With the Legislature passing the halfway point of the 2016 legislative session (ending before the July 25th kickoff of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia), it’s important to take a moment and highlight key policy areas where the State Senate has taken the lead, reinforcing key themes set out by Senate President Stan Rosenberg and a majority of State Senators at the beginning of the 2015-2016 session.
I’m proud that the Senate is now not only a more inclusive, small-d democratic body, as explained by the Senate President in this WGBH interview last month, but I’m equally proud of how the Senate President’s decentralized leadership and long-term vision has translated into the pace of the State Senate. This year, almost every week, 4 to 5 pieces of solid legislation are being debated and passed. This dramatic change in how the body is being run makes the State Senate an exciting, forward-looking institution today.
Here are four critical policy areas that the Senate has tackled this session so far:
Inequality
The Senate passed the following bills to advocate for pay equity for women, improve worker’s compensation, create more opportunities for individuals with disabilities and better protect consumers from unwanted loan debt:
S.2119 An Act to establish pay equity
S.967 An Act relative to enhanced enforcement of civil penalties
S.983 An Act to establish pay equity
S.2033 An Act relative to fairness in worker’s compensation disfigurement benefits
S.2166 An Act relative to the hiring of persons with a disability
S.2194 An Act relative to unsolicited loans
Criminal Justice Reform
The Senate passed the following bills to remove a driver’s license suspension as a penalty for vandalism, increase the threshold for a theft to be classified as felony larceny, help people in correctional institutions better manage their finances and credit and expand pretrial services:
S.728 Removes License Suspension for Vandalism
S.795 An Act relative to adjusting the credit for nonpayment of fines
S.2176 An Act relative to larceny
S.2216 An Act relative to the use of community corrections for pre-trial detainees and criminal defendants
Education
The Senate passed the following bills to lift the cap on charter schools, expand physical education programs, and promote common-sense sex education in classrooms:
S.220 An Act enhancing reform, innovation and success in education
S.2061 An Act to promote quality physical education
S. 2062 An Act relative to healthy youth
Healthcare
The Senate passed the following bills to improve access to quality health care and medical treatment for rare diseases, raise the smoking age to 21 years old and ensure that all patients have confidential access to the health care they need:
S.2137 An Act relative to HIV-associated lipodystrophy syndrome treatment
S.2234 An Act to protect youth from the health risks of tobacco and nicotine addiction
S.2138 An Act to protect access to confidential healthcare
Thanks for the update, Jamie. I am so proud to have you as my Senator!
The progressive action is certainly on the Senate side, and President Rosenberg and folks like yourself ought to be commended for that. But the actual power is on the House side and it seems unlikely to this outsider that any of these bills will see the light of day on that side of the Golden Dome.
When did this occur, exactly?
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I think the real issue is that the power in the House is consolidated in a few people – so that these few people have the power to stop any piece of registration even if the house might well pass it if it ever came to the floor.
By everyone except those in the far left or right.
.. strong leadership.
The present House Speaker, for example, appears to ‘lead from behind’ by determining the space between the nice things people want to hear and how much bullshit they’ll put up with in place of action.
That he has power means he is strong. That the CommonWealth is stagnating means he is not a leader.
Please clarify. Last time I checked the far right and far left are non factors at the Massachusetts state house.
And are pretty good at compromise and there is movement around each of the specific issues addressed by the Senate bills Senator Eldridge listed.
The house has the power to initiate bills that tax. The Senate does not. And currently the house has more members on joint committees, allowing them to stall action on Senate bills. The power of the chambers are NOT equal.
The power to originate taxes is constitutional. Perhaps we could mount a Constitutional amendment campaign to allow the Senate to originate taxes.
The number of House and Senate members on Joint Committees is proportional to the number of Members in each Chamber and is codified by Joint Rules. Could be changed by a vote of the full House and Senate.
When exclusive control over the initiation of revenue-raising bills was given to the House.
The House could just as easily pass something that gets stalled in the Senate.
Bobby DeLeo runs a tighter and more loyal ship than Stan Rosenberg. He wields more power within his caucus and house than Stan does in his. That is a fact. One confirmed by lobbyists and legislators I’ve been working with on several important issues.
Everything else is just an opportunity to poster. Smart Leaders just shrug an never point the finger.
Please clarify.
There has been no organized effort by even a tiny group of Members to challenge his leadership like there was to Speaker Thompson in the 60s, Tom McGee in the 70s, or Charlie Flaherty, or Tom Finneran etc.
All of those Leadership challenges were promoted from within by a critical mass, if not the majority of Members who were able to mount and manage a tough campaign. Similarly, President Bulger was able to withstand a strong internal campaign by Senators Pines, Keating and Wilkerson and others in the late 90s.
