Last week was busy. After wrapping up formal sessions, Massachusetts lawmakers departed from the Statehouse having passed some laws but leaving piles of unfinished business.
State House News Service reporter Chris Lisinski joined us to talk about some of the highly anticipated measures that passed — and those that didn't.
Chris Lisinski, SHNS: There were a few and only a few [that passed]. The biggest probably being a version of the housing bond bill that Gov. Maura Healey filed last year that would effectively authorize a slew of new state borrowing, more than $5 billion, basically to pump as much money as possible toward building new housing and making housing more affordable for residents. This, of course, is probably the No. 1 issue in the state. We've been hearing about it for years.
Other successes were a veterans services reform bill, as well as legislation modernizing the definition of parentage, which aims to make it easier for LGBTQ families to ensure that they can have full parentage rights over their children. And that is basically about it.
Carrie Healy, NEPM: OK. So, yes, most Statehouse lawmakers are Democrats, and yet a number of measures never reached the finish line in time. Those included the measure the climate activists were critical of leadership over and sour about. That's the law that would regulate clean energy permitting and have other climate-related policy in there. So what was the sticky bit there and what's next as lawmakers take August vacations?
As far as we can tell, what really sunk the negotiations on that clean energy bill were some of the broader sections that senators tried to add. There was a lot of focus in the Senate's version of the bill on reining in the natural gas sector, trying to transition Massachusetts toward newer forms of energy, and offering some relief to ratepayers during that process.
House Democrats said that they really wanted that bill to focus just on clean energy siting and permitting reforms, and even accused the Senate at one point of going back on an agreement to limit the bill to that topic.
I think it was Sen. Mike Barrett who said something to the effect of "carry[ing] over" that climate bill. Kind of makes sense, because if Donald Trump is elected, we're not going to have an offshore wind industry grid. So does the national political situation often play a pivotal role in Massachusetts bill movement drafting and passage?
I would say yes and no. It is common for Massachusetts lawmakers to keep an eye on federal policy and to respond to federal policy. I’m thinking about action to protect reproductive care and gender affirming care the past 4 to 6 years — a lot of that has been inspired by what's happening at the national level the end of Roe v. Wade.
But to hold things up and postpone them in case of something at the federal level is far rarer and — frankly — is possibly a bit of an excuse to deflect blame away from Massachusetts Democrats who really could not agree with one another in the first place.
Can we learn something from the unfinished business in the legislature? I'm thinking about the unfinished business that supports or undermines Gov. Maura Healey's agenda. How did she fare this session?
Mixed to poor. I would say she did get a housing bill on her desk, and she has said that's her top priority. There's no doubt about that. There's a lot of money in that. And that has been, as we said, the top issue plaguing the state.
But lawmakers weren't even able to send her an economic development bond bill. They say they're going to come back to it, but even if they do, because there's no roll calls allowed for the rest of the term, there's going to be no borrowing authorization in it, which is going to seriously curtail money for the life sciences initiative and for the climate tech sector, in particular. Those are both big Healey ideas that are — at best — in limbo until 2025.
So, I would imagine, even if she's not putting out too intense criticism of the Legislature, that the governor is feeling very frustrated behind closed doors.
There was a lawmaker who suggested the chamber be reverted back to one-year legislative sessions. I think the mechanism for change there is through chamber rules and not by a constitution change. But, what would that change be? Would it impact workflow, the pace of lawmaking?
Theoretically it could, right? If you take away this sort of safety net that Legislative leaders have built in for themselves, they're not able to spend 18 months thinking about maybe doing something and then trying to do it all at the end. Maybe it would space things out a little bit more.
But, you know, you could also make the argument in the opposite direction and suggest that if you went back to a one-year session, we might still see the same things happen, just at a different point in the calendar than July 31 every year.
