Stipend Reform

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This week, Incorruptible Mass takes a hard look at a uniquely Massachusetts practice: legislator stipends. We'll have a conversation with Jay Kaufman and Jonathan Hecht, a pair of former state representatives, about our current stipend system, how it's used as a tool for grift, and what we can do to put a stop to it.

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Transcript

ANNA

Hello and welcome to Incorruptible Mass. Our mission here is to help us all transform state politics because we know that we could have a state legislature that truly represented the needs of the 7 million of us who live in our beautiful Commonwealth. Today we have a very exciting episode on a stipend reform ballot initiative. This will change things at the State House, which, if you have listened to this podcast ever before, you probably know we think is deeply dysfunctional and needs to be changed. So we're super excited about this. We have two amazing guests, Jay Kaufman and Jonathan Hecht, who we will get to in a second, but we will be covering this ballot initiative and what's in it. We'll be talking about the culture of the State House, and you'll hear some stories as well, which I think will be very exciting. A little bit about the history of the ballot initiative and how stipends really fit into a suite of different tools that are used to create the anti-democratic dysfunction that we see in the statehouse and sort of how stipends fit into that. And then we'll talk about committees and how they function and how this can improve the committee's functioning. We'll also at the end get to how you can help. And so before we do, I'm going to have my illustrious co-host, introduce themselves, and I will start with Jonathan Cohen.

JONATHAN C.

Hello, I'm Jonathan Cohen, he/him/his, joining from Boston. Apologies for being en route during this, but you will get a wonderful scenic tour of the Back Bay and possibly Cambridge. Been active in progressive issues and electoral campaigns for over a decade now. I'm happy to be here as well.

ANNA

Fantastic. And Jordan, if you're ready, I will go to you. If you're not, I will introduce myself before you, which I've never done before. Looks like your audio is not working quite yet. I am Anna Callahan, she/her, coming at you from Medford, where I am a city councilor, and I spent many years training people across the country to run slates of progressive candidates in their cities. Also, I've done some work at the state level. My favorite has been, of course, this podcast, and I'm so looking forward to this topic. It's one of my absolute favorites, and it looks like Jordan is ready to go.

JONATHAN C.

So now the speaker— the speaker and Senate president cut his mic.

ANNA

That's right.

JORDAN

It does feel that way. Sorry, I had some technical difficulties. Jordan Burke Powers, he/him. For the purposes of this conversation, I am the former executive director of Mass Alliance. I worked at Mass Alliance for 13 years, and I'm intimately knowledgeable about how dysfunctional our system is and how much the individual reps don't have any power. And complain about it quietly.

ANNA

Well, thank you. And we are going to turn to our amazing guests. I would love to have you each introduce yourselves, and I will go ahead and start with Jay Kaufman.

JAY

Well, I'm one of the former reps who likes to complain about the institution noisily. And to some extent got in a lot of trouble doing so even while I was in office. I served for 24 years. Still identify as a recovering legislator. Now do sort of identify as a writer as well. Eager to be here for this conversation and particularly happy about being in this company for this struggle that we all have with our dysfunctional government.

ANNA

Wonderful to have you. Jonathan Hecht.

JONATHAN H.

Hi, everybody. Jon Hecht, another former state rep. I served 12 years representing Watertown and some parts of Cambridge, and had the pleasure of actually sitting one chair over from Jay Kaufman on the floor of the House for the first 10 years before Jay left. I beat a hasty departure not long after Jay, and since leaving the legislature in 2021, ironically on January 6th, 2021. Um, I have been active in legislative reform efforts starting, um, with Progressive Dems in Massachusetts and then with the Coalition to Reform Our Legislature, which has now, um, given way to a ballot initiative committee called the Legislative Effectiveness and Accountability Partnership, which is promoting the stipend reform initiative.

ANNA

Amazing. I would love for you— there's 2 Johns here, so I'm going to have to— I'm going to have to last name people. So, John Hecht, if you would give us a very brief overview of what the Stipend Reform Ballot Initiative does, that would be great, and then we'll go from there.

JONATHAN H.

