Advocates for Granting Driver Licenses to Undocumented Point to Pandemic

Because it can take a long time to enact a bill, and because many bills wither and die half-way to the goal of enactment,  advocacy groups often add new wrinkles to their lobbying campaigns in the hope of re-energizing their causes, generating positive publicity, and spurring movement in the legislature.

What happened earlier this month in the project to pass a bill allowing undocumented immigrants to obtain Massachusetts driver licenses is a case in point.

During the current legislative session (and in previous sessions as well), advocates for licensing the undocumented have presented the cause as a commonsensical response to the transportation needs of a vital, hardworking, family-oriented sector of the population and as an evidence-based step toward improving  public safety.  Now, they're adding this argument:

Allowing the undocumented to drive legally would serve to inhibit the spread of the coronavirus and simultaneously boost the state's economic recovery from the COVID-19-related recession.

Here's Natalicia Tracy, executive director of the Brazilian Workers Center and co-chair of the Driving Families Forward campaign:

"This bill -- to license all drivers, regardless of immigration status -- needs to be an essential piece of our public health and economic security policy.  Without driver's licenses, many of our essential workers have to crowd onto buses or subway cars to get to work.  This puts their lives and our community's health at risk."

The above was excerpted from an article published online May 21 by the State House News Service and headlined, "Driver's License Bill Reframed as Public Health Priority."

In that article, the other Driving Families Forward co-chair, Roxana Rivera, an officer in the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), was quoted thusly:

"Before the pandemic, this policy (licensing the undocumented) was common sense.  Now, it is about protecting lives and helping workers put food on the table.  If undocumented workers are better able to access good jobs safely, they will help our economy bounce back more quickly and help the state generate more revenue in the long term."

Last year, the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center estimated that 185,000 undocumented immigrants were residing in Massachusetts.  The folks at Driving Families Forward predict that, if these immigrants were permitted to drive, up to 78,000 of them would obtain licenses during the three years following enactment of such a law.

Senate Bill 2641, An Act Relative to Work and Family Mobility, and its identical lower-branch companion, House Bill 3012, would change Chapter 90 of the Massachusetts General Laws by, one, eliminating the portion of it stating that "no license of any type may be issued to any person who does not have a lawful presence in the United States," and, two, adding language to it making persons who cannot provide "proof of lawful presence" eligible for driver licenses "if they meet all other qualifications for licensure and provide satisfactory proof" to the Registry of Motor Vehicles "of identity, date of birth and Massachusetts residency."

SB2641/HB3012 were heard before the Joint Committee on Transportation last September.  On April 21, the committee voted 14 to 4 to send a redrafted version of it, with a favorable report, to the Senate Ways & Means Committee.  No action on it has since been taken.

The bill sent by the Transportation Committee to Senate Ways & Means would, if enacted, require an undocumented immigrant who is seeking a license to furnish two forms of identification, including at least one with a photograph and one with a date of birth.

Rep. Christine Barber, D-Somerville, a co-sponsor of the bill in the House, said in April, "The minute the bill was released favorably, we started hearing directly from colleagues who are really supportive and happy that the bill is moving.  There is support.  We're continuing to build support." [Source: State House News Service]  Rep. Barber also said:

"Undocumented people actually have a lot of documents.  They're not just legal permanent residents of the United States...Most of these folks are people who have lived here for a really long time.  They're members of our community.  They need to drive to either get to work or to take their kids to a doctor.  They are probably driving anyway and we'd rather have people have insurance, have passed a driver's test, pass a vision test, and actually have a license when they get pulled over, than to have them driving and not be insured."

In all, 84 members of the House and Senate have signed onto SB2641/HB3012 as sponsors or co-sponsors.  That number represents 42 percent of the 200-member legislature, which consists of 40 senators and 160 representatives.

Also recorded in favor of the bill are Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, Cambridge Mayor Sumbul Siddiqui, Lawrence Mayor Dan Rivera, Lynn Mayor Tom McGee and Somerville Mayor Joe Curtatone.

Some legislative leaders are reportedly cool to the idea of advancing  An Act Relative to Work and Family Mobility any farther than Senate Ways & Means in this session.  And Governor Charlie Baker is flat-out opposed to the bill.

This past February, explaining his opposition, Baker said, "I've said for many years that I think it's really hard to build the kind of safeguards into that kind of process that would create the kind of security that would be hard to live up to some of the federal and state standards with respect to security and identification.  And, for those reasons, I don't support that legislation."

The driver licenses envisaged by SB2641/HB3012 would not be compliant with the new federally-tailored REAL-ID program; licensees could not use them, for example, to board a plane or gain entry to a federal building.

In matters of prognostication, I am as accurate as a chimp tossing darts at a board.  Something there is about the métier of blogging, however, that rather foolishly invites/encourages predictions.  I'll rush in then to predict An Act Relative to Work and Family Mobility will pass the Senate but never come to a vote in the House this year.

