Beacon Hill Roll Call records local representatives’ votes on five roll calls from the week of Feb. 22 to Feb. 26. All roll calls are from debate on the adoption of the joint House-Senate rules under which the two branches will operate in 2021 to 2022. There were no roll calls in the Senate last week.
The House, 128 to 31, approved a set of joint rules under which the House and Senate will operate in the 2021 to 2022 session.
“The joint rules package that is before all of us will allow all of us to work more efficiently and will clarify some of our existing procedures,” said Rep. Bill Galvin, D-Canton, on the House floor during debate. “Our Legislature reviews thousands of bill every session. It is primarily our joint committees that are responsible for fully vetting these proposals and must give every bill they receive a public hearing. The joint rules help ensure each piece of legislation receives fair consideration.”
GOP Minority Leader Rep. Brad Jones, R-North Reading, said that amendments providing more transparency proposed by him and other members were rejected.
“None of the requested (amendments) were unreasonable, but they were all summarily rejected anyway,” Jones said. “Without these basic reforms to improve the committee process, I felt the underlying rules package was lacking, which is why I voted against it.”
A “Yes” vote is for the rules package.
Rep. Natalie Blais — Yes
Rep. Paul Mark — Yes
Rep. Susannah Whipps — Yes
The House, 36 to 122, rejected an amendment that would require that committees make public how each legislator on the committee voted on whether to favorably report a bill to the House. This would replace a section of the proposed joint rules that would only post the names of legislators who voted against the bill and list the aggregate count, without names, of members voting in the affirmative or not voting.
The amendment also requires each committee to make testimony on bills available to the public upon request, but gives the committee the power to redact sensitive personal information that could jeopardize a person’s health or safety. Another provision would increase from three days to one week the time in which the public must be informed of an upcoming committee hearing.
“I believe that that is an unfortunate and sometimes elitist argument to say that we cannot show our votes to our constituents and to our voters,” said amendment sponsor Rep. Erika Uyterhoeven, D-Somerville, in her maiden speech on the House floor. “We do not have a strong democracy by voting behind closed doors or being afraid of our voters for voting us out of office.”
During the debate, Rep. Sarah Peake, D-Provincetown, responded to Uyterhoeven, saying she would “try not to be insulted” by Uyterhoeven’s comments and “not take what should be a policy argument that somehow turned into an attack on members of this body personally.”
“They are not elitist arguments,” Peake responded. “They are shared experiences from experienced and yes, effective legislators.
Peake said that despite her opposition to naming how each representative voted in committee, she feels the House is making progress and taking a step forward by listing the representatives who vote against a bill in committee. She said that there is a major difference between a committee vote and a vote by the entire House. She argued that the most important vote that the House takes is not a committee vote, but rather the vote on the House floor for or against the bill.
“Only then are we voting in favor of a bill or not in favor of a bill,” Peake continued. “Committees are incubators of ideas. It’s where we vet what is in a bill. It is where we sharpen our pencils, and we make changes. It is in the committees that we invite the public into the public hearing process to hear from them so that we can hone legislation into a more finely tuned bill. Or we can decide that although a bill is maybe a good idea in principle, a bill is not ready for prime time and should be committed to a study order.”
A “No” vote is against the amendment.
Rep. Natalie Blais — No
Rep. Paul Mark — No
Rep. Susannah Whipps — No
The House, 38 to 121, rejected an amendment that would give legislators two hours to vote electronically when casting a vote in committee on a bill.
“In recent years, the window to respond to committee polls seems to be shrinking at an alarming rate,” Rep. Todd Smola, R-Warren, said in a statement to Beacon Hill Roll Call. “When a committee polls out a 30-page bill and gives members 20 minutes to read and respond, that is a woefully inadequate amount of time for a member to be well informed on the substance. No legislator is omniscient, and this amendment asks for a reasonable two-hour opportunity to read, comprehend, analyze and consider a legislative proposal before responding. At a bare minimum, our constituents expect us to actually read and understand the bills that are before this deliberative body. It is impossible to do this when committees release polls with only minutes to respond.”
