Episode 68: Jon Hecht (Political Activist / Former Town Councilor and State Representative)

Meet Jon Hecht! He's a longtime contributor to the Watertown community from being a town councilor, a state representative for the area, the first president of the Watertown Community Foundation and many other involvements. In this conversation we get into his early work with human rights in China, his first steps into local politics and joining the town council, helping create and being the first chair of the council's budget and fiscal oversight committee, working on open space and park projects, and then his path into becoming a state representative and using the platform to continue improvements in Watertown. Then we switch into his current work on legislative reform and the question he's working to get on the ballot for next year that he believes would open up the state legislative process to be more equitable for committee members and open to the public. 

Released November 12th, 2025

(Click here to listen on streaming apps) (Full transcript below)

Find out more information about the ballot question at stipendreform.com

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Transcript

Matt: 0:07

Hi there, welcome to the Little Local Conversations Podcast. I'm your host, Matt Hanna. Every episode I sit down for a conversation with someone in Watertown to discover the people, places, stories, and ideas of Watertown. This time I sat down with Jon Hecht. He's had a long history of involvement in Watertown, from being a town councilor to the state rep for the area and the first president of the Watertown Community Foundation. So we talk about that. We also talk about his current project that he's working on, which is getting a question on the ballot that addresses some political reform. And before we dive into this conversation, just want to remind people that the Little Local Holiday Giveaway is still going on. For people who sign up to support the podcast, as a monthly supporter, Little Local Friend, have a chance to win one of the many gifts I'm giving away from local businesses and organizations. You have until the day before Thanksgiving to sign up for that. LittleLocalConversations.com slash friend. That's where you can go for more information. Also give more information at the end of this podcast. But for now, let's get into the conversation with Jon.

Jon: 1:09

My name is Jon Hecht, and I've had a number of roles through the years. A life originally that was not locally focused, but then became very much locally focused. Eventually served on the what was then the town council in Watertown, and then as state rep for Watertown for 12 years. And since I left the legislature four years ago, again involved in a number of local organizations while also pursuing an agenda of legislative reform. That leads to the ballot question.

Matt: 1:41

Cool. Well, we'll get into, I'm sure, a lot of those things and definitely that last part as we go through this conversation. But I always like to start off kind of going back in time. Where did you grow up? How did you get interested in politics and that type of stuff? So yeah, let's start back at the beginning.

Jon: 1:57

Right. Well, back in the beginning, I lived up over the hill in Belmont. That's where I grew up. Lived there in all the way through school, all the way through high school. So came to Watertown frequently for sports games.

Matt: 2:10

On the other side. 

Jon: 2:12

On the other side then, yeah. Had a bad ankle injury in a game in Watertown, a soccer game in Watertown in high school. I remember that well. And also used to come to Watertown a lot because my dad actually had his business here out on Pleasant Street. So Watertown was a big part of our lives then, but not as the hometown.

Matt: 2:29

Gotcha. What kind of business did he have?

Jon: 2:30

It was an electronics business. They had a factory out on Pleasant Street close to where Russo's used to be. So it's gone through a couple of uses there through the years.

Matt: 2:41

Yeah. Still waiting on the next one.

Jon: 2:43

Yeah, exactly.

Matt: 2:43

Yeah. Cool. So how did you get into, you know, community involvement, politics? What was your first kind of bug into that world?

Jon: 2:51

Yeah, well, I think like for a lot of people, it started with family and kids. And you know, I started out with a very different plan for what I was gonna do to the extent that I had a plan. You know, I was very focused on international issues. I wanted to be a State Department diplomat or something like that. And I actually spent the first, you know, 15, 20 years after I came out of graduate school focused on that in a different way than I had originally thought. I mean, I was not a diplomat, but I got very involved in international human rights work and was focused especially on China. When I came out of college, China was just opening up to the world. And I had an opportunity to go there as an English teacher originally and got very caught up in what was happening in China and its emergence into the world because China had been closed to the world for a long time. And it was an incredible experience to work with people there who were trying to learn what was happening in the rest of the world. It was just so much pent-up interest and energy. 

Jon: 3:57

So I worked to be part of that and make myself useful, both to, you know, what people in China were trying to do, especially around human rights issues, but also to serve as a bridge of sorts so that people in the U.S. understood better what was happening in China. So that's what I did for a long time. I worked for the Ford Foundation as a grant maker in China in the early 1990s. We were doing grants for organizations that were there working in law and through law, sort of quietly on human rights, because it was a very sensitive topic. That's really where I was putting my energies for a long time. And then we came back from China in the mid-90s and landed in Watertown a little bit by chance. You know, I knew Watertown, and both my wife and I were working in Cambridge and wanted to be close, but we had two small kids and needed a little bit more room. We immediately just loved the feel of Watertown. I think in part because we had been living overseas, and Watertown just felt so interesting. There were so many people from so many different backgrounds and cultures, and our kids started in the schools at the Hosmer. You know, we got to know other families and the teachers there and so on, and just got really excited about being in Watertown. And we've been here ever since.

