“It is far past time for us to stop shortchanging our students.”

The following testimony was submitted to the Joint Committee on Higher Education.

Tuesday, April 30, 2019

Chairwoman Gobi, Chairman Roy, and Members of the Joint Higher Education Committee,

My name is Jonathan Cohn, and I am the chair of the Issues Committee of Progressive Massachusetts, a statewide multi-issue grassroots organization committed to fighting for social justice and progressive policy. Since our founding, treating education as a public good and funding it as such has been central to our mission.

As such, we strongly support S.744 / H.1221, An Act to guarantee debt-free public higher education, and S.741, An Act committing to higher education the resources to Insure a strong and healthy public higher education system (or CHERISH), and urge you to report them out favorably.

Since 2001, Massachusetts has cut funding for public higher education by 14 percent. However, at the same time that our state was retrenching from investing in our future, enrollment was going up. As a result, per student funding has fallen by 32 percent, almost a third.

When the state pulls back, the cost burden falls onto students. Massachusetts saw some of the highest tuition and fee increases in the country from 2001 to 2016, particularly during the recession. The share of costs borne by students and their families doubled, putting a degree out of reach for more and more students, especially those of disadvantaged backgrounds.

Today, the average graduate from our state universities and the UMass system leaves with over $30,000 in student debt—the tenth highest in the country. The average debt for graduates of public, four-year postsecondary schools grew faster in Massachusetts than in all but one other state from 2004 to 2016.

A postsecondary degree provides a proven premium in lifetime wages for graduates and countless other opportunities. Cost should not be a barrier. By preventing young people from living independently, buying a home, or pursuing their career of choice, college debt is a drag on our economy. Even when students drop out due to cost, they can be saddled with debt for years after.

It is far past time for us to stop shortchanging our students. Investing more in public higher education, as the CHERISH Act would require, and making public higher education debt-free would benefit not only students. When financial concerns are no longer a hindrance for people seeking to realize their full potential, we all benefit.

Time to End a Shameful History of Disenfranchisement

The following testimony was submitted to the Joint Election Laws Committee.

*************************************************************

Chairman Finegold, Chairman Lawn, and Members of the Joint Election Laws Committee,

As an organization committed to strengthening our democracy and promoting racial and social justice in our Commonwealth, Progressive Massachusetts strongly supports S.12, a proposal for a legislative amendment to the Constitution relative to voting rights and urges swift action.

In recent years, states around the US have started to realize that the decades-long phenomenon of mass incarceration was a moral, economic, and public safety failure. It destroyed communities, strained budgets, and made us no safer.

The omnibus criminal justice reform legislation passed last session to widespread public support shows that the MA House and Senate understand this. But there is more work to do.

The right to vote is a cornerstone of democracy. However, our neighbors in Maine and Vermont are the only states in the US to grant incarcerated individuals this right.

Massachusetts once did. However, in the late 1990s, Governor Paul Cellucci and other state politicians pushed to restrict this right, putting forth a constitutional amendment to prevent those convicted of a felony from voting while incarcerated.

Let us be clear. Given the inequities in our criminal justice system, this is part and parcel of our country’s shameful history of trying to disenfranchise minority voters. Although our state is only 7% Black, our prison population is 26% Black, and although our state is only 10% Latinx, our prison population is 24%. [1]

Moreover, the Supreme Court and US Congress have affirmed a variety of constitutional rights for prisoners. They have rights of religious freedom and a right to hold and express political opinions. As Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren once said, “Citizenship is not a right that expires upon misbehavior.”

Studies have repeatedly shown that maintaining a connection to the outside world is conducive to rehabilitation and reducing recidivism. [2] Allowing prisoners to participate in elections will strengthen their ties to the community, increase their sense of social responsibility, and facilitate their reintegration upon release.

We urge the committee to give this bill a favorable report.