Yeah, so the Stipend Reform Ballot Initiative is about strengthening democracy in Massachusetts, strengthening representation by making sure that our legislators are independent and focused on representing us rather than having to worry about legislative leaders cutting their pay if they don't vote the way they want them to. And by making sure that every bill is taken up in an open committee meeting so that All the legislators have a chance to debate and shape them in front of the public rather than having everything done by a small number of legislative leaders behind closed doors. So it's about real transparency and accountability as well as stronger representation. And it does this by changing the way legislators get paid in Massachusetts, which is, is a, is a, is a total outlier. This control that legislative leaders have over a large part of legislators' pay in the form of these stipends. You don't see it in any other legislature in the country.

ANNA

So I'm actually going to put a little bit of a point on that for people who haven't listened to some of our earlier episodes. There used to be, what, 9 people who were paid a stipend, and then there were 15, and then there were, you know, 30, and then there were, you know, at this point there's like there are 160 people in the State House and more than half of them get a paid stipend. Is that accurate?

JORDAN

Yes, it's, I think, 102 now of 160, if I looked at the number correctly.

JONATHAN C.

It's like the type of thing where you like give every child a gold star and tell them it's special, except for it's corruption instead of thanks to all children.

JONATHAN H.

And there are still a bunch of, a bunch, there are a bunch who don't get a gold star, John, who are hankering for it.

JORDAN

Yes, exactly. I just would— I think the other thing I always like to remind people about this is that there is a— there's a constitutional amendment that sets their pay. And we have on this podcast talked about that that's not ideal, like it should be— they should be paid more. But it sets their pay at the median income for a family of 4 in Massachusetts. And so this is also an end around the Constitution. Like, it's a way to basically thumb their nose at Massachusetts voters while pretending to sort of be in line with it. And what's insidious about it is the other piece to it is if you set a pay and you say this is where everyone gets paid, but you give a way to make the job actually doable and you can take that away at any moment, that's the system of control.

ANNA

And speaking of system of control, I'm actually going to go to Jay, who, you know, wow, you really have seen it all in there. I think if you can talk a little bit about just the culture inside the institution, stories of when you were there, like, let us know what is actually happening in the State House. Oh, you are muted. If you can take yourself off mute, Jay, that would be great. Awesome.

JAY

Sorry about that. The first thing that struck me about what was just said was the, you know, daddy handing out gold stars to all the kids. That's what the— that is the culture of the statehouse right now. It's very paternalistic. And the members have become complicit in that. They'll settle for very little to get approval from daddy. And daddy's got a lot of gold stars to hand out. Where you get assigned as a committee member is one of those gold stars. Whether you get any kind of assistance is another gold star. Um, where your office is located is another gold star. Whether you have any hope of advancing the legislation, that's a whole barrel full of gold stars. So members are— can be, if not forgiven, at least understood if they play go along to get along. Because if they want to advance any of their interests, intellectual, political, or otherwise, or any— if their constituents have any needs, they sacrifice the ability to get anything done if they don't have Daddy's approval. It is a completely perverse system. It is a completely dysfunctional system. But over the last, say, 25 or so years, it has become a system that is locked in place because people on all sides of it play it. And what happens very quickly if you don't is you're marginalized. You learn very quickly that you can't get any bills passed. You get discouraged and you run— you decide not to run again. And Jordan and Jon Cohen can speak to the fact that we have elected a lot of very wonderful people who learn very quickly that they will be ineffective if they don't go along to get along.. And that's what locks the system in place.

ANNA

And I just want to, for one second, I want to be really clear because we've said daddy, we said going along to get along, we said these things and we're talking about the Speaker of the House. Let's be really clear. We're talking about the Speaker of the House who controls what bills can pass and what bills cannot pass.

JAY

Right. But I don't know the Senate as intimately, but I think there's much to be said about that culture that has much more to resemble, what's going on in the House than we might think or we might want. So I think it's an institutional problem, not just a House problem. But I want to tell a couple of quick stories.

JORDAN

Jordan, you wanted to jump in? Yeah, please tell a story. Yeah, I'd love to tell a story.

JAY

You lived it. So what happened, I asked for the chairmanship of the Revenue Committee for what turned out to be the last 10 years of my career, specifically to advance tax reform and what wound up becoming the Fair Share Amendment. So that was my.

ANNA

Singular focus. And you wanted to get it through the legislature. It ended up being a ballot initiative, but your purpose was to get it through the legislature.

JORDAN

Yes.

