With a proposal that emerged Tuesday and that House leaders plan to push through Wednesday, the House plans to take a now-and-later approach to reforming the process citizens can use to make state law via ballot questions.
The near-term effect of the bill (H 5549) released by the House Ways and Means Committee is to expand disclosure rules for ballot question campaigns in a bid to reveal a more steady flow of information about funding sources and to impose new requirements around paid signature-gathering. It tracks closely with the bill (S 2916) that passed the Senate unanimously in January.
But the House is also looking further down the road, and unlike the Senate is proposing to create a special legislative commission to review the entire initiative petition process as laid out in the Massachusetts Constitution. That group would be tasked with recommending statutory and constitutional amendments to change the process by the end of 2027.
“The commission will examine a range of issues, including whether to expand the Attorney General’s certification process to include a more thorough constitutional review, as well as the process of ensuring that voters receive a fair and accurate summary of proposed measures,” House Speaker Ronald Mariano, a frequent critic of the initiative petition process, said in a statement. “Ultimately, this bill will help to ensure that the initiative petition process is working as it was intended when it was ratified in 1918, and that it will remain worthy of the public’s trust. I look forward to continued conversations with the Membership, and to passing this legislation tomorrow.”
The 2026 ballot question cycle has been a particularly messy one. A petition seeking to repeal the legal marijuana industry faced (and survived) allegations that paid signature gatherers collecting support to get the question on the ballot lied to voters about what they were signing. That same petition and a handful of others were contested to the Supreme Judicial Court. The cannabis petition was cleared to proceed, but the SJC ruled that Attorney General Andrea Campbell should not have certified two of the other questions she did and that she summarized another question so poorly that it could not fairly be put before voters.
Mariano said the bill the House will pass Wednesday, which is also the ultimate deadline for this year’s ballot question campaigns to file the signatures necessary to get on the ballot, is a response “to widespread concerns about the ballot question process.” Supporters say that process allows them to put important topics directly before voters, when the Legislature drags its feet or refuses to take them up.
“Over the past several years, we have seen a growing number of well-funded special interest groups turn to the ballot to advance their agendas through one up-or-down vote, bypassing the negotiation and compromise inherent to the legislative process,” he said. “Oftentimes, the opposition is equally well-resourced, which has led to high-stakes litigation and, in some cases, judicial removal of questions from the ballot.”
Under the bill, statewide ballot question committees would have to designate a bank depository, which would then trigger regular monthly reports on their finances until 60 days before the election. Currently, ballot committees don’t have to report on their finances between Jan. 20 and September – a stretch of time that Mariano previously dubbed a “blackout period.”
Once the election is within 60 days, campaigns would have to file twice-monthly reports until Election Day. The reports would be filed with the Office of Campaign and Political Finance and publicly posted online, as is already the case for individual candidates. The bill would require disclosure of in-kind contributions exceeding $50 and newly incurred liabilities and their purpose, and would require disclosure within 72 hours for contributions of $500 or more received shortly before an election.
Mirroring language the Senate added via a Sen. Barry Finegold amendment, the House Ways and Means bill includes a provision requiring paid signature gatherers to use petition forms that clearly state the gatherer is being paid and prohibiting ballot campaigns from offering rewards based on the number of signatures a gatherer collects, like a fee-per-signature arrangement.
The secretary of state would have to report within 60 days of a state election on whether signature-gathering activities complied with the law, and the bill establishes civil penalties of between $100 and $10,000 for violations.
The House Ways and Means Committee bill also adds to OCPF’s requirements, mandating that the agency refer evidence of campaign finance violations related to statewide ballot questions to the attorney general within specified timeframes, including up to three years after the relevant election.
The nine-person Commission on Reforming the Ballot Initiative Process contemplated in the bill would be led by the co-chairs of the Joint Committee on Election Laws and include the attorney general or a designee, the secretary of state or a designee, one member selected by the House speaker for their ballot question experience, one chosen by the Senate president for their ballot question experience, and three members to be selected by the governor: a retired justice of the Supreme Judicial Court, a representative of Common Cause Massachusetts and a city or town clerk with at least 10 years of election administration experience.
By Dec. 31, 2027, the commission would be required to file a report with recommendations related to whether to add to the attorney general’s initiative petition certification process an evaluation of whether a proposed measure, if enacted, would violate the Massachusetts Constitution or the U.S. Constitution; how to ensure voters receive a fair and concise summary of an initiative petition and “whether adequate mechanisms exist to identify and correct a summary found to be inaccurate or misleading” after signatures have been collected; the required number and makeup of signatures collected to get on the ballot; and the timeline of the ballot question process, including “the relationship between initiative petition deadlines and the biennial legislative calendar and whether greater alignment of those timelines may improve the process.”
The House Ways and Means Committee polled a variety of other legislation Tuesday, including a new version of legislation (S 3106) the Senate passed June 4 to ban the use of DEHP, a plasticizer found in IV bags and tubing, due to concerns about its potential health risks.
The committee also released a new draft of H 5192, which would authorize the Division of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance to take the land Norwood Hospital sits on by eminent domain. The 215-bed hospital shuttered after devastating flooding in 2020 and construction to rebuild it was halted in 2024 after Steward Health Care stopped paying a contractor. The project’s status has been in flux and local lawmakers have been active in trying to make something happen at the former hospital site.
Committee members also polled out drafts of H 2896 dealing with collective bargaining agreements and Mass. Water Resources Authority employees, and H 5190 directing DCAMM to release three encumbrances the state holds on property in Revere.
Colin Young is the deputy editor for State House News Service and State Affairs Pro Massachusetts. Reach him at colin.young@statehousenews.com.
