In multiple recent contexts, I have seen unhelpful and misleading uses of statistics about bills introduced or passed as metrics of legislative “productivity.” For one of too many examples, please see this recent report comparing state legislatures and Congress. In the present post, I discuss the nature of the legislative process, critique bill “productivity” statistics, and offer an alternative framework for evaluating legislative results.
A “bill” is basically just a petition filed for consideration by a legislature. In Massachusetts, bills can be filed by citizens, by the Governor, or by individual legislators. The text of a bill could be one sentence or it could be hundreds of pages. Once a bill is filed with the House or Senate clerk, it goes through the legislative process — potentially including a public hearing, committee review, debate, and a final vote. Bills become laws when both branches have approved them and they are signed by the Governor. Bills are numbered sequentially over the course of our two-year legislative session and the total count of bills filed typically runs over 8000.
Of course, much of what legislators do as representatives of the people has nothing to do with bills or the legislative process per se. In their representative role, they help constituents to navigate bureaucracy; they assure that state agencies attend to community challenges; they represent taxpayers by scrutinizing executive branch activities; they do research that informs public policy generally. This post focuses only on core legislative “productivity.”
While it is tempting to accept bill or word statistics as measures of productivity, legislative productivity is never well-described by bill statistics or even word statistics. The legislature’s work is deliberative in nature:
Yes, legislating can be hard and take time. And, yes, it can be tempting to bypass Congress when some pressing problem arises. But the deliberative nature of the legislative process was the whole point of its design. Through that process, the Nation can tap the combined wisdom of the people’s elected representatives, not just that of one faction or man. There, deliberation tempers impulse, and compromise hammers disagreements into workable solutions. And because laws must earn such broad support to survive the legislative process, they tend to endure, allowing ordinary people to plan their lives in ways they cannot when the rules shift from day to day. In all, the legislative process helps ensure each of us has a stake in the laws that govern us and in the Nation’s future. For some today, the weight of those virtues is apparent. For others, it may not seem so obvious. But if history is any guide, the tables will turn and the day will come when those disappointed by today’s result will appreciate the legislative process for the bulwark of liberty it is.
Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump (02/20/2026), Gorsuch, J. concurring, page 46.
Nobody would dismiss the deliberative work of a trial jury because after six weeks of deliberation they came back with only two words — “not guilty.” In the same way, a legislature that spent months considering one great issue and did nothing else but resolve that single issue might properly be credited as greatly productive. I think of the first six months of 2007, during which the most significant thing that we did was decide not to advance to the voters a very simple proposal to nullify our Supreme Judicial Court’s decision establishing marriage equality. Every legislator had hundreds of conversations with constituents and colleagues about this issue and many changed their minds. I will never forget the majesty of the moment when our final vote tally protected equality. Think of the session of Congress that passed the civil rights amendments to the U.S. Constitution, ending slavery and establishing due process and equal protection for all persons — just a few words. Conversely, a bill with many words in it might do something trivial, like change vocabulary that appears in many places in the general laws.
Apart from the fundamental inadequacy of bill or word counts as a measure of significance or difficulty, four other challenges in making sense from bill counts should be called out:
- In Massachusetts, some bills combine many bills. Tallying the number of individual bills advancing or not advancing is misleading due to our tradition of passing package/omnibus legislation. Budget bills often include dozens or hundreds of sections, many of which could stand alone as legislation. Similarly, our packages on criminal justice reform, police reform, and housing combined many underlying bills. The criminal justice reform bill included over 100 distinct policy components. As another example, in 2025, 101 bills were passed in Massachusetts of which approximately 22 had statewide ramifications. However, the 22 statewide bills included several budget bills and these budget bills included a total of over 400 outside sections (apart from the money line items), many of which could have been standalone bills. Massachusetts is one of only seven states that does not have a “single subject” rule in its constitution. This makes state-to-state comparisons of bill volume or bill passage rates especially misleading — other states pass many individual bills that would likely be combined and counted as one in Massachusetts.
- Sessions should always be evaluated as a whole at the end of the session. The legislature processes bills in parallel, not one after another. Most bills become ready for action later in the session, so the last few months of the session always look more productive than the early months. Other factors can also affect timing. In 2020, we continued past our usual July close because of COVID. In 2024, conflict about procedural issues pushed much legislation late into the fall. In both cases, the final full-session results were solid.
