Redistricting hits the House
Beacon Hill Roll Call records local representatives’ and senators’ votes on roll calls from the week of Oct. 18-22.
House redistricting
House 158-1, approved and sent to the Senate a bill redrawing the boundaries of all 160 representatives’ districts. The House plan would increase from 20 to 33 the number of districts where minorities make up the majority of the population. Traditionally, the Senate does not tinker with the House’s version of redistricting just like the House won’t make any changes to the Senate’s upcoming version of Senate redistricting.
Rep. Mike Moran, DBoston, the House Chair of the Special Committee on Redistricting, did not respond to repeated requests by Beacon Hill Roll Call to comment on passage of the plan.
“This increase in majority opportunity districts is due to the demographic changes within the commonwealth,” Moran said in a message attached to his legislation. “The committee did not unduly, however, subordinate traditional redistricting principles for racial or ethnic considerations, but rather gave due weight to all of the competing state interests. The new districts reflect neighborhoods and communities of interest. They preserve compactness and contiguity. And they advance equal electoral opportunity for all residents. These districts are a direct result of our extensive public outreach effort during the COVID-19 pandemic and the public response that overcame the handicap of late census data and strengthened the plan.”
“There is an inherent conflict of interest in sitting office holders choosing their own districts because they’ll always do it in a way that protects their political power,” said Rep. Lenny Mirra, R- Georgetown, the only representative to vote against the plan. “What is needed is an independent commission drawing the districts so that it is done in a fair and impartial manner. Other states have done this and it’s time Massachusetts does the same.”
Benefits for military families
Senate 39- 0, approved and sent to the House a bill that would support military families who relocate to the Bay State by providing career stability for the spouses of service members and education for their children.
Provisions include making it easier for military personnel and their spouses who move to the Bay State to get a Massachusetts professional license, if their job requires one, so that they can continue their civilian careers and provide for their families without interruption; requiring the Commissioner of Education to issue a military spouse a valid certificate for teaching if he or she holds a valid teaching license from another state; allowing children of military members to register and enroll in a school district at the same time it is open to the general population by waiving the proof of residency requirement until the student actually begins school; creating a purple-star campus designation for certain schools that are military-kid friendly and show a major commitment to students and families connected to the nation’s military; and requiring that a child or spouse of an active-duty service member in Massachusetts continue to pay
the in-state less expensive tuition rate at state universities even if the service member is assigned to move out of the state.
Require schools to teach about genocide
Senate 39- 0, approved and sent to the House a bill requiring public schools to educate middle and high school students on the history of genocide. This measure also establishes a Genocide Education Trust Fund to help fund the teaching. The funds would come from the Legislature, private and public gifts and grants and revenue from fines imposed for hate crimes.
Supporters cited a 2020 survey, commissioned by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, which gauged Holocaust knowledge and found that 63 per cent of millennials and Generation Z population, did not know six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. The survey also found that nearly half were unfamiliar with Nazi concentration camps like Auschwitz.
“It is shocking how many young people today have never heard of the Auschwitz concentration camp, the Holocaust or other heinous genocides perpetrated in the past,” said Sen. Jason Lewis, DWinchester, Senate Chair of the Committee on Education. “This important legislation will ensure that more students understand the history of genocide so that it never happens again.”
Also up on Beacon Hill
PROMOTE TEACHER DIVERSITY: The Education Committee held a virtual hearing on legislation designed to diversify teachers in the Bay State by establishing a pathway for alternative methods of certification to be a teacher in Massachusetts. Currently, aspiring teachers are required to pass the Massachusetts Test for Educational Licensure (MTEL) which was created in 1998 for educators seeking pre-K to 12 teaching licenses. According to the Massachusetts Department of Education’s website, MTEL “includes a test of communication and literacy skills as well as tests of subject matter knowledge. The tests are designed to help ensure that Massachusetts educators can communicate adequately with students, parents/guardians, and other educators and that they are knowledgeable in the subject matter of the license sought.”
Other provisions require uniformity across school districts to appoint diversity officers or teams; mandatory diversity and inclusion training for the school committee and all staff; anti-bias training for all screening committees prior to reviewing candidate applications; and establish Educator Diversity Councils to serve as advisory councils to school committees to address issues of diversity, equity and inclusion.
CREATE NEW LEGISLATIVE FISCAL OFFICE: The State Administration and Regulatory Oversight Committee held a virtual hearing on a proposal that would create a Legislative Fiscal Office to research and provide assistance and analysis to legislators, legislative staff and legislative committees on the fiscal impact of proposed legislation or the state budget. The findings and recommendations of the office are not binding on the Legislature. The director and deputy director would be appointed by joint decision of the lieutenant governor, treasurer, secretary of administration and finance and the House and Senate chairs of the Ways and Means Committee and must have substantial experience in financial management, accounting or other related fields.
