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CLT UPDATE
Saturday, May 4, 2019

Those "Good Old Days"


The Senate will debate its annual budget bill beginning Tuesday, May 21 and amendments to the budget, which will be released next week, are due by 12 p.m. on Friday, May 10, under an order adopted Thursday.

The Senate Ways and Means Committee, under new chairman Sen. Michael Rodrigues, plans to release the committee's budget bill (S 3) next Tuesday. The House approved its roughly $42.8 billion budget bill (H 3801) last week.

A Democrat-controlled six-member conference committee each spring works to agree on a final budget for the new fiscal year, which begins on July 1.

State House News Service
Thursday, May 2, 2019
Senate budget debate set for May 21
By Michael P. Norton


The third, but not final, chapter in the Legislature's six-month budget drama opens on Tuesday with the release of the Senate Ways and Means Committee's fiscal 2020 budget proposal, a bill that will be debated beginning Tuesday, May 21....

The House took a spend-first approach to K-12 education investments in its $42.76 budget (H 3801), ratcheting up outlays for public school districts while postponing consideration of tax and revenue adjustments, and education aid distribution formula changes, until sometime later in the session. If the Senate takes the same approach, the degree of difficulty facing a House-Senate conference committee in June will be lower, so budget watchers will be on the lookout [for] new revenue proposals in the Senate budget....

The week ahead also features the launch on Wednesday of the 2019-2020 Constitutional Convention, which is the forum where lawmakers plan to resurrect a proposed $2 billion tax on the state's highest earners....

State House News Service
Friday, May 3, 2019
Advances - Week of May 5, 2019


Tuesday, May 7, 2019 Committee on Revenue meets to take testimony on bills related to the sales tax and excise tax. The committee is also going to accept testimony on a bill (S 10) filed by Gov. Charlie Baker to raise $137 million annually through an increase in the excise tax paid on real estate transfers to generate $1 billion over the next decade to help cities and towns cope with climate change impacts.

Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr and Rep. Marc Lombardo are pitching a reduction in the sales tax rate to 5 percent (S 1776/H 2545), an idea that Gov. Baker used to support....

State House News Service
Friday, May 3, 2019
Advances - Week of May 5, 2019


Wednesday, May 8, 2019 CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION: Lawmakers are expected on Wednesday to gavel in the 2019-2020 Constitutional Convention. The time of the meeting will hinge on an order that's expected to emerge on Monday. The convention will be the arena for debate on a legislative amendment to the constitution (S 16 / H 86), and amendments to that amendment, calling for a 4 percent surtax on households with incomes above $1 million per year. The Revenue Committee gave the so-called millionaire tax an "ought to pass" recommendation.

State House News Service
Friday, May 3, 2019
Advances - Week of May 5, 2019


Along with another attempt to impose an additional tax on incomes over $1 million, state lawmakers could be asked whether Massachusetts should amend its constitution to allow no-excuse absentee voting and allow for language tweaks in the oath of office.

Ahead of an April 24 deadline, committees endorsed three proposals for amendments to the constitution. Those three -- the so-called "millionaire's tax," absentee voting, and oath language -- could come before the Legislature for a vote this session, one stage in a multi-year process of amending the constitution....

To advance to the next stage, an amendment must be placed on the Constitutional Convention Calendar by May 8.

Lawmakers must vote on legislative amendments to the constitution before the end of formal sessions for the term in July 2020, and, if it wins the support of at least 101 people in the 200-member Legislature, it would need to clear the body by the same threshold again the following term to eventually be put before voters.

Rep. James O'Day, a West Boylston Democrat who sponsored the income surtax amendment with Sen. Jason Lewis of Winchester, voiced optimism that their proposal could clear the vote threshold, saying "a ton of folks" were cosponsoring the plan. One hundred and fifteen other lawmakers signed on to O'Day's version of the bill.

"I think we're good," he told the News Service. "I think we have a good, strong argument that we're good, anyway."