[1] https://www.prisonpolicy.org/profiles/MA.html

[2] See, e.g., https://www.researchgate.net/publication/237298166_Inmate_Social_Ties_and_the_Transition_to_Society_Does_Visitation_Reduce_Recidivism.

We Made a Promise to Our Students. We Need to Keep It.

The following testimony was submitted to the Joint Committee on Education on Friday, March 22, 2019.

Chairman Lewis, Chairwoman Peisch, and all the members of the Committee, 

My name is Jonathan Cohn, and I chair the Issues Committee at Progressive Massachusetts, a statewide, member-driven grassroots organization built from the ground up by organizers and activists from across the state to advocate for progressive policy. Other states routinely look to Massachusetts for direction, and it’s important for us to get things right.  

Quality public education for all is a central component of our platform, and no bill before the legislature better delivers on this promise than the PROMISE Act (S.238/H.586). 

Massachusetts is the birthplace of public education in the US, and our public schools routinely rank first in the nation because of high standardized test scores and postsecondary degree attainment rates. However, such high overall scores mask persistent inequities that continue to pose an obstacle to children’s ability to realize their full potential. The achievement gap between low-income and better-off students is one of the highest in the nation, as are disparities in per-pupil spending.  

A major source of this inequality lies in an outdated funding formula. The Foundation Budget, established in 1993 by the Education Reform Act, was intended as a starting point for funding school districts across the Commonwealth, based on the circumstances and needs of each student. Just like the hair styles and fashion of the early 1990s are out of date, so too are cost assumptions.  

The Foundation Budget is substantially lower than what all districts need, but only wealthy districts are able to make up for the funding shortfall. When the funding isn’t there, cuts to essential services and programs continue year after year. Communities are hamstrung by Proposition 2½ in their desire to fully provide for students’ education.  

The Legislature knows what needs to be done. The 2015 Foundation Budget Reform Commission outlined the path forward, issuing five co-equal recommendations related to transparency and tracking and four cost areas: special education, health care, English Language Learner education, and closing income-based achievement gaps. The PROMISE Act is the only bill before the Legislature that would fully implement all five recommendations, and it builds on such progress with important adjustments to make sure low-income students are properly counted and districts aren’t disproportionately impacted by the costs of charter school reimbursements.  

The other two bills under consideration fail to include adequate funding for low-income students. For example, whereas the PROMISE Act commits approximately $4,600/pupil per year in new achievement-gap-closure funding for our neediest students, the Governor’s bill promises only $473 when adjusted for inflation. These bills also fail to address the proper counting of low-income students and charter reimbursements. Now is not the time for partial solutions.  

It has taken the Legislature more than two decades to revise this formula. We owe it to students to stop punting and take bold and comprehensive action as quickly as possible.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Cohn

Top 10 Excuses You’ll Hear for Why Your Legislator Voted Against Transparency

No Excuses

Last week, the Massachusetts House voted down three common sense transparency amendments to its rules package.

These amendments were simple good government proposals, requiring that…

  • Representatives be given a reasonable amount of time to read the final language of any bill they’re voting on
  • Representatives be given a reasonable amount of time to read any amendment submitted on the floor that they’ll be voting on
  • Hearing testimony (for/against) a bill and all votes taken in committee to be publicly available.

Yet they all failed, as most rank-and-file Democrats voted with House Leadership against them.

If you’ve reached out to your representatives since, they’ve probably given you a number of excuses. Spoiler: They’re not very good ones.

NO Excuses

(1)  “Requiring more time for Legislators to read bills would just create unnecessary delays. my constituents routinely tell me that we need to be doing more.”

The slow pace of legislative progress in the House is a confounding and deliberate choice–of legislators’ (and especially House Leadership’s) own making. Leadership sets the agenda and the pace: Hearings that take months to be scheduled, repeatedly missed deadlines for reporting bills out of committee, and a final month of a 2-year session packed with a flurry of  major bills. This is all by choice, and not out of necessity (recall the lightning speed with which the legislature drafted, debated, passed the “Upskirting” bill). There is no reason they can’t start the real work three days earlier. Better yet, they could start a year and a half earlier and not find themselves in such a time crunch at the end.

