Last week, we highlighted the good, the bad, and the very ugly of the MA House's budget.

This week, the MA Senate will be voting on its budget. And they have the opportunity to make it better.

This decade -- the 2020s -- will be the decade in which our collective actions determine whether or not we'll continue to have an inhabitable planet. And that means we need to start taking action--fast.

Tomorrow, the Massachusetts State Senate will be voting on omnibus climate legislation (for a good overview, read this).

The bill is strong in many ways, but it can be bolder and more equitable.

And that's where you come in.

Can you call your state senator today in support of the amendments below?

TL;DR: Tell your state legislators it's time to make corporations pay their fair share.

Structurally deficient bridges. Congested roads in desperate need of repaving. Buses and trains that never manage to come on time. These are a daily reality in Massachusetts.

It's gotten so bad that CNBC recently ranked us 48th in the country in infrastructure, and the American Society for Civil Engineers gave us a D+.

The reason for this is no mystery. Misguided, regressive tax cuts from two decades ago, combined with a Legislature beholden to throwback anti-tax sentiments, have led to severely reduced revenue for the investments we need in our infrastructure.

Four years ago this very month, the Foundation Budget Review Commission highlighted how the state has been shortchanging public schools due to an outdated funding formula.

Because of the advocacy of teachers, students, parents, community members, and YOU, that formula will finally get fixed.

The Student Opportunity Act will provide $1.5 billion per year in new school funding to help the students who need it the most.

Tomorrow, when the MA Senate votes on the bill, we have an opportunity to strengthen it so that this once-in-a-generation bill is as strong as possible.

The State Senate will be voting on amendments to its FY 2019 budget next week. The budget makes some modest improvements to education and transit funding, but without new revenue sources, it remains in the same paradigm of underinvestment that has dominated for the past decade and a half (Take it away, MassBudget). 

Passing the Fair Share amendment on the ballot this fall will be a first step toward changing that.

But back to the budget…..

If you have only five minutes this week:

Call your state senator, as well as Senate President Harriette Chandler (617-722-1500) and Senate Ways & Means Chairwoman Karen Spilka (617-722-1640), in support of Amendment 1147 (Eldridge): Civil Rights and Safety.

The Legislature has so far punted and stalled when it comes to their responsibility to protect MA’s immigrant families from Trump’s xenophobic mass deportation agenda. The Safe Communities Act, which Progressive Mass and allies around the state have been fighting for over the past year, has remained stuck in committee.

This amendment contains key provisions of the Safe Communities Act:

1. No Police Inquiries about Immigration Status
2. Stop Collaborating with ICE
3. Provide Basic Due Process Protections

Let your senator know that you support taking action now in support of MA's immigrant families.

As the saying goes, a budget is a statement of values. The FY2019 budget from the MA House, released last week, makes some modest steps forward, but in others, is just standing still (which, as we all know, is another way of moving backwards). Over the past few years, our Democratic Legislature has too often taken its cues for the budget from our Republican governor rather than from the needs of communities around the state.

In other words, we can do better.

Legislators last week filed a litany of amendments to the budget, and we've highlighted the ones we found most important to advancing our progressive agenda for Massachusetts.

Can you email your State Representative TODAY about these amendments?

(Need to look up his/her info? Find it here.)

Students from across Massachusetts walked out of class (or, if they had a snow day, out of their homes) to march to the State House to demand action on gun violence.

According to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, Massachusetts has some of the strongest gun laws in the country and, correspondingly, one of the lowest gun death rates. And we should be proud of that. But the question isn’t whether we’re doing better than other states -- it’s whether we’re doing as best as we can. And there, the answer is a clear no.

The Massachusetts Legislature, however, has the opportunity to strengthen our gun laws this session, although time is short.

The following letter was drafted by Caroline Bays and Jonathan Cohn from the PM Issues Committee and transmitted to the CJR conferees: 

House Chairwoman Claire Cronin, Joint Committee on the Judiciary

Senate Chairman William Brownsberger, Joint Committee on the Judiciary

Majority Leader Ronald Mariano

Chairwoman Cynthia Creem, Senate Committee on Bills in Third Reading

Ranking House Minority Member Sheila Harrington, Joint Committee on the Judiciary

Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr

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

January 17, 2018

Dear Members of the House-Senate Conference Committee:

The Massachusetts incarceration rate, while low compared to other states, is three to four times higher than that of European countries. In fact, there are only seven countries with a higher incarceration rate than Massachusetts.

There has been a growing consensus that the policies of the “tough on crime” era were misguided. They did not make us safer, but instead entrenched lasting racial and economic inequities. Studies have shown that high levels of incarceration have devastating consequences for minority communities, including an increase in crime, poverty, and homelessness. They prevent individuals and communities from thriving and living up to their full potential and make cherished rhetoric of “liberty and justice for all” ring hollow.

We are grateful to the House and the Senate for their exhaustive work on Criminal Justice legislation. Both the House and Senate bills have many excellent provisions, and in the following letter, we identify (a) essential provisions in both bills that should be included in a final Conference report, (b) places where one bill or the other was superior and whose provisions merit inclusion, and (c) a few places where the bills stray from their intent. The subsequent recommendations will best help to achieve our mutual goal of ending mass incarceration in Massachusetts.

Mon, Tue, Wed of this week (Nov. 13-15), the Massachusetts House will start voting on a comprehensive criminal justice reform. The House bill, as expected, is not as comprehensive or as progressive as the Senate bill.

We must work to make it better before the vote on its final form: we must contact our State Representatives, NOW, loudly, and in as large numbers as we can. 

The House will be voting on amendments Monday through Wednesday. 

It's vitally important representatives hear that you want to see a stronger bill that delivers on the promise of comprehensive criminal justice reform. Mass incarceration has proven socially a socially and economically damaging phenomenon, and it's time for Massachusetts to move beyond it.

Email/call your Representative TODAY (a copy/paste email script is here: progma.us/cjr-house-2017nov) and tell them to support/oppose the amendments below (when you're done--take a sec and let us know you called/contacted your Rep: it helps us know where we need to target more!). We'll be tracking the progress on these measures in the spreadsheet below. 

When I talk to allies on Beacon Hill, they say that criminal justice reform is going to be one of the top issues the Legislature takes up this fall. But whether it will be real reform, or just tinkering around the edges, remains to be seen. Massachusetts needs to turn the tide on a failed “tough on crime” paradigm that has wreaked havoc on communities and fueled mass incarceration without making us any safer.

And that’s where you come in.

Representative Claire Cronin, co-chair of the Judiciary Committee, is planning to meet with every state rep about the bills in her committee. She needs to hear from her constituents and her fellow representatives that Massachusetts wants real reform.

Call your state representative today and ask them to tell Chairwoman Cronin that Massachusetts wants bold criminal justice reform this fall.