What Past Committee Hearing Trends Can Predict for the Rest of 2023
The committee hearing phase is the most critical aspect of the legislative process. Bills live or die once testimony is made by organizations and individuals at committee hearings.
Because Massachusetts is a high bill volume state - only one or two states file more bills in a two-year period than we do - dozens of hearings occur monthly in the spring and fall of the odd-numbered years, many of them hours long with many testifiers. To better understand committee hearing trends in Massachusetts, we conducted a study dating back to the 2009-2010 legislative cycle to measure the number of hearings held, and their number of bills heard at them.
Using the Instatrac calendar which allows for just hearings to be shown, we were able to collect information involving the frequency of hearings throughout the first years of each two-year cycle from 2009 to 2021. We measured the number of hearings per year, hearings per month, even hearings by day of the week.
Here are a few of our findings:
While hearings used to occur in March and in April when InstaTrac was founded 30 years ago, virtually no hearings occur in those months any longer
The heaviest months for committee hearings are June through July
There’s another peak in October, given that little legislative activity takes place in November and December.
In the last completed legislative cycle (2021-2022), 49 hearings were held in June, 57 in July, and 51 in October. These months consequently took testimony on the largest number of bills.
The early summer months are a period of high activity in the legislature, as the budget season must be completed by the end of June.
Legislators and staff take time off in August. Because of this break, August hosts one of the lowest number of committee hearings, not reaching more than 5 since 2009.
Legislative activity picks up again in the fall. Formal sessions of the House and Senate end on the 3rd Wednesday of November, so October has a flurry of hearings, with a large number of bills heard. In October of 2021, 1,272 bills were heard - one of the largest numbers, if not the largest number, of bills heard in a month in recent decades.
Along with measuring hearings from month to month, we also measured hearings per day. We found that over the years, Tuesdays are by far the heaviest day in terms of committee hearings held. This is no surprise to MassTrac subscribers who have read repeatedly of our efforts on their behalf on what we dubbed “Terrible Tuesdays.” Tuesdays put all other days of the week to shame, sometimes hitting close to double digit hearings in one day.
Fridays, on the other hand, traditionally witness the fewest number of hearings. It is rare to even have a single hearing on a Friday. From 2009 to 2021, only 60 hearings were held on this day.
We can expect to see committee hearings occur very frequently as the busy season begins on Beacon Hill. The next two months will see a bulk of this year’s hearings and bill debates, making them arguably the most important months of the two-year legislative cycle.
Special attention should be paid towards Tuesdays in mid-to-late June, and in July. August will provide a needed break before action picks up again in October
While there may not be as much information to go on as we’d like to see, there’s been the suggestion in 2019 and again in 2021 that legislative activity, and therefore actions on bills, will take place later in June and in July, with a lot more to take place in October.
With as many as 9-12 hearings in a day, attending all of them (plus needing time away to pick up kids from school, attend meetings with colleagues or clients, whatever) can be impossible. And nobody wants to watch 4-6 hour videos of a missed hearing.
With MassTrac’s new Talk-to-Text (T2T) transcription functionality, you can be alerted to anything important to you that was mentioned at a hearing, search for anything else across all hearings or in just one of your choosing, and view - for the first time ever - have access to full transcripts of hearings.
Keeping track of legislatives activity may seem daunting, but MassTrac makes it simple! Following the busy period of the legislature has never been easier! If you are not as yet a Member of the MassTrac Family of Subscribers, now is a great time to sign on. And if you already do subscribe, but are not familiar with our new T2T benefits, please contact us to schedule a brush-up seminar in how best to use the MassTrac service,
And don’t forget to follow us on Twitter,Linkedin,Youtube, and Instagram.