- Many bills are duplicates: In considering the ratio of bills passed to bills proposed, it is important to recognize that the total number of bills is much greater than the number of actually different proposals. It is routine for advocates to find members to file identical bills in each branch. And in each branch, bills speaking to the same issue may get filed by multiple legislators with possibly contrary perspectives. Successive versions of a single bill each generate a new bill number as the bill moves through the process. To my knowledge, no one has ever taken on the herculean task of boiling down the list of over 8000 bills filed to a list of truly distinct issues.
- Many bills are filed repeatedly even though it is clear that they will never pass. Legislators often file bills as a courtesy or as a statement and invest no effort in seeking to advance them. They may refile these bills session after session. Legislators do this when a constituent, or an advocate, or the they themselves have a view that is not widely shared, but which they want to preserve on the record or theoretically to keep in play. Bills like this comprise a significant share of all bills filed and should not really be counted when considering legislative productivity.
It is more or less impossible to clean up legislative bill statistics in a way that would make them a useful measure of productivity. I would suggest instead the following more qualitative measures of a legislature’s productivity.
- Is the legislature respecting and protecting civil rights? In Massachusetts, we have been consistently diligent about protecting civil rights.
- Is the legislature able to provide steady funding for the necessary operations of government? By contrast to our national legislature, we have not, to my knowledge, ever had a shutdown in Massachusetts. We all too often run past our self-imposed deadlines for finalizing a full budget, and that is not good, but we have always been able to pass partial budgets that keep the government running without any drama.
- Is the legislature able to respond to the emergent issues of the day and to anticipate the challenges of tomorrow? In my opinion, the Massachusetts legislature has in each session been able to pass legislation that speaks to those major issues and challenges for which there is some level of agreement. When a court ruled that it was technically not a crime to use a phone camera to look up a woman’s skirt, it took us only a few days to outlaw “up-skirting.” When COVID hit, we rapidly made dozens of law changes to support the pandemic response. On the other hand, it often takes several sessions to explain a new idea to legislators and to build consensus, but that is the inescapably hard work of advocacy. For example, I spent ten years working to pass legislation regulating non-compete agreements, but those ten years were well spent in explaining and refining the legislation.
- Does the legislature dispatch minor but necessary matters in a timely way? There are many bills that make minor adjustments that are important to only one individual, one municipality, one department of government, or one very small interest group. In my experience, we do a fair job of dispatching these matters. Sometimes adjustments languish when they could move more quickly, but when these bills don’t get done by end of session, it is usually because there are real concerns about them.
The third measure requires political judgments across a range of complex issues, each of which can only be evaluated through deep study. Of course, even after deep study, people with different perspectives or different priorities will evaluate the results differently. For those interested in skimming the results of the most recent completed session, please consider this comprehensive report which documents progress across a whole range of areas.
Senator Brownsberger:
Your points are all well taken and make sense. However, I would caution you to use any metric associated with “legislative plumbing” to characterize the productivity of our legislature. It is outcomes that matter, and, while you may consider your legislative procedures more than adequate, Massachusetts has suffered from poor policy decisions that burden its citizens with some of the highest taxes in the country, housing costs that prevent its citizens from purchasing a home, energy costs that make living in Massachusetts a burden and a public education system that, in many districts, has 7 of 10 students unable to read at grade level, despite being well above national norms for per pupil cost. We are quite literally driving people out of Massachusetts. The IRS recently reported that MA lost $4.2 billion dollars of adjusted gross income from MA citizens who have left MA for SE destinations where more palatable tax and political climates are more welcoming to MA citizens.
And finally, the refusal of the legislature to comply with audit requirements that more than 70% of the electorate voted for combined with your self-granted waiver to comply with the public records law sets up the perfect storm for legislative abuse.
Thank you. Absolutely agreed that the focus should be on outcomes and the big picture, not on these “plumbing” outcomes like bill counts. That is the message of this post.
That’s what scares me. The “outcome,” the fruits of Beacon Hill are the diminution of democracy and our natural rights, and the promotion of profitable social pathology.
Well said. As someone once said…”Socialism/Communism is great until you run out of the other guys money. Until Massachusetts can work on passing laws which prevent people from leaving the State they have a much problem.
+1 agree
Mr. Champagne, perhaps you should run for office. You seem to understand the issues better than Mr. Brownsberger based on his updates about Marijuana laws, legislative productivity, and environmental matters. He is silent on real issues like you raised. And the legislature of which he is a leading part is a defiant bunch of do-nothings who flip their nose up at the citizenry.
