Inside the unproductive and contentious end of the Mass. State House's legislative session

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In the end, the Massachusetts Legislature’s formal session closed out with more of a whimper than a bang.

Lawmakers went into their final day with a dozen high-profile bills in compromise talks; only three made it out. The Democrats who command super-majorities in both chambers said they could not agree on legislation that would have turbo-charged clean energy projects, pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into life sciences and biotech, and created stricter oversight of for-profit hospitals.

“We are disappointed and appalled,” Progressive Massachusetts Executive Director Jonathan Cohn wrote in a fire-breathing statement Thursday morning. “It does not have to be this way.”

So why is it this way? One reason is the sheer amount of legislation leadership leaves to the end of session, in what many political observers describe as a game of chicken. “The pressure is useful to leadership,” said Central Connecticut State University professor Jerold Duquette, who studies New England politics. Duquette argues that as the end of session approaches, the need to reach bargains on key bills grows, at least in theory, because the “fire alarm is going.”

But this year those grand bargains didn’t happen. All Wednesday night, we reporters who were up at the State House kept hearing how the conference committees tasked with making deals were deadlocked. “There seems to be a larger game afoot,” state Sen. Michael Barrett told us shortly after midnight. By morning, the climate and energy bill he was negotiating was dead. Barrett blamed the House for not returning the Senate’s offers. His House counterpart, state Rep. Jeff Roy, said the Senate had “gone back on its word,” pushing for more than agreed-upon permitting reforms. Barrett stresses his personal friendship with Roy, but there was animosity clearly on display in the session’s waning hours. That animosity is mirrored by their two leaders, Senate President Karen Spilka and House Speaker Ron Mariano, who took swipes at each other through the press all week. Not even a late-night visit by the governor herself to Mariano’s office was not enough to bring the two together.

Legislators pay few political or electoral consequences for their inaction. Sure, there are angry statements from activists and lobbyists, but politicians rarely lose their seats. This year, 65% of lawmakers running for re-election don’t even face an opponent, according to an analysis by the CommonWealth Beacon. “That’s a powerful absence of incentive to urgency,” Duquette said.

Some of the bills legislators failed to act on still have a chance at coming back to life in the months ahead. In a rare move, and after a public prodding by Healey, both Spilka and Mariano put out statements Friday indicating they’re “prepared” to call a special formal session to pass the economic development bond bill. This is a power flexed rarely, and was last used in 2020 when the pandemic affected the regular session.

So there’s hope, at least for the bond bill. But in a State House where personal grudges and dysfunction abound, it’s hard to imagine a smooth path for many of these bills that died at the deadline.