What’s with Legislative Reform?

Our Massachusetts House and Senate continue to be outliers among state legislatures: the least productive and least transparent. In 2021, PDM issued a report titled The Massachusetts Legislature: Democracy in Decline, which detailed the state of dysfunction and explored the causes. This report was the genesis of the Coalition to Reform Our Legislature (CROL), a bipartisan group that includes PDM, committed to reforming the operation of the legislature. Despite the hard work of many of you, CROL’s ballot initiative to clean up the corrupt system of legislative stipends, i.e. loyalty pay, will not make it to the November 2026 ballot. In December 2025, CROL published an update to the 2021 report, entitled Democracy in Decline: Denial and Delay. The update tracks the lack of real progress in making change, notwithstanding heightened media attention and public awareness of the dysfunction. Our panel of experts: Jeanne Kempthorne, who wrote the original report as well as Democracy in Decline: Denial and Delay, Scotia Hille, Executive Director, Act On Mass, a group that leads the struggle to open up our legislature and Jon Hecht, former state representative and member of the steering committee of CROL with moderator John Lipptt discussed the status of legislative reform efforts and next steps.