Matt: 5:21

Yeah. We’ll get into Watertown. But before we leave the China bit, I'm just curious, is there any stories that people might find interesting about your experience being in China? You know, was there any particular interactions you had that stuck out, or any particular thing that you helped out with there, helping someone there, or you know, just anything to give the vibe of what was kind of going on there?

Jon: 5:42

Yeah. I mean, there were so many things. I don't know if I can think of one particular story. You know, when we first went to China, I mean my wife, she wasn't my wife at the time, but we both came out of college at the same time and both went into this program to be English teachers in China. And I mean, at that time there were so few foreigners in China that, you know, we were a source of fascination for people just the way we look and the way we dressed. And my wife is very blonde, and that was very, you know, fascinating for people. So, you know, we did a lot of traveling around the country. We were teachers, so we had a summer break, and we would travel on the trains all over the country, had these long train rides of, you know, 24 hours, 36 hours. The trains were old and slow, and everybody would be jammed in together in these cars, and we met people who, again, had never interacted with people from outside China. 

Matt: 6:36

You were like a celebrity. 

Jon: 6:38

Yeah, or uh, you know, or an oddity or an interesting animal.

Matt: 6:43

Yeah.

Jon: 6:44

You know, it was sort of a combination of all those things. But it was, you know, again, to have that chance to be part of in both directions, you know, learning about places and people that you don't understand and they know very little about you and your background. And yet finding ways to connect and laugh and drink together and you know, all the stuff that you do just to have fun with people was that was all an amazing experience.

Matt: 7:09

Yeah. Cool. Yeah, they didn't have the bullet trains back then, huh?

Jon: 7:12

No, no, no. China the way China has changed in the 40 plus years since we were there is astounding.

Matt: 7:18

Yeah. Yeah. Cool. So let's work our way back. So you came to Watertown. So how did you start getting involved with things here?

Jon: 7:24

Well again, you know, a lot of it was just becoming school families and getting involved in youth sports, you know, soccer. I was a soccer coach with Watertown Youth Soccer for many years. You know, our kids did Little League, they did children's theater, all the stuff that again is the fun of being in a community and just became part of what was going on, you know, with other families. And of course, you then, as your kids start moving through the schools, you become invested in making sure the schools are getting better. That very easily leads you into activism, political work, et cetera. So I, you know, that was really the path.

Matt: 8:05

Yeah. Was there a first project where you kind of stepped the line over from like concerned citizen to taking an active role in something?

Jon: 8:14

Yeah, I think trying to remember what year it was, but the schools were our focus initially. And there were always school committee races that were important, and we got involved in some of those just as, you know, handing out materials at people's doors and stuff like that. That was probably when we first became sort of politically involved. Again, I don't remember, you know, exactly which year or which campaign it was, but you know, that's sort of the entry point.

Matt: 8:41

Yeah. And then what was your first step of thinking about, because you've had public office positions, what was your first step into that and thinking about that as an option?

Jon: 8:50

Well, I think it was a combination of just getting more and more involved locally and just seeing more and more things that we cared about and wanted to try to help with. And then on the other hand, the work that I was doing, again, mainly internationally, mainly in China, began to feel a little bit too kind of removed from the things that I cared about the most, which were, you know, my family and what was happening in the community. And it was also a time politically when it sort of felt like we needed to take more responsibility and dive in more ourselves. I remember in particular, you know, this was in the first term of the second Bush presidency. We had the Iraq War. I guess I increasingly began to feel like my responsibility and my stake is really here in this country. And, you know, I had been spending at that point already, probably close to 20 years, professionally working on things in Asia and mainly in China. And that was great and interesting and gratifying and felt worthwhile. But at the end of the day, it's their country, their decisions to make. You know, my role was mainly as a facilitator, a channel to options for people to consider. But at the end of the day, the decisions were for people there to make. And I began to feel like, well, we got a lot of problems right here where I have a state as a citizen. So I wanted to focus more just on what was happening here. And then, you know, also honestly, practically speaking, it was becoming difficult. I was traveling to Asia still quite a lot. And we had at that point three small kids. Well, not so small. I mean, some of them starting to become teenagers, and it wasn't that easy to leave that frequently, and not fair to my wife. So you know, I began to think about how to focus more on things here. And then there was the 2004 presidential campaign. I worked pretty hard on the Kerry campaign. So, you know, that was sort of when I started to shift my focus.

Matt: 10:46

Gotcha. And what was the first step into you personally being like the focus of being a candidate or something like that?

