College students from Boston to the Berkshires might have closed their books and finished their final exams weeks ago, but Bay State lawmakers still have some serious legislative heavy-lifting to do before they all can start their summer vacations.
And as to-do lists go, the one confronting lawmakers is a big one.
Legislative negotiators already have been meeting behind closed doors for months, trying to hammer out agreements on big-ticket items that run the gauntlet from gun law reform and wage transparency to an effort to ban revenge porn, according to a scorecard compiled by State House News Service.
Now, with last week’s state Senate vote, you can throw the state budget onto the pile. And, waiting in the wings for likely conference committee action, there’s Democratic Gov. Maura Healey’s $4.1 billion housing bond bill, her sprawling economic development proposal, and health care reform measures brought on by the implosion of Steward Health Care.
And, just like the end of term, lawmakers face a deadline of their own: Formal sessions for the state Legislature end on July 31 and do not resume until January. And because it’s an election year, it’s a sure bet that they’ll want to have solid accomplishments in hand before they go home to face the voters.
“I’ve been at this for 40 years, and I’ve never seen anything like this,” veteran Western Massachusetts political consultant Tony Cignoli told MassLive.
Speaking to lawmakers last week, Senate President Karen Spilka, D-Middlesex/Norfolk, foreshadowed the heavy schedule ahead.
“I urge you all to take some time — everybody that’s here, you all have worked so hard — take time for yourself when you can. If you don’t do it, nobody else is going to do it for you,” the Ashland Democrat told senators and staffers around midnight last Thursday as the Senate finished work on its spending plan, State House News Service reported.
“Come back refreshed,” Spilka said.
Rank-and-file lawmakers will have plenty of time to exhale in this holiday-shortened week. Both the House and Senate are meeting in informal sessions, according to State House News Service.
But they’ll face their first hard deadline at midnight on June 30, when the state closes the books on the 2023-24 budget year. A replacement spending blueprint is supposed to be in place for the new fiscal year that starts at 12:01 a.m. on July 1.
But even that deadline can sometimes end up as little more than a suggestion: Healey didn’t sign a new budget, her first at the helm, until last August.
Meanwhile, two of the bills now before those joint House and Senate negotiating committees ― the ones on gun reform and revenge porn — have the potential to be transformational.
Right now, Massachusetts is only one of two states that doesn’t have a law criminalizing revenge porn, according to WGBH News. Survivors and their advocates have spent years pleading the case for the legislation, the station reported.
And if they’re finally approved, tweaks to the state’s gun laws, already among the toughest in the nation, would clamp down on so-called “ghost guns” and expand the list of people who can petition the court to take away someone’s guns if they are deemed dangerous, MassLive previously reported.
But it was not clear Tuesday when a negotiated version of those two bills might see a vote. A spokesperson for Rep. Michael Day, D-31st Middlesex, a House negotiator for both bills, declined MassLive’s request for comment, saying the panels are now in executive session.
A spokesperson for Senate Minority Leader Bruce E. Tarr, R-1st Essex/Middlesex, a Senate negotiator on the gun reform bill, similarly declined to comment. But Tarr opposed the vote to move the committee into executive session, citing the need for public transparency, the spokesperson added.
And that transparency is critical, Cignoli noted — especially at a time when public faith in institutions has cratered.
“The public has a right to know what’s going on,” he said. “The Massachusetts State House, despite having a reputation for being liberal and open … it’s not the case with the majority of these issues.”
It’s also not clear when Healey’s housing bill, which has been touted as a quantum leap toward solving a crisis of affordability and supply that was driving people out of the Bay State, will see a floor vote. Ditto for the economic development bill.
Healey has called passing the housing bill “job one,” describing it as the fulcrum on which the state’s future economic health and competitiveness turns. And while lawmakers agree on the principle, there’s far from a consensus on the solution.
“Housing is one of the foremost issues that I hear about from members and constituents alike, and it is a challenge the Senate is committed to addressing to support Massachusetts residents, families, and businesses,” Spilka, the state Senate president, told MassLive earlier this month.
But with a little more than six weeks to go, “it’s difficult to foresee how all of this happens,” Cignoli told MassLive.
“You have so many projects, items and amendments that are so important to so many members of the Legislature. They really want to get stuff done,” Cignoli continued.
And, he stressed, “they kind of need to.”