Oh, yes. You can bet your bottom dollar they are busy bees. And, 72% of us voted to find out just how busy they are.
“Business as usual” is as opaque as the censor’s marker. When USAID’s business as usual was disrupted we found it was a DNC slush fund pro-abortion groups, anti-Second Amendment groups and much more.
Maybe we will find the Massachusetts Legislature is funding loca ‘No Kings’ organizers.
The hypocrisy. The DNC’s “Council of Elders,” apologies to Ryan McBeth, attempted a CORONATION of someone so unqualified she had to withdraw from the 2020 primary lest she be bested by the fruit loop Marianne Williamson.
We’re no more at risk of Kings, or Queens, or Lord Emperor CEO, from the right as we are from the left.
The truth is these No Kings rallies are attended by people motivated by the Dobbs decision, and organized by anarchosocialists.
LOL, Fred, which universe do you live in? I know a number of people who attend “No Kings” rally’s – they do so of their own volition, they’re not paid to be there, they make their own signs, etc. etc. The “No kings” movement is simply a reaction to a chief executive who (according to a supreme court that he largely appointed) is violating the laws we have been living under for hundreds of years. Your point about excesses on both the right and the left are spot on. It goes both ways and whichever party is currently in power and attempting to do {insert whatever} “for the good of the people” (because they don’t know what’s good for them themselves) deserves to be protested. From the right or the left.
“ attended by people motivated by the Dobbs decision, and organized by anarchosocialists.”
It doesn’t tale money to attend the political rally, but it takes a good deal to organize it on the co-ordinated scale the socialist No Kings charade is organized.
There is some overlap of behaviors from the right and the left, but the right’s organizing principle is, like our founders, to constrain government and defend liberty, whereas the left is to expand it and constrain liberty.
Trump may be testing the envelope, but the left
Trump may be testing the envelope, but the left’s m.o. is antithetical to the reasoning and values behind our republic’s charter.
If you take a wooden ship and replace every part over time is it still the same ship? In the case of the Democrats the original ship was a grift based on keeping the descendants of slaves ever more dependent on a dehumanizing welfare state, well, those planks are still there, but the new planks and boards added pander to an ideology instilled in our population by our enemies and adversaries. The Democratic Ship is a foreign vessel, and a hostile one at that.
Fred – I would be happy to set up a GoFundMe to get you on the next shuttle to the Moon. This way you can return to your people…
I’m not hearing a counter argument. Do you have one? America may run on Dunkin’, but the left runs on ad hominem, propaganda, censorship, and anti-democratic policies and actions. Say “hi” to the leftists behind the wall in the exclusively leftist Bluesky enclave. I had a choice of silently assenting to the imbecilic socialist ravings there at Bluesky, or objecting, and I objected, and not being part of that cult is cause for suspension. Politicians who use Bluesky should be called out for violating the spirit of the Hatch Act.
Sadly. With the child centered family law bill it has been sent to study without allowing all to vote on it. Some Democratic process NOT. Who needs dads anyhow!!!!!!
Also not measured by productivity stats are bills that other state legislatures have passed that are harmful such as harassing trans individuals and curtailing women’s reproductive rights.
Exactly. It matters what bills we pass, not how many!
There are no “trans” individuals. There are men and women who believe, or assert they are the opposite sex, but there is absolutely no scientific evidence for such a phenomenon. It’s an absurd position.
If someone wants to believe they are trans they are free to do so, but no one has the authority to create laws that allow people to impose, or superimpose their subjective inner life upon objective reality, and by force of law to boot! It’s beyond Orwellian.
Abortion doesn’t not end a human life. The Dobbs decision was a just correction.
Killing the son, or daughter in your womb is not a “reproductive right,” it’s manslaughter. It may be a justified act of manslaughter given the medical necessity and clinical picture to save the mother’s life and limb, but a human being it is.
Many people I know including me join No Kings Day to use our right to free speech and ask for democracy to stay in place. We want dignity and truth and for our President to follow the constitution.
As for our State, what I don’t hear about are the incredibly out of line death taxes. That is why we will be moving out of state. We have paid our taxes for all our hard earned dollars and feel MA doesn’t deserve to tax our estate more because we have done well.
Great post Sen. Brownnsberger. One of your best – I learned a lot.
