This is a companion to the 192nd Session midterm Senate scorecard. Note that it does not include every vote taken by the Legislature but those deemed worthy of inclusion in the scorecard.
Although debates about rules and transparency have proven contentious in the MA House, they have not in the MA Senate. When a vote came up at the start of the to extend the public notice period for legislative hearings from 72 hours to one week so that members of the public can better engage in the legislative process, it passed unanimously (1s).
Some of the early work this session was a continuation of efforts from last session. This includes a vote on the Next Generation Roadmap climate bill (2s), which the Legislature passed at the very end of last session. Governor Baker was able to defeat it with a pocket veto, and with the session having already ended, the Legislature couldn’t override him and had to re-file the bill in the new session. The Senate yet again passed the Healthy Youth Act, which would ensure that schools that teach sex education use a comprehensive and medically accurate curriculum, and the Gender X bill, which would provide a non-binary option to the gender question on state-issued IDs, both of which the House did not pass last session (10s, 11s). There were also attempts to push back against work from last session, with a conservative messaging amendment demanding a cost analysis of the police reform bill, a move intended to imply that police accountability will be a burden for cities and towns (8s).
The Senate also voted to advance the Fair Share Amendment to the 2022 ballot, holding the second constitutional convention required by law (7s). Massachusetts currently has a flat tax, meaning that secretaries and billionaires have the same income tax rate. The Fair Share Amendment would create an additional 4% tax on annual personal income in excess of $1 million, dedicating the revenue to public education and infrastructure needs.
Several other recorded votes also concerned tax policy. The Senate overrode the Governor’s veto of a one-year delay in the charitable deduction, which, if had been implemented, would have cost the state $300 million a year, mainly benefiting the wealthiest taxpayers; as well as his veto of the repeal of a set of corporate tax giveaways (i.e., harbor maintenance credit, medical device user fee credit) that have been proven to benefit only a small number of companies without broader economic impact. They also rejected a tax change from Governor Baker that would have cost the state $90 million each year and given all of the money to the wealthiest residents of the state (9s, 12s-13s).
The Senate defeated other wasteful tax proposals, such as creating a $5 million grant program that would divert public funds to corporate lobby groups (3s) and giving farmers a tax deduction if they donate food to nonprofit, draining money from the state budget that could be used for providing food directly (among other valuable uses) (6s).
The Senate also overrode Baker’s vetoes of the repeal of overly restrictive laws for accessing welfare programs. The asset limits of $250 for Emergency Aid to the Elderly, Disabled and Children (EAEDC) and $5,000 for Transitional Assistance to Families with Dependent Children (TAFDC) created unnecessary paperwork that jeopardized the eligibility of struggling individuals for these modest but critically important benefits (14s-15s). And they defeated a Republican messaging amendment to increase the penalty for unemployment fraud that would have done nothing to address the rise of high-tech, high-dollar fraud from foreign businesses and instead done more to harm people for clerical errors (4s).
The Senate also took action in the bill addressing the crisis and tragedy at the Holyoke Soldiers Home to ensure strong labor and procurement standards, requiring the new Holyoke Soldiers Home to be built with collective bargaining and creating a committee to set goals on hiring minority-, women-, and veteran-owned businesses for the project (5s).
Last year, the MA Senate also passed a robust version of the VOTES Act, an election reform bill to make COVID-era vote-by-mail and early voting reforms permanent and to go further by enacting Same Day Registration and strengthening protections for jail-based voting. Unfortunately, the Senate defeated several attempts to make this good bill better, including amendments to require at least one secure, accessible drop box location per 25,000 registered voters in a municipality; to enable voters to enroll in vote-by-mail on a permanent basis, rather than just election by election; and to require that all workers be able to take 2 hours of paid time off to vote, ensuring that a work schedule is not a barrier to participating in our democracy (16s-19s).
A significant share of the Legislature’s time last year was spent on redistricting, the decennial redrawing of lines of legislative and Congressional districts to reflect the results of the census. Most maps passed with overwhelming majority, but an interesting exception was the Senate vote on the Congressional maps. Advocates had criticized the proposed map for failing to unite the immigrant, working-class cities of New Bedford and Fall River in one district, namely the coastal 9th Congressional District. Progressives and South Coast senators organized against the proposal, yield a closer vote than expected (20s).