If I'm wrong, and if the House does take up the bill and enact it, and if the governor vetoes it, I predict there will be enough votes in the Senate, 27, to override the veto, but not enough in the House, 107, to effect a successful override, meaning the long, hard-fought campaign to provide qualified undocumented immigrants with the opportunity to legally drive a motor vehicle in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts will have expired tantalizingly short of victory.

Fast, Welcome Medicine but No Cure: $4 Billion from Feds to MA Citizens

The feds have opened the money spigot and literally billions of dollars have flowed directly to  citizens of Massachusetts.

How much money are we talking?  Four billion -- as in $4,000,000,000!

That's the number the U.S. Treasury and Internal Revenue Service put out earlier this month in a joint announcement.

To be precise, there were 2,503,206 individual federal economic stimulus/ pandemic relief checks sent to Massachusetts, as of Friday, May 8, those agencies reported...and all those checks added up to $4,008,005,049.

The average payment to Massachusetts individuals was $1,200.

According to the IRS, during the first four weeks of the stimulus program, roughly 130 million persons nationwide  received federal checks with a cumulative value of $200 billion.

IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig said, "We are working hard to continue delivering these payments to Americans who need them.  The vast majority of payments have been delivered in record time, and millions more are on the way every week."

Four billion dollars suddenly finding its way into the pockets of two-and-a-half million Bay Staters is a big deal. Obviously, it is helping us weather the COVID-19 economic depression, especially the million or so who have lost their jobs.

But it is no panacea.  It cannot make everyone whole.  It cannot begin to banish every fear about money and the future.  One reason why is the enormity and complexity of the Massachusetts economy.

According to a 24/7 Wall Street analysis, our state's gross domestic product in 2019 approached $500 billion!

The precise Massachusetts GDP for that year was $490,200,000,000.

Our annual economic output was about the same as that of the country of Norway, the 24/7 Wall Street analysis indicated.  On the stage of the world economy, we'd be considered a little giant, pre-pandemic.

Now, the little giant's in the ICU with multiple, compound fractures.

It's going to take many months for it just to walk, and maybe years before it can run again.

New Bill Would Revolutionize Absentee Voting as a COVID-19 Work-Around

With wary eyes on the pandemic, more than a third of the members of the legislature have signed on to a newly-filed bill that would  allow anyone and everyone who wanted to vote by absentee ballot this fall do so.

There's a lot to like about, House Docket #5075,  An Act Ensuring Safe and Participatory 2020 State Elections in Response to COVID-19.

But one of the big questions it raises is: Are we ready to wait 10 days after the election this November to know all of the results?

Before getting to that issue, let me describe three aspects of HD5075:

• It proposes to create a new definition of who'd be eligible for an absentee ballot by reason of  disability. For the purposes of the law, you'd be considered disabled if you did not want to go to a polling place for fear of catching the coronavirus.  Section 2 of the bill says "that all voters who are ill, are confined to their homes to avoid transmission of illness, or wish to avoid polling places as a precautionary measure related to COVID-19, are unable by reason of physical disability to cast their votes in person at the polling places [underlining added]."  
• Nineteen days before both the September 1, 2020, state primaries and the November 3, 2020, biennial state election, it would require Secretary of State William Galvin to mail to every registered voter "an absent voting ballot and accompanying papers."  Every voter this fall would get an absentee ballot without applying for one!  The choice to vote that way would then be up to them.
• As a COVID-19-centric measure, it applies only to the September 1, 2020, and November 3, 2020, elections.  This bill would have to be amended, or another bill would have to enacted by a subsequent legislature, to institute permanent universal access to absentee voting.

As for vote-counting, Section 6 of HD5075 stipulates that, if a voter mailed in his/her absentee ballot "not later than November 3," and if that mailed-in ballot were received by the city or town clerk in that voter's community "not later than November 13," the clerk would have to count it.

That's quite a change from the existing situation in Massachusetts.

Currently, for an absentee ballot to be counted, it must be received by the voter's local election office no later than the time the polls close on election day.  That vote is then added to, and counted among, all the ballots cast that day.

The bill was filed only five days ago, on May 5.  The lead bill sponsors in the House are Rep. John J. Lawn, Jr., D-Watertown, and Rep. Michael J. Moran, D-Boston.  The lead in the Senate is Eric Lesser, D-Longmeadow. There are 60 co-sponsors of the bill in the House and 7 co-sponsors in the Senate.

An Act Ensuring Safe and Participatory 2020 State Elections in Response to COVID-19 is so new it doesn't yet have a bill number.  It has not yet been assigned to a committee or scheduled for a hearing.

That is not to say the bill is so late as to have no chance.  The COVID-19 pandemic has entirely upended our lives and changed so many of our behaviors and attitudes.  When the fall elections heave into view, voters could begin clamoring for universal access to absentee balloting.

I only hope that the legislature, if it embraces this bill, will set earlier deadlines for submission of absentee ballots so that we'll have the traditional satisfaction of knowing who's won or lost on the night of an election, or before breakfast on the morning after.