Have you seen the new movie Chappaquiddick that was released over the weekend?

It is an American drama film directed by John Curran and written by Taylor Allen and Andrew Logan. The film stars Jason Clarke as Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy and Kate Mara as Mary Jo Kopechne, with Ed Helms, Bruce Dern, Jim Gaffigan, Clancy Brown, and Olivia Thirlby in supporting roles. The plot details the 1969 Chappaquiddick incident in which Kennedy drove his car into Poucha Pond, killing Kopechne, as well as the Kennedy family's response.

The Chappaquiddick incident became national news that likely influenced Kennedy's decision not to campaign for President in 1972 and 1976, and it was said to have undermined his chances of ever becoming President.

We have seen it, and we think it’s something that all lawmakers at the Massachusetts State House would benefit greatly from seeing.

To help make this happen, the Fiscal Alliance Foundation and the Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance will be sponsoring movie tickets for legislators.  Just send us an email at [email protected] and we’ll make sure you get your ticket to this eye-opening film.

Sunshine Week is once again upon us!

For those of you who don’t know, Sunshine Week is an annual initiative of the National Sunlight Foundation that seeks to spark dialogue on government transparency and freedom of information.

Living in Massachusetts, we know firsthand how important openness and transparency is to good government. Our state has received an “F” rating for its lack of transparency from the Open State project. This comes on the heels of the legislature’s continued refusal to publish all committee votes and allow the public time to review bills before they vote on them.

Last year we caught up with Freshman State Senator Julian Cyr to ask him to explain why he cast his first vote as an elected senator for a pay raise for himself and others. His response was somewhat lacking.

This year, we’d like to bring your attention to a recent digital education campaign we launched regarding special interest-paid trips by state lawmakers. An expose by WCVB found that dozens of lawmakers had taken special interest-funded “junkets” to exotic locations such as Israel, Taiwan, Turkey, Saint Thomas, and the Azores.

Of particular note was Democratic State Senator Marc Pacheco of Taunton. Pacheco, who recently voted himself a 121% raise that hiked his yearly salary to over $154,000 a year, has taken 28 trips since 2014.

We made sure that Senator Pacheco’s constituents knew what he was up to.

Justice Louis Brandeis had it right when he told us that sunlight is the best disinfectant, and your team at MassFiscal will continue to ensure that plenty of sunlight shines on Beacon Hill, this week and beyond.

This week, our latest advocacy campaign began hitting mailboxes across the state.

Following the 2016 election, the very first thing legislators did was vote themselves an average 40% pay increase. Then Senate President Rosenberg saw his pay go up by some 62%, while some lawmakers saw an increase of as much as 130%!

To top it all off, they filed the pay bill as “emergency” legislation so they could begin collecting their raises immediately.

There has been no shortage of critical issues facing our state in recent years, but the House and Senate decided to make the pay raise issue their number one priority. We think this was the wrong approach for the legislature to take and if it weren’t for our advocacy, constituents would be left in the dark.

When completed, over 500,000 households across 18 different legislative districts will have received this mailing.

Here is a sample of one mailer from this week:

Thank you for being a supporter of MassFiscal. If it weren’t for your support and grassroots advocacy, the public would have forgotten about this important vote.