I realize that this isn’t as much fun as having Deval ‘pump you up’ – but THIS is how changes are made in the legislative process.
If you cannot attend to testify – and a 1 pm beginning for the hearing may well make it difficult for those who work – then please read the bills and send letters of support or opposition to the Committee (such letters are addressed pro forma to the two Chairs, Sen. Augustus and Rep. Bradley).
And PLEEEEEZZZZZEEEE – Go to Mass.Gov, to the General Court Web Page, and READ THE BILLS before making up your minds. All you need to access the text is the bill number, which is posted above. Remember, a bill called ‘An Act to Ensure Tranquillity and Happiness in the Commonwealth’ may be nothing more than legislation barring Democrats from holding office! In the game of Legislation, you can NEVER judge a book by its cover, so be a smart player and read before you decide.
Heaven knows, it would be more than most legislators do!
this is the type of post i find so very useful.
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do you have any nominations for the Most Deceptively Entitled Bill, or was that just a friendly warning? đŸ™‚
…but a perrennial favorite in the Insurance Committee was ‘An Act Regarding Hair Prostheses’.
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Whenever it came up and there was testimony about it, there was photos of little kids bald from chemotherapy, people with horrible scalp ailments, etc. Then you would go back and read the bill, and you’d realize that it also put hair plugs onto health insurance, which was the central reason for offering it. Whenever somebody tried to amend it to make it just before victims of illnes or disease, it would mysteriously lose all support.
House sponsored bills: http://www.mass.gov/…
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Senate sponsored bills:
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http://www.mass.gov/…
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If the identifying number given for a bill, above, begins with an “H” it is a “House Bill”; with an “S” it is a Senate bill.
I testified about independent redistricting the last time they had a hearing about this, and I intend to do so again this time, though I may not be as well prepared this time (because they scheduled the hearing for the day after the Somerville alderman primary).
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Please read my post, “Should Voters Pick Candidates, or Candidates Pick Voters?” and then come to this hearing if you can. Please bring a map of your “favorite” district đŸ™‚ I intend to once again bring maps of the 17th & 18th Suffolk state house districts, to distribute.
A shame that California Democrats zapped this issue a few years ago because it was too closely associated with the guy from the other team. I had hopes that this would become a national issue in the way that tax reform did some decades ago.
Ahnald’s idea has lots of problems IMO. It solidifies the (admittedly already very prevalent) two party system by having only the two largest parties have members on the committee.
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Furthermore, his 10 county clerks idea was a scam that would skew the 3 “independent” committee members to be conservative, because county lines result in lumping the huge population centers in a small number of counties. Consider: Los Angeles county has 10 million people; there are three counties in CA that have fewer than 10,000 people (Alpine, Modoc, Sierra) (a href=”http://www.csac.counties.org/default.asp?id=399″>source). By weighing all of the county clerks equally, he’s giving huge advantage to the small rural counties, which tend to be far more Republican.
So, most years you’d end up with 4 or 5 Dems and 7 or 6 GOPs on the redistricting panel. That ain’t fair, and it was done by design.
Now honestly, have you ever read the plan? Few bother with the details — but that’s where the juicy (and the dry) stuff is. My bet: you’re just parroting some combination of your prior biases and a few paragraphs of news and a few paragraphs of spin. I hope I’m wrong. I hope you have a really good explanation of why the Ahnald CA plan was a good one, and why my claim that the balance will skew conservative is wrong or irrelevant.
I confess that I did not know the details, and then I did not follow closely because I live well, way over here.
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That said, if the California Democrats agreed in principle, but differed on details, they did a lousy job letting anyone know. It sure seemed to anyone not living in Sacramento that the plan was summarily executed, rather than countered with a realistic, serious, counterproposal.
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If I were the Dem party in CA, I wouldn’t want an unbiased districting plan any more than were I a GOP in TX or FL.
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I won’t speculate on the reasons for the Dems deep sixing the proposal, but I will claim that it was a proposal only a Republican could love.
