End of Session

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Today, we dive into the latest legislative moves in Massachusetts. First, we’ll revisit question one on the state auditor and examine the legislature’s actions. Then, we’ll unpack the end of the legislative session, where lawmakers broke their own rules to pass key bills—including economic development and climate change initiatives—highlighting the arbitrary nature of these so-called "rules." What does this mean for progressive policies? Let’s get into it.

This is the audio version of the Incorruptible Mass podcast, season 5 episode 66. You can watch the video version on our YouTube channel.

You’re listening to Incorruptible Mass. Our goal is to help people transform state politics: we investigate why it’s so broken, imagine what we could have here in MA if we fixed it, and report on how you can get involved.

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Transcript

Hello and welcome to Incorruptible Mass. Our mission here is to help us all transform state politics because we know we could have a state that truly represents the needs of the vast majority of the residents of our beautiful commonwealth. Today we will be talking about a few different things.
Number one, we'll be talking a little bit more about question one, the state auditor question and kind of giving you some more information about what the legislature did. Then we will also be talking about the end of this legislative session and how they decided for some reason to break their own rules and come back and pass some more things, which just shows us how totally useless these rules are that they don't mean anything. And when they tell us they can't pass progressive policies because of the rules, they're just totally making it up.
It's baloney. We'll specifically talk about the economic development bill and the climate change bill. So before we do, I am going to let my co hosts introduce themselves and I will start today with Jonathan.
Jonathan Cohn he him here is joining from the south end in Boston. Been working on a number of different issue, progressive issue and electoral campaigns for a number of years now and always happy to be here. 
And Jordan, Jordan Berg Powers.
He him and I am, I live in Worcester, Massachusetts. I'm a longtime political consultant and executive director in Massachusetts and I'm knee deep in reading the actual law of the economic development bill. 
Amazing.
I am Anna Callahan. She her coming at you from Medford, currently a city councilor so doing a little more local stuff recently than statewide stuff. But we want to give everyone an update on question one.
So last time we kind of gave the impression that it seemed like the state legislature was maybe going to go along with this vote, that the people clearly voted very wide, wildly in favor of the state auditor being able to audit the legislature. But we want to give you a little bit of an update. And I know Jordan, you specifically wanted to speak on this topic about what in fact happened and what the state legislature did in response.
Yeah, so I made a mistake. So the reason I was like I was like we gotta come back and talk about this because I was like you used “we” which is very lovely, but it was me who made the mistake and so I wanted to apologize for not fully comprehending what had occurred. So in the auditor's ballot initiative that passed, it called for an audit of the state legislature, one that is totally legal, should not be controversial, used to happen all the time, stopped happening.
They refused to allow it and the state legislature immediately voted to Allow the auditor to pick somebody to audit the legislature. And I was like, great, that sounds great. Like maybe they're finally acquiescing.
And what I didn't realize is that they were doing that because it specifically says in the bill that. That the auditor will audit the legislature, which does make much more sense. And so it was their way of being, Like, anybody else can do it but you. Which is, of course, petty. And it's a, And it just speaks to how broken the system is that every Democrat voted for it because, not because they think it's a good idea. I can guarantee you not a single one of them could give you a rational reason for that except pettiness against the auditor for questioning how corrupt the building is.
Right. So, like, that's their rationale, is how dare you come to our place and tell us what to do? That's like. But there's not a good reason for it.
Surely it won't matter if the auditor does it or somebody's in the auditor office does it. But it's just petty. That's petty.
So that was my mistake. 
I want to make it super clear to people who were listening because it's got glossed over slightly. So on the ballot question, what you all voted for was for the state auditor, Diana DiZoglio, to audit the legislature.
And what the legislature voted on was for her to pick some other person. She can't do it, but somebody else will do it. So they did not vote to do what she wanted.
And what all of us. Sorry. What we all democratically voted to happen.
What they did was they voted for something different to happen, overwhelmingly. Yeah, but they voted for something and they voted overwhelmingly for some other thing to happen, which is not what we voted for. Jonathan, you looked like you wanted to jump in.
