The state House and Senate finally agreed to some transparency reforms. What’s next?

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For the first time since 2019, the state House and Senate are working under joint rules — a long-awaited bipartisan effort to make government more transparent and more efficient.

Their unexpected agreement follows intense public pressure for a more open government. But, it also follows the slowest start to the Legislative session in 40 years, with only eight bills passed so far. So, will these reforms make a difference? 

The joint rules, adopted June 26, include public committee votes, which have been central to transparency advocates’ demands for years, because most bills in Massachusetts die in committee without the public knowing why. Scotia Hille, executive director of Act On Mass, said this is a significant win for transparency.

Another new joint rule puts a 60-day deadline for committees to report favorably or adversely on a bill following a hearing, with a possible 30-day extension. So, in addition to knowing how legislators voted, it should be easier to follow a bill’s movements. 

New Bedford Representatives Christopher Hendricks and Mark Sylvia both said committee activities have been busier in light of the new deadline.

Any bill that does not receive a report by its deadline will automatically be marked as “sent to study.” So bills can still be sent to study, which means the bill will be studied during the recess, but most often is used as a quiet way to kill a bill, without a public vote. 

Hille is pleased with the new rules. But she said she has struggled to find the new information about extensions and votes on the Legislature’s website. 

“At least for the ones that have been posted so far, it’s a super-convoluted part of the website that makes it really difficult to track down,” Hille said.

The rules don’t specify a specific section of the website where the votes need to be posted, just that they need to be available within 48 hours. Because there is no standard place to find them on the website, different committees appear to be posting them in different places.

For instance, one committee has posted a roll call of its vote on the bill’s page, which is relatively easy to find. Two other committees have made the roll calls available in PDFs under the  “Documents” tab of their respective hearing livestream pages from April. 

Hille and Act on Mass are working on tracking committee votes on the website.

The rules also give committee chairs the power to set policies and procedures around making testimony available to the public. Only one committee — Aging and Independence — is so far defaulting to making all testimony available on the hearings page, according to a joint statement from Act on Mass and Progressive Mass.

Doug Howgate, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, said the fact that both chambers agreed on joint rules is even more significant than what’s in the rules. 

“The specific provisions of the rules absolutely matter,” Howgate said. “But to me, what really matters more is, is there a shared commitment to working together to effectuate action on important legislation?”

Howgate also said he hopes the new rules speak to a renewed commitment to efficiency, as they move up the date for when bills need to be reported. That, he said, is a positive sign, as it speaks to the goal of making sure important bills get done.

Jonathan Hecht, a former Democratic representative from Watertown, said that while the new rules are a “step in the right direction,” there are still things missing. Local legislatures in Massachusetts, like city councils and boards of selectmen, are required under the state’s Open Meeting Law to hold votes in public, and to meet to discuss the proposals. 

Hecht said that after holding public hearings, committees in the Legislature don’t have to discuss testimony, share ideas about bills, put forward amendments or vote in public (though votes do have to be posted online). And usually, they don’t. Hendricks says his committees mostly vote by email.

This is “completely unlike what the Legislature itself requires of every local legislative body in Massachusetts,” Hecht said. “And it’s unlike legislatures around the country.”

The test now, he said, is if joint committees will prove to be the place where issues are hashed out, and if bills are produced in the form they go to the floor in.

So, the rules have changed. And the joint rules agreement will make the Legislature’s actions somewhat easier to understand. But how will the Legislature’s approach to transparency continue to evolve? 

Bills to reform the Legislature

Act on Mass and Hecht are part of the Coalition to Reform Our Legislature, which introduced two bills that would amend transparency gaps specific to Massachusetts. The bills have gotten little support in the Legislature, so the coalition is considering whether to take them to the voters as ballot proposals. 

The coalition proposes tying legislators’ pay to performance, arguing that the current system makes legislators financially dependent on leadership. 

The Commonwealth has the largest system of extra legislator pay on top of base salaries in the U.S., and is one of few states with a full-time legislature. Legislators all receive the same base pay, currently $82,000 a year, but senators and representatives who are appointed to leadership positions — which is the majority of them — receive additional stipends of between $8,000 and $112,000 annually, State House News Service reported.

The committee leadership assignments with stipends are appointed by House and Senate leadership. The coalition proposes tying pay to productivity. 

So, leadership stipends would only be attached to committees with a significant workload — those hearing more than 50 bills. It would also open up compensation for rank and file members of particularly busy committees. 

The committees with a significant workload would then have to follow certain transparency measures, like holding an open meeting at which the bill is presented for discussion and open for amendment.

If a committee didn’t do this, its chairs would lose half of their stipend. 

“What this current system forces people to do is really to weigh their own means of making money for their families against the needs of their constituents,” Hille said. “When you can risk 40% of your salary by voting your conscience, you’re not acting as a free, fully empowered lawmaker.”

A limited 2024 audit of the Massachusetts Legislature found that Senate and House rules “lack detail and transparency regarding factors considered in appointing or nominating members to committees, committee chair positions, or chamber leadership positions.”

The audit summary recommended both chambers more fully document the processes and encourage more active participation by the full chamber in the process, which would “[help] prevent concentration of power amongst a few.”

“The chairs are rewarded for keeping work behind closed doors and not engaging the members,” Hecht said. “So the reform of the stipend system, both in the way that it would reduce financial dependence and also in the way that it would incentivize more open participatory committees, is designed to reverse that structure.” 

The coalition also proposed a second bill, which calls for independent legislative research and fiscal analysis bureaus. Massachusetts is the only state in the U.S. without a system like this, instead relying on committee staff and lobbyists to do research on bills. This type of research would include bills’ financial impacts and necessity. 

“We don’t want our rank and file lawmakers to be choosing between leadership’s narrative on a bill and a fossil fuel lobbyist’s narrative on a bill,” Hille said. “There should be an independent entity where they can get good information.”

The coalition did not find a legislator willing to file the first bill, and the second was filed by request through Rep. Tricia Farley-Bouvier (D-Pittsfield). Both bills, Hille said, are important next steps to pushing for transparency in the state Legislature. 

Another key next step, she said, is the long-discussed but not-yet-enforced legislative audit. 

In 2024 a ballot question giving State Auditor Diana DiZoglio greater authority to audit the Legislature garnered over 70% of the vote. Since then, DiZoglio and Attorney General Andrea Campbell have clashed over whether the question was constitutional, and the state feels no closer to a more thorough audit of the Legislature. 

DiZoglio is pleased with new joint rules, but for her, they don’t fix the transparency problem — especially because the Legislature has the power to suspend its rules.

“Any and all efforts to increase transparency and accountability up on Beacon Hill are certainly welcome,” DiZoglio said. “However, let’s be clear: this is a cultural problem at the Statehouse that still needs to be dealt with.”

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