Your points here are all well taken and sensible. No questions or concerns as far as they go. But comparisons to non-legislatively-relevant metrics aside, there are still comparative conditions that your comments have not addressed.
At the risk of belaboring the “audit” issue, I think it’s important to make connections between transparency and efficiency where obviously relevant. One such condition endured by the Massachusetts legislature and done better many other places, is in the coordination (or dearth of such) between the House and the Senate. As far as I understand, and you can correct me if I’ve missed a recent update, we still lack consistent and coordinated joint committee rules and deliberation processes between our two representative legislative bodies. Why is this? Wouldn’t an audit of this process (or dearth of such) make good sense in the hopes of achieving something meaningful and useful?
Any time progress is to be made, bills need to be reconciled. Wouldn’t prior be more efficient than post? Whom shall we hold responsible for achieving (or not) this simple legislative efficiency?
I’ll return to the observations of the Society of Professional Journalists: “Despite a legal framework that purports to guarantee access to public records, Massachusetts remains one of the few states in which the governor’s office, legislature and judiciary are largely exempt from public records requirements.”
I’d like to see this improved, in hopes that it likewise helps improve the efficiency of our representative legislative bodies by achieving joint rules that will streamline the advance of legislation.
The good news is that we did approve new joint committee rules in 2025 and we are moving forward more efficiently than at some times in the past.
That’s great news–I applaud this progress! Thanks for sharing the link.
Legislative productivity is a hard concept. There is a school of thought that every day the legislature is not in session, this is a day that our pocketbooks or way of life are free from government interference. In other words, a government that gets nothing done is a good thing.
On the other hand, another school of thought is that the maximum good is derived via the maximum amount of law and passing more laws is a good thing.
I don’t believe either of these extremes is “right”, but it certainly makes it hard to metricize productivity in the legislature. Some legislation is “easy” and a “no brainer”. The concept of marriage equality that you cite is one such example. But then again, I’m living in 2026 and in hindsight this seems obvious. You did the right thing. Yay! Sanity prevailed.
The harder question is how to grade productivity where it involves money and costs.
I would propose that a concept of “beneficial good” verses “extraordinary cost” is a good metric. In other words, I want to see laws that benefit people, but not if that means extraordinary requirements for funding.
For instance, it would be great to say everyone should be covered by universal healthcare. This is a goal that (with some significant alterations to the healthcare system) is technically achievable. And it is a noble objective. But there are significant costs. The reality of our economic system is that the costs are borne by successful people. This is intrinsically unfair and an anathema to capitalism. We can compromise, but there’s a limit.
The other reality is that there are consequences to the legislatures actions. The people in Massachusetts voted to pass a special tax on very successful people. The jury is still out as to whether this will affect the number of job creators in our state. (Killing the goose). In the short term, it’s working out. We’ll see in the long run. Very hard to grade if that’s good “productivity”.
I don’t envy you Will. It’s hard enough when you try to evaluate performance on “widgets”, but evaluating performance on much more complex intellectual products, like legislation almost falls into the category of “dark magic”.
Similar to you, I don’t think it’s reasonable to pick a “widget approach” for legislation. Sure, there’s 4,000 bills per year and only a couple hundred become laws. The key is whether the “right” 100 became laws, and that’s a much harder problem.
The eventual metric of this is that we keep re-electing our legislative representatives.
If your actions (largely) reflect the will of your constituency, we’ll keep sending you back.
It doesn’t mean we always agree with you, but that “(largely)” is doing some heavy lifting for you as a positive indication of success.
Not so much as the government in general. In my case I feel the MA government does not understand the need to temper their “science projects” and focus on “real world” such as the price of energy. Also, I support the social causes, but there’s a limit to my personal desire to fund them. And, in my personal life, I’d (largely) like to left alone. (we have too many laws)
We live in the “MA Bubble” which is a very different place from (at least) 47 or 48 other states. This can fool us into thinking that what we’re doing is “normal”. It’s not. We are a very, very, very rich state with immense intellectual property and wealth generation capability. This is as far from “usual” as you can get in the US. I think the Legislature tends to “forget this”. You can’t get away with this forever.
(btw, off topic – great seeing you at the CLS, even if you killed my amendment ?)
Thanks, Richard.
Indeed, we do have to weigh the values vs. the costs of the measures we put in place — as you say, this can be “dark magic,” but we do the best we can.
The Legislature has been VERY PRODUCTIVE at blocking the audit that 72% of us voted for! And also going to No Kings rallies.