Oh, no, I was just actually looking at something. No, it's just the thing. I would just tag in there.
If you're talking about people overwhelmingly. I continue, It's continually impressive and just speaks to the fact that it's of the resonance of such good government measures with the voters, of how it did pass in every single city and town in the commonwealth.
I think we had talked about before that it might have not passed in one. The one that it looked like it hadn't passed was actually because that town hadn't reported their data to the. Yeah, but it did pass there.
It would have been funny. It would have been. It's not as funny, though, if the entire commonwealth, except for one town, voted for something.
But in fact, every single city, it was one Small town where somehow everybody is a state legislator or former state legislator. 
Wait, let me get this straight. Every single city and town voted to have the state auditor audit the legislature? Every single Democrat in the state legislature voted to have some other auditor and not her audit the legislature? Amazing.
Truly amazing. Anything else on this particular update that we're giving people or shall we move on to the. The closing of the first people to continue pushing the legislature? I mean, it's really embarrassing, honestly, that they're even fighting this.
They should be audited like every other department. We should know how our money is being spent. We should know if they're misspending it.
We should know if they're piling up non disclosure agreements. We should. It is our money.
It is our legislature, and we overwhelmingly voted to allow somebody to oversee it. And the fact that they're thumbing their. The fact that they're giving us all the finger should be, Should be a problem for us. Like that's a problem that they have so much disdain for our democratic oversight over the. Over our institution, our elected institution.
Let me ask this question. How much is the media covering this? 
They're actually covering it in the perfect way the media covers everything which is, Which is as what? As like a spat between two people. Yes.
It's General Hospital. It's like, it's like, look at. The auditor is in a fight, a personal fight with the, with the speaker. As if. It's as if they're. As if they're children getting ready to throw water at each other or like on a Bravo show.
That's where they're covering it. Like it's the real, The Real Housewives of Beacon Hill.
Yeah. And that's not what's happening. What's happening is that there is a systemic issues in the state House.
And the person who by law, who I did not even vote for, who I did not want to be the auditor has got elected and wants to audit. Oversee a part of the. Let a part of our body –
–wants to do the job she was elected to do.
Right. That she does for every other department. Yes. And every other branch, to do it for the judiciary too. They oversee to make sure money is not being misspent. They're like, no, f you.
And then voters, And then voters, So then she went to us to say, hey, I want to do this thing. They're not letting me do it. And we were like, overwhelmingly. It looks like.
It looks like a dictator– It looks like we elected Saddam Hussein. We just overwhelmingly went for this.
And they're just Like F you, we don't care. 
Yeah, see like that statewide map of yes in every city or town. It's the same as the should you donate to the Incorruptibles podcast, yes or no.  Every city or town votes yes!  [Laughter]
We know that every listener always votes. Yeah.
And that link is just below. You are, you can vote yes for Incorruptible Mass very easily. Just clicky clicky.
Put in that five bucks that you would spend on a coffee somewhere and we will very much appreciate it. It'll help us get this message out. Because the media does not cover things like this.
The media, you know, either they are, they ignore it and act like the legislature is just, you know, oh the legislature voted for it too, it's fine. Or they are saying like ooh, what a spat, you know, what a little tiff they're having instead of portraying it as a question of like hey voters, you all overwhelmingly, every single city and town voted for this. And look at what your legislature is doing.
All right gang, are you ready? Shall we move on to the closing of the legislative session and their own breaking of their own rules? 
Yeah, let's go. I was born ready. 
Oh yeah, you're born ready. Jonathan, you born ready, will be the first speaker on this topic. 
Okay, so, so the, so we're talking about the Massachusetts legislative session. So that in the session that we have a two year legislative cycle started January of last year, it'll kind of it and it'll end this year.
I think the formula one does begin on January, the new one. I think it actually does start on January 1st, but it typically goes that kind of that cycle of early January, early January. In most sessions they stop doing things after July. Outside of the like most non controversial items, like –
Nice work if you can get it right.
