Last month — around the one-year anniversary of the declaration of emergency in Massachusetts due to the COVID pandemic — the MA Legislature finally passed a law to allow all workers to access five days of emergency paid sick time for COVID-related sickness, quarantine, caregiving, and vaccination.
Enter: Republican Governor Charlie Baker.
Rather than signing the bill, Baker sent it back with amendments to deny Emergency Paid Sick Time benefits to municipal employees – workers who are on the frontlines of the pandemic response and deserve the same protections as private-sector workers.
At the same time that he is requiring schools to reopen, he is trying to take away vital protections for teachers and staff. And trying to put countless other public workers at risk.
Fortunately, your state senator and state representative don’t need to listen to Baker and can reaffirm their commitment to an equitable recovery.
Please take 2 minutes right now to email your legislator, asking them to oppose Governor Baker’s changes to the Emergency Paid Sick Time legislation.
Yesterday, when Governor Charlie Baker testified before the Legislature about his administration’s vaccine rollout, there was a stunning degree of disconnect on display.
Baker refused to take any ownership for the failures to date and denied the lack of planning and equity that has been seen and documented across the commonwealth.
As Sen. Jo Comerford said, “This is where we were in two worlds. The committee was in one world. The Baker administration was in another.”
Fortunately, the Legislature can do something about it: they can pass laws.
The Vaccine Equity bill (SD.699 / HD.1283), filed by Senators Becca Rausch and Sonia Chang-Diaz and Representatives Liz Miranda and Mindy Domb, would ensure that equity is prioritized in the vaccine rollout in Massachusetts, recognizing that we can only have a successful recovery if it is an equitable one.
If the Legislature is going to start diving into the work of the new legislative session in earnest, they need to pass a set of Joint Rules. These Joint Rules govern how committees operate and how bills can proceed.
But due to opposition to basic transparency measures from the MA House, there is no agreement yet on these basic operating procedures.
The transparency measures embraced by the Senate are both essential and non-controversial:
Publishing committee roll call votes online
Making testimony accessible to the public with appropriate redactions (as with any other public record)
Extending the notice period for hearings to one week
All of these steps will help legislators do their own jobs better and strengthen the participatory nature of our democracy.
A Conference Committee of three senators and three representatives is currently negotiating what that final set of Joint Rules will look like.
Today, the MA House will be voting on a bill (H.89) that will provide workers with access to emergency paid sick leave and offer targeted tax relief to unemployed individuals. Both of these are vital parts of an equitable economic recovery and pandemic response and should be celebrated. And the achievement of emergency paid sick time is only possible because of the work of activists like you across the commonwealth.
Unfortunately, the bill also contains a misguided “Double Dip” tax break for profitable businesses.
Under current law, businesses that receive Paycheck Protection Program funds won’t pay taxes on that money. Under proposed language, they would be able to deduct expenses paid for with those funds. In other words, profitable corporations would be able to write off expenses they paid for with money they didn’t have. Even former Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin (!) recognized the problem here, once referring to the issue as “Tax 101”: “you don’t get to deduct expenses that someone else paid for.”
The cost of this tax break could be upwards of $330 million — money that we could be investing in our public schools, our public transit, and our public health infrastructure instead.
Fortunately, Representatives Erika Uyterhoeven (D-Somerville) and Mike Connolly (D-Cambridge) filed two amendments to address this:
Amendment #5 would limit this tax break.
Amendment #8 would fully eliminate it.
Can you call your state rep in support of these amendments?
Don’t have their phone number on hand? You can find it at http://www.progressivemass.com/legislator-lookup.
In July, both the MA House and the MA Senate passed police reform bills that, although not as strong as they need to be, had a number of vital reforms. Two and a half weeks ago, the Legislature succeeded at hashing out a consensus version of their bills and sent them to the Governor to sign.
Instead of listening to the broad and diverse coalition calling on him to sign the bill, Governor Baker bowed to the pressure of police unions and sent the bill back to the Legislature with harmful amendments.
Baker’s amendments curtail key powers to establish training curricula by a civilian board, allow broad use of the notoriously racist facial recognition software, and severely weaken the definitions and independent oversight for use of force by police.
Crucial negotiations are happening over the next few days, and your voice matters.
To quote State Sen. Sonia Chang-Diaz, “The bill that emerged from conference committee was already a compromise package. It’s time to stop asking over-policed communities to give up more and more of the justice they’ve so long been fighting for.”
The Legislature Stood Up to Baker. They Can Do It Again.
This week, the MA House and Senate did something that they so rarely do: they stood up to Governor Charlie Baker.
Rather than signing the budget passed by the Legislature, Baker — who only pretends to be pro-choice — sent back amendments to fully undermine the Legislature’s efforts to create more equitable abortion access. Thankfully, they rejected his amendments by wide margins. You can see the votes below.
But they need to stand up to him again.
They need to stand up to him again by rejecting his harmful amendments to the police reform bill.
And they need to stand up to him by rejecting his effort to strike vital oversight language in the budget to ensure that prisons and jails meet public health standards.
