The Legislature breaks for the holidays and ballot questions heat up

While it's the end of November and all of your lawmakers, yes, all of them have fully pieced out for their winter break. They actually left about a week ago. We're recording here on November 24th, right before we take the Thanksgiving break here at Commonwealth Beacon, but we thought we'd take a look back at what did and didn't make it through that final legislative push halfway through this two-year term. And there is no one better to join me, Jennifer Smith, at doing this, than my colleague here at Commonwealth Beacon, Chris Lesonski, who spends all of his time looking at Beacon Hill. So, Chris, how are you doing? I'm just doing great. I'm really happy that we're on the other side of the first year of the legislative term, even if it doesn't really feel like it, because not all that much happened. That's right. So I was kind of casting my mind back and I was thinking, you know, why was last Wednesday a significant Wednesday, they're going to be back in January to pick up where they left off? So what happened a week ago? Wednesday, November 19th, marked the last day for formal lawmaking sessions allotted under internal legislative rules in the first year of the two-year term. Once upon a time, the first year and the second year were a more significant division, bills didn't carry over from year one to year two. That's not the case anymore. It's basically the start of an extended holiday break for the legislature. They will not meet in formal sessions. They will meet in lightly attended informal sessions, which are essentially just to keep the lights running and move minor, non-controversial stuff on which there's already agreement. The big stuff, which is really the reason we're here today, if it didn't already get to the governor, it is on hold until 2026. So what's the significance then of this break for you? If you're watching this and something say doesn't make it through this kind of halfway mark, what does that say about either its chances or how lawmakers are feeling about it? It's a mixed bag. Sometimes if something doesn't get through during the first year, it's a sign that there's not that much momentum or appetite in the legislature, but more often than not, it just means they just didn't get to it yet. Lawmaking in Massachusetts, the way the legislature operates, most is backloaded. It is far, far more common for them to do a ton of stuff, not just in the second year of the term, but really in the last two weeks of formal business in the second year of the term. So anything that didn't get over the finish line now, it's not dead. It's just still in limbo, well, behind closed doors, lawmakers negotiate and horse trade and cross their teeth and dot their eyes. And we'll see a big burst about, I don't know, six, seven months from now. All right. Well, you did in fact kind of dig into this burst of activity, this mini burst right before the winter break here. So what actually did get done before we talk about what sort of got left on the table? The biggest thing is what's known in Beacon Hill parlance as the close out budget. This is a spending bill. There's many spending bills every year, but this is the one that's required in the book keeping exercise to quote unquote close the financial books on the fiscal year that ended June 30. That was fiscal 2025, we're into fiscal 2026 right now, more than $2 billion bill with plenty more money. Most of it for mass health and other healthcare expenses, but there's funding in there for sheriffs and for world cup tourism and for free school meals, a whole host of things. And there's some interesting policy writers as well. This is the bill that imposes new oversight on spending by sheriff's offices amid some scrutiny from the legislature on whether they're being accurate and forthcoming about their financial needs. Another section of this bill would essentially decouple vaccine schedules in Massachusetts from federal recommendations amid fears that secretary Robert F. Kennedy has dramatically changed a center for disease control panel and much more in this bill. And one of the things that I think, you know, I should probably bring up because we've spent so much time here at Commonwealth focused on what's going on at the Cannabis Control Commission, legislators are also trying to figure out what to do with the Cannabis Control Commission. I was really interested in your rundown where they're basically saying we're not technically starting from scratch here, but we do know a lot of retooling is needed. So what does that actually look like? Yeah, bills that have cleared both the House and Senate in slightly different forms would reshape the CCC, shrink it from five members down to three and give just a governor and attorney general authority to name those folks. They would also increase the number of cannabis licenses, a single real estate retailer could hold and boost the purchase and possession limit for recreational users. So it really is, you know, a decade in or a decade after voters legalize this industry, a really significant check-in on how the industry works, how the regulations work down at the granular level. How were lawmakers talking about this? Because again, the CCC specifically has been kind of beset by controversy, leadership changes over time, a very dramatic lawsuit over removing one of the commissioners and, you know, to what extent the treasurer was able to do that and that person was reappointed. So there's been a lot of back and forth over this. So I suppose what I'm curious about is to what extent are lawmakers saying, well, these are problems that kind of resulted from the fundamental structure of it as opposed to, you know, this was just a poor timing for who was involved at this time. Legislative leaders have tried to downplay the degree to which the controversies at the commission specifically between Chair Shannon O'Brien and Treasurer Deb Goldberg prompted this legislation. They've really pitched