Priorities-State
- Retirement plans for nonprofits: Working to get legislation passed that would authorize the State Treasurer to establish retirement plans for nonprofit employees and manage the plans and the investments. The bill has already passed the House once. To see more details on the bill after the January bill filling, go to the Massachusetts Legislature website and enter the bill’s title, An Act to Provide Retirement Options for Nonprofit Organizations, into the Keyword/Phrase box.
- Massachusetts Joint House and Senate Nonprofit Legislative Caucus: MNN is pleased to announce the formation of the Massachusetts Nonprofit Caucus which is co-chaired by Senator Jennifer Flanagan and Representative Liz Malia. The first meeting of the Caucus is Thursday, May 5 at 10:30 a.m. in Room 222 at the State House. The Caucus will serve as a bipartisan forum for legislators and the Patrick administration to collaborate on issues that impact nonprofits throughout the Commonwealth.
As of May 2, 2011, the current list of Caucus members are as follows:
* Representative Jennifer Benson
* Representative John Scibak
* Representative Stephen Kulik
* Representative Ellen Story
* Representative Kay Khan
* Representative Thomas Sannicandro
* Senator Benjamin Downing
* Senator Stanley Rosenberg
To build the strength of the Caucus, contact your state senator and representative to ask them to
join. To find their names and contact information, go to www.malegislature.gov/people/findmylegislator.
To join the Caucus, your senator needs to contact Amanda Johnson in Senator Flanagan’s office at Amanda.Johnson@masenate.gov and your representative should contact Matthew Cohen in Representative Malia’s office at Matthew.Cohen@mahouse.gov.
- State Health Care Initiatives: MNN will continue to monitor state health care initiatives to avoid policies that make it more difficult to offer nonprofit employees health care, and to work with for-profit allies to ensure that any initiatives that are proposed to help for–profit employers will include nonprofits as beneficiaries. See the copy of our Nonprofit Health Insurance Task Force findings for more information.
- Municipal and Local Issues: Many cities and towns across the Commonwealth have been facing constrained budgets, particularly due to state and federal cuts and declining property values. As they struggle to fill this gap, some are turning to the nonprofit sector for revenue, most often in the form of negotiated Payment-in-lieu-of-taxes programs (PILOTs) with nonprofit organizations. For further information about what PILOT programs are, how they work, and what to do if your nonprofit organization is approached to make such payments, click here to view our FAQs. For additional information please go to our Nonprofit Research Reports page.
There are efforts in place to charge special municipal fees to nonprofits for services from municipal governments that others receive without fees, such as trash fees, etc. MNN will be monitoring such efforts and working with local nonprofits to help them deal with these and similar initiatives.