The House Order does specify that amendments relative to enhancing or reducing revenue may only be considered prior to the third reading of said bill to be in order, and that all other amendments to the General Appropriation Bill shall only be considered subsequent to the third reading of said bill;
House Ways and Means staff will be working hard this week to sort amendments and brief Leadership about the substance of each amendment and getting each amendment sorted into the proper category. THIS IS THE WEEK TO CALL YOUR SPONSOR AND HOUSE LEADERSHIP IN SUPPORT OF YOUR AMENDMENTS – IDENTIFY YOUR AMENDMENT BY ITS NUMBER.
The language of each consolidated amendment will contain some approved bits and pieces of some of the amendments with the rest of the amendments attached by number to indicate they were considered but rejected.
Each consolidated amendment will be distributed to the Membership next week during a series of private caucuses (cauci?) in a room off the chamber.
During each caucus Members whose amendments were accepted in part or not at all, have an opportunity to speak up and lobby their colleagues and Ways and Means to insert their language in the consolidated amendment. REMIND THE SPONSOR OF YOUR AMENDMENT TO ATTEND THE CAUCUS.
Some caucuses take 20 minutes, some take hours as Members organize their colleagues and appeal to the Speaker to insert their language in the consolidated amendment. The final consolidated amendment is then distributed to the Membership on the floor and offered by a Member of the Leadership for a vote.
Sponsors of amendments that were not included in the consolidated amendment can take their amendment to the House floor before the whole Membership and ask for a vote or simply make a speech withdrawing the amendment rather that get into a situation where the Leadership stands up to oppose the amendment and forces otherwise supportive Members get get on record voting no with the Leadership.
Talk about tough choices. It’s not pretty.
This is a good primer for those looking to follow the floor process, but it is a little dated; this applies more to the DiMasi years than DeLeo year(s).
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p>If the House follows the same practice it did under Speaker DeLeo’s first budget, there will be no more caucuses in back rooms to debate their amendments. Last year when a catergory got announced, one of the two vice-chairs of the HWM committee held a meeting off to the side on the floor of the chamber to listen to members pitches and rationales for offering their amendments. The vice-chairs then would go meet with the chairman and his staff to work up a draft consolidated amendment, which would come to the floor a while later. After the amendment comes to the floor, there has to be at least 30 minuets set aside for members to read and digest the amendment. Then it goes to a vote.
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p>So when people contact their representatives, they shouldn’t encourage them to go to a caucus, but to the floor for the meeting with the vice-chairs.
I forgot the caucuses got moved to to the side of the chamber which offers some visual transparency I guess.
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p>I remember the announcement from the podium hat “Amendments relative to(economic development or health and human services or housing or whatever)will meet in the back of the chamber to the left of the podium”
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p>Advocates and lobbyists in the gallery could see the group of 30 or so Members huddled in a corner of the chamber and use their cell phones to find missing Reps or text a Rep in the middle of the huddle.
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p>
Here
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p> PHONE SCRIPT
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p>Hello, my name is ______________ and I live in and I am a constituent of Rep. _____is the Representative in his/her office for me to talk with him/her for a minute?
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p>If NO: – May I talk with the staff person who is keeping track of all the constituent phone calls that are coming in about the budget?
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p>If YES: Proceed to section **
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p>- Whom I am speaking to?
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p>- I want you to tell the Representative that I called to talk about two things:
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p>** I belong to __________ (organization) that has been fighting for ___________ (describe your program). This year we are concerned because of the cuts of _________ will do real damage to our programs and public structures and we would like the Representative to sponsor some amendments to restore those line items.
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p>We know that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts does not have enough revenue to restore my program or anybody else’s program. We belong to the “Community Investment Campaign” and we are urging our elected officials to support our revenue package of $600 million dollars so that we can avoid some of these devastating cuts. We are specifically asking the Representative to support the following proposals:
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p>1. Removing the sales tax exemption for smokeless tobacco +o-$8 million advanced by Rep. Hecht – Amendment #287
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p>2. Removing the sales tax exemption for candy advanced by Rep. Patrick – Amendment #329
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p>3. Restoring the tax on dividends and interest to 12 percent, with provisions to exempt moderate-income seniors (+/- $500 million) advanced by Rep. Patrick – Amendment #323
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p>4. Supporting transparency and accountability measures advanced by Rep. Patrick, Rep. D’Amico, Rep. Callahan, Rep. Kaufman, and Rep. Sciortino – Amendments #734, #735, #330, #543, #565, #734, #735, #835 and #836.
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p>Someone from our group will come to your office with a fact sheet outlining these revenue options that I hope you will be able to support.
Thank you very much for your kind attention.