the bill as just a necessary update so many years into this industry to buff out some rough areas that practice has shown don't work as well as needed. That being said, we're all free independent thinkers and we can connect the dots that this significant in industry overhaul has only started to move now after a very long series of controversies. And one of the other things that's made it out of both chambers is actually an effort to pull back a request that the state has made over time to the federal government around kind of prompting a constitutional convention. This is decades old at this point, but it kind of just been hanging out there. And why exactly did lawmakers decide to make this a priority? Why is frankly because they are afraid of Donald Trump? This is something in the U.S. Constitution article five allows a critical mass of states to request a constitutional convention to take up amendments to the U.S. Constitution. It's never happened, but if two-thirds of state legislatures request such a summit, it can happen. Democrats here are worried that if that were to be triggered, because it's so unproven, perhaps President Donald Trump and his Republican allies could pursue really dramatic changes to the U.S. Constitution that they don't like. So they went and approved a resolution formally revoking, as you said, decades old Massachusetts requests for such a convention. I think the math that supporters cite say that that made Massachusetts the 17th state to revoke a call for an article five convention, as it's called, which officially puts that two-thirds majority out of reach for anyone who might want this convention to take place. Interesting. Okay. Well, so that's what made it over the finish line. Many things including and asked to not do something, which I always enjoy. So what in fact did not make it through, either, because one chamber acted on it and the other one hasn't yet, or just nobody showed any interest? Probably simple one, the House in the final week before breaking for the holidays approved a rewrite of borrowing bill that the governor first filed to take out billions of dollars in bonds and use it to invest in higher education infrastructure around the state. No controversy there. The House just went first and the Senate won't get to it until 2026. The big one, as we have reported here at Commonwealth Beacon, shout out to our colleague, Jordan Woolman, the House decided to punt on its very controversial energy bill. This was a bill that Governor Healy first filed focused on energy affordability that some House Democrats sought to use as a vehicle to defang the state's 2030 decarbonization goals that got massive blowback, as our college Jordan has been all on top of. And when push came to shove, the House's budget chief, effectively the number two Democrat and the House said, you know what, we're going to wait, we're going to go back to the drawing board on this one. Maybe we got out a little over our skis. So that one is on hold until next year. And we're really not sure if any of the 2030 stuff is going to be in the bill when it finally does emerge in the House. And what's the relationship so far this term been between the legislature and Governor Healy? You often see that the governor either kind of does want big gestures to kind of make their way forward. And maybe lawmakers are not so eager to do that. Sometimes lawmakers kind of go above and beyond what the governor has done. The sheriff's funding, for instance, comes to mind. But are there any other major areas where there was a bit of a split between lawmakers and the governor? Other than agreeing on a few central priorities. For example, legislation expanding the state's shield on reproductive and transgender care or getting spending bills done. In 2025, the legislature and Governor Healy really worked on parallel tracks. They each had their own priorities that they worked at and there was not all that much overlap. For the most part, the governor is still waiting for House and Senate Democrats to get to most of her significant ideas, including energy affordability. And also, I think of municipal finances. She's tried two sessions in a row now to overhaul the way that cities and towns can pay for everything that they do, and that's gone absolutely nowhere. Maybe it will go somewhere in 2026, but we haven't heard much interest at all coming from Speaker Ron Moriano or Senate President Karen Spilco. And I think that segues us into, well, what do people who are not Governor Moore Healy do when the legislature doesn't move as fast as they would like them to, or at all? And that means it is ballot season. It is ballot season, and you and I, Chris Lesinski have been talking for the past week about one of the ballot measures, the potential ballot measures that has cleared this first substantial signature threshold. And so looks pretty likely to make its way before voters in 2026. And that is a proposal that would create a statewide mandate for red control at a very specific level. We've been talking about this a lot, but give us kind of the cliffs notes in case this is the first time anyone's heard about this and wants to go read 3,800 words in Commonwealth Beacon about why this has become such a drama. Oh, boy, if you want to talk more about this, please email me. I am always eager. It is alienated. Most people in my social circle. So the key distinction here is that the ballot question on course to go before voters in 2026 would impose a statewide rent control policy in which rents could not increase for most apartments beyond inflation. And that's all 351 cities and towns from Williamstown to West Tisbury, not just Boston, not just the handful of communities that have asked for permission. And that is a very tricky political decision for progressives who like rent control on paper, but might not be comfortable with such a big swing. That's right. I think you did a beautiful job. They're a great job, again, 30,800 words, you did it in about 30 seconds. So I