State House and Senate: Epic rivalry or functioning government?

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The Massachusetts Legislature has Democratic supermajorities in both the House and the Senate, but that doesn’t mean its chambers are likely to agree on issues. 

The House and Senate have disagreed on key pieces of legislation, which sit in the Legislature’s ever-growing pile of unpassed bills. Issues like medically accurate sex education, same-day voter registration and legalizing happy hour have repeatedly passed the Senate and been held up in the House. 

The Act to Prevent Wage Theft, which purports to protect workers from wage theft violations, promote employer accountability and enhance public enforcement, has a similar story. The 10-year-old bill has repeatedly passed the Senate and died in the House Ways and Means Committee. 

This bill was actually introduced by Rep. Aaron Michlewitz, who has been the chair of the House Ways and Means committee since 2019, and did not respond to requests for comment. Last session, the bill had 93 cosponsors in the House, and two sessions prior it had a supermajority of House cosponsors. So why won’t it pass?

Jonathan Hecht, a former Democratic representative from Watertown, said these kinds of holdups are “one of the defining features of Massachusetts politics and the way the Legislature operates.” He said sometimes bills are delayed because high-up individuals disagree with them, but a lot of the time it is down to negotiation strategy. 

“When one chamber indicates, by taking up a bill and passing it, that it’s a priority for them, the other chamber thinks ‘oh, well, if that’s a priority for them, we won’t do it, and we’ll do something else that’s a priority for us,’” Hecht said. “‘And then we can all get together at the negotiating table at the end of the session, and we can trade these things.’” 

Hecht served in the House from 2009 to 2020 before leaving and joining the Coalition to Reform Our Legislature. He said that there was an “enormous amount of pressure” to be part of the team in the House, and not to champion priorities of the Senate, or to develop a significant working relationship with senators. 

Hecht said that while it would make sense to have coalitions of more progressive people and more conservative people across both chambers, that was “very much discouraged and even punished.”

“It can be really frustrating,” said Scotia Hille, executive director of Act On Mass. “Some of the pieces of legislation that are really important kind of get treated as bargaining chips in this cold war.” 

Just as the House often won’t vote on popular Senate legislation, Jonathan Cohn, policy director at Progressive Massachusetts, said the House will often suggest language and amendments in budgets, which the Senate will not take up as part of the same negotiating strategy. 

Stan Rosenberg, former Senate president and former representative, said he never liked the kind of bargaining that holds up bills, and tried to avoid it when he could. He said he never understood why both branches can’t prioritize the same issue, have different perspectives, and then negotiate in good faith.

However, he also thinks that bill hold-ups like sex education and wage theft are largely down to differences in priorities. Rosenberg said it’s natural that the House and Senate will choose to prioritize different legislation, and only legislation that’s a priority for both is likely to pass. 

Cohn doesn’t think the Senate is necessarily more progressive than the House — just more productive. This, he said, comes from the fact that House leaders have more power to wield, making it much more “top-down.” With fewer senators, committee chairmanships are plentiful, whereas in the House, with not enough to go around, they become tools for manipulation. 

Cohn said the House also votes on fewer bills. The House, he said, has a tendency to want consensus. The Senate is much more likely to vote on a bill where a group will defect from the party line. And since the House has far more members, it’s difficult for the House to reach a consensus. 

A Senate effort to eliminate the Legislature’s role in approving new liquor licenses is thought to be unlikely to pass in the House, as House Majority Leader Michael Moran, who represents Boston’s Brighton neighborhood, opposes the measure. Moran has said he wants Brighton to maintain its “voice” in the Legislature on liquor-license approvals in the neighborhood.

Rosenberg also said that cosponsoring a bill doesn’t necessarily signal a commitment to passing it. Especially as a Senate leader, he found that legislators will often sign onto a bill because a constituent asked them to, and then, when it comes time to vote, will realize the bill doesn’t work for them. 

“Sometimes that happens, believe it or not, when a bill gets to the floor and someone cosponsors, and they go to the presiding officer and say, ‘Do we have to take a roll call on this?’” Rosenberg said. 

He expects the new joint House-Senate rules to change that, as all joint committee votes will now be posted online. Down the line, Rosenberg expects legislators to sponsor fewer bills.

Rep. Christopher Hendricks, D-New Bedford, said he’s definitely noticed disputes between the House and Senate, but they’re mostly confined to leadership and committee chairs, who can prevent bills from moving. 

“Once something’s up for a vote, that means that they’ve worked it out,” Hendricks said. “So members themselves don’t have much of a role in those disputes … the chairs are really the ones driving those trains.”

Rep. Mark Sylvia, D-Fairhaven, said he works together with senators, having filed home rule petitions jointly with Sen. Mark Montigny, D-New Bedford, and Sen. Michael Rodrigues, D-Westport — both of whom, along with Sen. Kelly Dooner, R-Taunton, represent parts of his district. He also thinks it’s natural for the Senate to come to more agreements than the House. 

“The House has 160 members, right? So we have a much bigger group of people that have to pass bills,” Sylvia said. “Common sense dictates that a smaller group can get to a consensus on things. So some bills that are great ideas in the Senate, with 40 people you can get consensus more easily than maybe you can in the House.” 

Rep. Ron Mariano, speaker of the House, did not respond to requests for comment on the current environment in the House. Montigny did not respond to requests for comment on the current environment in the Senate.

A spokesperson for Senate President Karen Spilka wrote in an email to The Light that “Senators are always encouraged to build strong working relationships with their House counterparts, as collaboration between chambers is essential to successful lawmaking and effective advocacy.” 

But advocates have noticed a recent decline in Senate floor votes, which they say follows more concentration of power. 

“They began to feel that by putting their differences on open display on the Senate side, it gave an advantage to the House in negotiation,” Hecht said, “whereas the House always wanted to present a very unified position among the Democrats.”

Hille and other advocates and legislators think the animosity between the chambers is made worse by the supermajority Democrats hold. 

“Testimony from legislators says that sometimes it’s actually easier when they have a Republican governor, because there is a common enemy which the House and Senate have to unite against,” Hille said. 

But, after numerous disagreements, tensions between the House and Senate seemed to cool this spring. Under time pressure and potential cuts to federal funding, the Legislature finalized a budget on time for the first time in 15 years, and agreed to joint rules for the first time since 2019. 

And the Legislature eliminated broker’s fees for Boston-area tenants in June. In the last session, the Senate’s effort to ban the extra costs for renters had died amid opposition in the House. 

Different priorities

Massachusetts is one of a few states where senators, like representatives, have two-year terms. Rosenberg said that contributes to tension — everyone’s always rushing to get their ideas to the front of the line.

Since senators represent much larger areas than representatives, Rosenberg said representatives tend to be seen as closer to the people. It’s much easier to see them around, and therefore to think of your representative when you need to call someone about an issue.

So, representatives might be more aware of the small issues impacting their constituents, which could affect their priorities.

Massachusetts is also the only state in the country that explicitly grants its citizens the right to file a piece of legislation with the General Court. This means that for both the House and Senate, they have much more legislation to comb through and choose to prioritize. 

The House and the Senate, Rosenberg said, will always have different priorities, and these could come from leadership and from tradition. But, he said, these differences are fluid. 

“It shifts with leadership,” Rosenberg said. “It shifts with the times. It shifts with the issues that are out there that people are talking about and need to be addressed.”

Abigial Pritchard is a summer intern with The New Bedford Light, as part of the South Coast Internship designed for local students.