THE MASSACHUSETTS House is considering making several changes to its rules that would make the legislative branch’s proceedings more accessible permanently – including for those outside the building.
A draft memo on proposed changes to the House rules, released Thursday evening by House Rules Committee Chair Rep. William Galvin and Second Assistant Majority Leader Rep. Sarah Peake, includes a number of significant changes prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The House still needs to vote on the proposal, which is likely to happen in the next two weeks.
One of the biggest changes that could linger, even once in-person operations resume on Beacon Hill, is hybrid hearings. During the pandemic, lawmakers have been holding hearings remotely – with remote participation by members and the public. The memo envisions a hybrid format, with some kind of remote participation, although the specifics are not worked out.
“At its core, a hybrid structure is about equity,” Galvin and Peake said in the memo. “Such a structure not only helps increase ease and access for our constituents but should also help empower those who have faced barriers to physical participation in the past.” For example, people with disabilities or who live far from Boston may find it easier to participate remotely.
However, they said, details need to be figured out such as whether committees will continue to accept live, interactive testimony; what technological investments need to be made; and whether all hearings should be livestreamed.
Since COVID hit, lawmakers have been meeting remotely. The memo proposes permanently maintaining an option to return to remote voting if it becomes necessary – for example, if the pandemic has a resurgence this winter. Lawmakers would not routinely be able to vote remotely once the House returns to full in-person operations.
But some other practices adopted during COVID would be embedded in the House rules, if the recommendations are adopted. Roll calls would continue to be posted in a timely fashion on the legislative website, informal sessions would continue to be livestreamed, and some additional information about committee votes would be put on the legislative website.
The proposal stops short of adopting what some government transparency groups had asked for, which is including on the legislative website a tally of which committee members voted yes, no, or abstained on each bill when bills are reported out of a committee with either a favorable or unfavorable recommendation. But the proposal would post online the total count of members who voted yes or did not vote (without breaking out separately yes votes and people who did not vote), as well as the names of any member who voted no. Galvin and Peake called this a balanced approach which acknowledges that members’ positions on a bill may change as the bill evolves during the legislative process.
The memo also suggests creating bill summaries for every bill the full House votes on. Today, the Senate Ways and Means Committee regularly publishes summaries of bills that emerge from that committee for a Senate vote, but a similar practice does not exist in the House.
It is not clear from the memo when lawmakers will adopt the new rules. The current temporary emergency rules that authorize remote voting are scheduled to expire July 15. But Galvin and Peake say adopting new rules with more in-person participation will depend on when the State House physically opens to the public. They recommend debating the new rules before July 15, but making them effective only once the building reopens – on a still-unspecified date – and continuing operations under the temporary emergency rules until then.
Senate President Karen Spilka and House Speaker Ron Mariano issued a statement Wednesday saying the Legislature is developing a reopening plan with the goal of returning employees and the public to the building in the fall, likely with a phased timeline for the public.
As part of the rules debate, Mariano asked the Rules Committee to take a comprehensive look at the conduct of advocates – particularly “unregistered advocates and coalitions.” The report says the concern surrounds the growth in coalitions, which are unregistered groups or nonprofits that do government advocacy but use various technicalities to avoid having to register as lobbyists. For example, these advocates may rely on trained volunteers instead of paid advocates or have an organization share paid staff with a coalition.
The memo suggested that the House should reform and revive a particular section of the lobbying laws which has largely fallen into disuse. The law says organizations that spend at least $250 a year on advocacy, even if they do not employ paid lobbyists, need to register with the Secretary of State and report the names of their contributors, as long as they don’t fall under certain exemptions. But the report writes that these types of organizations, referred to as Section 44 organizations after the chapter in the lobbying rules, have largely “escaped notice by the general public and, seemingly, state regulators.”
The memo does not recommend any sort of crackdown on these organizations, but says regulators “should focus resources on providing improved educational programming and resources in order to encourage self-compliance.”