Frequently Asked Questions

Who are you, and who is funding this?

We are a group of private citizens from across the Commonwealth of Massachusetts who are concerned about the unchecked power of local officials to set their own pay. We are not associated with any political party, and we are not funded by any external group. We have been volunteering our nights and weekends to make sure Massachusetts is run well for our children.

Mayors and Councilors deserve raises too!

They do! And the job of being a mayor in a city can be really hard. It’s a job that is non-stop and often underappreciated. Elected officials deserve raises, their families need to eat too! A Just Massachusetts is very happy to see elected officials get raises. We just want to make sure the raises make sense to the voters who will be paying them. Thats you!

How will we change the laws?

The laws can be changed by an act of the legislature. The easiest way to change the laws is to contact your state legislator and ask them to make the changes. These changes are small and likely not particularly controversial (we hope).

If this fails, A Just Massachusetts can try to collect enough signatures to force the issue in a statewide Ballot Initiative, and the voters will decide at the ballot box.

How can I help?

Have a look at the Get Involved Page (at the top right). There are lots of things you can do:

  1. Tell your friends about this organization and effort.

  2. Write/Call your State Legislator and let them know how you feel. Find My Legislator (malegislature.gov)

  3. Sign up for our mailing list. We promise we won’t sell your data or send you too many emails. We will let you know any progress we make and we will reach out to you if we need to start collecting signatures.

  4. If you are involved in a community organization which is interested in this effort, let us know, we would be happy to come and talk to you one on one.

Am I impacted by these laws?

If you live in a city in Massachusetts you may be impacted. The Massachusetts State Legislature has given power to local City Councils to set their pay and the mayor’s pay. They can set this to any value they want. You have very limited ability to change it if you don’t like it. If the elected officials are not running for office again, there is very little you can do. Further, if the officials have worked for the city long enough they may be able to collect the majority of that pay in retirement. Your property taxes will need to pay for these raises forever.

There is already a way to repeal a raise, why not let that be?

This is true. MGL Part 1, Title V11, Chapter 43, Section 42 allows voters to repeal a City Council resolution with a petition signed by 12% of the registered voters. However, that MGL section gives voters only twenty days to accomplish the task. That is three weeks. Assuming it takes one week for the public to even learn about the raise (most city papers are not published daily), and one week to even learn how to repeal the vote (There are a lot of rules about how you can collect signatures), that leaves essentially one week to effectively collect.

We learned this the hard way in Quincy. It took A Just Quincy over a week to get organized. As we got close to our final day we were collecting approximately a thousand signatures a day. The repeal was extremely popular, yet we missed the deadline. Literally two more days and we would have almost certainly been successful.

A Just Massachusetts strives to change the state law so that others in the same situation have the time they need to mobilize and stop this.