Progressive Needham announces scorecard with Needham representatives

WickedLocal Needham reported on the scores of the Needham delegation on PM’s legislative scorecard:

Progressive Needham, a chapter of advocacy group Progressive Massachusetts, recently released a statement regarding the Progressive Mass scorecard, which grades state legislators for their actions in 2019.

The scorecard can be found at http://scorecard.progressivemass.com.

State Sen. Becca Rausch, D-Needham, distinguished herself by writing, cosponsoring and supporting “progressive” legislation and backing the transparency pledge, standing for votes in the senate eventually being joined by colleagues in this effort.

State Rep. Denise Garlick voted against bills rescinding corporate tax breaks and increasing oversight of the Office of Campaign and Political Finance. While Garlick was lead sponsor for the Medicare for All bill in the house, her testimony left many questioning “whether she was in fact for the bill or against it.”

The Massachusetts Legislature is one of only four states in the country that exempt themselves from public records law. After a commission to address this failed, state legislators tried to change this, filing amendments to allow more time for legislators to read bills and amendments and to publish committee votes and testimony online. Garlick was actively lobbied to sign the Transparency Pledge and votes for all transparency bills. Garlick voted no, with her process related reasons including reduced efficiency of the Statehouse.

State Sen. Mike Rush, D-Needham, voted against increasing the frequency of reviewing school funding allocations, voted to weaken the Fair Share Amendment and skipped votes on both the ban of conversion therapy, gap funding for family planning and on a bill that would have tightened child welfare eligibility requirements.

Boston Globe: Is Boston Ready for Michelle Wu?

Milton Valencia, “Michelle Wu says Boston is ready for change. But is Boston ready for Michelle Wu?,” Boston Globe (6/30/20)

“It doesn’t feel to me that people in the traditional power center of the city have noticed the city is changing, not only demographically but ideologically,” said Rachel Poliner, of the Roslindale and West Roxbury chapter of Progressive Massachusetts. (Wu was the only incumbent to get the group’s support.)

In recent candidate forums, Poliner said, members were less focused on neighborhood matters and more driven by big-picture issues: housing, transportation, the environment.

“There are issues that we really need action on,” Poliner said. “And there are processes that we believe we can engage in, in ways the city isn’t.”

New progressive strongholds have sprouted within the city, as well. The city’s highest turnout in 2018, by the percentage of registered voters who cast ballots, was in Wu’s neck of Boston: along the Southwest Corridor that stretches from Jamaica Plain through Roslindale and into West Roxbury, what Larry DiCara, a former councilor and longtime city politics observer, called Boston’s new “lefty strip.”

MassLive: Whither the Legislature’s Commitment to Racial Justice?

PM Issues Committee chair Jonathan Cohn was quoted in Steph Solis’s article in Mass Live on the Governor and Legislature’s response to the calls for racial equity in the wake of the murder of George Floyd:

 Some critics, including Jonathan Cohn of Progressive Massachusetts, quickly noted that Spilka had removed Sen. Sonia Chang-Diaz, who was the only woman of color in the Senate, from her post as co-chair of the Joint Committee of Education in in 2019….

Cohn, the chair of the Issues Committee for Progressive Mass, raised concerns about the Senate’s decision to launch an advisory group rather than move forward with legislation, as well as the addition of Moore, a former police officer.

Cohn said lawmakers should instead focus on re-allocating resources from police and prisons to investments in housing, health care and other priorities to support communities of color. He pointed to the recent letter from senators calling for changes to the governor’s IT bond bill as a recent example.

“So many legislators will talk about their rhetorical commitment to racial justice, but if you’re putting more money into the prison system, you’re missing the point,” he said.

CommonWealth: A New Rules Fight

CommonWealth’s Shira Schoenberg wrote about Speaker Robert DeLeo’s short-lived effort to take advantage of the pandemic to make a more top-down House:

Several progressive activists also voiced their concerns about the proposal, even as they generally praised the decision to move to remote voting. Jonathan Cohn, issues chair of Progressive Massachusetts, a group that frequently calls for more transparency at the State House, said requiring the approval of 16 members for a roll call vote is already a higher threshold than what most other states require. “Raising it to 40 is just a way of saying we don’t want these to happen, period,” Cohn said.

SHNS and MassLive Report on the Revenue Debate

“Revenue a hot topic; not in spending debate” — Chris Lisinski and Michael Norton, State House News Service (4/23/2019)

“The House has once again failed to enact policies that the overwhelming majority of Massachusetts voters support,” Jonathan Cohn, Progressive Massachusetts’s issue committee chair, said in a press release. “When you’re stuck on a disabled train tomorrow or your child’s school announces that it is cutting its art and music programs at the end of this year, the blame for that rests solely with our state legislature.” 

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“Massachusetts House to talk about raising revenue, but not as part of budget debate” — Shira Schoenberg, MassLive (4/22/2019)

Jonathan Cohn, of Progressive Massachusetts, said in a statement, “When you’re stuck on a disabled train tomorrow or your child’s school announces that it is cutting its art and music programs at the end of this year, the blame for that rests solely with our state legislature.”

Boston Globe: A Legislature as Slow as Ever

The Boston Globe‘s Matt Stout and Victoria McGrane wrote about the glacial pace of lawmaking in Beacon Hill during the pandemic:

That glacial law-making pace has long defined Beacon Hill, said Jonathan Cohn of the group Progressive Massachusetts. “But it’s especially striking when you have a moment of crisis that requires bold action . . . and it’s just slow moving.”

The Appeal: A “Build the Wall” Sheriff in MA

PM Issues Committee chairman Jonathan was quoted in an article by Ella Fassler of The Appeal about MA’s most Trumpian sheriff, Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson, and an upcoming trial that an ICE protester faces:

“As long as the Massachusetts legislature continues to punt, they are being complicit in Trump’s racist deportation agenda,” Jonathan Cohn of Progressive Massachusetts, an organization that supports the bill, told The Appeal: Political Report last year. “Inaction is the result of a legislature and leadership that is unrepresentative of the diversity of the state.”

CommonWealth: A Secretive Committee Process

PM Issues Committee chairman Jonathan Cohn was quoted in Shira Schoenberg’s new CommonWealth piece on the MA House’s secretive committee process:

Jonathan Cohn, head of the issues committee for the liberal organizing group Progressive Massachusetts, voiced dismay at the lack of transparency and said he has also had mixed experiences – able to get vote totals from some committees, but not from others.

“The problem with the system as it exists is that legislators are able to kill bills giving everyone clean hands afterwards,” Cohn said. “It’s people’s jobs to take votes. They should be willing to defend those votes to their constituents.”

According to Cohn’s research, 26 states make committee votes public on a legislative website.

Boston Globe: Targeting the “Sausage-Making” of Boston Politics

The Boston Globe’s Milton Valencia reported on the efforts to take over ward committees in Boston with diverse and progressive counter-slates:

“People are ready to embrace that Boston has shifted, and let’s make it shift in more ways,” said Rachel Poliner, of the Roslindale and West Roxbury chapter of Progressive Massachusetts. She said the independent growth of the Fresh Slate campaigns in separate neighborhoods shows a citywide desire for change.