In 2025, we submitted a petition initiative for a constitutional amendment to address the legislature’s inaction, lack of transparency, and excessive top-down control by establishing an outside committee to set salaries and staffing for the legislature, instead of allowing the leadership of the state legislature this control. We submitted this for feedback, although our 2025 version was not ready.

Another group submitted a different proposal that was approved. We support this proposal. It can be viewed at stipendreform dot com. This proposal actually ties legislator salaries to required work and transparency, which would be a quick win for democracy in Massachusetts if put in practice.

Update: Although enough signatures were gathered in the fall, the Massachusetts Supreme Court invalidated this proposal as it conflicted with the state constitution.

An additional ballot question proposal also was approved that would require that the executive and legislative branch have public records. This would increase transparency by applying state public records laws to the executive and legislative branches, which currently each claim exemption to public records laws.

Why change the legislature?

Currently, the state legislature does not function like a democratic institution, and it is not efficient.

What is so wrong with the Massachusetts legislature?

The public can sometimes convince the legislature to act with numbers. Yet, many sensible bills don’t move forward for years or decades, while those preferred by industry move quickly to passage.

The state legislature has a lack of transparency, potentially hidden conflicts of interest, and rules, including for elections, that fail to support democratic functioning.

One problem is the excessive power of legislative leadership, in particular that of the speaker of the house. Even though legislators earn about $70,000 in salary, the Speaker of the House decides the bonus pay of nearly 160 representatives, while the Senate President decides it for the rest ( a lesser number). Bonus pay currently ranges from zero to $90,000 extra. With the ability to give or take away $90,000 in bonus pay, the speaker has great influence over most of the legislature.

This kind of control could be dangerous in the hands of one wrong person. The power of the speaker naturally encourages corruption. State speakers of the house indicted include Speaker Salvatore DiMasi (D) in 2011 for kickbacks; Speaker Thomas Finneran in 2004 for lying about redistricting to his benefit; and Speaker Charles Flaherty (D) in 1996 for lying about taxes and lobbyist gifts.

Leadership is also able to handpick a few people for ‘conference’ committees to rewrite bills entirely, ignoring the proposals of the committees that held public hearings (public hearings in theory, disregarding numerous absent legislators).

The House also calls a vote. The speaker can block or push bills at will, as well as bring bills to vote without transparency, so that legislators may be voting on bills that have never been seen except by 3 or 4 people. At the end of the year, bills are often bundled together for votes, making it difficult for any legislator to say yes or no to any one bill since the good may be bundled with the bad.

The excuse for bundling is that there are apparently so many bills to pass. Yet, bills are usually held for a vote until the very last minute probably because this is thought to control legislators. Since the speaker can decide nearly unilaterally whether any bill passes, legislators were often missing during public hearings until in 2025 roll calls began to require attendance.

Ironically, despite bundling bills, the legislature doesn’t seem to pass bills that appear to have popular public or legislative support, or even bills that both the speaker and senate president profess to support. The budget is never passed on time, partly because the budgeting process allows non-budget items to be included without public hearings and attention.

Our state legislature has two branches – House and Senate. Sending bills through committees for both the house and senate slows down legislation. Would we want two branches of the town or city council as Davis Bernstein, in an article linked below, asks?

The only benefit of slow action is that it seems that industry has more time, money, and energy to influence. Attending public hearings or reading dockets, you see the polish of presentations from paid industry lawyers. Most people, including academics and other experts, don’t have time to dedicate to public hearings and dockets. Yet when they make time, it seems they are not heard.

Legislators can lack the resources and staff to help with research, and industry is more than capable of providing bills for legislators to submit or staff to ‘help’ legislators. Handily, the legislature has set up disclosure laws and public access in way that amounts to very little disclosure. If you want to review conflict of interest information on a legislator, you must provide your driver’s license and that legislator is notified about you.

Campaign laws in Massachusetts are also unfairly set up to benefit incumbents, so much so that incumbents don’t need to gather as many signatures to run. And because primaries rarely draw attention, incumbent opponents often lose in primary elections and the public loses out on hearing the reasons in public debates.

