Dear Cambridge and Somerville Constituents —

I hope this note finds you keeping cool and doing well. Here are the latest updates from my State House office.

House Passes Location Shield Act

Every day, unregulated data brokers buy and sell personal location data from apps on our cellphones, revealing where we live, work, play, and where and when we seek healthcare services. Following the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, location data firms have been found to be selling information related to patients’ visits to Planned Parenthood facilities. This data can then be used to target and harass individuals and providers. 

That's why yesterday, I proudly joined with my House colleagues to pass the Location Shield Act, which will protect the privacy of patients by prohibiting companies from collecting and processing an individual’s reproductive or gender-affirming care location information.

In this moment when retrograde right-wing forces are rolling back civil liberties across the country, I was eager to vote to protect vulnerable patients from the harms of surveillance by data brokers and their clients. While I support an even more comprehensive data privacy regulatory framework, yesterday’s vote was a crucial step forward in protecting patient privacy. I was also proud to co-sponsor the original draft of this bill earlier in the session.

The bill now goes to the Senate for further consideration. More information is posted here on my State House blog.

In last week’s newsletter, I highlighted all of the major bills we passed during the busy month of June. Today, I want to also take a moment to highlight some of the other bills we passed this spring that may have flown under the radar:

House Passes Bill To Unlock More Federal Funds

Many projects across the district are funded through a combination of state and federal funds. The recent Green Line Extension was funded at roughly a 50-50 state and federal split, and pending projects like the grounding of McGrath Highway will similarly receive federal funds. While those two examples are some of the most significant projects to occur in our community, there are countless other examples of small and medium sized projects that utilize federal funds, such as renewable energy siting, workforce development, grid modernization, broadband infrastructure, and more. Additionally, recently passed federal legislation such as the CHIPS and Science Act also includes grant monies that the Commonwealth can apply for. However, many of these grants can only be accessed if the Commonwealth leverages its own funds.

That's where this bill, An Act to Provide for Competitiveness and Infrastructure Investment In Massachusetts, comes in — it passed the House on February 28 and is now pending before a House-Senate conference committee.

Once signed into law, this will establish a steady stream of money from interest collected on our rainy day fund that can then be used to apply for federal grants. If we have this dedicated fund to pull from, we will be able to more efficiently unlock federal grant opportunities. You can read more about this bill on my State House blog.

House Passes Veterans Bill

According to the Housing Assistance Council, Massachusetts is home to approximately 277,442 veterans. Of those approximately 17,000 veterans live in deep poverty, 60,000 have a service related disability, 60,000 face housing insecurity, and roughly 530 are unhoused.

It is in this context that my colleagues and I in the House passed legislation in May to increase services, update definitions, and incentivize the hiring of veterans. Some highlights of the bill include:

• Medical assistance, dental and vision benefits — requires the Secretary of the Executive Office of Veterans Services (EOVS) to provide a medical assistance benefit, behavioral health assistance benefit, and dental benefit beyond other benefits available to veterans, including medical and dental visits, behavioral health assessments, procedures, prescriptions, and costs.
• Benefits for dependents of veterans — updates the definition of “dependent” to make it gender neutral and include children over the age of 18 that meet the criteria for emancipation. It also expands the pool of coverage by extending benefits to dependents who are mentally or physically unable to support themselves after reaching the age of 23. This section aligns the residential eligibility requirements of the dependent of a veteran with the residential eligibility requirements of the veteran, granting benefits to the dependent of a veteran that has resided in Massachusetts for one day prior to applying for benefits.
• Employer tax credit for hiring veterans — increases from $2,000 to $2,500 the amount of a tax credit for each qualified veteran hired by an employer and for subsequent years of continued employment of each veteran. This applies for tax year 2024.

To read a full list of the policy provisions in this bill, click here to access my blog.

House Votes to Support Our Community Hospitals

This spring, the Steward Hospital crisis further exposed vulnerabilities in the Commonwealth’s healthcare infrastructure. In response to the alarming role private equity is now playing in health care, the House advanced legislation to strengthen hospital oversight, address rising costs, and protect struggling community hospitals.

I want to highlight a provision of the bill that will help the Cambridge Health Alliance (CHA) and other community hospitals as they continue to face a crisis of consolidation and insurance reimbursement inequity. The bill establishes a Rate Equity Target for insurance companies, with the goal of raising the reimbursement rate for historically poorly reimbursed hospitals like CHA. The bill incentivizes insurance companies to pay these hospitals no less than 15% below the average reimbursement rate for hospitals in the insurance company’s network during the first three-year benchmark cycle from 2026 to 2029. Thereafter, the bill guarantees a minimum percentage increase in a hospital’s reimbursement rate as a percentage of healthcare cost growth benchmarks.

