After 10 months of inaction, it's time to release the Joint Rules from Conference Committee

Thousands of us demanded more transparency from our legislature. The State House promised reform. Now, they're delaying any meaningful change.

We need your help to hold them accountable.

Did you know that we often don't get to see how our state reps vote? In fact, Massachusetts has one of the least transparent state houses in the country. In response to widespread pressure from voters, the House and Senate voted last February to make more votes publicly available. But instead of working to swiftly implement these new rules, the final version has been tied up in a conference committee for the past 10 months - essentially running out the clock on its relevance. 

Join The People's House coalition -- Act on Mass, Sunrise Boston, Mijente Boston Asamblea, Our Climate, and Indivisible Mass Coalition -- in calling on the Conference Committee on the Joint Rules to (1) release the final version of the Joint Rules, and (2) reflect the Senate's proposal regarding the public availability of committee votes and written testimony in the final version. 

House Leadership is assuming that our movement is not paying attention. Help us show them that couldn't be further from the truth, and that the people of Massachusetts do care about this issue. (See below for more information.)

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Background

This past winter, thousands of Massachusetts residents organized, met with their representatives, published letters-to-the-editor, handed out flyers, sent texts and made phone calls as a part of the Transparency is Power campaign. They were calling on the State House to make all votes in Joint Committees (the committees that consider most substantive bills) available to the public and posted online. This is crucial: Joint Committees are where many popular, progressive and desperately needed bills go to die by being sent to study. Being able to see which reps are voting which way (or not voting at all) is necessary to hold them accountable to their constituents--the people they are elected to represent. 

Because Joint Committees have members of both the Senate and the House, the two chambers must agree on a common set of rules. Each chamber put forth a proposal in February:

  • The Senate's proposal would make all committee votes public, and written testimony submitted to committees available by request.
  • The House's proposal would make "no" votes public and listed by name, but "yes" votes, abstentions, and non-votes would be displayed as "aggregate tallies." The House's proposal would not make testimony available by request.

In order to reconcile the differences between the two proposals, a Conference Committee was formed on March 22, 2021. Over 10 months later, there is no proposal for the Joint Rules, and Joint Committees have been operating on the rules from last session in which there is no requirement to make committee votes public.

Join The People's House coalition -- Act on Mass, Sunrise Boston, Mijente Boston Asamblea, Our Climate, and Indivisible Mass Coalition -- in calling on the Conference Committee on Joint Rules to (1) release the final version of the Joint Rules, and (2) reflect the Senate's proposal regarding the public availability of committee votes and written testimony in the final version. 

Members of the Conference Committee:

Senator Joan B. Lovely
Senator Ryan C. Fattman
Representative William C. Galvin
Representative Paul K. Frost