(2)  “By a time a bill comes to the floor, there has been a tremendous amount of public input already. So giving more time for experts, advocates, and the public to read it is just superfluous!”  

This is a loose interpretation of the word “public.” The drafting of a bill happens behind closed doors, which only high-ranking legislators and well-financed lobbyists can get behind. Even rank and file legislators do not have access to this process, and there is no record of whose input is actually being incorporated. It is important for experts, advocates, and constituents to be able to offer input as well.

(3)  “This would create an opportunity for obstruction. A Republican state rep like Jim Lyons could file amendment after amendment, clogging up the process and taking days of our time.”

First of all, Jim Lyons was defeated last November. That point aside, the uninformed chaos of floor amendments could be avoided if amendments were filed well in advance of debate and voting. Moreover, if a legislator were seeking to be obstructive, there is already a backstop: the House routinely suspends its own rules anyway, and it would just need an (easily attainable) 2/3 majority to do so. Amendment #2 would have required that this suspension be done by a roll call vote, providing a public record of who judged the amendments to be gratuitous and unworthy of a serious reading, but it would still be perfectly possible.

(4)  “This is a solution in search of a problem. We already have enough time to read what we’re voting on.”

Last year, the House voted to authorize the creation of community benefit districts the very same day the bill was reported out of House Ways & Means Committee. The bill would have let wealthy property owners in residential and commercial areas impose taxes on their neighbors and privatize public spaces. Many members had no idea what they were voting on, having been given favorable talking points but few details. Only after the House passed the bill were organizations like the ACLU, Common Cause, the NAACP, and the Mass Law Reform Institute able to rally the public to action.

The “Grand Bargain” deal passed by the Legislature last summer (in order to avoid a $15 minimum wage, paid family and medical leave, and a sales tax reduction being on the November ballot ) was voted on the very same day it was reported out of the House Ways & Means Committee – indeed, just one hour after activists from the Raise Up Massachusetts coalition, which was behind the $15 minimum wage and paid leave ballot questions, were given the language and well before the 100+ group coalition had finished reading and debating it.

In both cases, the rule granting representatives 24 hours to read a bill was suspended, and this was not because legislators had all finished reading. Indeed, even by extending the window to 72 hours, the House could still suspend the requirement; however, Amendment #1 would again require them to do so by roll call, meaning representatives would have to justify to their constituents why they felt such a suspension was appropriate.

(5)  “Committees should be able to set their own rules, and wouldn’t these rules cause an undue burden for already overworked and underpaid staff?”

The House Rules *already* set standards by which committees must operate. Requiring two additional steps of transparency – the publication of testimony and the publication of committee votes – is fully in line with that. Establishing basic parameters for a committee is not undue interference with its operation.

Moreover, in January 2017, the Massachusetts Legislature voted for a pay hike that increased the pay, stipends, and office expense budgets of committee chairmen. It is fully within their ability to increase the pay of their staff; indeed, they should.

(6)  “All hearing testimony is already public.”

Sure. But very difficult to participate in and to access.

Yes, anyone who is able to come to downtown Boston to attend a hearing in the middle of the workday is able to listen to the testimony. That is no substitute for publishing submitted testimony online, like Alaska, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, Ohio, Oregon, and Wisconsin do.

Furthermore, a great deal of testimony is submitted in writing – in fact, the committees encourage it. Even representatives who are not members of the committee have been denied access to this testimony by some committees. If even rank and file legislators can’t get it, experts, advocates, and the public certainly can’t.

(7)  “All of my votes are already public.”

Ha! First of all, publicly recorded floor votes are VERY, VERY DIFFICULT TO FIND especially on the House side. (For more on this issue, check out our Scorecard website FAQs).

