Ways and Means Committee Chairs Sen. Michael Rodrigues (left) and Rep. Aaron Michlewitz (right) listen to Gov. Maura Healey and her budget chief, Matt Gorzkowicz, discuss their fiscal year 2027 spending plan on February 11, 2026. Chris Lisinski/CommonWealth Beacon

A recent commentary piece by Massachusetts Senate counsel James DiTullio arguing that criticism of the Legislature’s productivity is misplaced because we are one of just seven states that allow for multi-issue “omnibus” bills drew considerable attention, including three op-eds written in response that we are publishing. In addition to the commentary below by Scotia Hille of Act on Mass, there are responses by Jonathan Cohn of Progressive Mass and former Democratic state representative Jay Kaufman.

IN HIS RECENT op-ed regarding legislative productivity in Massachusetts, Senate counsel James DiTullio actually adds credence to the movement for reform.

As executive director of Act on Mass, a nonprofit focused on transparency and civic engagement with our Legislature, I have criticized our Legislature’s lack of productivity. DiTullio contends that critics like me ignore Massachusetts’s lack of a “single subject” rule, which forces most other states to write bills pertaining to only one policy matter. Criticisms that Massachusetts is unproductive, he claims, can be explained by a unique ability to use “omnibus bills” and policy riders to combine multiple policies into large legislative packages.

Those other states have something else in common: Their legislative output is clear enough that it does not require the chief counsel of a legislative chamber to spend extra time defending it to the public. Their output can be viewed and understood plainly by considering the number of bills enacted by the legislature and their contents. If this is not the case for Massachusetts, it is not the fault of “critics,” but of a broken legislative system that prefers opacity over transparency and unanimity over debate.

Although Massachusetts’s peculiarities can make it difficult to compare to other states, it can be measured against our own historical record. During the 1997-1998 legislative session, the earliest available on the Legislature’s website, Massachusetts enacted 725 new laws. As is typical, most of these were local bills, commemorative bills, appropriations, or sick leave banks for individual state employees. An Act on Mass analysis found that 252, or roughly 35 percent, were general policy laws.

In the most recently completed legislative session, 2023-2024, Massachusetts enacted just 496 new laws. Of these, just 79 were general policy laws, representing 16 percent of legislative output. Repeating this analysis for all sessions since 1997 reveals a consistent decline in overall legislative output. Although the current session is unfinished, it is not on track to reverse this trend.

Results of Act on Mass analysis of the Massachusetts Legislature’s historical output.

The decrease in overall output has coincided with a significant decline in passing general policy bills. If this decline in output is not due to a lack of productivity, as DiTullio claims, then the frequency and size of omnibus bills must have dramatically increased in the last 30 years. Put differently, a dependence on omnibus lawmaking is not an inherent feature of our state’s constitutional system, but a choice made by our current political leadership.

The current Legislature has one of the largest Democratic supermajorities in the country. Unlike Congress, it cannot blame “gridlock” for its reliance on large omnibus bills and policy riders. If it’s true that our state legislators—unlike any other in the country—increasingly need such tactics to be “productive,” we should be concerned about why, not patting ourselves on the back.

Indeed, the modern trend of relying on omnibus bills for routine legislative work is not a neutral choice. It turns a simple democratic process into a labyrinthine ordeal. For a window into what this costs us, here’s a slide from an Act on Mass “State House 201” workshop, concerning a bill that passed through DiTullio’s chamber.

Slide from Act on Mass “State House 201” workshop, covering omnibus bills.

Before even reaching the House, the Senate Data Privacy Bill (S.2619) was assigned six different numbers, each with its own unique page on the Legislature’s website. After a single public hearing, the bill absorbed the contents of three different bills, swelled in size, and then shrank by half.

In order to track the fate of an individual policy change from S.29, an interested constituent would have to manually search for it among the 34 pages of S.2619—and then hope it makes it through negotiations with the House. With a process this convoluted, it’s hard not to envy Virginians, whose system DiTullio points to for its “painfully narrow” bills.

For another example, DiTullio touts the Legislature’s economic development bill for “effectively” addressing “many separate policies and topics” in one bill. That 225-page bill contains policy measures as diffuse as piloting psychedelics as mental health care, wage law adjustments for minor league baseball players, legalization of historic horse race betting machines, and authorizing multifamily housing on land owned by religious institutions, among others.

In praising this system, DiTullio and his colleagues overlook a key purpose of our Legislature: representative democracy. Each of the bill’s “policies and topics” are distinct issues, which a constituent may care about and want to know their representative’s position on in order to inform their next vote for representative. Blending these issues into one bill, passed with a single vote, is not clever lawmaking; it’s a system that keeps constituents in the dark.

The last few decades have also seen more and more legislative work shifting to the second year of a session, even well past the traditional July 31 deadline. At the end of the most recent legislative session, legislators enacted a whopping 95 laws on the session’s final day; State House News pointed out that this constituted 20 percent of all laws enacted in the 2023-2024 session. In the first six months of this session, in 2025, just eight new laws were enacted.

Now, 20 months into this legislative session and a year after Act on Mass first used it as a workshop example, the Data Privacy Act (S.2619) has still not been enacted into law. It is one of many outstanding priorities still languishing on Beacon Hill, including energy affordability, primary care reform, and the economic development bill discussed above.

This procrastination has consequences. Currently, it means that the Commonwealth’s schools have started another academic year without knowing if they may need to implement a ban on cellphones. Although Gov. Healey named it an early-session priority in May 2025, we are heading into another winter season without a solution on energy affordability. And although it is the number one concern for Massachusetts voters, the Legislature failed to produce a single standalone bill tackling the housing crisis. Some might describe this delay and inaction, from a full-time Legislature, as a lack of productivity.

Massachusetts residents don’t need to read a 50-state analysis to feel that our Legislature is failing to deliver. They feel it when they open their utility bills. They feel it when they struggle to find affordable housing. They feel it when considering this year’s record-tying nine ballot questions, many of which result from years of frustration trying to pass things on Beacon Hill.

If Beacon Hill wants accolades for their productivity, they should spend less time defending undemocratic tactics and more time passing laws to improve the lives of Bay Staters. For greatest clarity, they could consider doing it one at a time.

Scotia Hille is executive director of Act on Mass.