Beacon Hill 101

The legislative session begins on the first Wednesday of the year following an election (i.e., each odd-numbered year). After the session begins, legislators file bills. Most bills are filed during this early period, although bills can still be introduced later (“late files”). Legislators are given positions (member, vice chair, or chair) of committees to handle different areas of work (e.g., Education, Health Care Financing, etc.), and bills are assigned to relevant subject matter committees.

At this point, each chamber also votes on a set of rules to govern their functioning for the session, and the two chambers vote on a set of joint rules as well.

There are 33 joint committees in the Legislature, as well as 11 Senate-only and House-only committees. Given that each body has its own rules and its own budget process, the Rules Committee and Ways & Means Committees often operate independently rather than jointly (even though they exist as both). 

This means that the House Speaker and Senate President each have 41 chairs and 41 vice-chairs to assign. Because chairs and vice chairs come with extra staff, space, pay, and resources, the roles create a dynamic in which legislators can easily drift toward seeing the Leadership in their respective chamber as their “boss” (rather than viewing their constituents, who elect them, as their boss).

This competition for leadership positions also illuminates one distinction between the House and the Senate. In the 40-member Senate, every member of the majority party can chair at least one committee. In the 160-member House, state representatives vie for positions in a state of scarcity–not everyone can get one. That scarcity breeds centralization: 88 chairs and vice chairs, a Majority Leader, and a Speaker Pro Tempore (setting aside any other Leadership positions) gives a Speaker more than enough votes to stay in power. 

NB: Members of the House and Senate Leadership teams typically refrain from co-sponsoring bills. They still need to hear from you.

• As an Individual
• 
  
  • If you have an idea for a bill you don’t believe has been addressed yet, reach out to relevant advocacy organizations and friendly legislators about filing it. You can find your legislators’ contact info here.  

• • Contact your legislators about co-sponsoring bills that are important to you — and explain why they’re so important. Co-sponsorship is the most basic step a legislator can take to show support of a bill. You can — and must — ask more from them, especially as some legislators sign on to bills publicly to appease constituents and then lobby against them behind closed doors. (And make sure to follow up!) Learn more about our current Legislative Agenda here. 

• • Want to make sure that committees are representative of the Commonwealth or aren’t stacked with industry allies? The Speaker (Ron Mariano of Weymouth) and Senate President (Karen Spilka of Ashland) determine who chairs and sits on each committee. Get some friends in their districts to contact them.
  
  
  • Lobby your legislators about the rules. You can find suggestions throughout this guide. Although the Legislature tends to vote on the rules once, it’s never too late to work on changing culture and norms.
• 
  
• As a Group
  
• 
  
  • Be in touch with coalition partners and legislative allies to learn about which bills are being filed and by whom, and to add your ideas.
  
  
  • Host a lobby day at the start of the session to drive attention to your priority legislation.
  
  
  • Host educational events about your priority legislation to both inform legislators and mobilize activists.
  
  
  • Share calls to action about the individual steps listed above.
  
  
  • Track the co-sponsors of your priority bills. (You can do this throughout the session!)
    
  
  

• Elect committee chairs. If the monetary perks of committee chairmanship are determined only by the Speaker and the Senate President, legislators are more likely to fall in line in order to rise up the ranks. Electing committee chairs, as is done in the US House, isn’t a silver bullet for addressing the centralization of power, but it enables all legislators as well as advocates and the public to weigh in.


• Make co-sponsorship mean something. For example, the House and Senate could each require that any bill co-sponsored by the majority of the chamber gets a floor vote. This may lead to fewer legislators co-sponsoring a bill, but that would also lead to a clearer picture of where it stands.

• Bill Number and Committee Assignment: When a bill is assigned to committee, it receives a bill number, starting with S if it is a Senate bill or H if it is a House bill. The legislature uses “joint” committees that have both House members and Senate members on them.

  Once a bill number has been assigned, the website for that bill’s docket number will redirect you to the page with the new bill number. [Example: Senate docket No. 926 (SD.926) in the 191st session became Senate bill No. 1401 (S.1401). The website for https://malegislature.gov/Bills/191/s1401 thus leads to the same page as the page for SD.926.]

• Co-Sponsorship: Each bill has a lead sponsor, or petitioner, whose name is attached to it. Any other legislator can co-sponsor the bill as well as a way of indicating support up until the time the bill gets reported out of committee. The House used to have a much tighter window for co-sponsorship but changed that in 2021.

• Docket Number: When a bill is filed, it receives an initial number (preceded by SD in the Senate or HD in the House) before being assigned to a committee. The website for any bill at this point will be https://malegislature.gov/Bills/ + the Session Number + the Docket Number.

  Example: the Safe Communities Act in the 191st session (2019-2020) had the docket number of SD.926; the corresponding website was https://malegislature.gov/Bills/191/sd926. 

• Filing Deadline: Each new legislative session starts on the first Tuesday of the year after the election (i.e., odd-numbered years). 6,000+ bills will be filed between this day and the third Friday of the month, the deadline for filing bills of the session. [This deadline was extended to 2/19 in 2021.] The Governor can file bills at any time.

• Floor Division Chair: A member of the House Leadership team in charge of overseeing the floor votes for one of the four divisions of the 160-member chamber.

• Late-File Bill: Some bills can still be filed after the filing deadline, but they need formal approval from the Rules Committees of both chambers.

• Senate President / Speaker Pro Tempore: The second in rank in the respective chamber and a part of the chamber’s Leadership team. The Senate President / Speaker Pro Tempore is in charge of presiding over the chamber in the President / Speaker’s absence (“pro tempore” being Latin for “the time being”).

• Steering & Policy: The committee in charge of determining which bills not related to the state’s finances make it to the floor for debate and a vote.

• Third Reading: The committee in charge of making any final changes to a bill before passage.

• Ways & Means: The powerful committee in charge of the annual budget and any legislation that involves state finances. Most bills must pass through Ways & Means before making it to the floor.

• Whip: The member of a caucus’s Leadership team tasked with bringing members of the caucus around to the Leadership’s recommended position on upcoming votes.