Massachusetts Lawmakers complete bid to kill legislative stipends reform

BY SAM DRYSDALE

The initiative petition to reform how legislative leaders hand out assignment-related stipends to some lawmakers to cannot proceed to the ballot following a high court’s opinion that it is unconstitutional, according to the attorney general’s office.

Assistant Attorney General Anne Sterman sent a letter to Secretary of State William Galvin on Tuesday saying the measure “may proceed no further in the Article 48 process.” Article 48 is the section of the state Constitution governing voter-initiated initiative petitions and their ballot eligibility. 

The Supreme Judicial Court last week issued an advisory opinion casting scrutiny on the measure that would overhaul how legislative stipends are allocated and tie them to internal procedural requirements. Supporters have framed the measure as a pro-democracy reform aimed at rebalancing power in a system that they say rewards loyalty to Democratic leadership. Lawmakers have pushed back harshly against that characterization. 

The high court’s justices wrote that the proposal constitutes a rule change, seeking to impose reforms to the Legislature’s internal proceedings — and in doing so steps over a constitutional line of what ballot questions are legally allowed to contemplate. 

Though Attorney General Andrea Campbell’s office originally certified the measure to go forward to the ballot last August, Campbell’s letter on Tuesday reevaluates that in light of the court opinion. 

“As you know, in August 2025, the Attorney General’s Office (AGO) certified the Petition as being ‘in proper form for submission to the people’ according to the process set forth” in the Constitution, “But that certification was proper only to the extent the petition proposed a law, rather than a legislative rule,” Sterman wrote. 

The advisory opinion was sought by the Senate, who opposed the measure. It is non-binding, and petition supporters last week said they still planned to go forward with the process to proceed to the November ballot. 

“We respectfully but firmly disagree with the Justices’ advisory opinion,” John Lippitt, chair of the proponent committee, said at the time. He called the opinion “advisory and nonbinding” and argued it conflicts with the attorney general’s prior certification. The group said last Monday that it intended to keep pursuing the ballot question, with Treasurer Jennifer Nassour adding, “This question belongs before the voters.”

Deb O’Malley, spokesperson for Secretary of State William Galvin, said last week that there was nothing preventing supporters from requesting papers to collect the last round of signatures to secure ballot access. 

After Tuesday’s letter, the secretary’s office position has changed. 

“The Secretary can only provide petitions if an initiative is certified by the Attorney General. Given this letter, and her office’s view that the petition is not properly certified, we have notified the petitioners that we will not be able to provide them with additional petitions,” O’Malley said. 

The committee supporting the question fired back in a release on Wednesday that they are “committed to return in 2028 with a ballot question to eliminate stipends altogether,” calling the events the “Legislature’s backdoor maneuver” to “block voters from voting on stipend reform.” 

Their release outlines the infrequently used step the Senate took to request the advisory opinion from the justices as a “short-circuit maneuver [that] is only available to the legislature.” 

“The opinion that came back is, by the Justices’ own description, advisory and non-binding. It is not a ruling. It is not a final decision. But it is now being used as the legal cover to silence the voices of the voters,” the release says. 

Sterman’s letter asks “what becomes of the Petition, given that the Supreme Judicial Court has instructed the Senate that it was improperly certified.”

To resolve this question, the assistant attorney general cites precedent as well as the implementing legislation of Article 48. 

“Turning first to precedent, very similar circumstances occurred almost exactly 30 years ago. In 1996, the House of Representatives sought an Opinion of the Justices as to whether an initiative that would have reduced legislative pay and afforded certain authority to the Inspector General and State Auditor was properly certified and pending before it,” she wrote. 

In that case, the proponents similarly still sought petition papers from the secretary of state’s office. Galvin was also secretary then. 

“Because it was clear by that time that the initiative had been improperly certified, your office declined to issue the requested petition papers. The proponents of the initiative sued, seeking a court order requiring the petition papers to be provided. Their argument was rejected by a Single Justice of the Supreme Judicial Court, and the case was dismissed,” Sterman wrote. “We expect the same result would occur here, gien the materially indistinguishable circumstances.”

Sterman also argued that the court’s opinion that the petition proposes a legislative rule, and not a law, makes it ineligible to proceed to the ballot. 

“As a result,” she said, “the proponents of the Petition may proceed no further in the process. Article 48 affords them the right to propose a law, and despite the AGO’s certification of the initiative, the Supreme Judicial Court has concluded that they have not done so.”

The letter concludes, “For these reasons, Initiative Petition 25–37 may proceed no further in the Article 48 process. Should its proponents desire to test this position, we are prepared to defend the actions of both of our offices as consistent with the Supreme Judicial Court’s recent Opinion of the Justices, past precedent, Article 48, and its implementing legislation.”

Nassour said in the release that the “backdoor maneuver should alarm voters across the political spectrum.”

“The Legislature has now demonstrated, in real time and in front of the entire Commonwealth, exactly why this reform is needed,” Lippitt said. “We are going to keep fighting until this question reaches the voters where it belongs. The next question will not be how to reform the stipend system, it will be to end it. We would have preferred reform. The legislature has forced us to move to eliminate it.”

Senate Republicans this year urged Democrats in that branch to seek an advisory opinion from the SJC about the 2024 legislative audit law but so far Democrats have opted not to ask for an opinion.