State House News Service
Monday, April 29, 2019
Income surtax backers hope for vote before summer break


Friday, May 10, 2019 SENATE BUDGET AMENDMENT DEADLINE: Senators by noon must file their amendments to the Senate Ways and Means Committee's fiscal 2020 budget recommendation (S 3). The amendments will be considered by the full Senate when it begins its public budget deliberations on Tuesday, May 21. (Friday, noon)

State House News Service
Friday, May 3, 2019
Advances - Week of May 5, 2019


Just after 8 p.m. last Monday, Rep. Paul Donato alerted his fellow House lawmakers that a five-page, $9.2 million document was now available for their review, eight hours after the start of a closed-door meeting where representatives could pitch House Ways and Means Chairman Aaron Michlewitz on their proposals for education and local aid, two big areas of public investment.

Forty-seven minutes after Donato's announcement, and with scant public explanation, that five-page package of additional education and local aid spending was unanimously tacked on to the House's version of next year's budget in the first of nine similar votes the House took over the course of four days of budget consideration.

Using a familiar process authorized by the House in early April, the House addressed -- either by including it in the budget or leaving it out -- 1,260 of the 1,370 amendments representatives had filed by consolidating them into nine packages assembled by the Ways and Means Committee staff and voted on as single entities.

The House last week took 16 recorded votes and adopted a grand total of 21 amendments outside of those consolidated packages....

On Monday, House Speaker Robert DeLeo offered his own explanation of how the House conducts the budget process. He said each member has a chance to meet one-on-one with the chairman of Ways and Means "in terms of what their priorities" are and then another chance, in the Room 348 meetings, to make their case.

"And bottom line, when folks talk about the fact that their item was not debated or they wish there was some debate, each and every member has the ability to take that amendment outside of the so-called consolidated amendment and debate it if they are displeased with the decision of the chair," DeLeo said. "So it's up to the members, whatever they wish to do."

Though lawmakers have that option to remove their amendments from the consolidated packages and open them up to individual debate, only Rep. Russell Holmes opted to do so this year. His proposal to rework the legislative pay structure -- which he said would result in more equitable salaries for what are essentially the same jobs and reduce House leadership's influence over the members -- failed on a 5-151 vote.

Holmes said afterward he was not surprised by the vote and did not find the budget process to be open and accessible to the public.

"Most decisions, clearly, are being made behind backrooms, and I agree with everything I've read in terms of how we lack transparency," the Mattapan Democrat said. "However, this is what folks find efficient, and I'm everyone's equal in this building, including the speaker, the majority leader and anyone else. We all have the same rights, and I can pull out my amendment, and that's why I did it. I think other people should do it as well, but no one wants to get out of sorts with the leadership." ...

In addition to avoiding debates, House lawmakers opted to dispense with most amendments without direct votes.

The Holmes amendment marked one of six recorded votes on the House budget that was not unanimous and one of only four recorded votes on an individual amendment that was not consolidated.

In total, the House took 16 recorded votes. One, a quorum call, essentially took attendance, and another was to continue meeting past 9 p.m. on Wednesday night. Nine votes were on consolidated amendments, and the final vote, at 8:35 p.m. on Thursday, was 154-1 to pass the budget. Holmes voted in opposition....

The consolidated amendment process is not new. The first mention of consolidated amendments in the News Service's online archive, which dates to 1986, came at about 2:30 a.m. in June 1988 when Senate President William Bulger put a package of budget amendments on the floor and Assistant Minority Leader David Locke praised the idea.

Under House Speaker Thomas Finneran by the early 2000s, consolidated amendments became a way for House budget managers to deal with repetitive or duplicative amendments. Rather than consolidating dozens of amendments as is the practice today, the House about two decades ago often merged just a handful of amendments at a time.

By 2005, when Speaker Salvatore DiMasi was in power and tapped DeLeo to run the Ways and Means Committee, the modern-day budget debate process began to take form in the House. Members would meet privately in Room 348 to voice their priorities to committee leaders and staff, and then would wait to find out if their amendments survived.

In 2010, after DeLeo ascended to the speakership, the News Service reported that though the consolidated amendment practice had "been a common practice for years, this year, House members have put the process into overdrive." The House had adopted 22 consolidated amendments, each on a single topic, in 2009 and in 2010 the committee "crammed as many as five large categories into one" and the House adopted seven amendment packages, the News Service reported.