Exactly. You have, you have August, September, October, November, December all off for the rest of the year. You can, you can still do constituent work if you are good enough to actually do constituent work in the first place as a state legislator.
But then beyond that, the actual work of making policy typically dies down with maybe like a few non controversial things just get through. Because the legislature in that time is in what's called informal session means that one person shows up, blocks something, it all stops, unless they bring people back. And they don't bring people back.
One thing that we saw back during COVID when they back during like in 2020 because of COVID suddenly that rule went out the window two years ago, where they extended that formal period of the legislative session and they're like, okay, we have a lot to get done because we just lost a month to the pandemic. We'll come back and vote on things virtually coming back. And that showed, of course, how that idea that you can't pass legislation in that end of that even numbered year was fake.
It never existed in reality. It was just like a mutually agreed upon decision to not do work.
I will say that during COVID like we could believe during COVID exactly. That it was a one off.
We could believe that it was a one off. And what we've seen in this session, and we can talk about some examples is because of the way as, as our listeners would have seen, they got to so, they finished so little back on July 31 that they have in fact come back to vote on things. And if you're willing to come back to vote on those things, like, there's really no reason why you couldn't be coming back to vote on other things or have done that all of these times in the past and not treated July 31 as though it were like the midnight in Cinderella and all of your bills get turned into pumpkins at midnight.
I love it. Jordan. Yeah.
And they, you know, I think it's just in years past, if you've listened, if you've been listening to this for some time, you've heard our frustration that they, that they just leave the much needed things that they're done or, all the times that that Charlie Baker overruled the legislature and made things worse, like the women's prison, like protecting immigrants. Right? Those are all things that they could have come back clearly and fixed, but instead they said, oh, Charlie Baker got rid of it. We can't. There's nothing we could do. Right.
So there is, you know, the, they passed a housing bill that had good zoning laws that Charlie Baker got rid of and that because they passed it at the last second, they didn't come back and fix. Right. So these are all…
By “the last second” you mean in July when it ends December 31.
They could have come back and fixed any of those things at any point, clearly. And they didn't. And the worst thing is that some of those things still go unpassed.
So I'm glad that they're coming back and passing a good climate change bill and a relatively terrible economic development bill, but maybe has, but has some good things in it. I'm glad that they're doing things. I'm glad that they're, they're not living by this artificial boundary that they set for themselves.
And like, what the heck, Right? 
And Also speaks again to just how much authoritarianism there is in the legislature that they, that no one has even questioned why they could go, why they're going back now. And no one has pushed back against going back.
And no one has said we should have done this the past years. Like, it's all, it's all muted and even the left, even the coverage of this, no one's talking about how weird it is that they've never done this before. And you know, like, they're just, everyone's just going around. Like they only have, like, they're like the, you know, the media's coverage of this is like Dory and Finding Nemo. Like, it's just like she's. What happened? Oh, like just five second memory.
Like, just like, did nothing else happen in past years? Like, we just, like, it's just so, it's just, you know, so it's just, it's just, I'm glad. And also, like, what the heck? 
It's also 
I love “the last second,” six months before the last second, right? So they say that it's the last second July. It's like, dude, there's six months left, you know, five months, six months left of your term. Like, why was that the last second? You know? 
And then the other thing I do want to bring up is this whole, they don't do anything for the last, you know, months and months of their term is only one of the totally ridiculous, stupid rules that prevent our legislature from doing anything useful for us. The entire timeline is invented. The entire timeline where there's only like, you know, one or two months that you can submit a bill for consideration for the next two years.
Like, that's crazy. There's only a certain period of time that they have hearings. There's only a certain period of time that things are in committee.
There's only a certain amount of time. You know, this entire timeline is absurd and it serves no purpose except to make sure that progressive bills do not ever see the light of day. 
So this isn't the only rule, right, that is serving this purpose, but it is one of the rules that like, they could buck at any time and they don't because it's convenient for them.
