Transparency and a Government That Answers to You

Until recently, lawmakers on Beacon Hill took most of their votes behind closed doors, and Massachusetts is the only state in the country where the governor, legislature, and judiciary all exempt themselves from public records law. They prioritize corporate interests over our communities, and with no transparency, we don't have a voice or the ability to hold legislators accountable. It is no coincidence that ours is also one of the least productive legislatures in the country: when power is concentrated behind closed doors, the bills our communities need die quietly in committee. Erika co-founded Act on Mass to change this. Act on Mass organized ballot campaigns across the state, and won: as of last year, every committee vote is now posted publicly online. That transparency is already delivering results: when the public could see what was in the energy bill, the poison pills that would have raised your bills were stripped out, and with that same accountability the Legislature finally moved legislation to protect our immigrant neighbors.

Everyone Deserves a Voice

For Erika, this fight is personal. Raised by a single immigrant mother, one of her earliest memories is watching the parents of her classmates mimic her mom's English outside her preschool. As a child, she believed she was inferior because of her race, her class, and the shape of her family. Over time she unlearned that doubt, and she carries the lesson into every room on Beacon Hill: none of us are voiceless, and every single one of us deserves a stake in our government and the right to hold our representatives accountable. When the State House operates in secret, it tells working people, immigrants, and everyone without a lobbyist that their voice does not count. Erika will make sure the voices of our communities are heard loud and clear.

Transparency Is How We Win Everything Else

Transparency is not separate from the fights for housing, healthcare, climate action, and workers' rights. It is a precondition for all of them. A 2021 report from the Climate and Development Lab at Brown University, "Who's Delaying Climate Action in Massachusetts?", documented the problem directly: 90 percent of public testimony on climate bills supported action, and yet the vast majority of those bills died in committee, where votes were held in secret and outcomes were shaped by utility and fossil fuel lobbying that outspent climate advocates more than 3.5 to one. The report's top recommendation was transparency itself: make committee votes public, record floor votes, and archive testimony.

That pattern repeats across every issue our communities care about, and it runs deeper than any single study: for years, a bill could have a majority of the Legislature signed on as co-sponsors, from preventing wage theft to committing to 100 percent renewable energy to protecting reproductive healthcare access, and still be shelved in secret, with no way for you to know how your own representative voted. When the process is opaque, the people who benefit are the ones with lobbyists. When the process is transparent, the people who benefit are constituents. Transparency is how we shift the balance of power, and that is why Erika treats it as the first fight, not a side issue.

What We Have Already Won

Erika co-founded Act on Mass before she was ever elected, because she saw from the outside what she now sees from the inside: secrecy is a policy choice that protects the powerful. Alongside grassroots volunteers, Act on Mass organized ballot campaigns in districts across the state, and the pressure worked. As of last year we won:

• Every committee vote is now public. For the first time in decades, you can see how your legislators vote on every bill in committee, where most legislation lives or dies.
• Written testimony is now released, so the public can see who is pushing for and against a bill, not just who wins.
• Hearings come with real notice and hybrid participation, so working people can weigh in without taking a day off to travel to the State House.
• Conference committees must open their first meeting to the public, a first crack in the most secretive room on Beacon Hill.

And the wins compound: every public committee vote gives organizers a target, every released testimony shows who is standing in the way, and every open meeting makes the next fight easier to win.

Accountability Starts With How Erika Serves

Transparency is not only a demand Erika makes of the institution. It is how she does the job. She has personally knocked over 15,000 doors in the district, sends a weekly newsletter on what is happening on Beacon Hill, holds regular town halls, and writes to constituents explaining her reasoning on hard votes, including when some constituents disagree with her. She believes engaged, critical feedback from the people she represents is exactly how democracy is supposed to work, and she answers to it directly. That is the standard every legislator should be held to, and it is the standard she will bring to the Senate.

Standing Up to the Pressure

State House leadership holds real tools to keep legislators quiet: control over committee assignments, control over stipends that make up a meaningful share of legislators' pay, and the threat of being shut out of shaping legislation. Erika has lived this for three terms, and she has learned that the threat is real but the answer is leverage that leadership cannot take away: do the policy work, build coalitions with colleagues and with unions, tenants, and community organizations on the outside, and mobilize constituents. The broker fee ban did not pass because leadership handed it to Erika. It passed because she built a coalition that made it impossible to ignore. And when a Home Rule Petition threatened to weaken the Lawrence Teachers Union's bargaining position, Erika was the only House member willing to use her procedural right to halt it, and she worked with AFT Massachusetts to win the fight. Years of organizing around the State House taught Erika a lesson she asks voters to apply to every candidate, including her: it is not enough for a legislator to agree with you on the issues. What matters is whether they will stand up for those issues in public, even when it is uncomfortable.

The Unfinished Agenda

In the Senate, Erika will keep working with the transparency coalition she helped build, including Act on Mass, good-government advocates, and colleagues in both chambers who are ready for a Legislature that answers to the public. And she will fight to:

• Give everyone time to read the bill. Almost always, legislators have only a few hours to review a bill before filing amendments, even when it is hundreds of pages long. Erika will fight for a guaranteed review period measured in days, not hours, so legislators, advocates, and the public can weigh in before a vote, not after.
• Apply the public records law to all three branches of government. Massachusetts is the only state where the governor, legislature, and judiciary all exempt themselves, which means the public cannot request the documents behind the decisions that shape their lives, a basic right people have in every other state. That must end.
• Bring the open meeting law to the Legislature. Every city council and school committee in Massachusetts deliberates in public. The Legislature should too, especially conference committees, where six lawmakers determine the near-final version of a bill behind closed doors.
• Defend the audit voters demanded. Nearly 72 percent of voters approved the audit of the Legislature, and it still faces resistance and litigation on Beacon Hill. Erika will fight to see the voters' will carried out in full.
• Reform the stipend system. Leadership-controlled stipends flow to a large majority of legislators and function as a mechanism of control, rewarding silence and punishing independence. Erika supports reforming the system so legislators answer to their constituents, not to the leaders who set their pay.