Jon: 10:55

Well, you know, I was doing a fair amount of different stuff locally, all of the stuff related to the schools and the kids. And then the Arts Center was starting, and I got involved in that. We had in 2005 was the 375th anniversary of Watertown. So we're coming up on 400 in a few years. And I got involved in working on that celebration, worked with some incredible people who had done so much in Watertown for so long. You know, Lucia Mastrangelo, who was on the library board of trustees for years and years, Joyce Munger, who did everything in Watertown. And that was sort of another, you know, relationship, sort of a bonding experience that again gave me just a very strong feeling about Watertown and the traditions here and the people here. And then I think, you know, it was sort of, in some ways, happenstance in 2005 was the year that I ran for the council. The district counselor stepped down. I think he may actually have even called me up and asked if I was interested in running. And because I was sort of going through this rethinking about my focus, anyhow, you know, away from Asia and more back toward things here, it just felt like the right time to try something like that.

Matt: 12:13

Yeah. And so you successfully ran for the town council. What was that experience like actually being in office making the actual decisions rather than just facilitating and advising on them?

Jon: 12:24

Exactly. I mean, that's exactly what I wanted to do. And it was great. The council was really a great opportunity to work with people in a way that led to some change. The year that I ran, I think there were four new councilors, maybe, maybe even five. And it was a great group. We did some really, I think, important work together. We really increased the focus on the schools. That was a big part of what we were trying to do. They were also kind of like me, had kids in the schools, had that very much focus on how to make the schools as good as we could. We did some stuff really with how the council works, which was fascinating. We set up the council president of the time, it was Clyde Younger, and I worked together to set up a new committee, the Budget and Fiscal Oversight Committee, which didn't exist. 

Matt: 13:14

Seems like a pretty important one. 

Jon: 13:15

Oddly enough. And really worked to make the council more of a active partner with the manager in figuring out what the priorities of the town should be in terms of the budget. Prior to that, the manager had pretty much, I mean, there was no formal way really for the council to kind of give its input on what the priorities should be. So we set up that committee. I was the first chair of that committee. We set up a system for getting input from the community and then from the councilors as to what the budget priorities should be, and communicating that with the manager and then working with the manager to see that the budget that actually was put in place reflected those priorities. So that was a great one. I mean, sort of a basic element of just good government, but which had not been in place in Watertown. So that was a good one.

Matt: 14:03

Seems like an important step considering how much I hear it thrown around now that we are a very well-positioned fiscally municipality. So it sounds like that was an important step. Any other key issues that you guys took on that you want to mention?

Jon: 14:16

I'm trying to remember what were the other key things. You know, it was a tough financial period. I was on the council in still in 08 when we hit the big recession, and that's always a big challenge. And fortunately, Watertown has steered itself through those situations better than a lot of other communities. You know, we had a growing focus also on just our quality of life issues around town, you know, parks. We began to do some work with the state, which then I picked up later when I became state rep on the parklands along the Charles, which, you know, Watertown being a small town doesn't have a lot of open space to begin with. 

Matt: 14:56

Small city. 

Jon: 14:57

Well, see, there you go. That shows the generational difference between us, Matt. I still can't call it a city. So the parklands along the Charles are really one of our most important open space resources. They're owned by the state.

Matt: 15:09

Right.

Jon: 15:10

So we did a lot of work to try to push the state to deal with some of the safety issues. For example, Nonantum Road. I don't know if you know this, if you were, you know, was a wider, used to be a wider road. 

Matt: 15:23

I actually interviewed Ruth Rappaport. I interviewed Ruth Rappaport about this, and she was involved with this.

Jon: 15:31

Exactly. Yeah, no, Ruth was was a great, great part of that. Yeah, we had accidents over and over and over again over on Nonantum Road, terrible accidents, including, you know, right up almost to the point where the state finally began to do the work to narrow that road, where a young woman in the winter hits, you know, somehow drove off the road and ended up in the river and drowned. I mean, it's just horrible. So that was a big focus. And then also the, you know, given the opportunity to narrow the roads and make the parklands more accessible, then the issue became, well, how do you make parklands quality so that people really want to go there and can enjoy it? So that was a big thing we worked on as well.

Matt: 16:09

Yeah. Nice. And before we step up into your state involvement, where does the like Watertown Community Foundation fit into this? Because was that around the same time?