I am also pleased to report I co-sponsored an adopted amendment supported by SEIU and the Mass. Nurses Association to provide a Medicaid rate enhancement for a similar group of community-like hospitals, based on a hospital’s percentage of patients that are public payers. These policies help ensure insurance companies are paying their fair share to community hospitals who are providing the same services as their larger counterparts.

For a full writeup of the bill, please see this post on my State House blog.

House Capitalizes IT Infrastructure Accounts

Also in May, the House passed the FutureTech Act. This bill authorizes $1.23 billion in capital spending and utilizes an additional $400 million in anticipated federal funding to bolster critical information technology projects across the Commonwealth. The initiatives included in the bill aim to modernize the Commonwealth’s information technology infrastructure, enabling agencies to operate with enhanced efficiency while also upgrading cybersecurity efforts.

Some capitalized initiatives include the Business Enterprise Systems Transformation (BEST) and the Commonwealth Digital Roadmap, both aimed at enhancing administrative workflow efficiency and streamlining state operations. The bill also supports a new project to consolidate and modernize the Division Occupational Licensing (DOL)’s licensing database. This project will replace the current outdated infrastructure, which relies on paper files as well as manual data entry and review, resulting in delayed application and renewal processing.

The bill also includes authorizations for the continued rollout of the Employment Modernization Transformation (EMT). The pandemic exposed major vulnerabilities in our state unemployment insurance systems, so I am glad this project will provide both employers and those seeking unemployment insurance with a new portal to conduct state-facing employment activities. 

This bill is currently in the conference committee process where three members from each chamber work to reconcile the differences between respective versions of the bill.

Funding for Roads, Bridges, and Bike Paths signed into Law

In April, the House passed what's commonly known as “the Chapter 90 bill” which makes funds available to municipalities around the Commonwealth for local transportation infrastructure. Every city and town in the Commonwealth will receive a share of $200 million in funding to be used for the maintenance and construction of roads and bridges. From that pot of funds, Cambridge will receive $2,949,411 and Somerville will receive $1,228,927. Separately, $150 million will be allocated equally to six programs targeting specific transportation infrastructure including: funds to increase transit access, bus enhancement, bike paths, municipal EV grants, and others.

This funding is typically made available to cities and towns annually and was signedby Governor Healey in early May. 

House votes to remove Offensive and Outdated Language from our General Laws

Unfortunately for many years, our statutes have included offensive and outdated language where members of the disability community were referenced. That’s why I was pleased to vote in April to pass legislation updating the Massachusetts General Laws by removing out-of-date and offensive terms related to persons with disabilities, and rename the Massachusetts Rehabilitation Commission (MRC) to MassAbility.

Some might say the passage of this bill was symbolic, but words matter, and this bill ensures we are using the right words in service of our constituents with intellectual disabilities. It's important to me that constituents feel seen and are embraced for who they are in our laws, and this simple bill takes a meaningful step forward toward that goal. You can read more about this on our blog.

Our bill to make childcare an allowable campaign expense receives a favorable committee report

I’m delighted to report our bill, An Act Supporting Parents Running for Public Office,was favorably reported by the Joint Committee on Election Laws on May 30, following a public hearing in May 2023. This bill aims to make childcare an allowable campaign expense. 

For many working families, running a campaign without access to safe, affordable childcare is not feasible. Caregiving services disproportionately fall on mothers, with women 15 times more likely than men to be responsible for the majority of childcare. Therefore, childcare should be treated like other allowable expenses. This bill would eliminate a major barrier for parents seeking public office in their communities and help to advance equitable political representation throughout the Commonwealth.

I’m grateful to our advocacy partners at Vote Mama Foundation, the Massachusetts Caucus of Women Legislators, MassNOW, The Massachusetts Commission on the Status of Women and others for their support as well as to the Chairs of the Joint Committee on Election Laws, Representative Ryan and Senator Keenan for this favorable report, as well as my House co-filer, Representative Meschino from Hull, and Senator Jehlen for carrying this bill in the Senate.

There's more coverage of this favorable report in this recent story from CommonwealthBeacon.

Thank you, once again, for being an informed and engaged constituent. Please do not hesitate to reach out with any questions or concerns.

Yours in service,

Rep. Mike Connolly