Massachusetts voters could decide next year whether to pass new laws capping annual rent hikes, lowering the state income tax and attempting to open up the workings of state government.
Groups backing those policy ideas — and several others — filed the initial round of paperwork Wednesday toward putting their questions on the 2026 ballot.
Meeting that first deadline is no guarantee that an initiative will ultimately end up going before voters. But the slate of proposed ballot questions illuminates some areas where advocates and interested citizens are so ready to see action that they’re taking matters into their own hands.
Supporters have been pressing the Legislature to pass a number of these measures for years — and a few others would reshape how Beacon Hill operates.
Here’s a review of some of the most consequential and hotly contested pitches.
Limits on rent increases
One potential question — already opposed by the real estate industry — would limit annual rent increases to match the rise in the cost of living, with an overall cap of 5%.
“The Legislature ... could act now to protect tenants from excessive rent increases, but they haven’t,” Denise Matthews-Turner, a member of the Homes for All Coalition behind the rent control proposal, told GBH News. “We’re compelled to take action now to advance toward the ballot because our people need it now.”
Matthews-Turner is executive director of the housing nonprofit City Life/Vida Urbana, which holds weekly housing rights meetings.
“We have new people coming into our meetings who are facing increases of $400 or $800,” she said. “We’re talking astronomical rent increases.”
This push comes more than 30 years after Massachusetts voters outlawed rent control at the ballot. Bills that would let cities and towns opt in to adopting local limits on rent hikes have failed to gain traction in the Legislature for years.
The real estate industry instead wants the state to make it easier to build new housing.
Tax breaks
The Pioneer Institute, a conservative Boston think tank, is among the backers of two proposals it says would provide relief to taxpayers.
One would gradually lower the state’s 5% income tax to 4%.
The other would amend a rarely triggered state law that calls for extra revenue to be returned to residents when state tax collections exceed a statutory cap, with the goal of more frequent refunds.
Massachusetts residents might remember receiving a few hundred dollars in a tax refund three years ago when the state collected unusually high revenues.
Elections
Multiple groups are trying to get election reform measures on the 2026 ballot, including a proposal that would require voters to show ID at the polls and another to shift the state to a nonpartisan primary system with all candidates running initially in one field.
Secretary of State Bill Galvin filed a question to allow same-day voter registration in Massachusetts, another issue that’s hit roadblocks over the years in the Legislature.
Government accountability
Other initiatives address the idea of legislative transparency, a topic voters coalesced behind in 2024 when they overwhelmingly supported a question championed by state Auditor Diana DiZoglio. Nearly three-quarters of voters last year granted DiZoglio the authority to audit the state House and Senate, though leaders of the two chambers continue to resist a probe they say is unconstitutional.
DiZoglio said on GBH’s Boston Public Radio Wednesday that she supports a proposal this cycle that would apply the state’s public records law to the Legislature and the governor’s office, both of which are exempt.
A group that calls itself the Legislative Effectiveness and Accountability Partnership filed two versions of a potential question that would change how state lawmakers get paid by giving the House speaker and Senate president less control over how much money other members make.
“Legislators in Massachusetts are financially dependent on leadership, and dependency breeds deference,” former Watertown state Rep. Jonathan Hecht, a member of the group, said in a statement.
Bargaining for public defenders
The union SEIU Local 888 said it has been trying for a decade to pass legislation that would extend collective bargaining rights to employees at the Committee for Public Counsel Services, the state’s public defender agency.
Without movement on that front, the union and some public defenders filed ballot question paperwork Wednesday.
“Everybody that becomes a public defender wants to be able to do this work forever. It becomes unsustainable to do it at a certain point,” public defender Tanvi Verma told reporters. “And so I’m just trying to find a way to make this sustainable for myself, to keep doing what I love, for who I care about, forever. And I think that organizing is a really big part of that.”
The initiative specifically speaks to the bargaining rights of state-employed public defenders. Most attorneys representing indigent clients are contracted private attorneys, known as bar advocates.
Some of those bar advocates stopped taking new cases in May, prompting lawmakers and Gov. Maura Healey to raise their pay.
What’s next
To secure a spot on the 2026 ballot, the potential campaigns will have to survive a review by Attorney General Andrea Campbell’s office, who checks to make sure the proposals meet certain legal criteria. Campbell’s decisions on which measures are ballot-eligible are expected the first week in September.
Then the coalitions have to collect tens of thousands of voter signatures.
A question that would repeal a wide-ranging 2024 state gun law is already set to appear on the 2026 ballot through a separate process.
