Transparency on Beacon Hill?

To the editor:

Massachusetts has one of the least transparent State Houses in the country. With few exceptions, our legislators vote in secret.

A lot of important progressive bills die in committee each session, with no record of how they were voted on. Not only does important policy not get passed, but the public doesn’t know who opposed them. If we know who votes against our interests, we could at least set up meetings with those Reps and seek common ground.

Filed at the beginning of a session, the original text of a bill is almost never what reaches the floor, and for good reason: Committees take testimony from the public and suggest changes to the text. That’s how the system is supposed to work.

However, the changes a committee makes can be large and far-reaching, and Reps need enough time to read the new version of the bill and consider if they want to offer amendments to debate on the floor.

Floor votes in the House of Representatives are only recorded if 16 Reps stand and request it. This creates a huge barrier to having votes recorded. Our vote recording threshold is higher than 40 other states, even though we’re a blue state with a Democratic supermajority.

Please let state Rep. William “Smitty” Pignatelli (D-Lenox) know that you want to see these common sense rules adopted in the 2021 Legislative rules, which is coming up very soon!

1.  All votes held in legislative committees are publicly disclosed
2.  Bills are made public for 72 hours prior to a final vote
3.  The threshold for a vote to be publicly recorded in the House of Representatives is reduced   from 16 to 8

It’s crazy that this is not how our government already functions, isn’t it?

Please contact Smitty’s office today!
Lenox: 413-637-0631
Boston: 617-722-2210

For more information go to: https://actonmass.org/the-campaign/

Lynne Posner
Sheffield