The state senate recently passed a bill legalizing sports betting in the Commonwealth. It passed the chamber by a voice vote, which means that senators’ individual preferences on the bill’s passage were not formally recorded. The Boston Globe editors were shocked…shocked to see voice votes on gambling in the state senate. “A lawmaker’s first duty is to vote, and to do it in a way that makes it clear exactly where that lawmaker stands,” intoned the editors.
Okay, so the Globe editors weren’t actually shocked. Sorry, I couldn’t resist.
In fact, no one was shocked and it is highly unlikely that any senator has much to fear regarding their voice vote on sports betting. The policy making process on Beacon Hill is the least transparent of any state in the Union. Elections to the state legislature in Massachusetts are also among the least competitive in America. Democratic leaders in the House and Senate are in absolutely no danger of losing their three-plus decades old veto-proof majorities anytime soon and incumbent legislators favored by leadership too need not lose any sleep over their re-election prospects.
Good government activists have been trying to force Beacon Hill to be more transparent and accountable for … well… forever. The legislative reform working group of the Progressive Democrats of Massachusetts recently published a report called The Massachusetts Legislature: Democracy in Decline. [Full disclosure: I provided research and advice to one of the report’s authors] In it they document the many ways in which legislative leaders’ control of rules and resources prevent rank-in-file legislators from challenging the status quo on Beacon Hill. The report concludes that the “best chance for real reform is a broad-based coalition, backed by research, coming to a consensus as to goals, strategies, and tactics, drawing up an agenda for culture change and reform, and amassing and deploying the necessary resources to put it into action.”
This conclusion, which is indisputably correct, makes quite clear how daunting the task really is. The acknowledgement that good government reform requires well-executed political mobilization of a “broad-based [political] coalition” is definitely progress for legislative reform advocates. Consensus “as to the goals, strategies, and tactics” among coalition partners, however, suggests either a narrow understanding of “broad-based” or a significant contraction of PDM’s reform goals.
At the end of the day, PDM’s and the Globe editors’ criticisms of the state legislature are very nearly beyond reproach. In fact, they rarely generate energetic reproach from Beacon Hill insiders. Legislators calmly refusing to publicly disclose their votes on legislation makes it seem like they know something that engaged policy activists and high-information voters in the Commonwealth do not. Could it be that they are confident that competitive GOP challengers are long extinct in the state? Are they certain that process reforms designed to increase the competitiveness of Democratic legislative primary elections, the transparency of the legislative process, or the independence of rank-in-file legislators will never generate sufficient voter interest and engagement to threaten them? Or, do they believe that average Massachusetts voters are satisfied with their state legislature and their state legislators? Does the failure to launch of reforms like clean elections and ranked-choice voting in the Bay State signal this satisfaction, or is it just evidence of the Herculean effort and political mastery required to bring meaningful public accountability to the state house?
To their credit, the PDM legislative reform working group seems to have produced a sober assessment of the enormity of their task. As for their prospects for success, sobriety may not be the most productive state of mind.