think we'll take a pivot away from that because on the question of spending, there are also a few ballot measures that have cleared again this first hurdle that would change the way that our tax rates are being conducted, applied. And I am curious, not just, of course, to hear you describe them, but also kind of contextualize them because recently there was a ballot referendum that actually increased taxes on a number of wealthy individuals that has basically been underpinning a significant amount of the spending that the state has been able to do. So where are we at on taxes right now? There's a pair of questions still in the mix. Looks like they will clear the first major hurdle. One would reduce the state's flat income tax rate from 5% to 4% over a period of a few years. The other would overhaul what was once an obscure state law known as chapter 62 F for all of you psychotic insiders like me who enjoy this stuff. And basically what that means is it would make it much more likely that the state bumps up against a ceiling, a limit on how much tax revenue it can collect each year before it has to return money back to the voters. Now that was the provision that caused perhaps the strangest news cycle just a few years ago. And I recalling correctly that was when everyone suddenly went, why do I keep hearing 62 F over and over again? You are indeed recalling correctly. Oh my gosh, PTSD there. Why? Why did that come up? That came up because after the very initial pandemic economic slowdown, tax revenues surged again quite dramatically. And Massachusetts collected so much money in taxes that it blew past this cap that does exist in state law was approved by voters in I believe 1986 that said above a certain threshold, if the state has all of this money, it must return it to taxpayers. It had not been triggered in I think four decades, maybe three and a half decades before we had this sudden pandemic flood of revenues. And ever since then, it has been back in the spotlight. And so telling you a little bit about the groups pushing these tax measures here. The rent control one is being pushed by an affordability oriented group homes for all who is trying of course to get a handle on the housing crisis through this statewide rent control ballot proposal, but who wants to mess with the tax structure this year? You won't be surprised to hear that it's some of the state's most influential business groups. They're organized under the banner known as the Massachusetts Opportunity Alliance, but the big names there are the Mass High Tech Council and the Pioneer Institute. These are groups that are very vocal, very common in affordability tax policy debates up here on Beacon Hill and they just seem to be like so many other ballot question proponents sick of waiting for the legislature to adopt something they like and ready just to go to voters directly. And we talked about the efforts that the legislature is taking right now to kind of re-tool the way that cannabis is regulated and directed on the state level here. There is a ballot measure which is trying to undo the legalization of recreational marijuana. Am I recalling that correctly? You are correct. We should emphasize we're recording this on November 24th. The next significant deadline is in early December when Secretary of State William Galvin's office will say if these campaigns are indeed certified as having collected enough signatures. So something could change between now and then, but based on my reporting, other reporters information. It does seem like folks who want to recriminalize recreational marijuana are moving forward. They seem to have enough signatures. They say they are confident. They're on track to put a question on the ballot that more or less a decade after the 2016 legalization vote would say, "Hey voters, do you want to undo this thing you did 10 years ago?" That is so fascinating that we have both that one and then also the rent control question which itself would be undoing a ban on rent control passed by voters through ballot referendum in 1994 though, of course, not just undoing it, but creating new standards for that. So the cycles of would we like to reconsider this today? Sometimes it's decades, sometimes it's one decade. It is going on with the kind of legislative transparency spectrum here. If we want to recall back to ballot measures not so distant past, we had an effort put forward by State Auditor Diana Zoglio. That was very successful to ask voters to OK the auditor's office auditing the legislature. That is not gone anywhere really since then because the legislature, as folks might recall, basically said this is a separation of powers overreach. You shouldn't essentially be diving into how committee assignments are being done. You shouldn't be able to kind of piece apart all of the ways that this independent branch of government does its work and furthermore, we post all of our financial stuff publicly. Anyway, so that's still kind of in a morass right now, but there are new efforts to basically say the way that the legislature does its business should either be more open to public scrutiny or change. That's right. It's a pretty natural continuation of the legislature question and one of them is actually being led by Auditor Zoglio herself. She started out just supporting it morphed into essentially the leader of a campaign that would, if approved by voters, subject both the legislature and the governor's office to the state's public records law, quick trivia question, what is the one other state besides Massachusetts in which the legislature and the governor's office consider themselves exempt from the public records law? Do I have to guess that or should people write in? I think people should write in. Yeah, people should write in. There's two states in the entire country where that is true, Massachusetts is one of them. So this ballot question would seek to change that being led by Auditor Zoglio. And there's another one where similar groups are in alignment