Examples of lack of action despite public support:

Massachusetts Data Privacy Act including the sale of location data across state lines – finally the senate passed a revised version (S2608) of 2025 senate bill 2516 – this revision lacks teeth. We’re still waiting on the house — this bill has been around a long time without action, and so you can see the frustrated senate voting on its own bill alone, but the house has to vote in support for it to pass.
PFAS ban – never passed – or regulations (see bill H4486 with numerous legislative sponsors, first submitted c. 2023 and still hasn’t crossed the governor’s desk).
Solar Farm Limits – never passed, instead local communities lost all control of siting – same with cell tower limits but with this legislators don’t even seem to attend to the issue although admittedly federal regulations are a bureaucratic labyrinth
Audit Legislature – still blocked by legislature despite a petition initiative showing strong public support – state auditor Diane Dizoglio is suing the state for blocking the audit. Objections are that this audit would remove the independence of the legislature from the executive branch, but the auditor is a single elected official, the voters asked, the voters have the right to revise government, and the auditor cannot force the legislature to change but only provide a report. Self-policing audits are a failure. Update: the legislature has stated the courts cannot allow the auditor to conduct a standard audit, and the auditor was also prohibited from auditing many years of records by the legislature.
Limits on Utility Gouging – no action, just compare smart meter opt out prices (e.g. around $600 a year for Eversource vs. around $100 in Holyoke, which has a municipal utility)
Limit Political Spending of Foreign-Influenced Corporations – never passed despite submission in 2021 – see S525 in 2025). The influence of Russia and other governments should be curbed in elections, but instead politicians at the state and federal level have failed to set limits such that shell corporations can pour money into campaigns.
Require Telcos & MA Broadband Institute Spend State Funds on FiberOptic as Promised – never happened and, as far as the MA Broadband Institute, state funds for public broadband were preferentially given to monopoly corporations instead of municipal applicants.
Lack of Water Protection for public (e.g. residents struggled to halt a dangerous lithium battery facility proposed over Barnes Aquifer in Westfield because of a lack of state regulations/ residents struggling with polluting sand mining or ‘sand wars’ in southeastern Massachusetts; data centers use of PFAS and other chemicals not regulated, instead tax breaks provided to new data centers) – no action yet (update: the lithium battery facility in Westfield was halted) and instead MA has streamlined regulations to speed the permitting for battery storage ignoring the real dangers of toxic leaks and fires

Further Resources:

The above is a quick summary based on experience and on a number of articles that have criticized the state legislature over the years, such as the following:

***Why the Democratic supermajority on Beacon Hill won’t pass Democratic bills: If we want a Legislature that represents the will of Massachusetts voters, we need to change its top-down ways.*** by Aaron Singer October 11, 2025. Commonwealth Beacon
Let’s Dismantle the MA House of Representatives, by David Bernstein in Boston Magazine, 3/26/2017 – details the leadership conference committee rewriting bills, as well as how bills get choked up by too many committees.
Disappointing Tradition in House (1/3/2019) – Eagle Tribune criticizes non-secret vote for House speaker.
Ex-Lobbyist Reveals How House Really Works (12/19/2018) – by Phillip Sego in Commonwealth Magazine
MA House Plays Follow the Leader (2/11/2019) – by Bob Katzen in Sentinel & Enterprise, discusses how house legislators all cast same vote as house speaker’s vote, as called in, and then immediately switched their vote when the house speaker called in to switch his vote.
Former rep backs up Kaufman’s account – Turner “not surprised” by DeLeo’s alleged ultimatum. Andy Metzger (October 29, 2019)
Demoted in House shake-up, Holmes says it’s punishment. Andy Metzger, State House News Service (July 19, 2017)
Massachusetts Path from Transparency to Secrecy (10/3/2023) Bridget Beleno in Massachusetts Collegian
It’s Time to Bring Transparency to the Legislature (2/24/2021) Jonathan Cohn in the Commonwealth Magazine
The compelling case for Massachusetts legislative reform – 6 ideas to start the conversation on fixing what’s broken on Beacon Hill. Jim Stergios (August 15, 2024)
Business as usual’: Democrats closest to House leadership get most budget earmarks. May 08, 2025 by Walter Wuthmann.
In closed-door budget process, Mass. House leaders scored big. May 9, 2024| Russell E. Holmes
Speaker Mariano plans to seek reelection in 2026. Colin A. Young Jun 21, 2025 (Term limits were eliminated in 2015 in MA, the speaker doesn’t like them)
Conflicts of interest in state government and the need for community media
Spending in legislative races topped $11 million: The more things cost, the more they stay the same. by Gintautas Dumcius November 19, 2024
Mass. Senate lifts 8-year limit on president’s term. February 10, 2023. Chris Lisinski and Sam Doran, State House News Service
Coalition to Reform the Legislature has many other articles here.
Monsanto papers at US Right to Know discuss how the industry paid for fake scientific and expert reviews to pretend Roundup was safe: anti-genetic engineering (GMO) research/news group]: https://usrtk.org/monsanto-papers/
Coalition to Reform the Legislature (CROL)