The MA House and MA Senate Are Voting on Key Bills This Week. Here’s What They Should Hear from You.

In the last month sprint of the formal legislative session, expect to see an increased pace of action in the MA State House.

Today, the MA House is voting on its economic development bill, and tomorrow, the MA Senate is voting on a bill to address addictive design from social media companies.

Read on for more information about what your state rep and state senator should be hearing from you.

Tell Your State Rep: Support Amendments to Expand Economic Opportunity and Access to Affordable Housing

The MA House is voting TODAY on its economic development bill. Our allies are supporting a number of amendments to strengthen the bill in ways that promote economic opportunity and increase access to affordable housing.

Email Your State Rep

Email your state rep to urge them to support amendments that strengthen the bill.

  • Amendment #25, which would eliminate the requirement that a household provide a notice to quit or utility shutoff notice for a household to be eligible for Residential Assistance for Families in Transition (RAFT), removing a significant barrier to accessing this critical homelessness prevention resource
  • Amendment #71, which would allow cities and towns a local option to provide tenants in multi-family buildings the right to match a third-party offer when their homes are being sold
  • Amendment #136, which would ensure worker-owned businesses are recognized in economic development program selection criteria, helping broaden access to state economic development tools for cooperative and shared-ownership models
  • Amendment #155, which would allow qualified, job-ready people to fully participate in the workforce by automating the CORI-sealing process to seal records that are already eligible after the required waiting periods
  • Amendment #226, which would provide $15,000,000 in bonding authorizations for a pilot program to fund the construction of small to medium sized (1-25 unit) permanently affordable home ownership developments
  • Amendment # 438, which would ensure that the executive order-created Office of Access and Opportunity is codified into Massachusetts statutes to uphold the Governor’s commitment to language access in our state agencies
  • Amendment #636, which would ease access to Massachusetts IDs for people experiencing homelessness by waiving the $25 fee for standard Mass IDs and easing residency verification requirements for youth and adults experiencing homelessness

The MA Senate Is Voting on a Bill to Regulate Teen Social Media Use. Here’s How It Can Be Better.

A couple months ago, the MA House advanced a harmful bill that would ban minors from social media, force social media platforms to enable parental surveillance of teenagers’ online activity, and subject everyone to privacy-invading online ID checks in order to access information or speak out online. We joined groups from across the state in opposing this language.

The Senate’s bill (S.3164), which will be voted on this Thursday, takes a smarter approach, targeting addictive design.

Our friends at Fight for the Future are urging senators to support several amendments that would protect privacy, protect youth, and help the bill better accomplish its stated goals  (read more about them here).

Email Your State Senator

  • Amendment #2, which closes a loophole in the definition of “user” that would have allowed platforms to continue providing addictive features to minors so long as the minor does not use an account to access the platform
  • Amendment #3, which updates the definition of social media so that it would cover Snapchat and exclude sites like GitHub and Wikipedia that have valuable educational purposes
  • Amendment #4, which clarifies that the attorney general will be regulating interoperability of age signals and not mandating that all operating systems implement age signals
  • Amendment #19, which prevents companies from manipulating users into using addictive features
  • Amendment #24, which voids the privacy and security issues that come with obtaining parental consent, while increasing the protections for minors
  • Amendment #25, which clarifies that platforms can use interaction data to generate feeds when that data functions to allow users to control the amount and types of content they receive from users they subscribe to
  • Amendment #27, which expands the ban on tech companies’ ability to use design tactics, such as repeated nudges and grouping of settings controls, to manipulate users into choosing less protective settings
  • Amendment #29, which adds important protections to minors’ data by requiring the attorney general to address issues of re-identification that could expose minors’ personal information to the public

Testimony in Support of Language Access and Utility Accountability

Tuesday, July 22, 2025

Chair Cabral, Chair Collins, and Members of the Joint Committee on State Administration and Regulatory Oversight:

My name is Jonathan Cohn, and I am the Policy Director of Progressive Massachusetts, a statewide grassroots advocacy group with chapters across the state committed to fighting for an equitable, just, democratic, and sustainable Commonwealth.

We urge you to give a favorable report to H.3384 / S.2125 (An Act Relative to Language Access and Inclusion) and H.3400 (An Act prohibiting the use of ratepayer funds for utility lobbying, promotions, or perks).