that wants to overhaul the way legislative stipends work. So all 200 lawmakers in Massachusetts make the same base salary, but that's augmented quite significantly. In some cases, surpassed by what lawmakers can make in stipends for being a committee chair or in the inside of the House or Senate leadership team. And because those positions are decided by legislative leaders, opponents say lawmakers are financially rewarded for being loyal to party bosses for not breaking ranks and voting against something that the speaker or Senate president wants. And therefore largely incentivized to listen to the speaker over their own voters or listen to the Senate president over their own voters. So there's a real thread there as well because this might sound familiar to people where what Zoglio was asking the last time in the rationale for auditing the legislature at least in theory was not just look at how they're spending their money, but and again, I am reaching back in my brain here. She was saying one of the things that in her understanding the auditor's office can do is say, if you create your own rules, which lawmakers can do, check that you're following your own rules, look into kind of how these stipends are given out, how leadership assignments are created. Zoglio is sort of all one big morass, like a second crack at it, right? Yeah, it's thematically all of this falls under the exact same umbrella that has long been hoisted criticizing Massachusetts as one of the least transparent state legislatures in the country as far as we can tell as independent journalists, those claims are largely true. And we're about to talk about a ballot measure proposed by one secretary of state, secretary of the Commonwealth Bill Galvin. But before that, you did ask Bill Galvin what he thought of the fact that having perhaps 11 different ballot measures that could go before voters, which look as a Californian native, that's not nearly touching us, but it's getting kind of close. What did the secretary say this signals? First, let's just note, it could be 12. No. If all 11 of these get certified, which again is still no guarantee, there's one question that's already a lock for the ballot in 2026. And that is a repeal referendum to the state's sweeping new gun law. So we could have an even dozen. Bill Galvin, when I spoke to him, he said he thinks that this is really a watershed moment that reflects how voters and how activists feel about the legislature, that it reflects a lot of frustration with the slow pace of work, the fact that ideas that seem popular, that poll well, that get a lot of legislative co-sponsors wind up going nowhere, essentially just because the speaker and the senate president decide they dislike this or that. He really was not shy about saying that this is a reflection of where we're at on Beacon Hill and what the public sentiment is with Beacon Hill. And one of the things that's so tricky about ballot measures as essentially either in spirit, a referendum on the legislature or a very literal referendum on the legislature, is that they are by their nature sort of blunt instruments. You're limited in how many different details you can put into any given ballot measure. You're limited in kind of the subject matter, you can pursue by ballot measure. And voters of course just get a kind of yes or no vote on it. And the legislature still gets to be a presence, either in considering whether or not it wants to act because of the threat of ballot measure or refine the language even after the measure passes itself. So that all, as the caveat here, now tell me what Bill Galvin wants from them. Bill Galvin's specific proposal is to allow election day registration, which will allow prospective voters to go to the polling place on election day, register right there on the spot and still cast a ballot and have it count or have someone change the registration if they've moved recently. Current state law has a 10 day blackout before election day, which means if you forget to update your registration, if you're a student or just anyone who lives in an urban area and moves around a lot and you forget to do that within before that 10 day window, you are blocked from voting. Tens of thousands of people every year have their ballots not count in Massachusetts as a result of that secretary Galvin thinks that disproportionately hits non-white communities and lower income communities. And he said, frankly, he's tired of waiting for the legislature to take this up, doesn't think it's going to go anywhere in the legislature. So he, like others, is ready just to go to voters and seek this reform that in his mind will boost democratic participation. And another democratic process reform ballot measure involves primaries, right? That's right. The proposal led, actually, by Daniel Allen, the Harvard professor and former Gruber Nertoyle candidate, that Jen, as a Californian native, you just mentioned, how do you feel about all party primaries because we could get those here in Massachusetts? Jungle primaries, baby. The question would essentially do away with democratic and Republican primaries, put all of the candidates into one big pot together. And whichever two get the most votes would go on to the November general election, even if it's two people from the same party. I would like to say you don't have to be a Californian native to be excited about this concept. You just need to be a Boston voter where when someone mentions their actual party affiliation, everyone is really confused because in Boston, we have nonpartisan primaries. So someone saying, I'm a Democrat or I'm a Republican is more of a signal than anything else. So some places in Massachusetts have done away with the idea of partisan primaries. But an all party primary does not mean you don't have a party affiliation next year name. It just means that party affiliation is no guarantee that you definitely get a slot in that final. And another ballot measure that's sort of in conversation with the legislature's