This year, the House dealt with 1,260 individually-filed amendments across nine consolidated amendments, most of which dealt with at least two topic areas.

State House News Service
Wednesday, May 1, 2019
Private debate, few votes as House allocates $42.7 Bil


More than 50 immigrants and advocates with snare drums, flags, and banners marched the roughly 25 miles from Framingham to Boston to highlight a push to provide driver's licenses to undocumented immigrants, arriving at the State House the same day a pair of district attorneys filed a federal lawsuit to halt immigration arrests at courthouses.

Rallying on Beacon Street Monday afternoon, marchers who spoke in Spanish with a translator said their four-day trek was to call attention to the sacrifices made by migrants seeking to enter the United States.

They urged the Legislature's Transportation Committee to quickly hold a hearing on bills (S 2061, H 3012) that would allow people to apply for and obtain driver's licenses if they are unable to provide proof they are lawfully present in the country. The licenses would not be REAL ID-compliant, meaning they could not be used for air travel or to enter a federal building.

Li Adorno told the crowd that Moviemento Cosecha, which led the march, opted not to invite politicians to the event because they have not seen lawmakers act on the issue, first introduced in the 1990s.

"We are tired of the promises," he said.

State House News Service
Monday, April 29, 2019
License-seeking immigrants march to State House


Chip Ford's CLT Commentary

In the CLT Update of June 23, 2009 ("The second-largest tax increase in state history") I wrote:

"It took 207 years of Massachusetts history for the commonwealth to reach its first $10 billion budget.

"The 1989 "temporary" Dukakis income tax hike package funded a $12.3 billion budget, just twenty years ago. Today's tax hikes are to fund a budget that'll spend significantly more than twice that much. Through numerous tax hikes in the interim, Beacon Hill has more than doubled state spending in just two decades. Yet the pols think they're still not taking enough money from us."

In June, 2009 the Legislature passed and Gov. Patrick signed a tax increase package totaling $1 Billion to fund a state budget of $27.4 Billion.  This included the 25 percent hike in the sales tax, from 5% to 6.25%.

In his Boston Herald column on June 30 of that year Michael Graham wrote ("Alas, it's only drizzling on taxpayers' parade"):

In most states, a governor who just signed a $1 billion tax hike would be looking for political cover. A budget with a 25 percent sales tax hike would be a legislative orphan elsewhere.

But in Massachusetts, taxpayers feel a palpable sense of relief. “We only got nailed with a sales tax?” locals ask in pleased surprise.

Welcome to Massachusetts, where taxpayers lined up before the Beacon Hill firing squad are just grateful they didn’t get shot twice....

Thanks to a combination of one-party government and a largely liberal media, the Democratic autocracy that runs this state is free to rain on the taxpayers’ parade every day. Voters in other states might expect more but why should we?

For a few months, our taxes are going to be slightly less higher than expected. And, I predict, one day this week we’ll see the sun break.

In both instances, my advice is the same: It’s Massachusetts. Enjoy it while you can.

In retrospect, we might call those "the good old days."

A mere decade later the House of Representatives has unanimously (minus one protest vote) passed its proposed state budget for next fiscal year totaling $42.8 Billion.  That is over $15 Billion more spending than just ten years ago, a 55 percent increase.  Even when adjusted for inflation that 2009 budget would have increased to $32.9 Billion.  The current House proposal is still spending an adjusted increase of $10 Billion.

The sales tax was hiked from 5% to 6.25% in 2009.  Spending has increased by 55 percent over the ensuing decade.  The state can certainly "afford" to return the sales tax to 5 percent  and it certainly does not need to confiscate more of taxpayers' hard-earned income, what remains of it.

So of course we support the bills (S 1776/H 2545) sponsored by Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr (R-Gloucester) and Rep. Marc Lombardo (R-Billerica) to roll back the state sales tax to 5 percent.

Taxes simply cannot continue to be piggybacked over and over again on past tax increases, new taxes devised and imposed in perpetuity.  This ridiculous overspending is not sustainable.  This tax-spend-tax more-spend more escalating cycle simply cannot go on forever if Massachusetts isn't going to flush ever more productive taxpayers down the toilet or chase even more of them out of the commonwealth.  Must that be the only way this accelerating cycle of self-destruction can end – when only The Takers remain, with nothing left for them to take?