“Ninety-nine (percent of the time) or I would say the great majority of time, there’s plenty of time for members to answer,” Rep. Galvin said on the House floor during debate. “It’s not a problem, and the business at hand needs to run at a reasonable pace. Even though this is well intentioned, I think it draws out the committee process even longer.”
A “Yes” vote is for giving two hours to vote. A “No” vote is against giving two hours.
Rep. Natalie Blais — No
Rep. Paul Mark — No
Rep. Susannah Whipps — Yes
The House, 34 to 125, rejected an amendment that would require all purchases by the House business manager or the chief financial officer of the Senate totaling over $10,000 to be submitted to the state comptroller and posted on the state’s Open Checkbook website. The amendment would replace a rule that files be maintained on all procurements over $10,000 and be made available for legislators to review during regular business hours.
“The pandemic has essentially done away with ‘regular business hours,’” Rep. Jones said in a statement to Beacon Hill Roll Call. “This amendment would simply add another layer of transparency to the process by making sure this information is available and easily accessible to the public on the state’s Open Checkbook website.”
“This amendment is unnecessary because there’s already a system in place,” Rep. Galvin said during debate on the House floor. “Every time the House business office or the chief financial officer of the Senate processes a transaction, it already automatically goes to the comptroller who posts it to the CTHRU website. This is because these offices use the state accounting system, as required by all state government agencies. I just checked this morning, and you can see what the House spends on everything and from whom the House purchase products and services. This is a redundant amendment and not necessary.”
A “No” vote is against the amendment.
Rep. Natalie Blais — No
Rep. Paul Mark — No
Rep. Susannah Whipps — No
The House, 35 to 123, rejected an amendment that would give legislators 72 hours to read a conference committee report before voting on it. Current rules allow the conference committee report to be considered the next day.
“Conference committees often require weeks or even months of negotiations between the House and Senate to arrive at a compromise bill that can be presented to the membership for a vote,” amendment sponsor Rep. Jones said in a statement to Beacon Hill Roll Call. “The current process allows very little time between the release of the conference committee report and the vote to accept the report for members to review and understand what they’re actually voting on. Providing a 72-hour window would give both the public and legislators a better understanding of what’s included in the conference committee report before a vote is taken.”
“We are a deliberative body oftentimes debating issues for a half of the session,” said Rep. Daniel Hunt, D-Dorchester, during floor debate. “I do appreciate the leader’s point where at the end of last session, because of necessity, because of the global pandemic, because of the extended session and the hour of the day, oftentimes reports were out in a 24-hour period. Previously in other sessions, it’s been our best practice to raise a bill on a Friday for debate on Wednesday. Chairman Galvin and I have been working with the speaker’s office over the course of the last six months on this rules package. While this is a floor and not a ceiling, bills will likely be put out for longer periods of time in the coming session.”
A “No” vote is against giving 72 hours.
Rep. Natalie Blais — No
Rep. Paul Mark — No
Rep. Susannah Whipps — No
A controversial bill filed by Rep. Joe McKenna, R-Webster, would allow a taxpayer to check a box on his or her state income tax return indicating that he or she does not want his or her tax payment to be used to pay for state-funded “abortion services.” While federal funds cannot be used to cover abortion, the state’s MassHealth program does cover abortion care. MassHealth is the state’s Medicaid program that provides health care for low-income and disabled persons.
The portion of the taxpayer’s income tax liability that is not used to pay for abortion services would be deposited into a special account to develop and implement a public information program to inform the general public of the Baby Safe Haven Law, which was approved in 2004 and allows a parent to legally surrender newborn infants seven days old or younger at a hospital, police station or manned fire station without facing criminal prosecution.
“Most people, I hope, would agree that an individual’s tax dollars should not be spent on something they are morally and religiously opposed to,” Rep. McKenna said. “This bill ensures that taxpayers can avoid their hard-earned income taxes going to something that they find reprehensible in the abortion of unborn babies.”