actions over the past few years is an effort to unionize committee for public council services staff. So that's basically saying that the state's public defenders organization should be able to unionize and bargain and negotiate. And the reason that that of course kind of bubbled up to the surface here. And this is a union put forward effort and a union backed effort is because there has been and remains to some level a work stoppage from bar advocates and those are the private attorneys that take on clients who can't pay for their own council services. And they decided to stop work because their paid in Massachusetts, much less than their counterparts in other New England states. And so that really did kind of bring this question about how much are we putting on public defenders in this state right front and center because they were the ones that kind of then had to deal with not just overseeing what was going on with the bar advocates, but themselves trying to pick up the slack. So Chris, what do I need to know about this effort here? First we should just for clarity's sake, distinguish that bar advocates, the private attorneys who are essentially independent contractors, would not be affected by this question. This would just be the full-time public defenders and the support staff who work for CPCS. That agency is staffing up pretty aggressively as part of the response to the bar advocate crisis. The legislature and governor Healey directed more money to CPCS so they could hire more attorneys. The thinking goes with more CPCS full-time attorneys. There's less reliance on bar advocates. So it's a pivotal time for that organization and its work, the texture of day-to-day operations for those staff could look a lot different if they also had collective bargaining rights. And what about the land and water conservation trust measure? It's a fairly straightforward one that would redirect a portion of revenue from the sales tax on sporting goods, try and say that five times fast, toward conservation efforts for open spaces, clean water, so on and so forth. And it is maybe the last one that we'll talk about here aside from said gun measure, which is the housing crisis and how to deal with the housing crisis. And this of course has been something that has eaten up plenty of efforts up on Beacon Hill. There are lots of different versions of, you know, relax zoning to make it easier to do this. Tighten rules around rent control or kind of general affordability metrics in this other way. Well one group has taken this directly to the ballot to basically change zoning in a way that would make it easier to build starter homes. That's the pitch that they're going with. So what are they actually saying? I believe the metrics are the ballot question would allow single family lots to be less than 5,000 square feet and to have less frontage requirement. So essentially, it would clear the way for more homes to be built on smaller and smaller parcels, which current zoning rules and Massachusetts make somewhat prohibitively difficult. This is very much in line with the way that, you know, the yes in my backyard folks, the one bee folks discuss the concept of in fill zoning, which is the most exciting sentence anyone has heard us say so far on this episode, I'm sorry, I'm not sorry, but the idea is essentially that you have these areas that are well suited for more density, but you have these rules that are a little bit out of step with the way that someone might want to use it. And so kind of reducing the limits on how you can use a plot of land would in theory make it easier to squeeze more housing into less space. So that's the logic there. Kind of getting to something you've alluded to earlier is at this point. It's not a lock. There is only one that is definitely a lock, right? Yes. And that is the gun law repeal with went down a different path. We don't need to bore our listeners with an intricate unpacking. Excuse me. I talked about in fill zoning. Yes. The only one that is right now is we're sitting here, a guaranteed spot on the 2026 ballot is the one that we were talking about last year, and that's to repeal the gun law. So this was a big sweeping gun law that made it through. It was really trying to crack down on a few things like ghost guns. It was trying to strengthen background checks, red flag laws, that sort of thing. But it very immediately hit pushback from Second Amendment advocates who were saying this is basically an unconstitutional intrusion upon the rights here. And they immediately pushed to put this right in front of the voters and undue said gun law. So that will absolutely certainly be in front of voters on November something 2026. And I think we should probably close this out with if we have 12 ballot measures, 12. I'm just going to say the number 12 over and over again. How does that compare to other years? Now last time around, we had eight, which was an awful lot. It wasn't the record. This would blow past it. This would blow past the record year by a full third. If we get all 11 plus the gun law on the ballot next year again, caveats, caveats, caveats. The current record is nine statewide questions in a single year. It's a three way tie between 1994, 1976, and 1972. Well, sounds fun. That's all the time we have for today. Thank you again to Chris Lysinski for joining me on the podcast. Thank you for listening. I'm Jennifer Smith. This episode was engineered by John Geek. Our production and theme music is done by Charlie Cazella. Leave a rating and review wherever you're hearing this now if you want to help other folks find us and email [email protected] if you want to get in touch directly specifically so you can tell us what. Which other state besides Massachusetts exempts its legislature and its governor's office from the public records law? I would love to know and I refuse to read your article so somebody better email in and tell me. But until then, have a wonderful Thanksgiving. We will be back in your ears next week.