Jon: 16:19

Yeah. It’s good you mention that. I overlooked that. I shouldn't have. I was the first president of the Watertown Community Foundation. Was also around that time, 2003, 2004, that was getting going. Again, you know, like so many of the things that I've been involved in in town, it was the other people that I worked with that were the source of so much of the fun and inspiration in it all. You know, Roberta Miller was a huge part of that coming out of the work that she done on the arsenal redevelopment, so many others as well. And sort of the idea that Watertown could support a community foundation was something that a lot of people didn't believe. You know, we had the money from the arsenal redevelopment, but you know, would the community rally behind it and sustain it? You know, if you look in the textbooks about community foundations, you know, most of them will tell you you can't have a community foundation in a community of this size. You need one that's, you know, like Cambridge or Boston. And I think we proved that wrong. And I was involved in the very early days. We really was a work of, you know, it's now been how long, twenty twenty plus years. So a lot of people who really picked up from where we started and have turned it into not only an important source of funding for critical programs and services around town, but you know, a convener, just a point of conversation and really community building, which is where we started with the community foundation. One of the first things we did with community foundations was to start supporting block parties. I think that still goes on. 

Matt: 17:50

It still does. 

Jon: 17:51

And the whole theory behind that, I mean, Susan Musinsky, I remember, was the person she was on the board in those days as well, was really the one who understood how that sort of fit into community building and how community building in turn would support the foundation and support people understanding the value of a community foundation.

Matt: 18:10

Yeah, yeah. And it's really expanded from there to so much great stuff. And people want to know more about that. I did do an episode with Tia earlier on where she can tell you all the details on that.

Jon: 18:20

Yeah, yeah. Tia's taken it to new heights.

Matt: 18:22

Yeah, for sure. Cool. So then do you want to step into how you moved on up to a state role? How did that come about, the state rap?

Jon: 18:29

Yeah. So part of that was, you know, in my role on the council, I became increasingly aware of, interested in, involved in what was happening in state government. You know, the example of the DCR that I just gave was one. But you know, we depend on state aid for a lot of our budget. There are services that the town is responsible for, but there are a lot of other services that the town doesn't provide that people need to look to the state for. So I was aware from hearing from people around town what sort of their hopes were for what the state would do. And then I started getting involved with the Mass Municipal Association. Through that, began to have, you know, in my role as a local official, but through the MMA, began to have some involvement in what was happening at the State House. And then our state rep became the registrar of motor vehicles. And that seat became open. And again, the timing was right for me in terms of where I was at with my family. I was really cutting back more and more on my international work, and it seemed like a great opportunity to dive into that and have even more opportunities to work in positive ways in government.

Matt: 19:35

Yeah. So what year round was that?

Jon: 19:37

That was 2008.

Matt: 19:39

And then so how did that go, stepping up, you know, your perspective to so what were you representing, Watertown and how far out?

Jon: 19:48

Yeah, at that time the district was almost all of Watertown. It was eleven of the twelve precincts in Watertown, plus a small piece of Cambridge, West Cambridge. The district has changed a little bit now. It has moved east and is now a little bit less Watertown and a little bit more Cambridge, the district as Steve Owens now represents it. But it was very much a Watertown-centric district. And the experience at the Statehouse, and I mean this we can talk about in connection with the ballot question as well. I mean, on the one hand, I did find more opportunities to. I mean, for example, we continued to press the DCR on the parklands issues. We redeveloped Riverside Park here on this side of the park with that amazing garden and boats and so on for folks with vision challenges. 

Matt: 20:34 

Braille trail there. 

Jon 20:35

Yeah. Finished the work on Nonantum Road, did a lot of work on the bike paths, you know, the bike path through the arsenal, and then ultimately the bike path all the way to Fresh Pond. So it was an opportunity to, from the state side, push on that stuff, which was great. And then, you know, there were other things happening in town that needed help from the state or that were just within kind of the state's scope of work. We got some support through the Department of Mental Health for the jail diversion program that the police department here runs. We got help with special ed expenses, which, you know, in Watertown have been traditionally very, very high because we have a great special ed program. And we also, you know, home to Perkins, and there are other reasons why families with kids with special needs come to Watertown. You know, that requires resources, and we were able to work with the state to get recognition of the fact that Watertown was doing important and good work in that area and needed more financial help. So things like that, you know, we were able to work on at the state level, and that was great. 

Jon: 21:37

Ultimately, I came to feel that the legislature was not open enough and not welcoming enough to participation by all the members. I kind of got sideways with the leadership at the State House because they were very much accustomed to a top-down form of work that basically required ingratiating yourself with them before you'd be given opportunities to really be actively involved. And it was so different from my experience at the town council, where every member, just as a matter of course and as a matter of right, could participate to whatever extent they wanted to in whatever issue they wanted to. And that just always felt important to me, I guess in part, you know, again, going back to my original work in China, just having seen how in places like China, which have a history of top-down government, which kind of on the face of it seems efficient, but has led to disaster after disaster after disaster, where a few people who think that they understand everything and know how to make decisions for everyone lead the country into disaster. And I just feel very strongly from that experience, from my experience in Watertown, and just, you know, I think all of us as people in a country that has strong democratic traditions just believe that the better way to make decisions is doing it openly, democratically, collectively, and giving individuals too much power is just a bad idea. I mean, that's the whole founding premise of our country, right? No kings. And I found at the State House that that was not the dominant way of looking at things. So over time I became increasingly frustrated.