Jonathan? Oh, I would say that, yeah, that the, that I, we've been seeing some other states decide that they need to take some, like, emergency action with the Trump administration coming in. And like, there are so many things that our legislature could pass to say that we're going to be standing up early. And they're going to wait for Everything to be refiled again and then be assigned to a committee and then have a hearing. And then suddenly it's, suddenly it's September of next year and they still haven't done anything.
Yep. Should we, let's talk about the two parts of the two bills that were specifically in this. So there's an economic development bill. Let's do that one. We'll save the climate for last. It's a slightly happier story.
Let's, let's go ahead and give people the good news first. Jonathan, do you want to give people like some of the things that were not so bad about this economic bill? 
Yeah. So there are some good, there are some good wins in the economic development bill that the legislature passed.
So as just a few examples, one of them is that it allows, allows parents to expense childcare to campaign funds, something that advocates have been fighting for for a number of years. There are so many different things that you're able to expense to a campaign account. People can expense their tuxedos, they can Expense Uber trips, they can expense so many different things. But if you're a candidate running for office and you have a small child, your ability to do the work of a candidate can often depend on somebody who is not you watching your child. And so it is very much so, not just merely incidental to the work of campaigning.
And so, and like the secretary, Secretary of state's office has always been opposed to this. And so that's a good step forward. It's something that will also help possibly make more people who might not have been interested in running or afraid of running because of the time commitment more willing to do so.
Other states, I believe, have done this already. I think that there was even, I think that there was movement on the federal level for this as well. I remember that court ruling.
So that was a positive step. I know that there was a pos. There was language that I believe that the teachers liked around helping to promote diversity amongst the kind of teacher workforce by allowing kind of alternative certification processes of the knowing that a number of the standardized tests that can be used to become a teacher end up showing racial biases that as we've shocked in the show, can be prevalent for many types of standardized multiple choice tests, kind of.
That was a good step moving forward. As an example again of like when things pass easily and then get vetoed and then don't come back. There was a bill about strengthening the state's public health infrastructure that Charlie Baker had vetoed, even though, like it was unanimous.
I think in both houses it was like unanimous. And maybe there were a few Republicans. No, but I think it was unanimous, at least close to it.
And then because that happened at the end of the session, they were like, okay, they didn't do it. Like, they didn't, they didn't do anything. And then, so it had to be, had to come back.
And then it was almost possibly not going to happen again. But it got in the Senate. Economic development though, and this thing that, no, that very few of any individual legislators say that they oppose has finally become law.
One of the other ones that I know folks who had been active on was quitting pathways for foreign trained physicians. So somebody who comes over to the US if you are a doctor in your home country, you come to the US and you can't be a doctor because it's not, it's not transferable. The legislature made it so that, so that would be an easier system.
All right, so those are some of the, you know, I want to say really quickly for the, for the part about childcare, shout out to Becca Glenn, one of the best organizers Massachusetts who pushed this law being pushed and it finally got in. And I just want to say that the only reason we had to do it because the federal government ruled that you could use for childcare and our secretary of state decided to be against it because he's a terrible human being. And so they needed to fix something that actually could have been fixed by the Secretary of State's ruling at any time to be in line with the federal government.
And you know, they mentioned 31 other states, but 31 other states just simply followed the federal government regulation. We decided to be against women and most primarily women who were, who are obviously unfortunately because of our patriarchy society, childcare is often left to them. And so that was just his decision alone.
So you could, you could spend it on tux, you could spend it on baseball teams, you could spend it on traveling to Cuba, but you couldn't spend it on childcare. Right. So like, you know, the fact that he made that designation can only be seen as a clear way of saying that there are certain types of people we don't want in government.
And that's women with kids. Right. Because that's, that's the predominant people who were, who, who were going to use it was pushed by the stat, the Commission on Status of Women and helped by Becca Glenn, that was obviously a great organizer who pushed it.
So I just wanted to shout that out and say like, this was a ridiculous thing that we had to do to be kid. And the Fact that it took so long is actually really gross and terrible. With a blue executive, blue legislature, blue everything.
