Legislature Close to Being Held Accountable to the Voters
The Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance made the following statement in response to yesterday’s news that Secretary of State Bill Galvin’s office has recorded over 40,120 certified signatures to place the November ballot question to repeal the legislature’s law giving driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants. With one week to go before the actual signature deadline next Wednesday, that number will likely increase dramatically as municipal clerks continue to process current signature sheets and a flurry of new sheets are dropped off in the leadup to the collection deadline. While the total number of certified signatures is not yet known, yesterday’s development is a crushing defeat to the organized opposition that have been illegally harassing the volunteer citizen signature collectors. Among them is state Senator Jamie Eldridge (D-Acton), who has spent countless weekends bullying and intimidating people seeking to sign the petition.
“Yesterday’s milestone is a great achievement for the voters of Massachusetts and proves the referendum process is a viable tactic that can be used in the future to keep State House politicians accountable to the public. Career politicians like Senator Jamie Eldridge want nothing more than to see this volunteer effort fail because the last thing anyone at the State House wants is to be held accountable to their voting record. The next time State House leaders decide to pass a bill into law that is rushed through and without any support from the opposing minority party, they will have to consider that this effort can be replicated and their actions can be held accountable to voters of Massachusetts,” stated Paul Diego Craney, spokesman for the Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance.
Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance joined all the Republicans in the legislature and Governor Charlie Baker in opposing giving driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants. The Governor vetoed the bill and warned that the Department of Motor Vehicles was not equipped to handle the complex, international documents required for these types of driver’s license applications. A copy of the Governor’s veto message may be found here.
MassFiscal will continue to support this effort in any way it can to make sure the voters of Massachusetts have an opportunity to hold their out of touch legislative leadership accountable. Speaker Ron Mariano and Senate President Karen Spilka rushed through this law without a single Republican voting to support it and even went to the extreme measure of overriding the Governor’s veto. They did this before passing any type of tax relief or reform before the legislative session expired on August 1.