Matt: 23:24

And is that what eventually led you to step down from the role? 

Jon: 23:27

Yeah, it did. 

Matt: 23:29

But you were there for a good amount of time.

Jon: 23:31

I was there for a good length of time. I was there for twelve years. And you know, I certainly had good opportunities, as I say, to do work, especially that was important for Watertown. But I did eventually feel that I had kind of maxed out how I could impact things there. And you know, I also, another thing I strongly believe in is not having people stay in political roles too long. I think fresh blood, fresh ideas is something that we should prize. No one is irreplaceable. So, you know, I wanted to do some other and different things. I didn't want to spend the rest of my career just kind of hanging around at the State House. And I knew that there'd be other good people who could take the office and do as much, if not more, than me. So I was happy in that way to move on. But I have not gotten away from thinking about how we could make the legislature better. And that's really been one of the main things that I've been doing since I left the legislature is thinking and working with other people to try to understand what the sources of the problems are and see if we can come up with a way to make it better.

Matt: 24:35

Yeah. Perfect time, I think, to switch gears here. So was there anything that's happened between the time you left office that led you up to your current initiative? Anything that's been happening in between that's important to talk about before we dive into your current initiative here?

Jon: 24:49

Well, you know, I think in terms of how the State House is operating, I think people are seeing more and more clearly the negative impacts of the dysfunction of the legislature and particularly the limitations of a legislature that is so top-down in its operations. You know, the last couple of sessions have been really noticeable in terms of the just the limited amount of work that's been getting done and the way that it always seems to get done at the last minute and in a way that it's very hard for people to understand because so much of it is happening behind closed doors. You know, I think there's a growing awareness in the state that the legislature is not operating optimally. And at the same time, I think, you know, we have a bigger political context here where people understand that you can't take democracy for granted, that institutions and traditions that we have always assumed would operate well are subject to going bad and going in negative directions. And it requires people continually working to keep their political institutions in a healthy state. So I think in terms of sort of broadly what's happened over the last few years, I think that is supportive of what we're trying to do to get people to help us improve the way that this one key political institution in Massachusetts is operating.

Matt: 26:15

Yeah. So tell me about coming up with this question and how you went about that.

Jon: 26:20

When I came out of the legislature in early 2021, you know, I very quickly found a group of other people who, like me, were concerned with the state of the legislature. We formed a working group initially under the umbrella of the progressive Democrats of Massachusetts to do a deep dive into what's going on in the legislature, assessing what the problems are, sort of the lack of productivity, the slowness, the lack of transparency, the lack of participation, the lack of responsiveness, and try to understand what the sources of those problems are, and then try to come up with some ideas for how to make things better. And along the way, that group morphed into another group called the Coalition to Reform Our Legislature that was explicitly cross-partisan. So we had started out, you know, as a group of progressive Democrats looking at this, but we, you know, very quickly realized there were people across the political spectrum who are concerned about it. And that as a practical matter, if we're going to make change, you have to have a broad coalition of people behind it.

Jon: 27:25

So we sort of came out from under the Progressive Dems umbrella and created this coalition in which, you know, we have people from across the political spectrum, all the way from the progressive left to, you know, what I think of as sort of the sane center-right. So we don't have the MAGA element in our group, but. And that group in turn began to sort of start thinking about a reform agenda and an advocacy agenda. And the thing that we've particularly decided to focus on is the way that legislators get paid in Massachusetts. And we're focused on that both because we think it's part of the problem we have in Massachusetts with our legislature, and also because it's a source of leverage to try to change the way the legislature operates, rewarding different types of behavior than the behavior that is rewarded now. So I think probably most people aren't aware, but in Massachusetts, we have a very unusual system of paying our legislators. All legislators get the same base pay, which is fixed in the Constitution. It's about $82,000 a year right now. But above and beyond that, there is additional pay that they can receive if they're appointed to certain positions in the legislature by the legislative leadership. These are positions that are entirely controlled by the legislative leadership, and they come with a lot of extra money. This is unlike any other state legislature in the country or Congress, where you might have a handful of Congresspeople getting additional money, like the Speaker of the House gets an extra, I think it's $25,000. The majority leader gets a little bit extra, the minority leader gets a little bit extra. But that's it. Everybody else is paid the exact same amount. And that's true of most state legislatures around the country. But in Massachusetts, this system of extra pay, or what we call stipends, has grown enormously, and especially in the last 10 years, so that legislators here receive a larger share of their pay through these stipends than any other legislature in the country.