And we are among the less than 50% of states that are not even. They're bucking the, you know, progressive national legislation as it comes down. Awesome.
And I want to. And the other thing I want to say about the bill is that so now a bunch of legislators have moved from Twitter to Blue Sky. Luckily there are not a lot of people are engaging with them.
I could not encourage you not to. I want to encourage you not to. And they're touting this bill with like money that's being spent.
And I will again remind people that a lot of this is bond money, which means that it's not going to be spent. Some of it will be spent. The tax cuts will definitely be spent.
But the actual money for things like things in your town, we don't know if it will be spent and likely it won't. So I see them on Blue sky being like, this economic development bill is going to do this for this center and that for this. And maybe, maybe not.
Like, and this is again, what happens is they play this game where they're spending money which somehow they have, but they don't have to help poor people or unhoused people or. Right. So they cut.
Recently Governor Healey cut money for people who are on food stamps. She is cut the ability of people who are unhoused. Unhoused people are living in the airport, they're living in.
On streets. They are un. She cut money for that.
But there's a money for an economic development bill which is largely, which is, you know, largely tax cuts and a few spending. Well, where's the money for the spending coming from? Because there is no money for spending because they're not actually going to spend it. And I just want to make that clear that they're going around saying money is going to be spent, but it's not clear that any of that money is going to be spent.
So I just want to remind people of that when you the media again is saying 4 billion dollar economic development bill. And that is a lie. That is not factual.
It is not true. It's not. That's not what's going to happen.
They're not going to spend all that. And if they do, It'll be over 10 years. It's just not true.
So the other piece I want to, that's, that's controversial in the bill is our, our federal government is current. The Biden administration, I always say this. The Biden administration is suing Ticketmaster, that will obviously go away because Trump's in bed with terrible people.
And there's no terrible, There's no more terrible people. What? No, really? [laughter]
And so our legislature did not side with Biden. Our legislature sided with Trump and enshrined Ticketmaster as the sole ability to sell tickets in Massachusetts. You've heard that, right? You love Ticketmaster.
You love spending money. You love all the extra fees. The Massachusetts Democratic legislature and our Democratic governor has enshrined Ticketmaster as the monopoly to charge you extra money.
And the media said that it's a truth in ticketing price. So here's the catch seller. Ticket sellers, quote, shall not restrict the transferable of a ticket sold unless the terms and conditions of the restriction on transferability are clearly inconspicuously provided to consumers.
So Ticketmaster already does this. They can enforce it by state law. That means that if you don't agree to Ticketmaster's terms, they have the right to block the selling of your ticket if you decide to give it to a friend to donate it or sell it on one of these exchanges.
Ticketmaster has the right to bait, to cancel your ticket and take it back and not give you the money. So that will destroy the secondary market. StubHub, Vivid, Seat Geeks, all of these things.
Ticketmaster would basically say, well, we have the rights. We are the terms and conditions as stated by the legislature for your ticket. So you don't have the right to resell it unless we say so.
So they have been trying to monopoly into our. We are the. We are going to be the only state where you have to pay the full price for Ticketmaster.
That's what they did in this bonkers town. Yeah, I just like, again, like. And here's the thing, I don't think most of them know that.
I don't think they understand it. I know they didn't read it right. There's no way they read this bill.
So I'm sure they don't know that that's what happened, but that's what they did in this bill. And so I think it's just. Yeah, it's one of the many again.
And I think this is as a quick point in that one of the problems with the legislature's tendency to do things as large omnibus bells, rather than being able to actually legislate on an individual basis on pieces of legislation, is then, one, people don't know what they're voting on, and two, it takes away the ability to really do, like, effective accountability. Because if you're voting on this large package, you can say that you're voting. Oh, I'm, I was voting for it because X, Y and Z.
And so it breaks down those fundamental lines of accountability. 
Totally. And if anyone is listening to this and is like, what do you mean they didn't read the bill? What are you talking about? How could they possibly not know that that was in the bill? I recommend you go back to episodes 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 of this season, which, this season is like 60 some odd episodes.
