Roll Call: How Legislators measure up for students and public education

The MTA has compiled a record of roll call votes taken by members of the Massachusetts House and Senate from January 2009 until formal sessions ended on July 31, 2010.

The MTA included all of the votes cast by legislators that affected public education. The fact that all votes are not of equal importance has been reflected. Although the MTA recognizes that the record is but one measure of a legislator’s support for public education, examining these votes is a concrete way to measure that support.

The national recession, which resulted in the state losing over $9 billion in state revenues, made this a difficult legislative session. Because of this, MTA’s main legislative goals reflected the recession and therefore included:

• Increasing state revenues.
• Protecting funding for public education – preK through graduate school – as the recession significantly
  reduced state revenues.
• Protecting collective bargaining and the rights of teachers in underperforming schools in a major education
  bill while also supporting policy initiatives to help close the achievement gap.
• Maintaining meaningful participation by employees in decisions on municipal health insurance and ensuring
  quality health insurance coverage.
• Protecting pension benefits for current and future employees.

Pressure to cut funding for all programs and services – including public education – has been fierce, as has pressure to scale back employee benefits.

Increasing revenues is never easy. While some economists argue that increasing government spending is exactly what needs to be done during an economic downturn, many voters and legislators are leery of this notion.

In the 2009 session, however, the Legislature did increase revenues by close to $1.5 billion, mainly through an increase in the sales tax. Legislators also passed a series of local-option taxes.

In the 2010 session, although Governor Deval Patrick included tax increases in his proposed budget, legislative leaders made it clear that there would be no increases. At the end of the 2009 session and again this year, there were serious attempts to roll back the increase in the sales tax. There is also a very real threat on Election Day in November that Massachusetts residents will vote to significantly reduce the sales tax and drain another $2.5 billion from annual state revenues.

On the last day of formal sessions, the Legislature passed legislation to license casinos and slot machine parlors, but because of the inclusion of slot parlors, the governor did not sign the bill.

Public education was largely – though not entirely – spared the enormous cuts that other programs have seen.

This is mainly because Governor Patrick rallied support at the national level to pass the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which targeted funding for public education. Both the governor and the Legislature used that money to fill in gaps in funding. These decisions do not show up in roll calls, though at times during the session MTA lobbied both the administration and the Legislature to ensure the monies went to public education.

Fueled in part by economic pressures, there has been a growing antipathy toward public employees, and these attitudes have been echoed in the media. These anti-public-employee sentiments have spilled over into recent legislative debates on Beacon Hill.

MTA’s advocacy over the past two years has included lobbying to protect collective bargaining for municipal health insurance. Those efforts, like the ARRA decisions, do not show up in the roll calls because the House took no votes on the issue and the Senate vote did not make distinctions in members’ positions. Since there was no closure on this issue, it is certainly going to be part of legislative debates in the next session.

In the summer and fall of 2009 and winter of 2009-2010, the MTA was engaged in a major effort to ensure that an education bill that was introduced and then passed by the Legislature not only protected the rights of our members, but also included policies that would help students in underperforming schools. Generally, we were successful in that attempt. However, in the final conference report, instead of supporting the House-passed language, the conferees included a provision that eroded collective bargaining for educators in chronically underperforming schools. MTA did not support this language and opposed the conference report.

Unfortunately, the nation and the state are still facing stubborn unemployment and economic insecurity, creating a very volatile electorate. The results of the November 2 election will determine whether the Commonwealth will move forward to make investments in public education and other services that are critical for our communities and our state.

How Do They Measure Up for Students and Public Education: Roll call of votes from the 2009-2010 legislative session of the Massachusetts General Court