Guest MINDSETTER™ Goodrich: Legislative Outlook for Early 2016

Friday, December 11, 2015

Guest MINDSETTER™ Andrew Goodrich

As 2015 comes to a close, what is on tap for Beacon Hill early in 2016?

First on the agenda is transparency reform. This will be unfinished business from 2015 because though the House worked on the issue for months, the bill was conveniently passed too late in the year to become a law. Massachusetts is one of the least transparent states in the country, and while the legislature claims that’s unacceptable they have made no progress towards reform. The bill currently passed is extremely weak and actually makes getting public records longer in many cases.

Additionally, the bill didn’t fix many other problems in our public records law. Under the House bill, the state legislature, judiciary, and governor’s office would still be exempted from any transparency laws – a huge loophole that makes large parts of the state government essentially unaccountable.
The burden of proof would still be on the public, meaning that journalists and citizens need to individually request information and then fight the state in court to get it. This is the wrong approach. Instead, government information should be presumed public and the burden should be on the state to keep something secret. If this disclosure-first standard were adopted, it would eliminate the need for a lot of the expensive bureaucracy around public records that towns claim makes transparency difficult.

Beyond transparency reform, fantasy sports regulation might be one of the legislature’s early 2016 priorities. Massachusetts has a long trend of trying to regulate innovative industries. When Uber transformed how people get around cities, members of legislature joined with the embattled taxi industry to over-regulate ride-sharing services. When Airbnb changed how people get short-term rentals, House members wanted to tax the service so high it wouldn’t be competitive against traditional models. When Tesla offered cars with new technology and a new, dealership-less distribution model, state regulator pushed back and banned the new model entirely. It took an order from the SJC to allow Tesla a way to sell its own car to consumers, amazing.

Now, fantasy sports websites like DraftKings and FanDuel are under attack by legislators who want to tax them, regulate them, or simply ban them completely. While there is a place for sensible regulation, too many legislators want to cling to outdated notions about the economy. They view fantasy sports websites as harmful even as our state embraces casino gambling.

Andrew Goodrich is the executive director of Mass Citizens for Jobs

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Guest MINDSETTER™ Goodrich: Legislative Outlook for Early 2016

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