We gotta, we gotta do a new season, my friends, a new season. Maybe, maybe we do a new season under the Trump presidency starting in January or something. But, but go back to 1 2, 3, 4 and 5.
Catch up on what is happening with our state legislature because we, it's been a while since we talked about that and today we've touched on it a number of times. So for anybody that has only been listening recently, I recommend you go back to some of the fundamentals. So are we ready to talk about the climate bill? Yeah.
The good news. Let's talk about the good news. Awesome.
Jonathan, go ahead. Do you want to talk about it? Yeah. So there's a bit of context here for the cases where the legislature came back.
Like you do have to physically come back and vote in person on a bond bill. So that gave them the reason for coming back for the climate bill. It stems from the fact that in the legislature, as I noted before, if anybody present objects, then you need to bring people back.
And that's the case because there were Republican opponents to the climate bill that would have to be brought back in person. And this, the context for this is the Senate and House have both passed very substantively different bills, the House bill being much narrower and that the kind of consensus version of it that did pass was one that for the most part kind of climate advocates were happy with to highlight a few points from it. One of the main points of it was the priority for the House, it was a priority priority for the governor was there are various reforms to the siting and permitting process.
One thing that was a win for the kind of environmental justice community was in the way in which kind of the incorporation of what's called a cumulative impact analysis and the definition used for that, what that means is that cumulative impact analysis is that if you're a community that has been historically burdened by pollution, knowing all of the different racial and economic equities about siting that like that, that should be taken into account for where we are citing something new so that you are not continuing to this kind of compound upon that. Although the bill didn't go as far as the Senate's bill had in kind of accelerating a transition away from gap from gas, it did take a number of steps in that direction. Much worse in the House, but had nothing.
The Senate had very strong language and so the fact that it still did include part of that was a win for advocates, even though we do need to kind of stop our overall reliance on fracked gas. In Massachusetts, it took some steps for expanding kind of renewable energy in the state, whether solar, offshore wind. Had some labor provisions like kind of like promoting apprenticeship programs and kind of requiring good labor practices, part of certain application processes.
Had some steps for promoting kind of electric vehicle charging infrastructure in the state, some language around building codes and improving, improving kind of the energy efficiency of buildings. I think that's going to be my quick overview of it so that I don't sound like too into the weeds. But it was something that they did again like they bundled a lot of different categories into one bill.
It was a bill that like overall like again the climate activist community was happy with while acknowledging that there's still so much more that we need to be doing in a nurse state because like we have, our state has, has goals that we've set for climate targets. We are not on track to meet them. And so it's this is, this helps move forward, but there's still a heck of a lot more that we need to do.
Yep. Well, I'm glad that they got to that. That's, you know, that's good news.
Anything else folks want to talk about this week before we go? We're going to be on holiday next week because of Thanksgiving. Yeah, I just want to, just want to shout out Brian Hess in the Commonwealth Beacon for a lot of the information about the Ticketmaster, although there's other places that have also written about it. That's really good.
But I quoted him directly so at least give him a shout out for a good article and he also wrote about it before in the past and Progressive Mass for reading about what happened with the climate bill and some of the other stuff and continuing to hold, they held the conversation. So do join Progressive Mass about ways that we can push back and think about and push forward on some of these issues. Awesome.
Thank you. And one thing I just wanted to quickly chime in with again when we're talking about resources for follow ups and I'm actually, I'm saying this, I'm completely forgetting what actually I was going to say credit oh, wanted to make sure we talk about the client bill. I just wanted to give credit to the activists who fought to hold the legislature candidate to passing a bill and to passing a bill that actually contains some of the some of the priorities in it.
Because the legislature you can like. Even if the legislature were filled with people who had all good values, you can never trust them all to do the best things on their own. And we are not so blessed to have a legislature that is 200 all well intentioned people.
And so the work of activists is always critical to making that happen. Absolutely. Thank you so much.
Thanks to everybody who's listening. Do forward this all to all your friends. Donate below and have a great Thanksgiving.
We will chat with everybody in a couple of weeks.