The State House News Service reported on the upcoming Senate budget debate:

The House took a spend-first approach to K-12 education investments in its $42.76 budget (H 3801), ratcheting up outlays for public school districts while postponing consideration of tax and revenue adjustments, and education aid distribution formula changes, until sometime later in the session. If the Senate takes the same approach, the degree of difficulty facing a House-Senate conference committee in June will be lower, so budget watchers will be on the lookout [for] new revenue proposals in the Senate budget.

The operative phrase in that paragraph is "budget watchers will be on the lookout for new revenue proposals in the Senate budget."  In the CLT Update of April 26 I noted:

When it gets to the Senate watch for whether it will be deemed a "money bill" due to the House's inclusion of Minority Leader Brad Jones' (R-North Reading) amendment to expand the conservation tax credit.  His amendment was adopted unanimously with the support of all House Democrats and Republicans.  In its July 2015 ruling on what constitutes a "money bill" the State House News Service reported on the ruling of the state's highest court:

The Supreme Judicial Court, in its opinion signed by all seven justices, found that the House's decision in its version of the budget to delay the implementation of a business tax break and expand a tax credit for land conservation opened the door for the Senate to propose additional tax policy changes.

It appears the House failed to learn from its previous mistake – or without dissent, it intentionally again expanded the conservation tax credit to knowingly open the tax floodgate in the Senate.

It's going to be a busy few weeks ahead, folks stay alert!

Chip Ford
Executive Director


 

State House News Service
Friday, May 3, 2019
Advances - Week of May 5, 2019


The third, but not final, chapter in the Legislature's six-month budget drama opens on Tuesday with the release of the Senate Ways and Means Committee's fiscal 2020 budget proposal, a bill that will be debated beginning Tuesday, May 21.

Ahead of those deliberations, the Senate on Thursday plans to take up legislation requiring motorists in Massachusetts to use only hands-free technology while driving. That policy overhaul would trump the state's nine-year-old ban on texting while driving, a law that many drivers flout. Amendments to the distracted driving bill are due by noon Monday.

Over in the House, there's work underway to get the annual bill allocating funds for local road projects through that branch. The week ahead also features the launch on Wednesday of the 2019-2020 Constitutional Convention, which is the forum where lawmakers plan to resurrect a proposed $2 billion tax on the state's highest earners.

And next week is capped with a noon Friday deadline by which senators must file amendments to the proposed Senate budget.

The House took a spend-first approach to K-12 education investments in its $42.76 budget (H 3801), ratcheting up outlays for public school districts while postponing consideration of tax and revenue adjustments, and education aid distribution formula changes, until sometime later in the session. If the Senate takes the same approach, the degree of difficulty facing a House-Senate conference committee in June will be lower, so budget watchers will be on the lookout [for] new revenue proposals in the Senate budget.

The Senate traditionally speeds through its budget amendments in a few days and approves its budget bill just before Memorial Day weekend. Ways and Means Committee Chairman Sen. Michael Rodrigues and his House counterpart, Rep. Aaron Michlewitz, will then get their first opportunity to lead talks on behalf of their branches, working on a six-member conference committee charged with recommending a consensus budget in time for the July 1 start of the new fiscal year.


State House News Service
Friday, May 3, 2019
Advances - Week of May 5, 2019

Tuesday, May 7, 2019


Committee on Revenue meets to take testimony on bills related to the sales tax and excise tax. The committee is also going to accept testimony on a bill (S 10) filed by Gov. Charlie Baker to raise $137 million annually through an increase in the excise tax paid on real estate transfers to generate $1 billion over the next decade to help cities and towns cope with climate change impacts.

Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr and Rep. Marc Lombardo are pitching a reduction in the sales tax rate to 5 percent (S 1776/H 2545), an idea that Gov. Baker used to support.

Rep. Kay Khan has filed a proposal (H 2529) to impose an excise tax on the distribution of sugary drinks like soda. There are a number of bills related to other sales or excise tax exemptions and Rep. Tom Golden has a bill (H 2478) to establish special commission to study the efficacy of funding the construction of public safety buildings through the sales tax.