JAY

Well, in order to get to the ballot, you have to go through the legislature one way or the other. So anyway, I don't want to focus too much on the Fair Share Amendment, but I watched over those 10 years As the members of the revenue committee sort of peeled away one by one, uh, at the beginning, I, I always invited at— for all the chairmanships I had, I wound up inviting all the committee members to breakfast when we first got appointed, talk about what their goals are, what my goals are, uh, asking for them to engage as much as they possibly could. By the end of my tenure in the state house, nobody showed up for breakfast. Much less did they actively engage. The number of people who show up for hearings just declined, steady decline, because they knew it didn't make any difference and they could find a better way to, you know, spend their time. So membership in a committee made no difference, and even being a committee chair made not a hell of a lot of difference because I occasionally would go to fellow chairs and ask for input on some of the legislation I had before their committees, and the response inevitably was, let me check upstairs. So it wasn't— they weren't telling me their judgment. They weren't exercising their judgment. They were saying, I'm doing the speaker's bidding. I've got to find out what, what he wants or doesn't want. So, I mean, this is pretty disgusting. When my committee sort of disappeared from underneath me or around me, My fellow chairs disappeared into obedience. And one last quick story about this. One of the people who was appointed to the Revenue Committee was basically assigned as a babysitter, somebody to watch over me, somebody with a very different politics. And he asked the speaker to remove him from the committee. I was actually looking forward to his participation because he Although we differed on a lot of things, it was precisely that we differed that I was looking forward to. So I asked him, why did you ask to be removed? He said, well, I think as a committee member, I should be deferential to the speaker, deferential to the chair. And quite frankly, I can't be deferential since we have policy differences. Wow. That's, that is the bullshit that passes for a deliberative institution.

JORDAN

So you were looking forward to having an intelligent, fact-based conversation across a difference of differences of opinions. And he was like, I can't be allowed. I can't, I can't be here because doing so would violate the very reason I'm here, which is to do whatever the speaker says. And that might— and then I might not— I might have to do something I don't want to do. It's just— that's wild.

ANNA

It sounds like he thought that his role in that committee was to be.

JORDAN

A yes man to you. Well, because if he— because if anything moved, the speaker, it would— because if any— the yes-men to Jay, because if Jay moved anything, it was because the speaker said so. Like, it's just this— it's like, it's this insidious, just like, I can't even say no to something I already want to say no to because I'm— because the speaker might be upset.

JONATHAN C.

Like, it's just a wild— Yeah. Sorry, go ahead. Oh, just super quickly, I had put together recently For one presentation, I was doing a slide deck about like 10 myths about the State House. And that, like Jordan, what you're saying reminds me of one of them I had on there is the myth that if somebody votes for something, it's because they support it. And if somebody votes against it, it's because they oppose it inherently. When sometimes people vote for or against something that they actually don't agree with because leadership told them that's how they're voting.

JAY

Well, and that's where, that's where my story gets ugly and very painful.

ANNA

Do you mind if I let John Hecht go for one second? Because I think he was going to jump in.

JONATHAN H.

Yeah, no, I just wanted to add a few thoughts about committees. And Jay was talking about the Revenue Committee. And, you know, I served on over the course of my 12 years in the legislature, probably 8 or 10 different committees. And the thing that people need to understand, I mean, talk about myths about the State House, myths about the legislative process in Massachusetts. I mean, legislative committees You know, if you look in the, you know, the civics textbooks, or if you talk to other legislators around the country, committees are where the real work of legislating is done. They're supposed to be where the real work of legislating is done. I mean, they're always called the workhorses of the legislative process. But in the Massachusetts legislature, there are no functioning committees. They don't actually do any work as committees. And You know, the clearest way that you can see that in my personal experience, it was this way, and it's been true of everybody, I think, for the last at least close to 20 years, is that committees never meet. Committees hold hearings. So the public comes, it's a one-sided affair. The public comes in and testifies usually after, you know, waiting for hours and hours and hours, you know, really, you know, passionately conveying their personal stories or their their deeply held convictions about issues and so on. And then the committees sit and listen to this. Sometimes there are not many committee members there, as many of you know, but then the committee never meets again. So there's no— there's actually no committee. There's no committee there. There's no there there. The bills, when they come out of committee, come out strictly as a result of a decision taken by the speaker, the Senate president, a couple of other leaders, and, and the chair of the committee. The committee members just get an email and a list of bills that have been recommended for approval and given, you know, sometimes 2 hours, sometimes 4 hours, very little time to vote electronically. They played no role at all in discussing the bills, shaping the bills, the sort of stuff that goes on in most legislatures around the country. So people have to understand the committee process in the Massachusetts legislature is completely defunct.