I agree that the CA D pols probably saw this as a threat to their own interests… and the Ds certainly are not pure on this question. But there seems to be something wrong with CA, a D majority state, unilaterally disarming at the same time that TX and GA, states with R majorities are enacting outrageously partisan maps. That’s why this is really an issue that should be solved at the federal level and why I am less than motivated to pass such legislation here in MA. Note that I am talking about federal and not state districts; I am 100% behind creating a fair and NON-partisan (nb: not BI-partisan) way to draft state house and senate districts.
I’m all in favor of independant redistricting, but I fear that the plan as proposed in S.22 is not quite there. Better than nothing, of course, but not quite independant.
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It calls for districting to be done by an Independant Redistricting Commission, and district plans to be approved by the General Court. My main concern is exactly who is on the commission.
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The Governor nominates a dean or professor of law or political science. The Attorney General nominates a retired justice, and the Secretary of the Commonwealth nominates an expert in civil rights laws. The Speaker, the House Minority Leader, the Senate President, and the Senate Minority Leader each pick three candidates, and the professor, justice, and civil rights expert pick one of each of those groups of three nominees.
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So, basically, we get a pick by the Governor, the AG, the Secretary, the Speaker, Senate President and the Minority Leaders. Which means the commission is basically going to be 5 Democrats and 2 Republicans. A year ago, it still would have been 4 Democrats and 3 Republicans.
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Is this an Independant Commission? Seems like a skewed bipartisan commission to me…
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Will this make better districting than the current set-up? (N.B. This is a serious question, not rhetorical. I honestly don’t know…)
I am actually more opposed to BI-partisan redistricting than to partisan redistricting. At least with the latter, you have the potential for overreach (see PA House elections in the last cycle; Delay’s seat in TX). There’s really only so far you can go to limit the efficacy of 45% of the population and you mobilize the opposition. On the other hand, when the politicians of both parties get together and decide to entrench themselves in a sort or detente, real harm is done to small-d democracy and it tends to fly under the radar screen.
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How to solve this problem? I can’t say I know for sure. I would start by turning the mapping software against the gerrymander… if it can be done for partisan purposes, than surely you could design a program to map on a neutral basis.
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There’s also real problems that the Voting Rights Act presents that no one in the D coalition want to bring up. This isnt so much of a problem in MA, but it is one of things that continues to kill the party in the South. For instance, the creation of Mel Watt’s salamander-shaped district in NC has made the adjacent districts much more likely to elect R candidates. Or compare the GA delegation in 1990 (Newt was the only R and the delegation was overwhelmingly white Ds) vs. 1994 (there were now 3 black Ds vs. 1 before, but all the other reps were white Rs). How to protect “communities of interest” and majority-minority districts with neutral redistricting criteria?
As has been the case in recent sessions, several instant runoff voting bills have been filed, primarily by Jay Kaufman, Alice Wolf and Ellen Story. Does anyone know if these bills will be discussed on April 11?
Where did you get notice on these hearings? I can’t find it anywhere on the mass.gov site?
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I’ve been working on a project to present the info on mass.gov in a much more meaningful light. I would love to know if there is somewhere I’m not looking that has more up to data.
Here from Mass.Gov – http://www.mass.gov/…
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Every Committee has agendas available. I was just struck by how ALL of these bill’s subject matters are discussed here.
I couldn’t find the hearings you mention there. In fact those listing don’t mention the slew of hearings scheduled on 4/4 on auto insurance bills.
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More info than you probably want…
Right now I’m tracking hearings by scanning all of the bill histories for mention of public hearings and compiling a list. As of this morning this produced a list of hearings for 4/3 and 4/4 but none for 4/11.
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Did you find the ones you mention on mass.gov or the old fashion way (calling?).
And ya know, this is a counterpart to the refusal to post Committee votes on the web site too.
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Now we know they don’t post Committee business agendas either.
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So – short of cultivating a source on every committee – House and Senate – the electorate must go to the State House between 9 and 5, as the Democrats have decreed.
Now that would be “civic engagement”, you think?
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The citizenry could know:
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1. How their legislator voted.
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2. When to observe or testify as to issues in which they have an interest.
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Now THAT would be a positive change that would cost very little money – but would reduce the fog over the process.