Matt: 29:26

And how big are these stipends we're talking about?

Jon: 29:28

Well, they range the smallest ones are about $8,000, so about a 10% additional amount of money. But they go up from there to, you know, some of them are $20,000 to $25,000, some of them are $40,000 to $45,000, some of them are $50,000, $55,000. And when you get to the top, you know, the majority leader, the ways and means chairs, the speaker, and the Senate President, they're receiving close to as much, if not more than their pay in this stipend than they are in the base amount. And the net result is that the legislators at the top, Massachusetts are the highest paid legislators in the entire country. So the Speaker and the Senate president are making over $200,000 a year, which again is far greater than any other state, greater than California, greater than New York, greater than Pennsylvania, you know, the other sort of large states. And, you know, I'm not somebody who wants to pay legislators nothing. I mean, I was a legislator. I believe in the importance of government. I believe in the importance of lawmaking. I think it's important work. I don't mind paying good compensation to our legislators. But the problem is it's being paid essentially to reward people's loyalty to a few people at the top. And the work is being done in oftentimes behind closed doors without the participation of most of the legislators, let alone the public. So this extra pay is being used to reward the wrong types of behavior, in my view. And so the whole point of this ballot question is to change this system so that it rewards the right kind of behavior.

Matt: 30:59

So how are like heads of commissions and stuff picked in other places? How is it?

Jon: 31:03

Well, it's it's not so much the appointment. I mean, generally, you know, committee chairs, leadership positions, and so on, in most legislatures are chosen by the legislative leaders. That I think is normal and fine. And it helps, you know, to create sort of some consistency of agenda and so on, which I think is important in a legislature. The problem is the money that comes with it that then rewards, you know, deference, it rewards oftentimes in terms of the way our committees work in Massachusetts, they reward the committee chairs for keeping the work behind closed doors and keeping it under the control of the people at the top, rather than using the committees for their appropriate function, which is an open, deliberative process involving all of the committee members, involving open processes that the public can observe and even participate in. So our committees in Massachusetts, they're not real committees. It's not like the city council when, you know, when they have a matter that is sent to committee, the committee meets in public, hears from the public what they think about it, and then they have all of their discussions in public. They amend the whatever it is, the ordinance or the proposal in public, and then they vote on it in public. That's how every local legislature in Massachusetts operates. 

Jon: 32:21

But in the State House, the committees, they hold public hearings so that members of the public can come in and share their views. After that, the committee never meets again. So there's no opportunity for rank and file members of the committee in an open process to put forward their ideas, put forward amendments, and there's no requirement for the committee to justify before the public why it's doing what it does. After the hearing, the committees never meet. And as a committee member, you know, I had this experience over and over. You would just wait months and months and months, and then eventually you'd get an email from the committee chair saying, here's what I recommend we do with this bill. Maybe it's been amended behind closed doors. You're not provided a red line, so if you want to figure out what the amendments are, you have to go back to the original bill and put the two of them side by side and read them line by line to figure out what changes have been made. And by the way, you have until noon today to vote. And you vote electronically. You don't vote in front of the public. So there's no opportunity for committee members to be meaningfully involved. There's no transparency about what is being recommended and why and who was involved in shaping it. And there's no obligation, frankly, to justify what you're doing to the public. So it's a very undemocratic way of making laws. And I think the risk of errors is higher. I think the risk for influence behind the scenes by powerful people who have access to the chairs or to the legislative leadership, the risks of that are higher. And also it's just less work getting done because there are fewer people really doing the work with the opportunity to do the work. So that's the problem we have.

Matt: 34:13

So what is your question that you're trying to bring out for vote on ballots and how will that address this issue?

Jon: 34:21

Yeah, so essentially what we want to do is we want to reduce the control that the legislative leaders have over people's pay, reduce their control over people's livelihoods, essentially. And in that way, give more of our elected representatives the freedom to operate as they should, which is as our agents, as our representatives, rather than feeling constrained when they go to vote on a bill or to express their views to have to worry about whether they're going to have enough money to pay for their kids who go to college. That's just feeling fundamentally wrong that our elected representatives should be put in that position where they can't always put the interests and the values of their constituents and their own values first and foremost. So that's part of what it does. It cuts way back on the number of these positions that come with extra money, which, to be honest, a lot of them don't actually involve much work. They've sort of been created in order to create this dependency, this financial dependency of the elected members on the leadership. The Globe did a whole series of articles on this last year that pointed out that a lot of the particularly new committees and new positions that have been created in the legislature over the last 10 or 20 years, they don't actually involve any work. They're like no-show jobs for which people are being paid an extra $20,000, $40,000, you know, $60,000. So get rid of those positions and sort of get us back to where we were 30, 40 years ago, where there were a limited number of positions that actually involved significant work where some additional compensation was reasonable. So that's one thing. 