H.3384/S.2125: Language Access and Inclusion Act

Massachusetts is home to a vibrant immigrant community. One in six Massachusetts residents is an immigrant, while one in seven residents is a native-born US citizen with at least one immigrant parent.

Massachusetts, correspondingly, is home to great linguistic diversity: more than 1 out of 4 residents report speaking a language other than English at home, with the most common languages being Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese (including Mandarin and Cantonese), Vietnamese, and Russian. However, as the pandemic demonstrated, our state agencies and departments have a patchwork of different policies around language accessibility, and there is no current statute to ensure that non-English speaking residents have a fair and equitable opportunity to obtain an education, apply for benefits, receive housing assistance, or represent themselves in court.

The Language Access and Inclusion Act would help our Commonwealth better meet the needs of all residents by standardizing and enforcing language access protocols and practices at public-facing state agencies. Everyone should be able to interact with and seek help from their own government, no matter what language they speak.

H.3400: Utility Accountability

Our public utilities are supposed to serve and be regulated in service of the public interest; however, gas and electric utilities are regularly using money they collect from customers’ bills to fund their lobbying, advertising, and trade association dues. Customers have no say in such decisions, and such spending can often be directly in contradiction of the public interest. Voters across the Commonwealth want strong environmental laws and robust and equitable climate legislation, and we should not be coerced into funding opposition campaigns simply because of the need to have light, heat, and electricity in our homes.

Similarly, utilities are using customer ratepayer money to subsidize the lavish expenses of their Boards of Directors—at the same time as they are raising prices.

It’s quite simple: If utilities have so much money to spend on lobbying, ads, and perks, they are charging customers too much money and investing too little in the transition to clean, green energy.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Cohn

Policy Director

Progressive Massachusetts

Testimony in Support of the Language Access & Inclusion Act and Indigenous Peoples Day

Tuesday, October 3, 2023

Dear Chairman Collins, Chairman Cabral, and Members of the Joint Committee on State Administration and Regulatory Oversight:

My name is Jonathan Cohn, and I am the policy director at Progressive Massachusetts. We are a statewide, multi-issue, grassroots membership organization focused on fighting for policy that would make our Commonwealth more equitable, just, sustainable, and democratic. 

We urge you to give a favorable report to S.1990/H.3084 (An Act Relative to Language Access and Inclusion) and S.1976/H.2989 (An Act establishing an Indigenous Peoples Day).

S.1990/H.3084: Language Access and Inclusion Act

Massachusetts is home to a vibrant immigrant community. One in six Massachusetts residents is an immigrant, while one in seven residents is a native-born US citizen with at least one immigrant parent.

Massachusetts, correspondingly, is home to great linguistic diversity: more than 1 out of 4 residents report speaking a language other than English at home, with the most common languages being Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese (including Mandarin and Cantonese), Vietnamese, and Russian. However, as the pandemic demonstrated, our state agencies and departments have a patchwork of different policies around language accessibility, and there is no current statute to ensure that non-English speaking residents have a fair and equitable opportunity to obtain an education, apply for benefits, receive housing assistance, or represent themselves in court.

The Language Access and Inclusion Act would help our Commonwealth better meet the needs of all residents by standardizing and enforcing language access protocols and practices at public-facing state agencies. Everyone should be able to interact with and seek help from their own government, no matter what language they speak.

S.1976/H.2989: Indigenous Peoples Day

For decades, Christopher Columbus has been celebrated as a “hero” who “discovered America.” Indigenous people have made it clear that, to the contrary, these lands were invaded, not “discovered,” and that Columbus and his men were responsible for the enslavement, rape, and murder of countless Indigenous peoples in the Caribbean. Since the 1970s, Indigenous people have asked that Indigenous Peoples Day should instead be celebrated on the second Monday in October as a positive day to learn about and honor Indigenous history and peoples.

Our neighbors in Maine and Vermont already celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day, as do an increasing number of cities and towns in Massachusetts. The Commonwealth should join them, and S.1976/H.2989: An Act establishing an Indigenous Peoples Day will make that happen.

Thank you again for all your work on today’s hearing, and again, please give a favorable report to S.1990/H.3084 (An Act Relative to Language Access and Inclusion) and S.1976/H.2989 (An Act establishing an Indigenous Peoples Day).

Sincerely,

Jonathan Cohn

Policy Director

Progressive Massachusetts