House Co-Chair Mark Cusack promised House members who wanted to debate revenues as part of the state budget late last month that his committee would give their ideas a full vetting in due time and House Speaker Robert DeLeo has said the House plans to bring revenue issues to a vote at some point this session. (Tuesday, 1 p.m., Hearing Room B-2)

Revenue Committee Agenda:  https://malegislature.gov/Events/Hearings/Detail/3130


State House News Service
Monday, April 29, 2019

Income surtax backers hope for vote before summer break
By Katie Lannan


Along with another attempt to impose an additional tax on incomes over $1 million, state lawmakers could be asked whether Massachusetts should amend its constitution to allow no-excuse absentee voting and allow for language tweaks in the oath of office.

Ahead of an April 24 deadline, committees endorsed three proposals for amendments to the constitution. Those three -- the so-called "millionaire's tax," absentee voting, and oath language -- could come before the Legislature for a vote this session, one stage in a multi-year process of amending the constitution.

Lawmakers filed several proposed amendments this session. Committees gave adverse reports proposals to Sen. Adam Hinds amendment to restore voting rights to incarcerated felons, Rep. Thomas Golden's amendment to set term limits for judges, and Rep. Mindy Domb's amendment to make the constitution's language gender-neutral.

To advance to the next stage, an amendment must be placed on the Constitutional Convention Calendar by May 8.

Lawmakers must vote on legislative amendments to the constitution before the end of formal sessions for the term in July 2020, and, if it wins the support of at least 101 people in the 200-member Legislature, it would need to clear the body by the same threshold again the following term to eventually be put before voters.

Rep. James O'Day, a West Boylston Democrat who sponsored the income surtax amendment with Sen. Jason Lewis of Winchester, voiced optimism that their proposal could clear the vote threshold, saying "a ton of folks" were cosponsoring the plan. One hundred and fifteen other lawmakers signed on to O'Day's version of the bill.

"I think we're good," he told the News Service. "I think we have a good, strong argument that we're good, anyway."

Revenue generated by the tax would be dedicated to funding education and transportation. A similar effort, initiated by citizens petition, to put the tax before voters in 2018 was scuttled when the Supreme Judicial Court ruled it improperly mixed unrelated subjects. Legislatively proposed amendments do not face the same relatedness requirements as those launched through the petition process.

The first attempt at the 4 percent surtax passed the Legislature 135-57 in 2016 and 134-55 in 2017.

O'Day said he hoped a vote would be scheduled for next month. Lewis said he'd like to see it brought to the floor "in the next couple months."

"My hope would be that we could take a vote on it in a Constitutional Convention before the summer break in August," Lewis said.

A favorable committee report does not guarantee a vote at the Constitutional Convention, where lawmakers over the years have often opted against debating or voting on amendments.

The Election Laws Committee reported out a Rep. Michael Moran proposal (H 78) that would bring no-excuse absentee voting to Massachusetts, where voters are currently allowed to cast absentee ballots in only limited circumstances, and the Judiciary Committee advanced a modified version of a Rep. Domb amendment dealing with oaths of office.

The amendment (S 2211) would allow a person to "affirm" an oath of office instead of "swearing" it, and to replace the words "So help me God" with "This I do under the pains and penalties of perjury" if they so choose.

Testifying before the Judiciary Committee earlier this month, Domb said the constitution currently allows only Quakers to opt against "swearing" their oath because of the word's religious implications. The first-term Amherst Democrat said she is not a Quaker but was "not really comfortable swearing," and had wanted to be able to affirm her oath earlier this year instead.

Giving the options of affirming oaths would be more inclusive of various religious and spiritual beliefs, Domb said.


State House News Service
Wednesday, May 1, 2019

Private debate, few votes as House allocates $42.7 Bil
By Katie Lannan and Colin A. Young


Just after 8 p.m. last Monday, Rep. Paul Donato alerted his fellow House lawmakers that a five-page, $9.2 million document was now available for their review, eight hours after the start of a closed-door meeting where representatives could pitch House Ways and Means Chairman Aaron Michlewitz on their proposals for education and local aid, two big areas of public investment.