JAY

One very minor amendment to what Jonathan just said, which is completely accurate, albeit discouraging picture of the life of the legislature. Those behind-the-scenes meetings may not include the chair. I was excluded from any number of meetings having to do with revenue. Because I just wasn't in the Speaker’s circle. So it's a, it's a very small circle of friends, most of the men, that get in a room. I don't know if they smoke cigars or not, but they may as well. And dissent is not only actively discouraged, it's punished. And if the chair doesn't happen to be in favor Well, that's just, that's a, you know, that's an inconvenience. But again, I don't, I can't count the number of times I heard from chairs that bills came to the floor that had borne no relationship or only loose relationship to the bill that they thought they were going to be asked to speak to.

JORDAN

Yeah, I just, I just want to say 2 things about that. One really quickly is just that, you know, It's, it's, it's really, it's not just like, it's not just like uncommon that the chair doesn't have a say. It's actually common that the chair doesn't have a say on bills that come forward. It's very a lot of most of the time it's coming through the small circle around the speaker who said, who says this is the bill that's going to pass. And then the chair gets notified that they have to get to the committee. And until we had any processes where they agreed to show a vote, sometimes it's passing with 1, maybe 2 reps even weighing in from the committee. Like they're barely even present as a part of the process of moving it forward. And so the committee in the past would say it's been recommended. And I know for a fact that there was 2 reps who emailed saying yes to it because they— and not because they were for or against it, because if they weren't on their emails that day and they were given 2 hours to respond, they didn't even know that there was something moving in their committee because to, what former Rep Peck said, they, the committees don't meet. There's no hearings. There's no, I mean, there's no, there's hearings. There's no scheduled meetings. There's no time to discuss. So reps don't know that things are moving in their committee. It's just the speaker decided to move it that day. Told the chair that it's moving in their committee. The chair emails people from across the state, and if they were driving in, didn't have access to their email in that time, they don't weigh in. They don't know it happened, and it's moved out of their committee. Before any— like, that's because the expectation is that you don't get to stop it. You don't get to say, which gets to the other piece I always tell people is the irony about all of this work that we're doing is like really what we're trying to do is give the people, the legislators themselves, the elected people, like we're trying to give them power to actually do the job they're elected to do, right? Like I always joke that one of the things that's so ironic about being on the outside pushing these things is what we're saying is like to the people in the 160 of you, we want you to have more of a say. We want you to have more power. We want you to go through a process where you're taking in the testimony and then make— using your brain, not just the speaker's brain, your brain onto what it could look like to address that issue and to talk with your colleagues and your colleagues as a group to then say, this is what we recommend, right? Like, we're— the irony is that we're really about dispersing power back to the legislators themselves through this process.

JAY

I don't want to jump in because it's, it's a lot of fun to rag on the legislature in the House in particular, but I think what we want to focus, if I might suggest this, for the next couple of minutes is on the role that the stipend system plays in reinforcing all this ugliness. Yes. Because with, with more than half of the members of the House and much even higher numbers when you add the role that minority leader plays, because He also dispenses these stipends to his members. So I think it's something like 130 of the 160 members in the House are getting additional pay. Jonathan, is that about right?

JONATHAN H.

Not, not quite that high. I think it's around 110, 115, including, including the minority party. 95.

JAY

So it's, it's not absolutely horrible, it's just horrible.

ANNA

Um, I mean, it's over 50%. That's absolutely horrible because it can control the vote.

JAY

That's it. And, and let's be very clear, there's nothing remotely anything remotely close to this in any other legislature in the country. Nothing remotely close. We have 102, 105, whatever it is, members paid. In most legislatures, if there's any stipend of any sort, it's a half dozen, 7, 8, 9. It's a very small number. And that's what the numbers were in Massachusetts in recent memory. And the numbers have gone up. And with that, with the rise in the number of people receiving stipends, we have a comparable decline in the individual responsibility of members because of the lure of getting additional salary. And that's not to say that everybody is mercenary, but to some extent, if your family household depends on, uh, the speaker's good graces, you pay some attention to that. In my case, it was a third of my salary was a function of the so-called leadership stipend. That's non-trivial. And now members get, in some cases, more than their salary in the way of stipends. And when you have that many people dependent on only one person for not only their professional advancement but on their household income, you have a formula for the kind of dysfunction that we have before us. And that's what, what was exciting— what is exciting for me about the stipend initiative is that it attacks that root culture. It's not a symptomatic reform. Well, it is to some extent a symptomatic reform, but it's a pretty damn important symptom. If we can pull that out from the current system, then we have an invitation for some kind of serious reform. No guarantee, because there's a lot of bad habits developed over the last two.