Jon: 36:56

And the other thing is to say that for these positions that are going to continue to get extra money, that you only actually get paid that extra money if you conduct your lawmaking in an open, accountable, participatory way. So there are a number of metrics in the ballot question about how committees need to handle the bills that come before them. Not just having public hearings, but having then public meetings of the committee, what are called markup sessions, which legislatures everywhere else do where committee members can propose amendments to the bills and they get voted on, all of this in public. And then at the end of the day, that the bills be voted on in public, so that there's both an opportunity as well as an obligation of our elected officials to be actively involved in the lawmaking process, not just wait until the bills emerge from committee through a process behind closed doors that you don't know who is involved with. And then with this pressure, which comes from this financial dependency on leadership, this pressure just to go along. So that's essentially what the ballot question does.

Matt: 37:02

Gotcha. So it seems like it's a pretty, this isn't gonna be a small ballot question.

Jon: 37:06

No, it's got a lot of details to it, but that's because it needs to be done right and it needs to be done in detail so that there's not too much wiggle room for the legislature, that is, the legislative leaders, to sort of find ways around it.

Matt: 37:20

So the financial part, are you gonna particularly point out like only these two positions can get paid from here on out, or like how are you making sure it's only, you know.

Jon: 37:29

Yes, so the positions are all enumerated. The way the current system works, it says that the chairs of all committees of the House, the Senate, or the committees that are formed jointly are eligible for a stipend of a certain size. Now, what that means is that the House just can create more committees. The Senate can create more committees, they can create more joint committees. What we're saying is the chair positions would only come with stipends if they are for committees that are actually handling bills. So a lot of these House committees, Senate committees that have been created don't really handle any bills. It has to be a minimum number of bills. We've said 50 bills, so it's you've got to be doing a significant amount of work. And then again, it has to be work that is done in an open, accountable way..

Matt: 38:16

Right. Well, is there anything else on the actual content of it that we didn't get into that you want to make sure we talk about it?

Jon: 38:22

Yeah, there's one other thing. It's related to both of what I, the things that I talked about, both reducing the financial dependency of legislators on the leadership, and also giving more of a role, open role to all members in the lawmaking process. And that is that we're proposing with this ballot question to take a lot of the money that would be saved by reducing the number of these positions that come with extra pay, and shift that money over to extra pay for rank and file members. That would be pay that would not be controlled by the leadership. It would go just.

Matt: 38:58

Raise the base pay.

Jon: 38:58

Yeah, it's a little bit different than base pay, because base pay technically is what's in the Constitution, but effectively it would raise the base pay. You're right. Because the idea is it's another way of reducing their financial dependency on the leadership if they're making a decent sort of basic amount of money. And it's also a recognition of the fact that as members of the committees that are going to have regular public markup sessions, regular public votes, they're going to have more work to do. I think they'll welcome it. I know I would have welcomed it. It's why people go to the legislature, by and large, you know, because they want to be meaningfully involved. And I think it's a recognition that their role is very important. The way the system works now, it seems like we're saying that the only people whose work we value are the people at the very top or the people who chair these committees. That we don't value the work of, you know, a rank and file member from Watertown or from Winchington or from wherever. I think this would be a way of saying we value the work of everybody in the legislature, and we expect everybody in the legislature to be meaningfully involved.

Matt: 40:01

Yeah. So what can people expect from this question? So I did an episode with Jim Henderson who helped you kind of get this jumping through all the hoops you need to to get this on the ballot. So what can people expect going forward with this question? When should they see it pop up and you know all that?

Jon: 40:17

Well, I mean the first thing we have to do is we have to collect enough signatures to get the ballot question on the ballot. That's what we're currently doing. I don't know when this will air, but we have until November 19th to collect the signatures. So we have volunteers all over the state that are collecting signatures. I know we've had a lot of people in Watertown, you know, at Fair on the Square, at the farmers markets, at community events collecting signatures. So we have that work to do. So anybody who's interested in supporting this can reach out to the campaign. We have a website which is stipendreform.com. People can go on there and indicate that they want to sign or they want to help collect signatures. So that's the first thing we have to do. We have to collect 75,000 signatures by the middle of November. Assuming we do that, then there's a period of time where the Secretary of State has to review the signatures. Assuming they're enough, then the question is sent to the legislature. And the legislature is given a period, four or five months in which they can, if they want to, they could adopt it as a law. And then we wouldn't have to take it to the ballot. If they don't do that, then next spring we'll have to gather some more signatures. There's a second round of signature gathering. It's a smaller number. It's 11 or 12,000 signatures. And at that point, it would be ready for the ballot in November of 2026. So that's the sequence. And again, anybody who wants to help, go to stipendreform.com or reach out to me and we'll get you involved.

