Checking in with MassFiscal

Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance
We support Governor Charlie Baker’s vetoes to the 2015-2016 budget. Each veto was a difficult call. In most cases, the cuts were made to small pet projects, important to a particular legislator.

Ultimately, lawmakers voted to override all of the nearly 100 changes Governor Charlie Baker made.

Because of the volume of override votes compared to the few votes on other issues thus far, we’ve decided to treat them differently than usual on our scorecard. Were we to score each one on an individual basis, the overrides alone would essentially dictate a legislator’s score for the entire year. That doesn’t seem fair, so we’ve aggregated the override votes into a single position.

Methodology
Mass Fiscal supports voting no on all veto overrides. To determine whether a legislator should receive ayes or no vote on the scorecard, we split up the data in the following way:

  • First, we calculated the number of no votes each legislator took on the overrides
  • All legislators who voted no 0% of the time automatically received a yes vote on the scorecard
  • Next, we took the list of legislators who voted no some of the time
  • From that list we calculated the median number of no votes taken
  • Legislators with a number of no votes above the median received a no vote on the scorecard
  • Legislators with a number of no votes below the median received a yes vote on the scorecard
Scores
If you would like to see how your member of the legislature voted on all the veto override votes, please click here. To see our legislative scorecard, on this vote in the House, please click here. For the Senate,please click here.
Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance · 18 Tremont St, Suite 707, Boston, MA 02108, United States
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