It’s the primary main determination day for poll questions in Massachusetts.
Attorney General Andrea Campbell will clarify Wednesday the preliminary destiny of greater than 40 proposed legal guidelines and constitutional amendments coping with all the pieces from lease management to auditing the Legislature.
Ballot query backers filed 42 completely different initiative petitions in early August which Campbell has spent the previous month reviewing to see in the event that they meet constitutional muster. Supporters hope to see their concepts on the poll throughout the 2024 elections.
The questions contact on among the most debated matters on Beacon Hill — eradicating the MCAS as a situation for highschool commencement, election reform, the classification of app-based staff, and permitting for the unionization of transportation community firm drivers.
In the weeks since these proposals had been submitted, advocates have let unfastened 55 authorized briefs — 32 in favor and 23 in opposition — in an try to persuade Campbell to both certify or toss apart numerous questions.
One query would ask voters to repeal the state’s 1994 ban on lease management, an concept that has drawn monetary help from an out-of-state advocacy group however opposition from suppose tanks, actual property associations, a builders group, and landlords, amongst others.
But state Rep. Mike Connolly, the Cambridge Democrat behind the proposal, mentioned he and different proponents are “feeling very hopeful” forward of Campbell’s determination.
“We’re here because we’re in an unprecedented housing emergency,” he mentioned Tuesday. “… That’s actually the supply of our resolve on this matter, is to take each alternative to deal with this ongoing, unprecedented emergency that has resulted in unseen homelessness in addition to inexpensive housing being extra out of attain to extra folks than it has ever been in our lifetime.
In a letter opposing the concept, the Fiscal Alliance Foundation argued it violated elements of the state structure prohibiting poll questions that create takings of property with out simply compensation and those who tackle a number of unrelated insurance policies in the identical query.
Connolly and different supporters of the query deliberate an 11 a.m. press convention Wednesday outdoors the State House to “react to the attorney general’s certification decisions on potential 2024 ballot questions.”
For the poll questions that obtain the greenlight Wednesday, supporters will seemingly begin a mad sprint to gather greater than 75,000 signatures that have to be filed with native election officers by Nov. 22 and Secretary of State William Galvin’s workplace by Dec. 22. After that, the questions head to the Legislature for overview.
The funds of the varied poll query committees is not going to turn out to be totally clear till subsequent yr, when they’re required to reveal their 2023 exercise to the Massachusetts Office of Campaign and Political Finance.
One of the state’s largest trainer’s unions is hoping to nix the MCAS commencement requirement and exchange it with “locally developed alternatives for certifying academic mastery.” The Massachusetts Teachers Association, which represents greater than 115,000 members throughout the state, is backing the concept.
MTA President Max Page mentioned union members are “very optimistic” about their “strong, clear, completely legitimate ballot question.”
“We are hoping and expecting that the attorney general will certify it [Wednesday] and then we’ll be off to the races,” he advised the Herald Tuesday. “We’ve got a big meeting planned this weekend to get this out to all of our locals, and we’ll start gathering signatures.”
Another query awaiting a call by Campbell and backed by State Auditor Diana DiZoglio would authorize the state auditor’s workplace to audit the state Legislature, one thing the previous senator has been pursuing since taking workplace this yr.
The proposal would permit the state auditor to try accounts, applications, actions, and features instantly associated to the Legislature. DiZoglio requested Campbell earlier this yr to approve authorized motion in opposition to the House and Senate in an try to drive them to open up their books.
Top Democrats have to this point refused, arguing the state auditor doesn’t have the authorized authority nor the precedent to audit the Legislature. House Speaker Ronald Mariano and Senate President Karen Spilka each authored letters to DiZoglio outlining these factors.
Campbell has referred to as the request to pursue authorized motion “rare” however has to this point not tipped her hand on whether or not she is going to approve the request. The state’s prime prosecutor has additionally declined to touch upon the poll query till her workplace has completed reviewing it.
Other questions earlier than Campbell contact on the classification of app-based rideshare and supply drivers and requiring the complete minimal wage for tipped staff with tips about prime.
The app-based staff proposal was thrown off the poll final yr by the state’s highest court docket as a result of justices believed it handled too many issues for voters to contemplate in a single query.
A lawsuit in opposition to Uber and Lyft filed in 2020 by then-Attorney General Maura Healey is scheduled to go to trial in Suffolk County Superior Court beginning in May 2024, in line with court docket data. The lawsuit asks the courts to categorise drivers as workers moderately than unbiased contractors.
“We heard loud and clear that the SJC had concerns about relatedness, and we know that trial lawyers and labor will once again try to use legal loopholes to deny voters the chance to weigh in on this important issue,” Conor Yunits, a spokesperson for this yr’s poll query marketing campaign, mentioned in an early-August assertion. “We have provided the attorney general’s office with a number of options for certification that should address these concerns and ensure that voters have an opportunity to make their voices heard.”
Source: www.bostonherald.com”