Matt: 41:46

Cool. Any other thoughts to wrap that up or anything we were talking about previously, too, that you want to get out there to the listeners of Watertown and anyone else who may listen to this?

Jon: 41:55

No, I guess again, you know, we're in this we're in this tough moment, you know, as a country. And sometimes it's hard, I think, for people to know what to do. You know, I think everybody is trying in their own way to stay involved, stay committed, stay positive, stay constructive. It's hard. This ballot question, I think, is something, you know, it's not often that we get an opportunity to really make a positive change in an important political institution. This is one that we can do now, and I think we can get this to the ballot. I think it'll be successful. We've done polling around the state, and this ballot question gets support upwards of 75% of people in the state. I think people understand that we could have a more democratic, more transparent, more productive legislature, and we need one, especially now. So this is an opportunity for people to do something constructive. Not that we don't also need to worry about things happening in other places. It's not an either-or, it's a both and. So, you know, I see this as a chance for people to stand up for democracy. That's what this is about. We believe in democracy. We believe the best way to make decisions, you know, as a community, as a state, as a country is to do it in a way that gives everybody a voice and gives everybody's experiences and wisdom a part to play in figuring out where we're going.

Matt: 43:16

Gotcha. Great. Well, thanks for sitting down to chat and share your thoughts, stories, and ideas that you're working on. And yeah, thanks for taking the time.

Jon: 43:25

Okay. Thank you, Matt.

Matt: 43:27

So that's it for my conversation with Jon. I'll put links in the show notes for where you can find out more information about the things he's been talking about. If you like the podcast and like to hear more of these conversations, you can head on over to Little Local Conversations.com. Where you can find all the episodes. You can sign up for my weekly newsletter to keep up to date on everything. And you can see the upcoming events, such as a series of Creative Chats events I do once a month at the Mosesian Center for the Arts and the Watertown's Open series for local businesses. And of course you can check out the Little Local Holiday Giveaway, which again you can sign up for up until the day before Thanksgiving, and then I'll be giving out prizes the day after Thanksgiving. And to get a chance to win a prize, all you have to do is sign up to be a supporter of the podcast, what I call Little Local Friend. Find it at the website at Little Local Conversations.com slash friend. And I'm giving away some great gifts from people who have been on the podcast. So if you want to go back and listen to their episode, learn more about them, you can do that as well on that page, link to all their episodes. Let me give you a rundown of what's being given away. We have five restaurants at Arsenal Yards that are each given away a gift card, $100 each from Buttermilk and Bourbon, Condessa, Medium Rare, Mighty Squirrel, and Tori Jiro. The Boston Gold Kings are giving away four free tickets to an upcoming home game. Campolongo Cookie Company is giving a gift package of chocolate chip cookies, vanilla extract, and brown sugar. The Cass School of Floral Design is giving away a free floral design class. Farina’s is giving away a $100 gift card. Gore Place is giving away tickets for a free tour of the Gore Place mansion, for up to four people, or two free tickets to a concert in the Gore Place Carriage House. Mosesian Center for the Arts is giving away two free tickets to their December 9th Chords and Cocktails with the Eric Mintel's Quartet’s Charlie Brown Christmas. Mount Auburn Cemetery is giving away a free year, Friends of Mount Auburn membership. Revival Cafe and Kitchen is giving a $25 gift card. Ritcey East is giving a $50 gift card. So again, you can head to LittleLocal Conversations.com slash friend, sign up as a monthly supporter, win a chance to give one of those prizes, and help support, keep these conversations going. 

Matt: 45:26

Alright, and I want to give a few shout-outs here to wrap things up. First one goes to podcast sponsor, Arsenal Financial. They're a financial planning business here in Watertown that's owned by Doug Orifice, very committed community member, and his business helps people close to retirement, busy families, and small businesses. So if you need help in any of those areas, reach out to Doug and his team at arsenalfinancial.com. I also want to give a thank you to the Watertown Cultural Council, who have given me a grant this year to help support the podcast. So I want to give them the appropriate credit, which is, this program is supported in part by a grant from the Watertown Cultural Council, a local agency, which is supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency. To find out more about them, visit Watertown Cultural Council.org and Mass Cultural Council.org. And a couple more shout outs to promotional partners. First one goes to the Watertown Business Coalition, they’re a nonprofit organization here in Watertown that's bringing businesses and people together to help strengthen the community. Find out more about them at Watertown Business Coalition.com. And lastly, promotional partner Watertown News, which is an online newspaper focused on Watertown. It's run here by Charlie Breitrose and it's a great resource, so go check that out at WatertownMANews.com. So that's it. Until next time, take care.