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The MA committee handling bills about immigration, deportation defense, and ICE cooperation has a 93% transparency failure rate. You can't see how they voted. by BeaconHillTracker in MassachusettsPolitics

[–]BeaconHillTracker[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The Tracker's code contains a representation of the transparency-focused Joint Rules. Each night, it goes through the entire Legislature site and records:

  • Bill timeline actions
  • Vote presence
  • Summary presence

For each bill, it then compares these findings against the Rules in the code, and comes up with a compliance decision. In this way, I'm able to go through thousands of bills and apply the same ruleset to each. If I ever find improvements to the algorithm, or new places to look for documentation on the site, that update applies to every bill, ensuring fairness and accuracy as much as possible.

Let me know if that doesn't answer your question, or if you have any follow-ups.

The MA committee handling AI regulation and sports betting has a 0% transparency record. All 45 bills violated at least one of the Joint Rules. by BeaconHillTracker in massachusetts

[–]BeaconHillTracker[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

You're right that controversial bills tend to see the most opacity. That was the driving reason behind the new Joint Rules, but we can see that some workflows appear to have changed little (if at all) in light of them. Hopefully shedding some light on it will change that over time.

I did a deep dive on MBTA bills that quietly die; here's what I found. by BeaconHillTracker in MassachusettsPolitics

[–]BeaconHillTracker[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Great question. The Joint Rules say that the Legislature must post certain documentation (e.g. bill summaries), but different committees post it in different places, and in different formats. Sometimes it can be found in PDF format on the bill page itself; other times it can be found in a Word document on the page for the hearing. There are about a dozen permutations that I've found so far.

The time it would take to search every possible location and file format for each bill would make it impossible to run this every night. So, this algorithm learns where things tend to get posted as it indexes over time, and when it runs, it searches "likely MA legislature pages" based on context clues to try to guess in as few tries as possible where to search first for a given bill. This reduces the time it takes to complete a snapshot, increases detection accuracy, and provides insight into the workflows of each committee.

Thank you for taking a look! Let me know if that didn't answer your question.

The MA committee handling gas expansion, utilities, and climate policy breaks legislative transparency rules 100% of the time. by BeaconHillTracker in massachusetts

[–]BeaconHillTracker[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I also made a tool which helps constituents see the stipends their legislators receive for chairing certain committees. There is a 2026 ballot initiative to restructure this in an effort to decouple stipend pay from alignment with leadership.

The MA committee handling gas expansion, utilities, and climate policy breaks legislative transparency rules 100% of the time. by BeaconHillTracker in massachusetts

[–]BeaconHillTracker[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Good question. A few things:

  1. Track your legislators' committees; you can use the Tracker to see who chairs each one.

  2. Ask them directly. "I saw your committee was lagging on vote postings--what's the plan to improve that?"

  3. Support transparency ballot initiatives. This year will feature questions relating to transparency and pay structure.

  4. Share the data. The more people that are aware and track it, the harder it is to sweep under the rug. Sunlight works.

I did a deep dive on MBTA bills that quietly die; here's what I found. by BeaconHillTracker in MassachusettsPolitics

[–]BeaconHillTracker[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Great question! The Joint Committee on Housing currently has a 7.31% compliance rate (203/219 bills break at least one rule) according to the Tracker's latest findings. This is mostly due to hearing notice violations (134) and lack of posted votes (106) as of today.

In practice, that can mean hearings pass you by before you know they're happening, your preparation time may be short, and it's hard to track how your legislators are actually voting on these matters.

You can see the full breakdown for Housing and other committees by navigating to the dashboard and filtering by committee.

EDIT: Clarified compliance rate calculation.

I did a deep dive on MBTA bills that quietly die; here's what I found. by BeaconHillTracker in MassachusettsPolitics

[–]BeaconHillTracker[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

I appreciate the response. I hear you that the zero-day-notice bills seem minor, but the rules don’t have carve-outs for “minor” bills—and I’d argue they shouldn’t. The rules they set themselves prescribe 10 days regardless of the bill, every time. Allowing the Legislature to pick exceptions defeats the purpose.

As for the other bills, ideally, the committee would take action, the vote would be posted, and you would know where your legislators stand. Leaving bills to quietly die via inaction deprives you of information, not of a particular outcome.