JONATHAN C.

Decades, but it gets out of a specific way that they are able to wield power. That if we talk about the over-centralization of power as being one of the key problems, taking away the tools that they have to do that is a key part of it. One quick thing I just want to chime in. What's always striking to me has been realizing how various things in the legislature are very different than how Congress works, which is people's go-to understanding, as you notice. There's obviously a hierarchy in anything, but it's not nearly as hierarchical as Massachusetts. And you also then get to see the fact that rank-and-file members in Congress are also more willing to be public about things, that you can expect certain members of Congress, maybe not all of them, but they will publicly advocate in a way that I feel like a lot of legislators here shy.

ANNA

Away from doing. All right. Um, I know we are going over time, not quite yet, but like, I know we can all talk about this for so long. I'm going to go ahead and have John Hecht talk a little bit about the history of this bill or the ballot measure. And then I know that a lot of it has been trying to transform from within, which, you know, Jay did for, you know, decades. So feel free to sort of jump back and forth about like the history of basically trying to get these kinds of reforms through.

JONATHAN H.

Stipend reform specifically. Yeah, yeah, as you said, I mean, there have been efforts over the years within the legislature to make the membership, you know, more equal participants in terms of how lawmaking happens and therefore, you know, really give them the ability to, you know, represent their districts, you know, actively and without fear. You know, I would say really as late as the early 2010s, there was still some push within the House to address the overconcentration of power. You know, I remember there was an open letter put out in 2010 by 7 or 8 reps. I remember it included, you know, Matt Patrick, Steve D'Amico, John Quinn. It was a diverse group of, you know, ideologically. Tom Stanley, who's still in the legislature, Will Brownsberger, who's still in the legislature. But that was kind of the last gasp. You know, I then, you know, pushed some rules reforms for a number of years and Mass Alliance worked, you know, with a group of new reps who came in in 2018. And together we pushed a rules reform package. But, you know, it's because, among other things, there is this enormous power over people's livelihoods through the stipends. It's really become apparent that, you know, significant reform is not going to come from within. And that's what has led us to try to reform from without, and in particular, to focus on the stipends, both as a source of the dysfunction because of the enormous control that they give to the Speaker and to the Senate President, but also because we feel we can, you know, use the stipends as a lever to get the transparency and the accountability that we've been pushing for unsuccessfully from within the building, particularly in terms of how the committees operate. So that's, you know, sort of how we've come to this. We— this work started with the Progressive Dems of Massachusetts doing a working paper.

ANNA

Published— you covered that.

JONATHAN H.

That was amazing. Called Democracy in Decline. You should take a look at it. It's just recently been updated, which is— it's on the website, both of Progressive Dems in Massachusetts and also on the Coalition to Reform Our Legislature, which is the group that then took this up, which includes not only progressives, not only Dems, but some folks more in the middle of the political spectrum. And now, as I said, we've got this ballot question and got a ballot committee that's leading that charge. So over the course of now 4 or 5 years, We've moved from, you know, studying the problem, trying to figure out ways to address it, to forming a coalition, to actually bringing.

ANNA

It before the voters.

JONATHAN H.

Amazing.

ANNA

And Jay, any thoughts about, you know, trying to transform it from within?

JAY

How hard have people tried? Well, I just gave up on that, but I just want to underscore something Jonathan just said, which is This is a bipartisan coalition that's pushing this now, and it includes Jen Nassour, who's the former chair of the Republican State Committee, still financed— I think she has recently resigned but was finance chair for the Republican committee. She's a hardcore Republican, and we are in complete agreement about the dysfunction of the State House and of the desire to advance democracy by reforming it. So this is not a partisan issue. It's not a progressive issue even. The fact that it started with us is wonderful, but it's got much, much bigger, broader support right now. And we're looking forward to electoral victory in November, assuming that the courts don't throw it out, which we do assume, but it will almost certainly be challenged in court. And then we're going to have to collect more signatures. So get your pens ready and then.