My point is Speaker De Leo has his hands full creating a a consensus around the current batch of conversational and costly issues issues that many of the Members do not want to vote on.
I think you are confusing loyalty, with fear of repercussions. They are two different things.
Think of the way most special interest groups reward and punish elected officials loyalty to to their respective causes with grades.
with a school budget that has turned into a black hole, I’m frustrated with the House leadership and the refusal to consider renewed revenue. I say “renewed” because it was cut by a ballot measure. It was there before.
My town is falling apart because we cannot pay for ourselves, and the state isn’t doing its part. Our citizens have increased their taxes more than 11% in the last 3 years for trash and a new school project. Both were necessary. But we have no money to run the town. I’ll do a post on it, but I blame the House. The senate knows what’s up.
I wish we could even imagine winning a referendum repealing it. Its hard enough winning an over ride.
the unintended good consequence of shifting costs to the Commonwealth, which had a progressive tax impact. The real problems, the current problems, start with income tax cut at the turn of the century and the increased personal exemption. The Mass Budget and Policy Center estimates we lose $3.3 billion a year.
There seems to be a dissonance. In the first sentence, you celebrate prop 2.5’s impact on making our combined muni+state taxes more progressive. Then, you pooh pooh the increase personal exemption, which makes the state tax more progressive.
Huh?
The personal exemption costs the Commonwealth more than half a billion dollars a year. The average tax bill in my town will go up over $400 based on the overrides, and that’s not counting the 2.5% every year. That doesn’t include the costs of sending their kids to private schools or carting them to a school out of town from school choice. That doesn’t count other costs that might be incurred from the town not providing other services. I’m not sure the personal exemption is necessarily progressive in practice.
However, I wrote, “The real problems, the current problems, start with income tax cut at the turn of the century and the increased personal exemption.” I wasn’t trying to debate the progressive values of Massachusetts tax policy. I was talking about what killed revenue. The Proposition 2.5 comment was a response to Judy’s comment. I was also writing from memory, so I only mentioned two of the three revenue killers caused by ill-considered tax policy. The third was cuts in the dividend and interest rate cut was even more devastating than the personal exemption increase.
See Income Tax Cuts and the Budget In Massachusetts.
As it happens, the tax rate in my town will drop slightly in the next fiscal year based on our choices. The response to school issues are the choice of your residents.
But the increased personal exemption is distributed among all citizens, regardless of the choices of the local government as is appropriate with a statewide effort.
Will property tax revenue collections be up or down? If the homes in your town collectively appreciate by more than 2.5% in a year (and there’s no override), the tax rate will go down, but the tax bills will, on average, go up (in nominal dollars).
…so I anticipate a smaller bill from the lower RATE. My house is low-median anyway, so when there has been a rate cut in the past (and that has been more than a dozen years) the bill went down.
Doing what is required by law.
Right. Every town has a choice.
Towns that want their children educated at reasonable schools, their police and fire staffed for appropriate emergency response, that want construction on the buildings in their town performed to reasonable standards, that want to manage their water supply and treat their sewage responsibility, etc., etc., etc., will face staggering deficits and NO help from the state.
Towns that choose to be more like Alabama or Mississippi will do fine — until they collapse from their own shortsightedness, when they’ll be back at table whining about how awful things are in their town.
The tax cuts we are discussing here have DEVASTATED this state. No amount of GOP dogma can change that fact — whether or not Bob DeLeo, Charlie Baker, the MA GOP, or our other-winged friends here admit it.
..no matter what they do, why choose to tax yourself more? Keep your money, and depend upon yourself. Every time we hear about these devastating cuts, we shrug. We get jack crap anyway, so a percentage cut of little doesn’t make much difference.
There IS one thing we can do.
We can REJECT the failed GOP tax dogma, we can drastically increase taxes on the wealthy and very wealthy, and we can use the resulting increased general revenue to provide significantly higher local aid from the state.
That requires rejecting failed GOP dogma, removing Bob DeLeo as speaker (together with the DINOs who enable him), and facing — and paying for — what civilized society costs in the 21st century.
And the problem is that if the MA Democratic Party rejected GOP anti-tax dogma, and IF the Commonwealth drastically increased taxes on the wealthy and very wealthy, the increased revenue would almost certainly not be used to provide significantly higher local aid to towns.
Nor would it be used to build or maintain infrastructure. Nor would it be used to build a functional DCF.
It is almost entirely certain that all of the increased revenue would be used to fund exactly what we have now, but more expensively. Big raises for management at the Probation Department!