I had a few problems with ith your defense of the State Legislature.
At one point you compared the State Legislature with Congress. I’m not defending Congress I’ll just say “apples and oranges.
As far as submitting bills multiple times over multiple years that’s ridiculous and should be stopped immediately. You guys need a outside look at th we process. What do they call that? Oh yeah an
Audit!
Thank you, Tony. My thoughts on the “audit” are here.
Not sure what prompted the focus on efficiency of Legislation making but not a major concern outside of professional legislators. The concept of which is anathema to American citizenship and government by the people. Not too many of us are lawyers or theatrical players. I always had two concepts of work that I used. Efficacy and efficiency. Efficacy is what I focused on first and with the customer, not efficiency. I think the same is true here. Also, being efficient with effect is not useful. This should be measured by outcomes. Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. I see concurrence in the comments above. The problems that I see are too much active interference in all three of these elements by government and the expected non-performance and cronyism you always get when the referee plays vs. calls plays. Measure success of the legislators by citizens being free to act as they want within an environment that doesn’t harm others. Public services and utilities at a minimal cost which are desired and needed by most citizens vs. the self-interested advocates. I’d like the focus to be on safety, cost, and very limited restrictions on freedoms. In our current state I see the opposite on almost dimension. Lack of consequence for the truly bad actors in the criminal system but ensnarement of the naive. Every increasing costs of the state to cater to the whims of all of the issue advocates and ever more restrictions on our everyday lives. We should measure these indicators, not lines of statutes.
Definitely agree that questions like these — questions of values and outcomes — are the right ones to be debating.
Who decides on the right ones? Are many bills considered superfluous, and by whom? Seems most bills don’t even make a debate, and many die young..seems an arduous journey for these. Excuse my ignorance, just wondering why a common sense bill can go down a rabbit hole for a long haul, then end up in a sort of lottery luck of passing, if it does. Are these bills for the people? Presented by corporations also? Let’s, get an education..
Thank you for taking the time to discuss this issue with your constituents via this blog, Senator. You make a clear and coherent argument, and more people would benefit from an understanding of the legislative process.
An understanding of the legislative process, and possibly a critique of that process, especially considering who the process is for..thanks for considering!
What a load of crap. Finally he has a credible primary opponent so he comes up with another word salad to try to cover up the fact that he has done basically nothing for us in over a decade. He’s part of the senate leadership and supports the status quo. He brings up civil rights yet has produced no meaningful results on blocking ICE, helping trans kids, adding affordable housing or funding transit. Either rise to the occasion and meet the moment, or step down. Vote for Daniel Lander this year!
Yes, more people would benefit from an understanding of the legislative process (meaning lack of clarity?). Yet, but thanks for the clarity and cohesion . Oh, my. The mind f in this..
Having been involved in trying to pass several bills where tremendous public testimony was given and numerous letters sent with over 100 groups signing on but still the bill doesn’t pass, I have lost all faith in the Legislature actually doing the will of the people. Other states have shorter legislative sessions and get more done. I am convinced some legislators are moved too much by the groups who contribute to their campaigns and the citizens can’t compete. The people have not been served when money rules the Legislature.
Excellent post. Having been involved in the criminal justice reform bill process, I gained enormous respect for how such complicated issues with large numbers of perspectives, start as independent bills and eventually merge to become an omnibus bill. The incredible work of advocates, legislators, their staffs, and outside research organizations meant that this was a multi-session process. I saw Sen. Brownsberger as a leader in this process who helped make it all possible. Of course it wasn’t a perfect bill but it was significant and was something to build on for future reforms. It made many people’s lives better and improved the process in Massachusetts.
During these times when government is not functioning well nationally, I appreciate that I live in Massachusetts where I have experienced the deliberative nature of our legislature and have seen how advocacy and public opinion feeds into the legislature to point out the flaws and places where we need improvements so our state works for us all.
Keep up the good work, I know our legislators get much more negative than positive feedback. But all that effort is not forgotten.
Applauding this comment from Colleen! I fully agree. Building one’s worldview off AI suggestions for how humans should manage themselves is short-sighted and simplistic. (News flash: AI is not human, does not know what it is to be alive.) Either we debate as necessary but ultimately support our elected officials OR we mistreat them and end up managed by the worst of the worst who don’t care about us at all and fair enough because why should someone care about you if all you do is mistreat them?