A New England fiscal group argued Friday that an effort to repeal a statewide ban on rent control violates two constitutional provisions that govern whether ballot questions can make it before voters in fall 2024.
The Fiscal Alliance Foundation submitted comments in opposition to a proposed ballot question filed by Rep. Mike Connolly that would scrap a portion of state law banning rent control and replace it with new language allowing municipalities to regulate residential evictions, rents and fees, brokers’ fees, and the removal of housing units from the rental housing market.
In a letter to Attorney General Andrea Campbell, foundation chair Danielle Webb said the question crossed two sections of the state constitution that prohibit ballot questions that create takings of property without just compensation and proposals that address multiple unrelated policies in the same question.
Webb said because the question grants municipalities the power to regulate residential rents, fees, evictions, and removal of housing units from the rental market, it “would result in the appropriation of private property for public use without compensation.”
“The attorney general cannot avoid taking notice of the fact that the regulation of rents and the regulation of the removal of units from the rental market will result in a significant appropriation of private property value, given high market value rents and high demand for rental units across the Commonwealth,” Webb wrote in the letter to Campbell.
The proposed ballot question includes two unrelated matters as it provides local cities and towns with the power to regulate residential rents and evictions, Webb said.
“The petition’s proposed regulation of both rents and evictions fails to satisfy the related subjects requirement,” Webb said. “Although rents and evictions may be related at ‘some high level of abstraction,’ the petition fails to present a ‘unified statement of public policy’ that may be accepted or rejected as a whole by voters.”
Connolly’s question is one of 42 petitions for proposed laws and constitutional amendments that were filed with Campbell’s office last week. Campbell has until Sept. 6 to decide which questions meet constitutional muster and must then collect more than 74,000 signatures in about three months.
Connolly, a Cambridge Democrat and renter himself, said his proposed ballot question is necessary because the state’s ongoing housing crisis does not have any precedent in modern history.
“Never has affordable housing been this out of reach to this many people, and never has homelessness been this pervasive in our commonwealth,” he told the Herald in a phone call Friday. “And if you go back over history over the past 103 years in Massachusetts, it has been a common response to housing emergency for there to be rent control.”
He said he is “very confident” the ballot question satisfies constitutional requirements and pointed to multiple periods in the state’s history when rent control was in place.
“Certainly, the proposal that we filed includes provisions to ensure that it is fully compliant with the constitution,” he said. “Regarding the relatedness clause, we’ve looked very closely at the Supreme Judicial Court’s jurisprudence on this question.”
The Cambridge Democrat said his proposal presents voters with a simple, singular question, “should your municipal officials have the power to protect rents?”
“We’re very confident that as the attorney general reviews the proposal before her, that it will satisfy the constitutional requirements,” he said.
Connolly’s proposed question would not apply to newly constructed dwelling units for which the residential certificate of occupancy was obtained for the first time 15 years ago or less; two or three-family owner-occupied units; hotels or motels “which are rented primarily to transient guests for a period of less than” two weeks; publicly-owned housing; and public institutions of higher education, among others.
A 1994 voter-approved ballot question put in place a statewide ban on rent control and Connolly’s proposed question looks to repeal that.
Fiscal Alliance Foundation spokesperson Paul Craney said the question is “poor policy and poorly written.”
“It would be unlawful for this ballot question to go forward and the [Attorney General’s Office] and Supreme Judicial Court have rejected other ballot questions for the same reasons we outline in our written comments,” he said in a prepared statement.