But we’re not talking about floor votes; we’re talking about committee votes. And those are not actually available online.  

(8)  “I’m new here, and who am I to say how the chamber should operate? Isn’t that presumptuous?”

So House Leadership has convinced you of their power and the absence of yours. Interesting, don’t you think?

The Legislature does not belong to the Speaker, the Majority Leader, or any other member of House Leadership. It belongs to the people. It is only to their constituents that legislators are accountable because their constituents are the ones who elected – and will decide whether to re-elect – them.  

(9)  “I’m playing a long game. If I vote for this, then I’ll end up on the Speaker’s bad side, and I won’t be able to push any of the priorities that we both care about.”

Many representatives have been saying this for years. But given how important bills keep hitting the same roadblocks session after session, the strategy of going along to get along is certainly not a proven winner. The only reason the Speaker has that kind of control in the first place is the lack of transparency and accountability inherent in the House’s standard practices. The only way to fix structural problems is with changes in structure, and your constituents will certainly have your back.

(10) “But this will mean I’ll just get more calls from constituents.”

Yes, that is called democracy.

Beacon Hill Roll Call: “Switch ’em, Mikey”

“Beacon Hill Roll Call February 1, 2019,” Bob Katzen, Beacon Hill Roll Call

Jonathan Cohn, chairman of the Issues Committee of Progressive Massachusetts: “Too often, House Democrats will vote in lockstep with the speaker, whether he’s right or wrong, without doing their own due diligence about what they are, in fact, voting on. Legislators should come to their own conclusions about bills and amendments based on their own promises and principles and the input from advocates, policy experts, and their own constituents—not just on how the speaker chooses to vote … The House had a long debate about its rules, but for the rest of the session, there needs to be a serious debate about the norms by which the chamber operates and how badly they are in need of a change.”

The House Just Voted Down Three Important Transparency Amendments. How Did Your Rep Vote?

Former Sierra Club lobbyist Phil Sego was once quoted as saying, “Don’t mistake what happens in [the Massachusetts State House] for democracy.” Our legislative process is deeply flawed and designed to avoid public accountability.

Yesterday, your representative had a chance to take the first step toward changing that. Amendments were introduced that would have required:

  • Representatives be given a reasonable amount of time to read the final language of any bill they’re voting on
  • Representatives be given a reasonable amount of time to read any amendment submitted on the floor that they’ll be voting on
  • Hearing testimony (for/against) a bill and all votes taken in committee to be publicly available.

All three amendments were filed by progressive stalwart Rep. Jon Hecht (D-Watertown). We explained why they’re all so important here.

The first amendment would have ensured reps have at least 72 hours to read a bill before they have to vote on it. It failed 55-103. (Quick guide: To find out how your rep voted, look at the Y = yes, N = no, or X = absent to the left of their name). 

House Vote - Amendment 1 - 2019 Rules

The second amendment would have ensured that reps have 30 minutes to read any amendment filed on the floor before having to vote on it. It was voted down 47 to 111.

House Vote - Amendment 2 - 2019 Rules

NB: The text of both amendments would have allowed the House to waive the requirement for a 2/3 vote. So if something was non-controversial, it wouldn’t be creating unnecessary delay (the unnecessary delays being all too often of House Leadership’s own making).

Finally, the third amendment would have required the publication of hearing testimony (for/against a bill) and any roll call vote taken in committee. It was voted down 49-109.

We should all be able to agree on these commonsense measures. In fact, Mass Fiscal Alliance supported this amendment along with Progressive Mass – probably the only time we’ve agreed on anything.

We have to wonder what the representatives who don’t support such obvious transparency and accountability requirements are hiding.

Let Your Rep Know You’re Watching

Please send an email to your rep now. If they voted yes, a message of thanks will serve as reassurance that this was the right decision. If your rep is a no vote, they deserve to hear your opinion on that. Receiving this positive or negative feedback will be a factor in their decision making when the next vote comes up.

