Just Thinking: State Representative James Arena-DeRosa

Mary Greendale hosted State rep James Arena-DeRosa. Some highlights of the discussion included:

One of our most important functions of a State Representative is to ensure that our citizens know who to reach out when they have issues with government. If we can’t help you directly, we can direct you to town leaders, and federal leaders.

You should always feel free to reach out to us if you have a special event, or a person who should be recognized.

One of the issues we are facing is the disparity in gender pay. One thing that the state did is insist that any employer who has 25 or more employees must disclose the salary parameters in job descriptions. As a society, in general, we have undervalued the contributions of women in the workforce. Now that people have more opportunities, they are moving onto other fields. The larger issue is how women had previously been more active in the social services business.

Budget dicussions remained under negotiations and a lot of issues had been decided but the House and Senate could not agree on how to deal with the migrant issues (specifically sheltering).

Difference between informal session and formal session is that in informal sessions any one person can stop any legislation in its tracks.

Regarding the migrant issue. While I care deeply about the unhoused I also agree that something needs to be done. We need to make plans for people to get out of these situations including work permits. We appear to have come up with a plan that could work. While there has not been a lot of depth of answers, we need to know how much money we are spending, how much we’re wasting, etc. We need to balance being helpful and managing resources.

We need a good process at the border and we have to figure out this work permit system. We have highly skilled people coming in and we have an aging workforce. It’s not all of the answer, but it can be part of the answer by getting people a job and having them paying taxes.

People want to see how we move ahead, both as a state and on the federal level.

While this is different people, this has been occuring for 25 years. There are reps who are getting calls in the middle of the night. The way the state is dealing with this has to be managed better.

Regarding the budget and the processes including conference committees. Conference committees are comprised of members of the House and the Senate. This occurs when there are two different bills with the same goal. These bills have to say exactly the same thing to get passed. It is generally only six people and they are usually people who have been around a while. Ultimately what ends up happening are part of a huge bill. There are not as many debates about smaller issues.

The committee chairs are very open to questions. However, without being a part of these committee meetings, we don’t get to hear people’s voices.

Regarding housing tax relief. Local communities have the option of offering a local tax abatement. The assessors have just started discussing this. The Governor wants to mandate this. Within the last decade there have been dicussions in Holliston regarding this and affordable housing is not always the “same” when the government says affordable and what a community deems affordable. This will be a significant issue in Holliston.

To deal with the housing crisis, we are going to have to approach it with a variety of solutions.

Vacancies in public housing are significant and much of this is because the housing authorities do not have sufficient funding to repair all of them at the same time. We have thousands of public units which are open.

The quality of life in a town, the character is a big concern. However, the more restrictive the housing costs, and the lower turnover of housing means people who are working here often need to travel an hour or more. There is no magic bullet and we’re hoping that some more of these issues will be addressed into 2024.

If you need to reach Representative Arena-DeRosa, contact his office at (617) 722-2810 or james-arena-derosa@mahouse.gov.

You can watch the entire episode here.

Sign up and get automatic delivery of headlines to your inbox.

Thank you for subscribing!

×