Forty-seven minutes after Donato's announcement, and with scant public explanation, that five-page package of additional education and local aid spending was unanimously tacked on to the House's version of next year's budget in the first of nine similar votes the House took over the course of four days of budget consideration.

Using a familiar process authorized by the House in early April, the House addressed -- either by including it in the budget or leaving it out -- 1,260 of the 1,370 amendments representatives had filed by consolidating them into nine packages assembled by the Ways and Means Committee staff and voted on as single entities.

The House last week took 16 recorded votes and adopted a grand total of 21 amendments outside of those consolidated packages.

Across the four days, as the House approved leadership's $42.7 billion budget plan and roughly $71 million in additional spending, there was seven hours and 39 minutes of action that took place inside the House Chamber and within public view, an analysis of full session audio recordings found. The rest of the action happened behind closed doors as the consolidated amendments were compiled through a process favored by legislators but which critics say centralizes power among a handful of House leaders and keeps the public in the dark about the give and take on one of the most critical pieces of legislation.

"It's up to the members"

On Monday, House Speaker Robert DeLeo offered his own explanation of how the House conducts the budget process. He said each member has a chance to meet one-on-one with the chairman of Ways and Means "in terms of what their priorities" are and then another chance, in the Room 348 meetings, to make their case.

"And bottom line, when folks talk about the fact that their item was not debated or they wish there was some debate, each and every member has the ability to take that amendment outside of the so-called consolidated amendment and debate it if they are displeased with the decision of the chair," DeLeo said. "So it's up to the members, whatever they wish to do."

Though lawmakers have that option to remove their amendments from the consolidated packages and open them up to individual debate, only Rep. Russell Holmes opted to do so this year. His proposal to rework the legislative pay structure -- which he said would result in more equitable salaries for what are essentially the same jobs and reduce House leadership's influence over the members -- failed on a 5-151 vote.

Holmes said afterward he was not surprised by the vote and did not find the budget process to be open and accessible to the public.

"Most decisions, clearly, are being made behind backrooms, and I agree with everything I've read in terms of how we lack transparency," the Mattapan Democrat said. "However, this is what folks find efficient, and I'm everyone's equal in this building, including the speaker, the majority leader and anyone else. We all have the same rights, and I can pull out my amendment, and that's why I did it. I think other people should do it as well, but no one wants to get out of sorts with the leadership."

DeLeo said the representatives he spoke with last week thought the process worked well and "felt it was one of the best budgets they were involved with." When pressed about the remarkably small amount of public debate, the speaker said it is important to focus on the end result rather than the process used to get there.

"What I would ask the public to do would be to take a, again, let's take a look at the final product and what I see as the final product is each and every member representing their district very well and each and every member representing their particular interest or concern," he said. "Again, if that member who filed the amendment felt that it was necessary for it to be debated in public or on the floor, they have that ability."

In addition to avoiding debates, House lawmakers opted to dispense with most amendments without direct votes.

The Holmes amendment marked one of six recorded votes on the House budget that was not unanimous and one of only four recorded votes on an individual amendment that was not consolidated.

In total, the House took 16 recorded votes. One, a quorum call, essentially took attendance, and another was to continue meeting past 9 p.m. on Wednesday night. Nine votes were on consolidated amendments, and the final vote, at 8:35 p.m. on Thursday, was 154-1 to pass the budget. Holmes voted in opposition.

Michlewitz's office did not respond to News Service requests to speak with the chairman about the budget process. House Minority Leader Brad Jones, who was notably quiet during last week's budget debate, also did not respond to News Service requests for comment.

The View from Room 348

On Thursday, a few hours before the final vote on the spending bill, Environment, Natural Resources and Agriculture Committee Chairman William "Smitty" Pignatelli observed that the process was going "smoothly," but with "not as much debate on either side of the aisle."

Pignatelli, a Lenox Democrat who's served in the House since 2003, attributed the lack of debate to cooperation among Democrats and Republicans and Michlewitz's preparation.

"I think we're working well together," he said. "I've been in those [Room] 348 meetings, Aaron is very attentive. I think he's done a lot of work in advance."