Find Your Rep’s Email Address, Phone #, and Social Media Handles Here.

If they voted yes…..

“Thank you for voting in favor of amendments #1 through #3 to the House Rules yesterday. Transparency is the bedrock of democracy, and your support for a more transparent State House matters a lot to me and other constituents.”

Email your rep now.

If they voted no…

“I was very disappointed to see that you voted against amendments #1 to #3 to the House Rules yesterday. These common sense measures would have brought much-needed transparency to the State House and made sure constituents–and legislators–feel empowered to be a part of the democratic process.”

Email your rep now.

If You Want a Different Outcome, You Need to Change the Rules of the Game

The Massachusetts General Court is the second oldest deliberative body of the world. It’s time for it to start living up to such a stature.

Opaque processes and procedures are the standard operating procedure in the Legislature, leaving the public—and even many legislators—in the dark while monied interests exert sway behind closed doors. And an over-centralization of power encourages a culture of quiescence and retaliation, discouraging open debate on major issues—a problem especially acute in the Massachusetts House of Representatives.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Real reform will be impossible without changes to both rules and norms.

And with the MA House set to vote on its rules for the 191st legislative session tomorrow, we have a few good ideas about measures the House could adopt.

(1) Read What You’re Voting On

PROBLEM: When legislators don’t have the time to do their due diligence, bad legislation can easily slip through. Take, for example, the House’s vote last year on a bill authorizing what’s called “community benefit districts.” That bill would have enabled wealthy property owners to essentially “own” public spaces and impose fees on other property owners in the district with or without their approval, all with zero safeguards for civil liberties and equal access. Representatives only learned that a vote was going to take place on the bill the day of the vote itself, providing no time for legislators to read the fine print or consult with experts. The result? It sailed through almost unanimously, with representatives only realizing what they actually voted on afterwards.

SOLUTION: Bills should be made available to House members and the public, in the form in which they were most recently reported from committee, at least 72 hours (three days) before being considered on the floor. Legislators, experts, advocates, and engaged community members then have the opportunity to more thoroughly evaluate a bill, and legislators will better understand what they are actually voting on.

The same standard – read what you’re voting on – should also apply to amendments. When a bill is being considered, representatives should get at least 30 minutes to review the text of any new amendment before having to vote on it.

(2) Know What You’re Voting On – and Who’s Behind the Bill

PROBLEM: Legislators don’t have the staff (or time) to attend every single hearing on every single bill, and can thus be left with only a cursory understanding of what a bill does and who the main forces behind it are.

Hearings, at least, are public, unlike much of the legislative process. When negotiations happen behind closed doors, other legislators and the public are left in the dark about how a bill is changed and who is lobbying for those changes. Take, for example, the case in 2017 when the House Ways & Means Committee watered down a bill to protect pregnant women in the workplace – with no legislator or lobby group taking ownership of the change.

SOLUTION: Committee staff are already doing a lot of work compiling information on a bill, so that information should be made available to all legislators and the public. As is the norm in a number of other state legislatures, bills reported out of an “issue area” committee should be accompanied by substantive reports with a) a summary of the arguments advanced pro/con at the bill hearing and in written testimony submitted; b) a list of organizations and individuals that testified pro/con on the bill; c) a list of organizations and individuals that met or otherwise communicated with the Committee Leadership. And when a bill gets reported out of a committee like Ways & Means or Third Reading, those reports should also include an explanation of any changes made to the bill.

(3) Show Your Vote

PROBLEM: Of the thousands of bills that get filed at the start of a session, comparatively few get passed in either chamber, let alone being signed into law. Most bills end up dying in the committee stage – whether voted down, sent to further study (i.e., indefinitely tabled – the study never happens), or discharged to another committee (where they then flounder). When a bill dies in committee, all legislators are left with clean hands, since no recorded vote is made available for the decision. Indeed, the House evades its own stated rules around making these recorded votes available by polling votes electronically instead of in person. This leaves legislators outside of the committee—and the public—in the dark about what is happening on important pieces of legislation.