ANNA

We'Re going to need to campaign. Great. We hope to help with that. We hope our listeners will help with that. I— we don't have to spend a lot of time on this one, but I love going through this list. And Jay, you already did a little bit go through this list. I just want to list all of the ways that the Speaker of the House and yes, in the Senate too, but like especially the Speaker of the House has to sort of control people. So, it's a really fun list to feel, feel free, jump in if I don't mention things. How, you know, of course, there's the stipends and how much you're getting paid every day. There's where your office is. There's whether you get 1 staff person or 2 or 3 or 4 staff people. You know, famously, Marky had his desk in the basement, right? It was one of his ads from many years ago. There's where your parking spot is. There's what, whether, you know, what committees you're on, what committees you head. There are things like whether or not you get to be able to use the conference rooms. Is that accurate? Some sort of like public rooms that they run, whether you can meet there.

JORDAN

Jump in.

ANNA

Tell me some of the other things that the.

JORDAN

Speaker gets to control. Whether or not the money for your city or town. So if you have excess money for your city or town, if you are seen as somebody who is opposite of the speaker, anything you care about becomes a whole issue.

JAY

Issue.

JORDAN

Famously, the legislature won't tackle water and like water infrastructure because it's seen as Jamie Eldridge's issue. And so the legislature won't tackle a major issue facing our cities and towns because they dislike one state senator. It's just bonkers, which is just like, just like, put your minds as our listeners' ideas about that. Like, your city's infrastructure is being held up because the legislature's personal vendetta against one state senator.

ANNA

And isn't this kind of like— there was this story about the environmental bill that passed and, or the, no, it wasn't environmental that passed. It was like when somebody got elected and the Speaker basically told the environmental groups that like nothing, he would not allow anything to pass for 2 years.

JORDAN

We had someone on who was talking about that. Yes. Yes.

ANNA

Because they unseated one of their people.

JONATHAN

Exactly. The other thing that I would kind of build on some of it, wait. Hold on, continue on. I was about to say something and I completely lost it.

JORDAN

Oh, yes. Okay.

JONATHAN

Now, what I was going to say is almost this kind of reinforcing dynamic that can exist where if you know that if the speaker and the Senate president will prevent somebody from taking somebody's legislation from passing, that also leads to advocates not going to that person for legislation because they think, oh, well, if that person carries it, it won't pass. So you can also have it be reinforced externally when advocates will try to move legislation away from somebody because leadership has deemed them out of good graces.

JORDAN

I just, I just want to say, I just want to, I want to, I want to finalize the, there's like two things I want to say before we wrap up. And I guess this will be my wrap up. My two things I want to say really quickly are, one, that this is also just, just like blatantly unconstitutional. Like, it just— this, this constant, like, say what you want, but voters voted to put into the Constitution how reps will get paid. And this is just a flagrant end around, around this. And it's just, it speaks to the way in which the Speaker and the system have no regard for you and how much our reps work for him and not for us. Like, we are secondary parts to their assessment of who their bosses is. Bosses are. And the only way to change that is when we make our voices heard. So the louder we are, the more we change that dynamic. And the easiest example I have for people about that is the, is the, is the schools funding, right? That became so untenable that the legislature had to do something it didn't want to do because people were at where when they started to learn more and more about how they were, they were systematically underfunding the schools, they couldn't go back to their that they couldn't go back to their voters and tell them, oh, well, we increased funding. And they're like, but I've— you're underfunding us. I've just seen this ad. I've just seen this thing. And so it became untenable. So the only anecdote to that— I mean, there's many anecdotes, I guess I'll say. There's lots of ways we can fix it. But one of them is getting involved and raising your voice. And the other piece I'll just continue to say is like the irony of all of this is that really what I want for the legislature is we elect great people. There are other great people who get elected, like Jake Hoffman, like Jonathan Hecht, and we want to empower them to bring that to the legislature. The legislature can't get out of its own way. The whole system of the speaker being the only person who gets to decide means that bad legislation gets passed at the last minute without anybody really vetting it, without anybody really thinking it through. You get, you know, you get the climate, you know, you get the corporations writing policies on climate and then them having to backtrack. Like, they don't know how that legislation got passed out of committee that totally destroys the environment and sets us back and raises prices on energy while claiming to lower it, right? Like, because there's nobody there going through a committee process to evaluate these policies, to think it through, rather than just like some barely not poorly paid staffer who's telling the speaker what to do in the speaker's office. Like, it's just a really bad system that actually doesn't even work for the legislature itself.