“The right to safe, legal abortion means little to the person who can’t access care solely because of her income,” said Dr. Jennifer Childs-Roshak, president of the Planned Parenthood Advocacy Fund of Massachusetts. “A person’s decision about whether or not to end a pregnancy should be based on what they know is best for them and their family — not what politicians will allow her insurance plan to cover. Any effort to block MassHealth insurance plans from covering abortion care is an attempt to create unnecessary, discriminatory and costly barriers that jeopardize people’s health to make a political point.”
“No person should be forced, against their conscience, to subsidize what they understand to be mass murder,” said C.J. Doyle, executive director of the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts. “The American jurisprudential tradition has held that a reasonable accommodation ought to be made respecting the sincerely held moral and religious beliefs of citizens. This legislation does just that.”
“At a time when millions of Bay Staters are struggling to get the health care they need, it is particularly outrageous, though not the least bit surprising, that anti-abortion politicians like Rep. McKenna are more focused on putting access to abortion care out of reach than they are responding to the pandemic,” said Rebecca Hart Holder, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Massachusetts. “Abortion is health care, and it is time for politicians to stop trying to take it away from those who need it.”
“Taxpayers should not be forced to fund the intentional murder of unborn children,” said Andrew Beckwith, president of the Massachusetts Family Institute. “That is why we have historically had a broad, bipartisan consensus at the federal level prohibiting this type of government subsidizing of such a barbaric practice. It’s far past time for Massachusetts to do the same.”
Rep. Nika Elugardo, D-Boston, and Sen. Julian Cyr, D-Truro, have filed a bill that would prohibit the state from suspending the driver’s license or vehicle registration of a driver because he or she has unpaid fees owed to the Registry of Motor Vehicles.
“Our laws are replete with outdated provisions that propagate and perpetuate poverty,” Elugardo said. “It is unfair, unreasonable and counterproductive to deprive a person who has unpaid debts of a driver’s license, the one sure asset that most people use to get a job and to get to their job. (This bill) continues the unsexy but absolutely essential work of removing structural inequities like this from the Massachusetts General Laws.”
“In remote and rural regions with limited public transportation, a debt-based license suspension is a poverty trap,” Cyr said. “They make it harder to travel to a job interview or work while debts continue to fester. Debt-based suspensions are an outgrowth of white supremacy and a punitive approach to justice that disproportionately harms Black and Brown residents — but like most penalties stained by white supremacy, they subject everyone to greater risk of poverty.”
Sen. Diana DiZoglio, D-Methuen, and Rep. Dylan Fernandes, D-Falmouth, have filed legislation that would require insurance companies to honor legitimate claims around business interruption insurance due to COVID-19 and get rid of the virus-exclusion clauses.
Supporters of the measure say that insurers have been denying many claims under business interruption coverage and contend that pandemics like COVID-19 are not covered by the insurance policy. Businesses argue that they are entitled to be covered under the provision “civil authority action” because it was state closure orders, not the pandemic itself, that forced their closing.
“This essential piece of legislation is crucial for protecting our small businesses, who have faced one challenge after another throughout this pandemic,” DiZoglio said. “It is unacceptable that our local mom-and-pop shops pay insurance claims to protect against incidents of this nature while not being permitted to access much-needed funds. Insurance companies have done just fine during this emergency — and are sitting on significant money, set aside to pay out claims like these, that our small businesses desperately need.”
“The pandemic has shuttered more than a third of small businesses across the state, devastating our local communities,” Fernandes said. “These businesses pay for business interruption insurance every year, but insurance companies have refused to cover losses related to the pandemic. Small businesses are experiencing unprecedented pain while the insurance companies that are supposed to help them are making a profit and sitting on a pile of cash. This legislation works to ensure that insurance companies do their job and provide support to our local small businesses during a time of great need.”