SOLUTION: The state legislatures in a majority of US states publish roll call votes from committees online, and so should ours. A recorded vote should be taken (and published) whenever a committee makes a decision, whether to give a bill a favorable/negative report, “send it to further study,” or discharge it.

MetroWest Daily News: “Robinson’s transparency pledge a necessity for Legislature”

“Robinson’s transparency pledge a necessity for Legislature” — Jonathan Cohn, MetroWest Daily News (1/14/2019)

The Massachusetts Legislature often touts its status as the second oldest deliberative body in the world. If only it lived up to that description. Unfortunately, public deliberation in our supposedly-deliberative body, especially the House of Representatives, has become exceedingly rare.

Consider, for example, the frequency with which state representatives withdraw their amendments. When a bill is brought to the floor, representatives have the opportunity to offer amendments. With most negotiations taking place behind closed doors among a small number of high-ranking members, this is the first and only chance for most representatives to affect the language being proposed. When an amendment is filed, however, its sponsor faces intense pressure from leadership to withdraw it. Hundreds of amendments are filed, only to be withdrawn without a second of debate.

Read the rest here.

CommonWealth: A resolution for Legislature: Finish last year’s work

“A resolution for Legislature: Finish last year’s work” — Jonathan Cohn, CommonWealth 

DATE: 12/29/2018 

IN A FEW short days, the next legislative session in the Massachusetts State House will begin. New legislators will be sworn in. The governor will give his State of the State address. The mad dash to file bills and secure co-sponsorships will start—and end—in the blink of an eye.

But we’re not there yet. Now is the time for reflections on the past and aspirations for the new. And in that spirit, I’d like to propose a New Year’s resolution for the Massachusetts Legislature: finish last year’s business.

The Legislature will have a lot on its table soon, and indeed, new issues arise all the time. But if they want to avoid the chaotic spectacle that the final days of a legislative session too often are, then it’s good to start early.

Read the rest here.

2018: Senate Scorecard in Review

A scorecard tells a story. So what story does our 2018 scorecard of the Senate tell? : A guide to the 2018 Scorecard

Criminal Justice Reform: The Senate passed a comprehensive criminal justice reform bill last fall (and easily passed the conference report). Early in the new year, the Senate made sure not to exacerbate the existing problems of the system more by striking the section of an animal welfare bill that allowed juveniles ages 14-17 to receive adult criminal sentences for animal cruelty (19-17, 37s). Countless studies show that housing youths in adult prisons only worsens recidivism and works against a goal of rehabilitation.

Democracy: Massachusetts has some of the highest voter turnout in the country due to the affluence and high education rates in the state. But those rates are hardly impressive by international standards and mask significant inequality within. In a win for democracy, the House passed Automatic Voter Registration (AVR), a reform first adopted by Oregon in 2015 (38-0, 56s). Eligible voters who interface with the RMV or MassHealth would be automatically registered to vote unless they decline. With more than 700,000 eligible citizens in MA unregistered, AVR would increase the accuracy, security, and comprehensiveness of voter rolls.

The Senate tried to build on past election modernization reforms even further by providing funding for early voting in the primary (35-3, 41s), although that unfortunately did not make it into the final budget.

In addition to expanding voting rights, the Senate, recognizing the essential role of an engaged and informed citizenship to democracy, voted to enact a comprehensive civics education curriculum and requirement in schools across Massachusetts (32-4, 39s) and defeated a Republican effort to weaken the bill (9-27, 38s).

Less successful, however, was an attempt to call for a limited constitutional convention focused on clarifying that the spending of money to influence elections is not protected free speech under the First Amendment and thereby enabling Congress and the states to better regulate political contributions (aimed at the disastrous 2010 Citizens United ruling). The Senate voted 23-15 to strike out the call for a convention from the underlying bill, the We the People Act, resulting in a rather modest resolution about the importance of curbing the outsize role of money in politics (53s).

