This July 31 is “already different” compared to this time two years ago, House Speaker Ron Mariano said Thursday, telling reporters “there’s less of a potential” for lawmakers to be in the building into the wee hours of the morning on Aug. 1.
“Most of the stuff is starting to happen. We have some conference committees that are starting to complete their work, and the rest are still working. So we know that the pressure will not be the same as it was last year. It’s that simple,” Mariano said following a closed-door House Democrat caucus.
“I think it will look more like a regular business day than last year. It was just — I was still here at 3:30 in the morning,” Mariano said. On July 31, 2024, lawmakers failed to reach agreements on several major priorities following a marathon session that lasted nearly 24 hours. In the ensuing months, they bent their rules to take up legislative accords once they were reached.
Two years ago, the House adjourned at 9:19 a.m. and the Senate at 9:57 a.m. after conducting legislative business throughout July 31 and for most of the first half of Aug. 1. The News Service caught up with Mariano Aug. 1 as he was emerging from a breakfast near the State House.
Lawmakers passed a new package of rules in 2025 enabling them to take up bills in formal sessions past July 31, as long as those bills are in conference committee by that date. Other bills can also advance in informal sessions with unanimous consent.
Asked if he thinks the pressure will just get kicked down the road to the final day of the 2025-2026 legislative session on Jan. 6, Mariano said, “No. No. Well that remains to be seen, but I think there’s plenty of time in there to get the work done.”
“I think that you see that when you take some of the pressure off of these deadlines, that we’re starting to get two or three rolled through and say they’re finished. We got information that maybe one will be done for tomorrow,” the Quincy Democrat said.
Pressed about which committee he was referring to, Mariano said, “Remains to be seen. I don’t know. I don’t have my scorecard with me. But we do keep score, so we will just see.”
The conference committee negotiating a home care licensure bill announced an agreement in principle on Thursday morning, after the committee tasked with negotiating an immigrant protections bill announced an agreement Wednesday.
That leaves 11 remaining conference committees, including one addressing economic development and another addressing enhanced teacher retirement benefits that are both taking shape. Committees tasked with negotiating bills relative to campaign finance, violence against healthcare workers and pets have all six conferees but have not yet held their first official meetings.
The Senate Rules Committee announced on Thursday that it voted to send to the full Senate a bill that the House passed last week (H 5595) addressing abortions that can be performed after 24 weeks of gestation. The House is taking up a bill (H 5618) addressing primary care and prescription drugs after the Senate last week passed a bill (S 3141) tackling primary care reform.
Asked if there are any bills the House has passed that he’s waiting on the Senate to pass, Mariano paused.
“I don’t – my head’s mush. My head’s mush. I don’t, I can’t remember,” he told reporters.
House Ways and Means polled five bills on Thursday morning, including a move over road safety proposal, a bill expanding coverage for prosthetics, and legislation addressing licenses related to the buying and selling of secondhand motor vehicles. The committee still possesses more than 1,100 other pieces of legislation.
“Obviously, we’re not going to get to all of those bills before the end of tomorrow. We certainly have been able to pull out a number of bills over the last couple weeks here, we’ve been pretty consistent. Obviously, just polled out a couple more today,” House Ways and Means Chair Aaron Michlewitz said when asked how he’s approaching bill decisions at Ways and Means.
“We’re working through that right now. But some of them we’re a little more familiar with than others. Others, some of them just got to the committee, you know, relatively recently, so we’re not going to necessarily have enough time to go through them before the end of tomorrow,” he said. “But certainly, there’s other times before the end of the year that we can go through them.”
Ella Adams is a reporter for the State House News Service and State Affairs Massachusetts. Reach her at ella.adams@statehousenews.com.Â
