Progressives Pull Out Some Wins at Mass. State House

It's been another tough legislative year for progressives. The battle over the 2011 state budget - and most legislation that will be passed this year - ended with no real job creation program in sight, the winnowing or destruction of many decent state programs, and an accelerating regressive taxation regime. But there have been a few bright spots that it would be remiss of this publication to fail to mention. So this week I thought I'd send some love out to the organizations that successfully pushed legislation through what can only be called a conservative consensus at the Mass. State House and won some good stuff for working people in a time of economic crisis.

First up, the CORI win. I was actually around at organizing meetings at the beginning of this fight 5 years back. And to see it move from discussions among a group of largely African-American workers at the Dudley Square public library in Roxbury - convened, I hasten to add, by the much-maligned Boston City Councilor Chuck Turner - to those same workers building a statewide multiracial coalition that included leaders in the criminal justice community. And on to winning genuine reform that will allow former prisoners that have done their time to have to wait fewer years before being able to apply for jobs without mentioning their prison record ... I mean, that's just an impressive feat. Former Turner aide Aaron Tanaka, executive director of Boston Workers Alliance and co-coordinator of the Commonwealth CORI Coalition has spearheaded the effort from day one, and deserves major props for his organizing acumen and tenacity. The changes to the CORI law will shortly have a most salutary effect on the job prospects of large numbers of poor people - many of whom have done time for non-violent offenses that people from wealthier backgrounds almost never get sent up for.

Second, the success of the campaign to pass An Act to Stabilize Neighborhoods - which will stop lenders from evicting rent-paying tenants after foreclosure - was also a good and important victory given that the foreclosure crisis continues to drag on in the Bay State as around the nation. This campaign was spearheaded by a coalition called the Mass. Alliance Against Predatory Lending that also involved organizations around the state. MAAPL was originally coordinated by Grace Ross, recently a Democratic gubernatorial candidate, and is now coordinated by Amaad Rivera. Kudos to all involved.

And finally, the Mass. Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health got a law passed that bans the use of highly-flammable wood floor finishing product (lacquer sealer_ that has been linked to home fired that have killed floor finishers and caused about $1.5 million in damages in this state alone (see an op-ed by MassCOSH on this issue in our Opinion section). This bill is also a pro-immigrant bill since advocates say that the floor finishing industry in the Commonwealth is concentrated in the Vietnamese community. Great work by the industry/labor/community MassCOSH-convened Floor Finishing Safety Task Force on this one.

If there are any progressive victories I missed, I'd love to hear about them in the comments section as always. But here's hoping that bills that help working people do ever better in the legislative sessions to come. I'd like to close with some encouragement for all those individuals and organizations who continue to fight the good fight on causes that the rich and powerful - that have far too much influence in state politics as they do on the federal level - regularly do their best to bury ... keep it up.

[And remember to write about your ongoing campaigns here in the Open Media Boston Opinion section. The inquiring minds that follow us, always want to know what up ...]

Jason Pramas is Editor/Publisher of Open Media Boston

UPDATE: Good Jobs First - the folks that make it their business to cast light on the many many shady dealings between corporations and government in the U.S. - mentioned another recent progressive win in their Clawback blog entry this week that I hadn't heard about. It seems that MassPIRG, One Massachusetts and Common Cause Mass. got a couple of sunshine bills passed. To quote GJF, "The first is the creation of a checkbook-style “Google government” transparency site for the state that will allow citizens to view and monitor state spending by public and quasi-public entities. The addition of this transparency site to Massachusetts’ contract disclosure site and its Recovery Act transparency site creates a strong foundation for enhancing spending accountability. The second reform enacted with the state budget is the requirement that the new transparency site disclose the names of recipients of certain types of business tax credit subsidies. Refundable tax credits (credits for which any amount exceeding the recipient’s tax liability is issued as a cash grant) and salable and transferable tax credits (credits that may be sold or transferred to other business entities when their value exceeds the original recipient’s tax liability) will be more transparent under this new law." You can read the relevant Clawback blog entry here. Nice work by all the organizations involved in pushing these reforms through.