LGBTQ Rights: The Senate voted 36-1 to establish a gender-neutral identity option for Massachusetts licenses, a recognition that some individuals may not identify as either male or female (54s), although the bill unfortunately later got caught up in end-of-session chaos and squabbling and did not make it through the House.

Public Safety: Massachusetts has some of the strongest gun laws in the country, but as we here at Progressive Mass stress, the question is not whether we’re doing better than other states, but whether we’re doing as much as we can.

The Legislature, learning from other states’ successes, passed legislation creating a kind of court order (Extreme Risk Protection Order, or ERPO) to temporarily restrict a person’s access to guns because they pose a significant danger to themselves or others, which can be requested by family members and law enforcement (36-1, 55s). Empowering family members, who are able to see early warning signs, to act in this way can prevent gun violence, whether mass shooting or suicide.

Housing: We supported the effort to increase the funding for the Community Preservation Act through a surcharge for documentation at the Registries of Deeds (38-0, 43s). CPA funds can be used for affordable housing, historic preservation, and green and open space.

A key item on the agenda for both House and Senate this year was regulating short-term rentals (e.g., Airbnb). Unlike what tends to happen, the Senate’s original bill was weaker than the House’s, but the Senate, thankfully, beat back an effort to reducing the possible revenue the state could raise from a tax on short-term rentals (11-26, 40s). The final bill that came out of the conference between House and Senate was stronger (30-7, 64s), but it has been stuck in limbo because of an effort by Republican Governor Charlie Baker has sought to make industry-friendly changes to the law.

Education: Massachusetts’s 25-year-old education funding formula is short-changing our schools $1-2 billion per year due to outdated assumptions about the costs of health care, special education, ELL (English Language Learners) education, and closing racial and economic achievement gaps.

The 2015 Foundation Budget Review Commission recommended a path forward for fixing it. The Senate unanimously adopted a bill to implement them, only to see resistance from the House (42s).

Climate Action: The Senate unanimously passed an impressive climate mitigation and adaptation bill that would accelerate our state’s transition to renewable energy, with an eye to equity (51s), only to again face opposition in the House.

The Senate also defeated a Republican effort to constrain the state from regulating vehicle emissions standards, ostensibly because doing so would place the state in violation of federal law (7-30, 50s). With the Trump administration day after day seeking to roll back critical environmental regulations, Massachusetts needs to be taking bolder action, not creating unnecessary, self-imposed constraints.

Immigration: Despite Massachusetts’s liberal reputation, our Legislature has been historically hostile to passing legislation to strengthen protections for our immigrant community.

The Senate included four provisions from the Safe Communities Act, a bill that our members fought strongly for, in its FY 2019 budget: (1) a prohibition on police inquiries about immigration status, a prohibition on certain collaboration agreements between local law enforcement and ICE, (3) a guarantee of basic due process protections, and (4) a prohibition on participation in a Muslim registry (25-13, 45s). The Senate shortly thereafter defeated a xenophobic amendment needlessly entangling police in deportations and set us back from the Lunn v. Commonwealth decision, which set limitations on such collaboration (13-25, 46s).

Due to opposition from House Leadership, the vital Safe Communities provisions did not make it into the final FY 2019 budget, which passed 36 to 1 (57s).

Revenue: We began the session with the expectation that the Fair Share amendment (“millionaire’s tax”) would be on the ballot this November. Conservative justices on the Supreme Judicial Court torpedoed those plans, striking the question from the ballot in June.

Anti-tax ballot initiatives from 1998 to 2002 have created a longstanding revenue crisis in this state, as vital programs are cut and the rainy day fund is regularly drained to fund basic budgetary needs. The Legislature did not improve matters this session. They reauthorizing a major tax giveaway to the biotech industry 33-5 (49s), rejecting an effort to subject these tax incentives to periodic review to evaluate whether they are actually delivering (15-22, 48s).

