within D6: Brendan Crighton, Joe Boncore, Sal DiDomenico, Pat Jehlen, Jason Lewis

*No questionnaire was received from Councilor Terrence Kennedy.

Cities of District 7: Fitchburg, Gardner, Leominster, and Worcester

Towns of District 7: Ashburnham, Ashby, Athol, Auburn, Barre, Bellingham, Berlin, Blackstone, Bolton, Boylston, Brimfield, Brookfield, Charlton, Clinton, Douglas, Dudley, East Brookfield, Hardwick, Holden, Holland, Hopedale, Hubbardston, Lancaster, Leicester, Lunenburg, Mendon, Milford, Millbury, Millville, Monson, New Braintree, North Brookfield, Northborough (Pcts. 1, 2, 4), Northbridge, Palmer, Oakham, Oxford, Paxton, Petersham, Phillipston, Princeton, Rutland, Shrewsbury, Southbridge, Spencer, Sterling, Sturbridge, Sutton, Templeton, Townsend, Upton, Uxbridge, Wales, Ware, Warren, Webster, West Boylston, West Brookfield, Westminster, Winchendon

State Senators’ Districts within D7: Harriette Chandler, Anne Gobi, Michael Moore, Ryan Fattman, Dean Tran

So what does the Governor’s Council even do?

The Massachusetts Governor’s Council is composed of eight individuals elected from districts, and the Lieutenant Governor who serves ex officio. The eight councillors are elected from their respective districts (consisting of five State Senate districts) every two years. The Council meets weekly to record advice and consent on warrants for the state treasury, pardons and commutations, and recording advice and consent to gubernatorial appointments such as judges, clerk-magistrates, public administrators, members of the Parole Board, Appellate Tax Board, Industrial Accident Board and Industrial Accident Reviewing Board, notaries, and justices of the peace.

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Sheriff

Norfolk County Sheriff (Special)

2020

Norfolk County: Avon, Bellingham, Braintree, Brookline, Canton, Cohasset, Dedham, Dover, Foxborough, Franklin, Holbrook, Medfield, Medway, Millis, Milton, Needham, Norfolk, Norwood, Plainville, Quincy, Randolph, Sharon, Stoughton, Walpole, Wellesley, Westwood, Weymouth, Wrentham

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MA-04

2020

In Bristol County: Attleboro, Berkley, Dighton, Easton, Fall River: Ward 4, Precinct C; Ward 5, Precinct B1 and C; Ward 6, Precinct C1; and Wards 7, 8, and 9, Freetown, Mansfield, North Attleborough, Norton, Raynham: Precincts 1A, 2A, 3, and 4, Rehoboth, Seekonk, Somerset, Swansea, and Taunton.
In Middlesex County: Hopkinton, and Newton.
In Norfolk County: Bellingham: Precincts 1, 2, 3, and 4, Brookline, Dover, Foxborough, Franklin, Medfield, Medway, Millis, Needham, Norfolk, Plainville, Sharon, Wellesley, and Wrentham.
In Plymouth County: Lakeville.
In Worcester County: Hopedale, and Milford.

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MA-06

2020

In Essex County: Amesbury, Andover (Precincts 1, 7A,8), Beverly, Boxford, Danvers, Essex, Georgetown, Glouchester, Groveland, Hamilton, Ipswich, Lynn, Lynnfield, Manchester, Marblehead, Middleton, Nahant, Newbury, Newburyport, North Andover, Peabody, Rockport, Rowley, Salem, Salisbury, Saugust, Swampscott, Topsfield, Wenham, and West Newbury
In Middlesex County: Bedford, Billerica, Burlington, North Reading, Reading, Tewksbury, Wakefield, and Wilmington

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MA-08

2020

In Bristol County: Precincts 1 and 2 in Raynham.
In Norfolk County: Avon, Braintree, Canton, Cohasset, Dedham, Holbrook, Milton:Precincts 2–4, and 6–9, Norwood, Quincy, Randolph, Stoughton, Walpole, Westwood and Weymouth.
In Plymouth County: Abington, Bridgewater, Brockton, East Bridgewater, Hingham, Hull, Scituate, West Bridgewater, and Whitman.
In Suffolk County: Boston, Ward 3: Precincts 1–6; Ward 5: Precincts 3–5, 11; Ward 6, Ward 7: Precincts 1–9, Ward 11: Precincts 9 and 10, Ward 13: Precincts 3, 7 and 10, Ward 16: Precincts 2, 5, 7, 9, 10 and 12, Ward 19: Precincts 1–6, 8 and 9, and Ward 20: Precincts 1, 2, and 4–20.