You’ve described the perception that must change.
The reality is that if we don’t change that perception, the state that we know and love is dead. The premise that new taxes “are not needed” is a bold-faced lie.
I want to be sure we’re all clear about something here — no party has a monopoly on corruption. Massachusetts government has been overwhelmingly dominated by men and women affiliated with the Massachusetts Democratic Party for decades. That means, as a matter of simple statistical reality, that the legislators prosecuted and convicted for corruption during that time will be overwhelmingly Democratic.
ANY party that participates in the government will have its share of corrupt officials. EVERY corrupt official should be prosecuted, regardless of political affiliation.
We desperately need to raise taxes on the wealthy and very wealthy, and we need to do that NOW — it is the only way to increase local aid, build and maintain transportation infrastructure, improve public education in Massachusetts, and so on.
Corruption in Massachusetts is primarily a Democratic phenomenon because there isn’t a Republican party that matters.
That just means things circle back to the boring rules stuff that no one but me and jconway think are important. Does the legislature have oversight power? Does the committee actually exercise that power? Does the leadership have the authority to yank people who want to exercise oversight? Can the minority conduct oversight? Etc.
The last election or two rather emphatically established that the Mass Democratic Party AND its voters do not give the slightest snoot about corruption. And yet the perception remains and is Reason 1 why taxes increases are resisted by an otherwise generally liberal electorate.
Until they feel like paying more taxes will make things (and that could be anything) better, they will resist. Example the MBTA.
“Better” is of course a subjective term. I believe in MA if you take increases educational expenditures over the last 10-15 years, that’s roughly equivalent to increased health coverage costs for educational workers. One could argue that “we need to pay more just to keep things the same” but that’s not how people think.
I think we are near (5 years maybe) a tipping point where pension and OPEB costs accelerate and people will need to face head on the impact of increased state and municipal contributions as these will start to eat into other departments. Let’s see how popular “pay more just to keep from going backwards” sounds to the voters.
Another question raised here- “pay more taxes to help out people that live far away from me in other MA cities and towns” I highly doubt will be popular as well. I also think that “pay us (the legislature) more now, and we’ll determine where to spend it” has few supporters in the voting/taxpaying population.
I agree that more taxes are needed, but you can see why people are skeptical. I would suggest be that some long term solutions are worked out where all parties compromise and taxpayers know that they’ll get return for increased commitment.
I provide my own water, handle my own sewage, pay for my own trash pick-up. We still have volunteer firefighters. The idea that increasing taxes and then the state will help me out by providing more aid makes me skeptical. Things aren’t that bad out here now.
My internet searching skills are not as complete as many on here, and my analysis of town/city budgets is strictly as an amateur, but
In 2015 Somerville’s budget was 200 million, you got 48 million from the state. In 2017 Charlton’s budget is going to be 25 million, and 1 million is expected from the state. If that is the urban/rural divide, so be it, but we don’t necessarily want to be more involved.
Are the public schools, police, and fire in Charleton better or worse today than they were thirty years ago?
Are those same essential services better or worse today than what Charleton residents WANT them to be?
If the answer to those two questions is that things in Charleton are fine, then I’m not sure I understand all the complaints about Quabbin reservoir, funding for public transportation, and so on.
If the answer to those two questions is that Charleton would like to improve those vital services, then it seems to me that Charleton exemplifies a town that would greatly benefit from the tax increases I advocate.
we’re pretty happy out here. Charlton is among the top fifty safest places to live in Mass. Schools are good, but I think parental involvement is the most important aspect of the quality of education.
The discussions about Quabbin/Wachusett had to do with the idea that people near Boston think they subsidize our way of life out here by sending money out this way, when I don’t think people near Boston (and the 43 communittes served) realize what a valuable resource the watersheds are. And those watersheds exist because tens of thousands of acres MUST remain pristine (and non-revenue producing for local economies) to keep their water safe.
Public transportation in general out here would be a poor investment. There isn’t the population density to make it worthwhile, but we also don’t want to pay to improve subways which will never come out here.
It’s a shame there isn’t more of a communal sense of shared identity in Mass, but out here there really is a distrust of Beacon hill, at least among the people I talk to.
We play by the states rules, the state’s requirements, the state’s unfunded mandates.
Your tax rate will drop slightly because of your choices? Not new property times 2.5%? No tax recap?
I don’t see anything in there that directly addresses poverty. The “Inequality” listed primarily addresses discrimination-based issues, not the fact that Massachusetts communities are very heavily segregated economically.
How does that punishment fit the crime? One does not seem related to the other.
Your move, House of Representatives.
Though the fight will continue until it’s won!