The Senate voted twice on creating a sales tax holiday. The first vote failed 14-24 (44s), but after the “Grand Bargain” made sales tax holidays permanent, they voted 33-6 to create a sales tax holiday in 2018 (61s). It remains a useless tax gimmick whose main outcome is draining much-needed revenue from the state.

The Senate did, however, vote to give municipalities a way to raise more revenue, authorizing them to place questions on the ballot to raise revenue for local and regional transportation projects (27-10, 62s). Many other states do this, and it provides communities a way to take action when inertia dominates in the State Legislature. The Senate passed this last session, and like before, it did not survive in the House.

Civil Liberties: Civil liberties suffered two main blows in 2018 in the Senate.

The first one came through a bill authorizing the creation of “Community Benefit District” (CBD) corporations, which could enable wealthy property owners to essentially “own” public spaces and impose fees on other property owners in the district with or without their approval, all with zero safeguards for civil liberties and equal access. The ACLU sounded the alarm, but the Senate nonetheless voted 22-15 in favor of the bill (59s). An effort to shore up tenants’ rights in the process failed 10-27 (58s).

The second one came through the Senate’s opioid bill. The Senate voted 33-4 to permit judges to civilly commit individuals suffering from addiction to a treatment facility without a hearing, until the courts open, with the patient entitled to a hearing within 72 hours (60s). People who undergo involuntary treatment in Massachusetts are twice as likely to die as people who undergo treatment voluntarily.

Economic Fairness: The Senate voted unanimously to empower the AG’s office to prosecute wage theft and holding businesses accountable for exploitative and illegal practices by their subcontractors (52s), only to see the legislation flounder in the House.

Less admirably, the Senate voted 31-6 for a a Republican messaging amendment to the budget to push racist welfare fraud myths and create burdens for small and minority-owned businesses (47s).

But back to the good: In the first time since last year’s pay raise that the Senate overrode a non-budgetary veto of the Governor, the Senate voted 32-5 to override Baker’s veto of a bill requiring that the hiring, promotion and termination of employees in custodial, maintenance, and other non-teaching positions in public schools be conducted in accordance with any governing collective bargaining agreement (63s).

They also overrode his veto of language that would prevent his administration from effectively denying vulnerable children needed welfare benefits, by unilaterally counting a parent’s Social Security Income (afforded to disabled adults who are low-income) to determine children’s benefits eligibility (31-6, 66s). And they voted down 7-30 a proposal of his to make the adoption of a more stringent calculation of benefits (counting a parent’s Supplemental Security Income in determining their children’s eligibility for welfare benefits) a precondition of lifting the punitive “cap on kids” (67s). Unfortunately, this battle happened so close to the end of formal sessions on July 31 that when Baker vetoed the provision the Legislature had insisted on (rejecting his alternative proposal), the Legislature was conducting only informal sessions, in which roll-call votes (required for veto overrides) do not take place. Massachusetts will remain one of the only states that still denies benefits to children who were born while a family is receiving state assistance.

About the Scorecard

A scorecard serves its purpose if it tells a story and informs advocacy.

As such, we prioritize votes that are contentious over those that are unanimous: unanimous votes neither tell a story nor inform advocacy. We prioritize bills and amendments that relate to our Progressive Platform and Legislative Agenda over those that do not, and we make a point of including bills and amendments for which our members lobbied their legislators.

Since legislators’ jobs are to vote, we count absences as the same as votes against the progressive position when calculating scores. HOWEVER, when legislators submit letters to the Clerk detailing how they would have voted had they been present, we will count these intentions, so long as their vote would not have alone decided the outcome of a bill or amendment. This helps us better achieve one of our main goals — informing advocacy — and acknowledges that there are extenuating circumstances behind some absences.