House Speaker Ron Mariano and Senate President Karen Spilka. (File photo by State House News Service)

WHAT IS THE one thing businesses, climate advocates, and lobbyists can agree on? The need to overhaul the state’s broken legislative process.

On July 31, the last day of formal legislative sessions, numerous major policy initiatives were left unresolved on Beacon Hill. Many reasons for the Legislature’s inability to complete its business have been proffered. There’s the complexity of the issues and the inability of the branches to reach consensus. But these have long been true. Problems are complex, legislators have personalities. What is indisputable is that elected officials have been entrusted by the voters with the responsibility of conducting the business of the Commonwealth, and they have not executed..

Legislating does not mean that any of the aforementioned interests should get all that they want. What is troubling is that the breakdown in legislating occurred against the backdrop of growing out-migration and widespread concern about the Commonwealth’s ability to retain and attract talent and businesses in a highly mobile post-pandemic economy.

Tax collections are slowing. Demand for public services is increasing. The state is facing challenges related to high housing costs, emergency assistance, health care affordability and rising unemployment. Many Massachusetts lawmakers talk a good game on competitiveness and affordability, but major policy initiatives to change the state’s trajectory are lacking.

This end-of-the-session backlog caps off an unproductive two-year legislative session. Massachusetts has a full-time Legislature—one of only 10 such state legislative bodies in the country.

Doing The People’s Business

Consider how often the House and Senate meet in formal session and how often roll calls are conducted. During the recently completed 19-month formal session, the House met 39 times and the Senate 46 times. There were entire six-week stretches the Legislature did not meet in formal session, meaning no official business could be done.

Roll calls are important because they are the only way each elected official’s vote on an issue is noted and made part of the official record. More typically, voice votes are called where the final tally of ayes and nays is not recorded.  A tactic used by both branches during the recent budget process was to group together numerous proposals into giant or “bundled amendments” and have lawmakers cast a single vote on the package of proposals.  The practice is problematic in three ways:

  • It allows legislators to deny that they supported any one proposal while voting in favor of the larger amendment;
  • It provides elected officials with cover when voting in favor of controversial or unpopular policies; and
  • It lets them dispense with many amendments in a summary fashion, irrespective of their relative importance.

The Legislature’s lack of concern about not meeting its July 31 deadline may be because it is self-imposed and not strictly enforced. Unable to reach resolution by the time the clock ran out, lawmakers suspended the rules and extended business well into the morning of August 1. With the Legislature overwhelmingly composed of Democrats, the rank and file suspend the rules if leadership instructs them to do so.

What is a Citizen to Make of All This?

The legislative session’s duration was changed in 1995 from one year to two years with the promise that bottlenecks and procrastination would end—that the longer term would allow for a steady pace and regular cadence. That has not proven to be the case. Procrastination continues, the bottlenecks worsen, and adherence to the calendar and rules is optional. 

The Massachusetts Constitution notes that “[g]overnment is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity and happiness of the people.”

For those reasons, voters must unite around legislative reform. A few phone calls to business groups and policymakers resulted in this short list of solutions on how to fix this situation:

  • Revamp the legislative process by shortening the amount of time legislative committees can review and act on legislation;
  • Require, as so many other states do, redlined copies of all bills indicating proposed changes, a fiscal note for each bill and a detailed summary of proposed changes to the law;
  • Provide sufficient time for lawmakers and interested parties to review and provide feedback;
  • Adhere to basic timelines, not the least of which is making sure the state budget is in place by the July 1, the start of the fiscal year;
  • Reform the conference committee process whereby six members of the Legislature are, ostensibly, charged with negotiating the differences between House and Senate versions of complex legislation; and
  • Eliminate the practice of passing large, omnibus theme-oriented legislation (like one health care or one energy bill) so individual bills can be debated, vetted, and passed on their own merits.

But the question of how to get the State House back in order is something that will take much deeper analysis and more than a few phone calls. Organizations interested in reform should come together and look at how a representative sample of effective, transparent, and responsive full- and part-time legislatures structure their own legislative processes. The citizens and residents of Massachusetts deserve better.

Jim Stergios is executive director of Pioneer Institute, a Boston-based think tank.