JONATHAN C.

And I was going to say— Hold on, quickly. Hold on, quickly, Anna, uh, thinking of money, what happens when people donate to the show?

ANNA

Oh yeah, well, thank you, what a.

JAY

Great, what a great.

JORDAN

Segue.

ANNA

What a setup. When people donate to the show, none of us get paid, but it does go to our lovely young people who do our graphics, they do our video editing, they do our social media to make sure that this kind of information that you don't hear anywhere else can get into people's ears, can get in front of people on YouTube. So there's always a little link below and you can donate just a few bucks or as much as you want. We appreciate everything and every one of our donors. And now that that is done, I was just going to wrap up this segment about the reason I wanted to bring up all of the different ways that the speaker has for controlling the state reps is because To me, the stipends is honestly, it is the biggest piece of this puzzle. That is the single number one thing. When they reach over 50% of the people are getting stipends and the, the speaker can just at any moment, he doesn't like the way they vote, pull that stipend any day of the year. Like that is the single most corrupting piece, bigger than where your desk is, bigger than, you know, all of these other things. So I love the fact that this is being worked on, and I think it's absolutely crucially important. We are a little bit over time. I appreciate you guys both so much for sticking around, actually all 4 of you. And I will just say, if we could talk just for a minute about the committees and making committees more functional, and then we will get to how people can.

JONATHAN H.

Help with this initiative. Do you want me to take that? Please. Well, Yeah, I mean, the problem again, the stipend is both a source of dysfunction and a source of leverage. So as far as the committees, the way they operate, obviously when a chair is getting a significant stipend, whether it's, you know, for some committees $25,000, some committees $45,000, other committees, you know, with the Ways and Means Committee, you know.

ANNA

Over $90,000 in addition to the other.

JONATHAN H.

Salary they get in addition to their base salary. Right. That's the extra money that they're getting, you know, directly from leadership. I mean, they, you know, they, they're going to run those committees in the way that leadership wants them run. And the way leadership wants them run is not to involve the other members, to keep the work behind closed doors and always check with leadership before doing anything. So that, that's where the source of the problem is. The leverage comes from what the stipend reform initiative does is it really It, it dramatically reduces the number of these stipended positions. And but for those that would remain, which would be a much smaller number of committee chairs, a much smaller number of leadership positions, it would condition them on the committees taking up every bill in an open meeting of the committee, not just a hearing, but a meeting of the committee at which all members would have an opportunity to offer amendments. Debate, discuss the bills, and then take their votes on the bills in public. So, you know, I can't overstate, you know, having sat, you know, on, on, on, on the legislative side of this, when you have to do something in public, it, it, it, it's just a dramatically different situation. I mean, the last thing you want to do is look like you're just a bump on a log. You're going to be active, you're going to speak up, and because your constituents are going to hear it and see it and may even be in the room and the press is going to report on it. You're going to be active. And that would completely change the dynamic, I think, in the legislature, because what gives the leadership so much latitude to, to determine which bills are going to come up and in what form they're going to come up and so on is the fact that most members are completely uninvolved. And if members are involved and if members have a political stake, they're out there politically having spoken for something or spoken against something or advocated for a change in something or just advocated that a bill move, it's just going to change the dynamic between leadership and membership, I think, in dramatic ways. So the thing about the stipend reform that's so powerful is it both reduces the top-down control in terms of the financial control, and it also provides a lever for opening up the process in a way that really empowers the members and gives them an opportunity as well as an obligation to be real, real players in the legislative process, which is, after all, how a democracy is supposed to work, right?

ANNA

Love it. Love it. Man, we want to know, how can people help? We're going to try and get this episode to as many people as possible.

JAY

What can they do?

ANNA

So a couple things come to mind. Oh, I'm going to— sorry, let me just let Jay jump in on this one. And then feel free, Jonathan.

