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LWVMA Supports YES on Ballot Question 4

A YES vote keeps the Work and Family Mobility Act as law in Massachusetts.

Question 4, which will be on the November 8 ballot, asks whether to keep the Work and Family Mobility Act as law in Massachusetts. LWVMA and LWVN is supporting Yes on 4.

The Work and Family Mobility Act ensures that all qualified state residents, regardless of immigration status, can apply for a standard Massachusetts driver’s license starting on July 1, 2023. The law was enacted on June 9, 2022. Massachusetts became the 17th state to pass such a law, joining our neighbors New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Vermont. LWVMA supported this bill during the 2019-20 session and is an active member of the coalition, Yes on 4 For Safer Roads.

The League of Women Voters of Massachusetts and the Transportation for Massachusetts (T4MA) coalition presented “Safer Roads for a Stronger Commonwealth,” an online panel discussion about Question 4.  At this forum, civic, business, transportation and public safety experts talked about what this law will do – and will not do – for Massachusetts. Watch the recording here. 

View and download the Yes on 4 for Safer Roads flyer.

LWVN Signs on To Petition Supporting Funding for Early Education and Child Care

On June 12, 2022, LWVN signed on to the Common Start Coalitions’ Petition calling on state legislators from both the House and Senate to maximize funding in this year’s state budget for early education and child care contemplated in An Act to Expand Access to High-Quality, Affordable Early Education and Care, H.4795/S.2883. If the State Legislature passes this bill and the Governor signs, it will greatly improve the Commonwealth’s early education and child care system, ensuring high-quality early education and child care that is affordable and accessible for all families.

Read more information on the Common Start Coalition.

See President Marcia Johnson’s memo to the LWVN Board notifying it of this action and the reasons for taking it.

LWVN Signs on to Childcare Advocacy Action

LWVMA Supports Funding for Early Education and Child Care

LWVMA is also supporting funding for early education and child care in this year’s state budget and providing affordable and accessible high quality early education and childcare in Massachusetts is a LWVMA priority bill that was featured at Day on the Hill. See League testimony here and fact sheet here.

Take Action Now

Please contact your legislators to ask them to encourage the Legislature’s budget conference committee to include the new early education and child care funding from both the House AND Senate budgets in their final conference budget. If the priorities of both chambers make it into the final budget, it would represent a substantial step toward implementing our full vision of a high-quality early education and childcare system that is affordable and accessible for all families.

Please call or email your state Senator and Representative; leave a voice message. Find your legislator’s contact information here.

Here is a suggested script:

I’m a member of the League of Women Voters of ________ and a constituent. I am contacting you about the Common Start early education and childcare funding provisions that are part of the House and Senate budget bills now in the budget conference committee. I am asking you to urge the Legislature’s budget conference committee to include the new early education and child care funding from both the House AND Senate budgets in their final conference budget, to advance the vision of a high-quality early education and childcare system that is affordable and accessible for all families in Massachusetts.

Thank you!

(Your name and your street address)

State Council/National Convention

State Council Set for June 11

The 2022 LWVMA Council will be held on Saturday, June 11 from 9:00 to 10:30 a.m.  

Ellen Clegg, former Editorial Page Editor of The Boston Globe, and Northeastern University Professor Dan Kennedy, are the keynote speakers. Their remarks will focus on the collapse of community journalism and its causes. We will learn, too, of the alternative paths that entrepreneurial journalists are creating to keep providing news and information citizens need to govern themselves in a democracy.

There’s no limit to the number of members who can register; the leadership of LWVN will designate its voting delegates. There is no cost to attend as delegate or as an observer.

This event will be held on zoom.  Register here.

For questions about the State Council, please contact the LWVMA Office at (857) 452-1715.

National Convention Set for June 23-26

LWVUS has published the first call for its 55th Annual Convention June 23 – 26, 2022.  This event will beheld in-person.  More information can be found here.

If you are a member of LWVN and would like to attend either the State Council or the National Convention, please Contact Us so that we can know who will be attending.

 

LWVMA Statement on Leaked Supreme Court Opinion

The League of Women Voters of Massachusetts views the leaked Supreme Court opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, if it holds, as an attack on a fundamental right to health care and to the right of pregnant people to make their own decisions about what is best for them. In light of the probable overturning of Roe v. Wade, the League expresses its gratitude to the Massachusetts state legislature for passing, in 2020, the ROE Act, legislation that codified the right to an abortion in Massachusetts regardless of any U.S. Supreme Court decision. We salute our partners in reproductive health advocacy for their work in anticipating the need for this legislation.

We now urge the legislature to continue this work protecting the right to make one’s own health care decisions by passing without delay two additional bills:

  • 1196/S.673 An Act ensuring access to full spectrum pregnancy care. This bill would provide financial assistance for a full-range of pregnancy-related care. See our testimony.
  • 2399/S.1470 An Act to require public universities to provide medication abortion. See our testimony.

The national League of Women Voters continues to advocate for these rights on the federal level. Read their statement here.

LWVN Supports An Act Promoting Community Immunity

The League of Women Voters of Massachusetts has endorsed and testified in support of S.1517/H.2271, An Act Promoting Community Immunity.

This bill is currently in jeopardy of being killed off by the house.  Please send emails to Chairs Marjorie Decker and Jo Comerford of the Joint Committee on Public Health, Senate President Karen Spilka, and House Speaker Ron Marino, urging them to move the bill out favorably. Their emails are as follows:

For your convenience, here is a template email you can use:

“Dear Speaker Mariano, Senate President Spilka, Chair Decker, and Chair Comerford:

I urge you in the strongest possible terms to release the Community Immunity Act from the Public Health Committee today and send it to the Senate for speedy consideration. We are quite literally living through the consequences of our state’s drastic flaws in infectious disease prevention infrastructure. This bill, carefully crafted with input from experts in both public health and government administration, provides the infrastructure we desperately and obviously need. In the 2019-2020 school year, nearly 100 kindergarten programs throughout the state had 10% or more of their students missing vaccines and also missing an exemption form; that is an infrastructure problem. In the same school year, more than 2,000 school and daycare programs failed to report any vaccination or immunization data to the Department of Public Health; that is an infrastructure problem. We have no statutory support for DPH to do concerted and targeted education and outreach in communities at an elevated risk for the spread of infectious disease; that is an infrastructure problem. We have no notification to parents and caregivers when programs their children attend drop below herd immunity rates for measles, whooping cough, polio, or any other vaccine-preventable infectious disease; that is an infrastructure problem.We have serious immunization infrastructure problems and we need a serious immunization infrastructure bill to fix it. The Community Immunity Act is that bill. Failing to advance and enact this bill will be failing all of us throughout Massachusetts, and particularly the communities hardest hit by COVID-19.Thank you in advance for your support.

Respectfully,”

Transportation and Climate Initiative – May 20th at 4:00PM

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Join League members from Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island for this special, tri-state League sponsored event to learn how we can all help reduce pollution that causes respiratory diseases such as asthma while investing equitably in modern, clean, regional transportation solutions.

When: Thursday, May 20th, 2021 from 4:00-5:00pm

RSVP at: tinyURL.com/lwv2021tci

Cosponsors: League of Women Voters of Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, Transportation Team of LWV US Climate Interest Group, The Acadia Center, Ceres, Green Energy Consumer Alliance, and Transportation for Massachusetts