*No questionnaire was received from Congressman Stephen Lynch.

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CommonWealth: It’s time to bring transparency to the Legislature

PM Issues Committee chair Jonathan Cohn just had an editorial printed in CommonWealth about transparency in the MA State House. Read an excerpt below and the full piece here.

***

In 2016, when the Massachusetts Legislature updated the state’s public records laws, they chose to punt on the issue of how such laws should apply to themselves. Indeed, Massachusetts remains the only state where the courts, Legislature, and governor’s office all claim to be fully exempt from public records laws.

In traditional Beacon Hill fashion, the Legislature created a commission to study the issue further, and the bicameral commission ended up with no actual recommendations.

But that’s not the fault of the senators in the commission. Frustrated with their House colleagues, the six Senate members issued their own report on December 31, 2018. In the report, they highlighted several as-of-yet-unadopted ways make the Massachusetts Legislature more accessible, including the release of all written testimony received prior to all committee hearings and any testimony or other materials submitted in-person during the hearing process, upon request and the online publication of any vote recorded either by electronic poll or by a vote of the “yeas and nays” during a committee meeting or executive session.

Earlier this month, the Senate reaffirmed their support for making testimony available (with, of course, appropriate redactions for “sensitive personal information or information that may jeopardize the health, wellness or safety of an individual”) and publishing committee votes online in the Joint Rules. The House again is proving a roadblock. In the Joint Rules on which the House plans to vote today, public access to testimony is gone. And although the House embraced a form of publishing committee votes, they narrowed it to a list of the dissenting votes and the vote count. Why not just list yeas and nays as we do everywhere else?

To be clear, public access to testimony and committee votes are not radical reforms. The majority of US states, including California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Oregon, and New Jersey, publish committee votes online. And states like Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, and Oregon go further than the proposal to simply make testimony available upon request: they publish it by default—something that the Massachusetts House showed it was able to do last summer with testimony submitted on the police reform bill.

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Announcing Our 2021-2022 Legislative Agenda

Join us in fighting for a progressive agenda in Massachusetts.

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Demand that Charlie Baker Prioritize Equity in Vaccine Rollout

We can’t have a successful recovery from COVID-19 without putting equity first.

Charlie Baker COVID

Your State Rep Should Support Open Government

Sunlight is one of the greatest disinfectants.

transparency

PM in the News: What’s the Matter with Mass?

Issues Committee chair Jonathan Cohn was quoted in a recent article in The New Republic on the state of the Massachusetts Democratic Party:

Jonathan Cohn, an organizer with Progressive Mass and dedicated chronicler of the state party, tells The New Republic that in order to understand why it’s so difficult for progressives to build power in the Bay State, one must first come to grips with Massachusetts’s underlying political ideology. “People think Massachusetts isn’t a terrain of conflict or struggle because they conceptualize conflict only through nationalized fights of Democrats versus Republicans, and we don’t have those kinds of fights because we have a nonexistent Republican Party and plenty of Democrats in our legislative supermajority whose voting records align with moderate Republicans,” he says.

…“You don’t have big donors or outside progressive groups mobilizing electorally here, because everyone’s under the impression that we’re all just living happily in this liberal utopia,” Cohn says.

“Then you also have Charlie Baker, who nobody is willing to attack outright,” he says. “Whether for his vetoes, or for his regressive stance on basic social welfare policies, everybody in the state is terrified of his approval rating, and so it keeps growing even as he continues to attack progressive policies and voices.”

…..

“If you are a wealthy, educated, socially liberal person, you align with the Democratic Party in most places, but Baker is a great asset for your fiscal conservatism,” Cohn says. “This is the kind of person that really defines the voice of The Boston Globe editorial board: They represent the mindset of white, upper-middle-class, inner-ring suburbia—socially liberal but into the idea that a friendly Republican governor is a check on a runaway Democratic legislative branch.”

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