The Legislature’s formal sessions close for the year at the end of July. That leaves just three and a half weeks before all 200 lawmakers head home to work full-time in their districts. It’s a hard stop to the process of lawmaking so senators and representatives can go home to campaign for reelection—and so the pressures of the political season don’t taint that lawmaking. Trouble is, only a third of the Legislature actually have opponents this year. Regardless, by their own calendar, lawmakers have a very limited window to finish work on several key issues.
On Thursday, the House plans to pass the governor’s economic development bill, a big part of the Baker administration’s plan to strengthen cities’ and towns’ ability to take advantage of job growth throughout the state.
Baker’s plan would put $918 million of capital into municipal coffers to help towns lure businesses, establish workforce development programs and basically make it easier for businesses to grow anywhere in the state. The legislation would set up $500 million in grants for business growth programs, and does everything from streamlining business-development nonprofits to modifying liquor laws to bring more brewers and distillers to the market.
On the Senate’s to-do list is to take up another bill from Baker to update a wide swath of municipal regulations to let cities and towns manage their affairs more efficiently. Baker calls it “weed-whacking” away a lot of the obsolete laws that limit municipalities’ flexibility. The House passed the bill onto the Senate in June.
The Senate also has its hand on the House’s bill to restrict the use of noncompete agreements to help spur competition in the innovation sector. Startups and other tech-types say Massachusetts needs to end the practice of keeping employees from working for competing companies in order to keep up with California, where the agreements are banned. More established businesses want lawmakers to carve out a few exceptions to the ban to provide some flexibility and to help them protect trade secrets.
House Speaker Robert DeLeo says he’s committed to bringing up an equal-pay bill that would encourage workers to talk more openly about their salaries—the thinking being that if women know what male counterparts earn, and vice versa, the wage gap could begin to narrow.
The House hasn’t scheduled a vote on Sen. Patricia Jehlen’s bill yet. The Senate passed it all the way back in January.
And then there are the bills both chambers have already passed that just need one last set of approvals to smooth out the details and send them to the governor.
Senate and House negotiators need to hammer out an agreement on regulations for the burgeoning ride-hailing industry here. Like so many other issues, the House and Senate don’t see totally eye-to-eye on many of the regulations proposed to insure and regulate services like Uber and Lyft.
One of DeLeo’s top priorities, an “omnibus” energy bill, also hangs in the balance of conference committee. The House’s preferred bill to bring more clean energy into the state read more like an energy procurement bill than a full-throated “omnibus” plan to re-engineer power in Massachusetts, but it easily passed the House with all sides agreeing on its specific mix of hydropower and wind energy resources. The Senate’s version went further in in calling for more clean power and in shaping energy policy, adding things like a ban on utility companies forcing customers to pay for gas pipelines to the bill. The differences in the bill are all on the table as six lawmakers race the clock to get a final bill that must then meet Gov. Baker’s approval.
Ever since the two chambers passed slightly different versions of a bill codifying transgender access to public spaces, Beacon Hill has been wondering who would swerve in the game of conference committee chicken between Speaker Robert DeLeo and Senate President Stan Rosenberg. The House’s bill called for the Attorney General to lay out punishments for people caught abusing the new rights for nefarious purposes and gave the law a later effective date. The Senate considered the extra punishment language unnecessary and wants the bill to instantly go into effect upon Gov. Charlie Baker’s signature. Now proxies for Rosenberg and DeLeo are locked in a conference committee negotiating the timing of the thing.
Senate President Stan Rosenberg told a Northampton radio station Tuesday that the transgender agreement is “ready to pop,” with both sides coming to terms. But until the ink is dry and the bill is on Baker’s desk, there’s a chance the disagreement on when the bill goes into effect could derail it entirely as time runs out.
