Press Release: 7/11/2025

Transparency Advocates Call out Legislature’s Violation of Its New Rules

Thursday, July 10, 2025

 

Transparency Advocates Call out Legislature’s Violation of Its New Rules

 

Last month, the Massachusetts House and Senate finally agreed to a package of reforms in the Joint Rules, with measures to improve access to information and create a more efficient legislative process. But according to transparency advocates, the legislature is not obeying its own rules.

 

Ironically, the Legislature’s tenuous relationship to rule-following was on display the day they passed these new transparency reforms: on June 26, 2025, the House voted to suspend the rules in order to vote later that day.

 

Did Members Read the Budget? The new rules stipulate that conference reports must be available for 24 hours before a vote, and that they cannot be voted on the next calendar day if posted after 8 pm. However, according to the bill page for the conference report (H.4240), the conference report for the FY 2026 budget was released on June 30 and voted on later that day.

 

What Happened to 10 Days Notice for Hearings? The new Joint Rules require that committees give 10 days notice before scheduling a hearing. This reform responds to years of calls from advocates to give members of the public and rank-and-file lawmakers more time to plan and prepare for public hearings.

 

However, since Joint Rules were passed just two weeks ago, a hearing of the Joint Committee on Public Service was recently scheduled for July 16th with 9 days notice. More recently, a hearing of the Joint Committee on Labor and Workforce Development scheduled for July 15th with only 6 days notice.

 

“Seeing the legislature finalize rules reforms for the first time in 6 years was an exciting moment for our state democracy,” said Act on Mass executive director Scotia Hille. “With the ink barely dried, to see them flouting those rules just days later is a really disappointing bait-and-switch. These lapses undermine the intent of the reforms, leaving the public and rank-and-file lawmakers still scrambling to attend hearings and read legislation. They also exacerbate confusion about procedure. Why write down rules if you’re not going to follow them?”

 

Is the House Following Its Rolling Deadlines? The House, earlier this year, adopted a new set of rolling deadlines. According to the House’s own rules, reinforced in the Joint Rules’s recognition of these deadlines from House sides of joint committees, committees will report out bills within 60 days of a hearing. After that hearing, the chair may ask for a 30-day extension.

 

As of today, ten hearings occurred more than 90 days ago, and additional 18 occurred more than 60 days ago.

 

According to an analysis of these hearings, of the ten hearings that occurred more than 90 days ago, only three committees (Public Health, Cannabis Policy, and Elections) have taken action on the bills in their purview, with the House Elections Committee rejecting a proposed constitutional amendment without a recorded vote.

 

The House Public Health Committee and the House Cannabis Policy Committee, to their credit, both provide recorded votes, but with inconsistent formats. The House Public Health Committee lists recorded votes as PDFs under an inconspicuous “Documents” tab on the hearing page, whereas the House Cannabis Policy Committee includes a recorded vote on the page of the redrafted bill itself, a more accessible placement.

 

No bill page has an indication of an extension, leaving a large number of bills in a state of limbo.

 

“The House promised greater transparency with its new rules, but by leaving so many bills in limbo, everyday people are left with less information about the status of bills than they did before,” said Jonathan Cohn, policy director of Progressive Massachusetts.

 

Will Committees Make Testimony Available to the Public? The rules give discretion to chairs to set policies and procedures around making testimony available to the public. As of now, only two committees -- Aging and Independence and Municipalities and Regional Governments -- are defaulting to making all testimony available, publishing it on the hearing page. Both deserve credit for setting a model that other committees should follow.

 

 

Contact:

Jonathan Cohn, jonathan@progressivemass.com

Scotia Hille, scotia@actonmass.org