Five months in, Massachusetts lawmakers' Joint Legislative rules have yet to be formulated and agreed upon for this session.
Lacking these, they are continuing to operate under six-year-old rules.
As some specific reforms face resistance, State House News reporter Chris Lisinksi spoke with NEPM'S Carrie Healey about whether the holdup reveals some potential deeper divisions between House and Senate leadership.
Chris Lisinksi, SHNS: The holdup is over several different portions of the package. Of course, there's consensus on probably 90% of it, or at the very least, a sizable majority.
But there are pressure points [including] virtual participation on legislative committees.
The House has wanted every lawmaker who sits on a joint subject matter committee to attend hearings in person or testify in person. The Senate wants remote options. We saw this flare up a few weeks ago when Senator Jacob Olivera [of Ludlow] was denied the opportunity to testify.
What we've heard most recently is that the House is willing to soften its position a little bit and allow lawmakers to testify remotely at committee hearings, and House Speaker Ron Mariano went out of his way to say that he sent that offer over and that the House hasn't heard back from the Senate yet, which I read as a sign that the talks really haven't picked up all that much momentum as we are now five plus months into the legislative term.
Carrie Healy, NEPM: Nearly all the legislatures’ focus so far this session has been on budget and spending bills and now much of that work is done or under negotiation. Lawmakers may finally have the bandwidth to turn to policy priorities. Are you getting any sense as to what they want to take up this summer?
We've already seen one major policy priority in the House last week, with a unanimous vote on a major cannabis industry reform bill that significantly changes the Cannabis Control Commission, or CCC; how that agency is appointed and operates, as well as makes some tweaks to the operation of the industry itself.
Over in the Senate, we're not really sure if the CCC reforms are as much of a priority on that side of the building. We've heard a lot of focus on updating the state's 2022 shield law, protecting reproductive and transgender care providers from out-of-state legal action.
We've also heard some interest in perhaps taking up a "location" shield proposal that would basically limit the sale of location data on cell phones.
So those are, I'd say, contenders for early policy action on the Senate. Of course, there's always a chance that something pops out of nowhere that we just didn't have on our radar before!
Speaking of focusing on those big issues, the Senate last week referred a number of late filed petitions to committees, and among them is SB 2852 from Senator Michael Brady. And it’s a controversial topic for sure, Chris.
[Laughing] Yeah. This is this is really going to split the Democratic Party! This proposal is to designate bar pizza as the official pizza of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
What do you think about bar pizza? I'm kind of agnostic about it, but that might just be because I'm a transplant and didn't grow up here.
[Laughing] I think I agree with you. I'm not so sure about that one!
Moving on, last week, dentists rallied at the statehouse, warning that federal fluoride bans and Medicaid cuts could worsen dental care access, especially in under-served communities.
Some dentists say unscientific federal messaging is decreasing fluoride use. What are dentists looking for Massachusetts lawmakers to do? And will that make any difference at all if the Trump administration changes federal law on the use of fluoride?
There doesn't seem to be all that much that Massachusetts lawmakers could do to prevent the federal administration from undercutting fluoridation.
But there are state level proposals that also seek to roll back the use of fluoride in water. That's [received] significant opposition from dentists here, and stalling those state level proposals is something that legislators could accomplish.
