BOSTON—State Senator Jason Lewis joined his colleagues in the Massachusetts Senate to unanimously approve updated legislative rules for the new 2025-2026 legislative session that would increase transparency and public accessibility to the state legislature.
The Senate passed updated Senate-specific rules that will go into effect immediately. The Senate also passed proposed Joint Rules for their collaboration with the House of Representatives; these will now need to be reconciled with a Joint Rules proposal from the House before taking effect.
“Building greater trust and confidence in our government by improving transparency and accountability is critical for a healthy democracy,” said State Senator Jason Lewis. “I have long championed efforts to improve the transparency of state and local government, including being the lead Senate sponsor of the last major update to the state’s public records law. These updated Senate and Joint Rules will further open up the legislative process and make it easier for the public to see how we operate and to hold us accountable.”
Highlights of the updated Senate-specific rules include:
- Requiring that all votes taken by Senators in joint committees be posted online. The Senate already requires Senate committee votes to be posted online.
- Requiring that all public written or in-person testimony received by Senate members of a joint committee be posted online. The Senate already requires testimony to Senate committees to be posted online.
- Requiring Senate committees to make bill summaries available online for legislation reported favorably out of the committee. Summaries from the Senate Ways and Means Committee have long been provided to Senators and members of the public who ask for them, but this provision would make the same information easily available online.
- Requiring every Senator and Senate employee to undergo cybersecurity training every legislative session. This would be in addition to anti-harassment training, implicit bias training, and ethics training which are already required.
Highlights of the Senate’s updated Joint Rules proposal include:
- Requiring bill sponsors to provide public bill summaries for every bill they file.
- Increasing notice time for joint committee public hearings from a minimum of three days to five days to give stakeholders and the public more time to prepare.
- Moving up the deadline for joint committees to report out bills earlier in the legislative session to improve the efficient flow of legislation.
- Requiring that at least the first meeting of a conference committee be open to the public and media for greater transparency.
- Requiring at least one full day between a conference committee report filing and a floor vote in order to allow more time for review.
- Reforming joint committees to enable Senate and House members to vote only on their respective branch bills to help prevent deadlock and speed up the flow of legislation.