For Rep. Lindsay Sabadosa, a first-term Democrat from Northampton, the meetings in Room 348 provided a "great opportunity" to get to know her colleagues and their districts. The experience of hearing other lawmakers defend their amendments and make their case for spending priorities was a "positive I was not expecting," she told the News Service.

Sabadosa was among a handful of new House Democrats who live-tweeted their budget experience, including updates from within the closed-door meetings, and responded to questions from the News Service over Twitter.

"Nothing is decided there," Sabadosa said of Room 348. "The representatives go in and advocate in about 30 seconds for their amendments that are consolidated within the topic area (& others they may support)."

Rep. Maria Robinson of Framingham described one gathering as "a last-chance pitch meeting where folks get to advocate for amendments (theirs or others)," and noted the room was "super warm." Rep. Tami Gouveia of Acton said a meeting she was in was "Very focused, collegial, and on-topic," and Rep. Mindy Domb of Amherst said the huddles provided a "real education into the needs of the Commonwealth - across the state - and the strong advocacy Reps make for their districts concerns, problems, and needs."

"It's actually been really fun to celebrate other people's wins," Sabadosa said in an interview.

A member of the Progressive Caucus, Sabadosa said she's gotten support from staff and the caucus in interpreting consolidated amendments before voting on them. "You learn quickly how to do it, how to read it, and what it means," she said. "You just have to sit down with it."

Sabadosa, who posted nightly Instagram video updates for her constituents and penned a pre-debate column on "demystifying" the budget process for the Daily Hampshire Gazette, said there are "always ways to make things more transparent."

"A Common Practice For Years"

The consolidated amendment process is not new. The first mention of consolidated amendments in the News Service's online archive, which dates to 1986, came at about 2:30 a.m. in June 1988 when Senate President William Bulger put a package of budget amendments on the floor and Assistant Minority Leader David Locke praised the idea.

Under House Speaker Thomas Finneran by the early 2000s, consolidated amendments became a way for House budget managers to deal with repetitive or duplicative amendments. Rather than consolidating dozens of amendments as is the practice today, the House about two decades ago often merged just a handful of amendments at a time.

By 2005, when Speaker Salvatore DiMasi was in power and tapped DeLeo to run the Ways and Means Committee, the modern-day budget debate process began to take form in the House. Members would meet privately in Room 348 to voice their priorities to committee leaders and staff, and then would wait to find out if their amendments survived.

In 2010, after DeLeo ascended to the speakership, the News Service reported that though the consolidated amendment practice had "been a common practice for years, this year, House members have put the process into overdrive." The House had adopted 22 consolidated amendments, each on a single topic, in 2009 and in 2010 the committee "crammed as many as five large categories into one" and the House adopted seven amendment packages, the News Service reported.

This year, the House dealt with 1,260 individually-filed amendments across nine consolidated amendments, most of which dealt with at least two topic areas.

"It's different now. I don't know if it's any better or any worse, but it's just a different process from what it used to be," Gun Owners Action League of Massachusetts director Jim Wallace said outside the House Chamber last week. "It used to be 1,400 amendments they'd go through one by one and we'd be here until 1 or 2 o'clock in the morning for four or five days in a row. I can remember lobbyists bringing pillows into the gallery."

Over the years, House leaders have defended the consolidated amendment process and extended its use to other areas of debate, like economic development bills and the expanded gaming law. In 2012, then-chairman of Ways and Means Rep. Brian Dempsey said allowing members to debate issues on the floor could become unwieldy.

"What's interesting about [Room] 348 is I think sometimes folks don't appreciate it's really about logistics. It's very difficult to have a debate in the House chamber when you have 30 or 40 folks interested in talking about a particular issue," Dempsey said.

Wallace, who was unsuccessful last week in lobbying for an amendment to establish a task force to review the firearms licensing process to be included in the budget, said he's seen the budget process change in other ways since he started lobbying professionally in the early 2000s.

"They do fewer outside sections. It used to be that if they were having trouble getting a bill moving they would try to throw it into the budget," he said. "There's much less of that, which we're OK with."

The Senate uses a similar process when it debates its own budget plan, called "bundling." When the Senate bundles budget amendments, its Ways and Means staff assembles a "yes" pile and a "no" pile and members are similarly empowered to request debate on a specific amendment.