“This is a good government bill,” said sponsor Sen. Jamie Eldridge, D-Acton. “Professional fiscal analysts could present nonpartisan scoring of legislative proposals free from political bias. Today, in Massachusetts, legislators often have nowhere to turn to get cost estimates on their bills. By contrast, Congress has a legislative fiscal office, the Congressional Budget Office produces reliable, highly respected work that both parties rely on in drafting and analyzing legislation.”
ALLOW LEGISLATIVE AIDES TO UNIONIZE: A bill that would allow aides to senators and representative to unionize was also on the agenda of the State Administration and Regulatory Oversight Committee hearing.
“Currently in this great commonwealth, we provide strong protections to our public servants,” said sponsor Rep. Shawn Dooley, R-Norfolk. “Nearly all are allowed to unionize, so that they have a strong unified voice when bargaining with their employer. Currently our own legislative aides are unable to form a union. Their pay is set for them and each one of them works at the will of the member they serve and the House of Representatives as a whole, either of which can remove the assigned aide at any time. This puts our aides in an unfair position. We expect so much from them and they do so much work for us behind the scenes, we should provide them with the same basic fairness we provide to other public employees.”
REVENUE COMMITTEE HEARING — The Revenue Committee held a virtual hearing on several taxrelated measures including:
ALLOW CITIES AND TOWNS TO IMPOSE A 3CENTS-PER-GALLON GAS TAX: Allows cities and towns to implement a local excise tax of 3-cents-pergallon on gas and diesel fuel sold within its borders. One cent of the tax would go to each of the following: the maintenance, repair, upkeep, construction or improvement of roads, bridges, sidewalks, bikeways, public parking areas or roadside drainage; the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority or regional transportation authority serving the city or town; and projects which promote and improve non-single occupancy motor vehicle transportation including pedestrian facilities, bicycle facilities, senior transportation programs, telecommuting programs and carpool programs.
“According to the Reason Foundation’s annual highway report, Massachusetts ranked as the second most expensive state in the country for how much taxpayers spend on roads,” said Paul Craney, spokesman for the Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance. “Massachusetts is the second most expensive state for its administrative cost and cost for maintenance. In those categories, Massachusetts is paying three or four times the national average. Clearly the problem is how our state spends money. Taxpayers are generous enough and they should not pay a penny more in gas taxes.”
“A local gas tax is nothing more than another sneaky attempt to raise municipal revenue outside and above the restrictions of Proposition 2K,” said Chip Ford, executive director of Citizens for Limited Taxation. “The state can certainly provide the funds to maintain transportation infrastructure if Beacon Hill prioritizes it,” added Ford. “Reason Foundation’s 25th Annual Highway Report 2020 ranks Massachusetts 49th (second highest) in total spending per road mile. Its state-controlled highway miles (3,659) is the fourth smallest highway system in the nation yet just its administrative cost per mile alone is second-highest.”
EXEMPT CITIES AND TOWNS FROM GAS TAX: Exempts cities and towns from the state’s 24 centsper-gallon gas tax.
“Our current system requires communities to wait for the annual distribution of local aid before seeing any kind of rebate or return of the taxes paid on municipal fuel purchases,” said House Republican Minority Leader Rep. Brad Jones, R-North Reading. “By offering a permanent exemption from the excise tax, we can provide much needed tax relief to cities and towns while giving them immediate access to additional local revenues to use as they see fit. The Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, the MBTA and Massport are already exempt from the fuel excise tax, and I think it’s only fair that we provide our local communities with the same benefit.”
TAX COLLEGE ENDOWMENTS: Imposes an excise tax on private universities that have an endowment fund in excess of $1 billion. The tax would be 2.5% of the institution’s funds that exceed $1 billion. The bill earmarks the revenue for subsidizing the cost of higher education, early education and child care for lower-income and middle-class residents. Current state law exempts nonprofit institutions, including universities, from paying property taxes.
“Both higher education and childcare are essential to our state’s equitable recovery,” said co-sponsor Rep. Natalie Higgins, DLeominster. “Private institutions continue to profit off of tax-free holdings, but a small portion of this wealth can provide opportunities for generations of residents across the commonwealth.”
How long was last week’s session? Beacon Hill Roll Call tracks the length of time that the House and Senate were in session each week. Many legislators say that legislative sessions are only one aspect of the Legislature’s job and that a lot of important work is done outside of the House and Senate chambers. They note that their jobs also involve committee work, research, constituent work and other matters that are important to their districts. Critics say that the Legislature does not meet regularly or long enough to debate and vote in public view on the thousands of pieces of legislation that have been filed. They note that the infrequency and brief length of sessions are misguided and lead to irresponsible late-night sessions and a mad rush to act on dozens of bills in the days immediately preceding the end of an annual session.
During the week of Oct. 18-22, the House met for a total of three hours and 50 minutes while the Senate met for a total of one hour and 43 minutes.