Explanation: The fraud of unconstitutional “informal sessions” in the Massachusetts Legislature.

Here’s what they're doing - how it works - and how it can be derailed.

April 13, 2025

The Massachusetts State House needs to be cleaned out by the citizens!

If you’re a bartender or teacher or grocery store worker, you have to go to work every day. But our elected legislators don’t want to have to do that. They don’t really feel like dealing with all the “boring” bills that they also were elected to consider and vote on – especially those that might be unpopular.

So they’re willing to let the leadership (and their lackeys) make those decisions, with no uncomfortable roll-call votes taken. Over the years the Legislature has concocted a scheme to facilitate this that has now been shamefully institutionalized.

Thus, the Massachusetts Legislature does something that no other legislature in the country does. The House and Senate both “pass” nearly 50% of their legislation in small so-called “informal sessions” that lack a required quorum. It is shocking to legislators in other states when they hear about it. It’s sleazy and clearly unconstitutional.

Here’s what they do

The Massachusetts Constitution (Article XXXIII) specifically says that a majority of the members of each branch shall constitute a quorum for the transaction of business. That’s the legal requirement for voting on any bills. It’s clear and unambiguous.

The House has 160 members. The Senate has 40 members. Thus, half of each body (80 House members or 20 Senators) must be present for business to be conducted:

But the full 160-member House and 40-member Senate meet only two or three times a month where they actually debate and have roll-call votes on bills. That doesn’t nearly cover all the bills and other business before them.

Twice each week, the House and Senate also meet in “informal sessions,” This time there are only only 2 or 3 – usually least one from each party – but sometimes it’s just 1 member. That’s where all the rest the bills before the Legislature get “voted” on. They quickly rip through a long list at each meeting, taking voice “votes.” It’s all been pre-determined. There’s no debate, and no roll-call votes. This happens all year long. These “informal sessions” and treated as if they were legitimate.

You can actually watch the videos of these House and Senate informal sessions on the State House website. They don’t try to hide it at all.

They officially “pretend” there’s a quorum

How do they rationalize this outrageous charade? They can “pretend” there’s a quorum by not formally taking a count of the members present, even though it’s obvious there isn’t one.

Everyone at the State House is in on the scam. It’s a grand collusion between both political parties, all the members of the Legislature, and all the Boston media. They all know what’s happening and choose to ignore it because it’s expedient for everyone.

The excuses we get from everyone at the State House

We once asked the House legal counsel whether informal sessions are unconstitutional. He didn’t deny it; he simply said, “That’s how we do things here.” The head Boston Globe State House reporter told us the same thing.

When we ask legislators about this, even “conservative” Republicans tell us that it’s OK because all these bills are “non-controversial.” (We all know that’s not true!) But they refuse to own up to the fact that the Legislature is constitutionally required to do the job it was elected to do and properly vote on all these bills, as the legislatures in every other state do. Shockingly, that doesn’t even matter to Republican legislators here.

As we’ve documented, many of the “non-controversial” bills are very controversial. But even the mundane ones deal with home-rule issues for towns, town charter changes, liquor licenses, and numerous statewide issues such as raises for state workers and the recent “move over” law for highways.

How this can easily be stopped

But they have one problem with that scheme – that we can take advantage of. If a member of the House of Senate shows up at the informal session and announces, “I doubt the presence of a quorum,” then the lack of a quorum is publicly on the record. The meeting has to shut down (until the next time).

Every year or so that happens! Last November, a state rep “doubted the presence of a quorum” and shut down a House informal session over the approval of property tax hikes for the City of Boston. In December 2023, Republicans temporarily stopped informal sessions by calling the quorum because the Democrats were pushing funding for illegal immigrants in those sessions. In 2011 when Jim Lyons was a State Rep, he shut it down for days over secretive funding for non-citizens – and they finally gave in. Even Democrats have done it. Rep. Paul McMurtry (D-Dedham) temporarily stopped informal sessions over a liquor license that the Legislature was blocking.

So our plan is simple: Our goal is to one or more legislators to go to every informal session and call the quorum! (Only a legislator can do that, not the public.)

That will grind the Legislature to a halt as bills pile up! It will ultimately force the leadership to schedule numerous weekly formal sessions, force everyone to show up almost every day, and upend their sleazy way of doing business.

But most importantly, it will send these elected officials a strong message that the people are tired of their oppressive behavior.

This should be easy, but it’s not. Out of 200 representatives and senators, some privately strongly agree with us, even the “good” ones are compromised. It’s a cesspool. But we’ll clean it out!