JAY

A couple things come to mind. One is what Jonathan just said. Start holding your, your own legislator accountable. Start making demands and, and want some verifiable evidence that they are, they are part of a change of culture as opposed to a part of the problem. Second thing, stipendreform.org—.com, it's a dot com— stipendreform.com is where you go to volunteer to help. We're going to need more signature gathering. We're going to need a campaign and we're going to need campaign money. Uh, there's no way to win this thing without some money. We've already invested a lot just to collect the signatures. So financial support for the effort is really, really important to us and for us all. Um, and the last thing I'll say, um, get ready to run for office. There are too many people who are deadweight right now. Too many people who've had bad habits for too long. I gave up on trying to reform and wake up some of my colleagues. Maybe some of them are still transformable, but I think until there are enough challengers, there will not be a change in the culture. Even if we pass the stipend reform, which I think we will, we're going to need to get ready to run for office. And have different energized people who are going back to doing the job that the system demands of us, which is that we're representing the people, representing something.

JONATHAN H.

Other than just the Speaker and Senate President. Amazing. Jonathan?

JORDAN

Stipendreform.com.

JONATHAN H.

That's where all the information is on what you can do. I mean, this is an opportunity for all of us to take a major step forward in terms of democracy in Massachusetts, to make a political institution that for far too long has been unresponsive, unaccountable, make it a truly functioning democratic institution, and in that way make it respond to the challenges we have. I mean, is anybody happy with how the legislature is responding to the current state of affairs? In our country. I mean, this is a chance to say, you know, time for everybody up there to play their part. There's more work. There's more than enough work for everybody. We need everybody stepping up and everybody truly speaking up for their constituents. And this is a way to transform that institution and make it the sort.

ANNA

Of democratic legislature we need and want. So exciting. I'm going to turn to my co-host for any.

JONATHAN C.

Super quick final words. I'll just say thank you. Thank you again to Jay and John for joining us and for continuing the fight to make our legislature that is overwhelmingly capital-D Democratic actually small-D democratic and work in the way that so many people probably think it already does, but it hasn't in a long time.

JORDAN

If it ever happens. Jordan? Yeah, just, I continue to think that we elect good people, and I'm frustrated that they won't claim some of their own power back. This is a real attempt to give it to them, but that ultimately we need a dance partner with this, that we need a dance partner. I think the larger progressive community is broken and how deferential it is to this broken system, and the people within the system are broken and how much of are deferential to the system, and it's literally hurting us. I'm jealous of a state of Illinois that's able to pass protection for its immigrant populations, not once, but amend it. I'm jealous of a California that's proactively passing legislation to take on Trump, not waiting for bad things to happen. And our legislature is 50th of 50th in one of the most dynamic states in the country, in a place that used to lead with some of the smartest people as its representatives. Like, I can't square how broke— like, I want people to grasp how truly broken that is, that like it is just ridiculous that so— that this is what we're dealing with as a statehouse, that people are in a time of crisis being proactive and they're having press conferences talking about how they'll someday do something, which means the July of an even-number year and that's it. Like, that is This is bonkers. This is just not a way to run such an incredible state. And it's just a real— it's a real shame considering how proud I think we all are of what Massachusetts has done and could be doing and the dynamic way the people who live here think of ourselves as a place that's forward thinking. And really, our legislature just isn't living up to that. And it.

ANNA

Could, and it should. And my last word is to say that I started this podcast, I think now if I look at it, 5 and a half years ago, to originally just by myself. And then these amazing guys, you know, joined in, which I'm so tickled every week that I get to speak with these guys and, you know, debate things and all that and interview such amazing people. And, you know, I started this podcast to tackle this problem, the horribly undemocratic nature, corrupt nature of the State House and the power of the Speaker. And this, I think this is literally the most exciting thing that I have seen in 5 and a half years. It is the most exciting. So I am going to encourage every one of our listeners to do everything that you can to help this ballot initiative. And with that being said, unless Jonathan or Jay, you have any final words for us. We're going to let you go. Thank you so much for staying. Thank you so much for our listeners.

JAY

I just want to thank all 4 of you for what you do all the time for this, for our democracy and for your partnership. It's just, I'm sorry we're all in this fight, but I'm glad we're in it together.

ANNA

Thank you.

JORDAN

Thank you.

JONATHAN H.

Thank you.

ANNA

We look forward to chatting. Yeah, wonderful final words. We look forward to chatting with you all next week.

JORDAN

Thanks very much.

JONATHAN

Thanks.