Paul Craney, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance, a conservative organization that often criticizes the Legislature, said the "blame" for a lack of public debate falls both on House leadership and on "House members who claim to care about transparency and are doing virtually nothing to object."

"What was once a robust, week long debate on legislators' most important obligation has been whittled down to sporadic announcements of closed-door meetings taking place in secretive room 348 -- a room from which both the press and the public are banned from," Craney said in a statement.


State House News Service
Monday, April 29, 2019

License-seeking immigrants march to State House
By Katie Lannan


More than 50 immigrants and advocates with snare drums, flags, and banners marched the roughly 25 miles from Framingham to Boston to highlight a push to provide driver's licenses to undocumented immigrants, arriving at the State House the same day a pair of district attorneys filed a federal lawsuit to halt immigration arrests at courthouses.

Rallying on Beacon Street Monday afternoon, marchers who spoke in Spanish with a translator said their four-day trek was to call attention to the sacrifices made by migrants seeking to enter the United States.

They urged the Legislature's Transportation Committee to quickly hold a hearing on bills (S 2061, H 3012) that would allow people to apply for and obtain driver's licenses if they are unable to provide proof they are lawfully present in the country. The licenses would not be REAL ID-compliant, meaning they could not be used for air travel or to enter a federal building.

Li Adorno told the crowd that Moviemento Cosecha, which led the march, opted not to invite politicians to the event because they have not seen lawmakers act on the issue, first introduced in the 1990s.

"We are tired of the promises," he said.

"We want to hold both political parties accountable for their actions," Adorno said. "There is no secret that the Republican Party is anti-immigrant, but there is a common myth here in Massachusetts that the Democratic Party is somehow friendly towards us. That is not true. As an undocumented person myself, I can tell you that is not true."

Earlier Monday, county prosecutors Marian Ryan and Rachael Rollins filed a lawsuit in federal court against U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, seeking to have the agency's practice of arresting people while coming to, attending, or returning from court declared illegal.

The suit asks the court "to immediately enjoin ICE from conducting any more courthouse arrests."

According to the Boston-based group Lawyers for Civil Rights, ICE's practice of arresting people for civil immigration matters at courthouses makes it more difficult to secure defendants' appearance in court and causes prosecutors to abandon cases because victims and witnesses are unwilling to appear.

"ICE's using state courthouses as a forum to conduct their enforcement work has struck fear in many of our most vulnerable, keeping them from accessing our courts. That is not justice. It does not make our communities safer," Middlesex District Attorney Ryan said. "What is clear to me is that in order to make meaningful and positive change, we all need to work together."

Said Rollins, the district attorney for Suffolk County, "Initiating a federal civil deportation prior to a criminal defendant being held accountable for the harm they caused in Suffolk County does nothing to serve the interest of justice or public safety. Instead, it creates an environment of fear and mistrust, and harms our entire community."

The suit comes four days after U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling announced the indictment of Newton District Court Judge Shelley Richmond Joseph and former court officer Wesley MacGregor on obstruction of justice charges, alleging they worked to allow a defendant to leave through a back door at the courthouse and avoid an ICE officer intending to detain him.

Martin Healy, the chief legal counsel and chief operating officer at the Massachusetts Bar Association, described the lawsuit as "unprecedented" and said it "reflects the escalating tensions between state and federal law caused by ICE's law enforcement activities around local courthouses.

"As demonstrated by the disruptions cited by both state prosecutors and public defenders, this strategy is not only interfering with the proper administration of justice, but also impeding the state's interest in enforcing its rule of law and chilling access to justice for defendants, witnesses and others with business before the state courts," Healy said.

The state public defender agency, the Committee for Public Counsel Services, and the community group the Chelsea Collaborative are also plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson released a statement blasting the suit, calling it "frivolous" and saying the lawyers and advocates should instead "be working with law enforcement instead of partnering with criminal illegal immigrants."

"ICE officers are federal law enforcement professionals who risk their lives day in and day out protecting our communities: Shame on anyone, especially elected officials sworn to protect their citizens, who sides with the lawbreakers over law enforcement," Hodgson said.

 

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