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When the COVID-19 state of emergency ended at 12:01 a.m. this morning, Gov. Charlie Baker’s order allowing remote public meetings expired, as did the law allowing restaurants to sell alcoholic beverages to-go and requirements that eviction cases be stayed while a tenant had a rental assistance application in process.
State lawmakers adjourned for the day Monday without completing legislation that would extend several popular pandemic policy adaptations beyond the state of emergency, leaving some measures linked to the order to lapse, at least temporarily.
The House plans to vote on Tuesday on its version (H 3872) of a policy extension bill, which like legislation the Senate approved last week would add several months’ time to the remote meeting authorization, eviction protections and restaurant relief measures.
During a Monday afternoon event in Bridgewater, Baker said he was “hoping we’re going to get a bill from the legislature sometime before midnight” that would address expiring policies put in place both through executive order and statute.
But by that point in the day, the House and Senate had already adjourned until Tuesday, foreclosing the possibility of a bill reaching the governor’s desk before midnight.
The House on Monday gave initial approval to an amended version of the Senate’s bill, and plans to vote on that legislation in a session scheduled for 11 a.m. Tuesday, after the emergency’s official end.
Before a bill can get to Baker, the two branches must agree on language – the House and Senate bills diverge on issues including telehealth rates, the billing protections Baker sought, and caps on the fees third-party delivery services charge restaurants. The Senate bill includes a temporary mail-in voting extension, while the House passed a separate bill last week to make mail-in voting a permanent feature of the state’s elections.
The Senate has scheduled a 2 p.m. session for Tuesday, and could be ready to act after the House passes its bill.
Action on Evictions urged
Advocates have been urging lawmakers to prevent the expiration of pandemic eviction protections.
Pamela Schwartz, director of the Western Massachusetts Network to End Homelessness, warned Monday that an important protective measure aimed at staving off housing removals would expire when the calendar flipped to Tuesday.
Under a COVID-era state law sometimes referred to as Chapter 257, courts are required to pause eviction cases for failure to pay rent if a tenant has an application pending for emergency rental assistance. Both the House and Senate bills would extend that section of the law until April 1, 2022.
“The bottom line is: Chapter 257 prevents people from becoming homeless during this COVID-19 recovery period,” Schwartz told the Joint Committee on Racial Equity, Civil Rights, and Inclusion. “It has prevented a lot of people from becoming homeless already despite this current crisis, and we can’t afford for it to end.”
The state still has hundreds of millions of dollars in rental assistance available for those in need thanks to influxes of federal aid. While residential eviction filings have fallen in recent weeks to roughly half of pre-pandemic levels, housing justice advocates cautioned that a major safety net will vanish without legislative action.
Schwartz stressed that housing insecurity disproportionately affects people of color in Massachusetts, who represent more than 60 percent of tenants who are behind on rent.
Baker said on Monday he hoped to get a bill “that would extend a number of both the things we did ourselves as administrative orders but also some of the things that the Legislature did on a temporary basis, to either extend until they can have hearings on those things or extend until they can sort of decide what they think the next move is.”
The governor pointed to expanded outdoor dining as one policy change that’s proven “enormously popular” and also noted programs that have expanded pedestrian and bicycle access in downtown areas.
