Representative Steven S. Howitt (R-Seekonk) and House GOP continue to advocate for increased government accountability and transparency

Boston – As a new year gets underway, State Representative Steven S. Howitt (R-Seekonk) is highlighting some of the major pieces of legislation passed by the House early in the 2025-2026 legislative session, as well as several key reform initiatives advocated for by the House Republican Caucus this session.

One of the first votes taken by the House in 2025 was on a Republican-sponsored amendment to a supplemental spending bill requiring all funding expended for providing services through the state’s emergency housing assistance program to be subject to a competitive bidding process, a proposal that is now law. The vote came less than a year after the House Republican Caucus successfully advocated for a competitive bidding requirement for all food contracts related to the emergency shelter system, following reports of a no-bid contract that cost the state close to $10 million.

As in previous years, Representative Howitt and the members of the House Republican Caucus continued in 2025 to push for meaningful reforms to the emergency housing assistance program, which has been costing the state’s taxpayers approximately $1 billion annually due to the large influx of migrants seeking assistance under the state’s right to shelter law. Some of these reforms include proposals to set a minimum residency requirement to qualify for services, which if adopted would help restore the program’s original intent of prioritizing housing assistance for Massachusetts residents in need of services.

The House Republican Caucus was also successful in restoring a requirement that the Healey Administration provide ongoing updates disclosing how much the state is spending on the emergency shelter system, after the original reporting requirement implemented by legislators in 2023 expired on June 30. Language included in the Fiscal Year 2025 closeout supplemental budget, which was signed in November, requires full disclosure of all state spending on the shelter program moving forward as part of the bi-weekly reports issued by the Executive Office for Administration and Finance and the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities (EOHLC), as well as the detailing of all retroactive spending data dating back to July 1.

Representative Howitt noted that the House in 2025 passed legislation that would require human trafficking awareness training for hospitality workers; provide $234 million in one-time financial support for fiscally strained hospitals and community health centers; and implement a formal licensing process for home care agencies operating in Massachusetts to help protect vulnerable clients receiving services.

Workplace safety issues were the focus of two bills engrossed by the House of Representatives last year. House Bill 4767 would take steps to address workplace violence within the health care industry by implementing stronger protections for health care workers, including mandatory training and enhanced reporting requirements.

While House Bill 4767 still awaits Senate approval, legislation to protect public transit workers from assault was signed into law in December. Chapter 79 of the Acts of 2025 adds these workers to an existing law that provides penalties for assaulting a public employee while they are engaged in the performance of their duties, a crime that now carries a penalty of imprisonment for not less than 90 days and not more than 2½ years in a house of correction, a fine of between $500 and $5,000, or both a fine and imprisonment. The new law also creates the crime of assault and battery by means of a bodily substance.

Also signed into law last year was a proposal to extend pandemic-era laws allowing for hybrid and remote municipal meetings until June 30, 2027. Representative Howitt said providing cities and towns with these options have helped to increase public participation in government deliberations at the local level over the last five years. The new law also extends until June 30, 2027 provisions reducing the number of individuals needed to constitute a Town Meeting quorum and authorizing representative Town Meetings to be conducted with remote participation.

Representative Howitt noted that the House in 2025 also approved legislation to implement stronger child welfare protections designed to improve communication and coordination among state agencies working with the families of children in foster care or receiving state services. In addition to passing legislation to remove outdated and offensive language used to describe individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities from the General Laws, the House also endorsed a plan to restructure the Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission in light of the ongoing dysfunction on the board.

In the area of education, the House unanimously approved legislation that would offer enhanced retirement benefits to certain qualifying teachers hired before July 1, 2001 through the RetirementPlus program. The House also passed the higher education BRIGHT Act (An Act to build resilient infrastructure to generate higher-ed transformation), which would provide $3.28 billion to help address deferred infrastructure maintenance and other modernization projects at Massachusetts’s 29 public college and university campuses.

Representative Howitt said both bills are still pending before the Senate.