Thread by @erika4rep

Big day today, voting on ARPA funding for MA! This means: 💰💰💰 -> 🏥+🏘️+🏫+💉+😷+ (covid test emoji?)

Time for an amendment run down! 1/🧵

For ref: full text of the bill + amendments here: malegislature.gov/Bills/192/H434…

S/O to @TamiGouveiaMA who filed amendment #10 to make antigen tests FREE OF CHARGE and amendment #14 to increase testing funding from $30M -> $75M

Testing should be universally available to anyone who needs it, for free. 2/🧵

Some of us can work from home and isolate, many can't. Imagine paying $10+/day to keep your kid in childcare, $10+/day to keep going to work in-person safely, $10/a day to keep your isolated pod safe.

If we mass purchase testing at the state level, it'd cost us all less. 3/🧵

Fun fact, @TamiGouveiaMA has a DrPH & yrs of experience in public health.

She raised the alarm 🚨 on state-wide rapid testing since spring **last year**

It's too bad she wasn't put on the covid response committees 🤔🤔🤔

Her bill on rapid testing
malegislature.gov/Bills/192/H3780 4/🧵

S/O to @mciccolo for her amendment #18 to extend Vote by Mail & Early Voting 🗳️🗳️🗳️

For the sake of our democracy and public health, we must keep voting safe & accessible for all.

Related, the House needs to pass the VOTES Act, which the Senate passed 36-3 last year. 5/🧵

Democracy doesn't end at the ballot box, we also need to maintain remote participation with our local governments.

While we don't have town meeting in #Somerville I co-sponsored all the amendments to authorize remote participation for town meeting. 6/🧵

Big picture, ARPA is a spending bill (an extra budget, if you will, on 💰 from DC), since we had 3.5 hours notice to file amendments yesterday and 24 hours to review the bill, I don't have a full visual breakdown / summary / hot take on the overall spending to share yet 7/🧵

It seems the big buckets of spending hasn't changed drastically from the last version of ARPA we voted on last fall, here's the big picture buckets from the last version of the bill: 8/🧵

What we're voting on today is a part of ARPA funding ($55M) to fund masks & testing. Worth noting we have a surplus from our tax revenues so we could be spending a lot more on state covid response. It's currently unclear how many masks & tests we'll buy for 7M MA residents. 9/🧵

As formal session moves forward today, I'll share footage from the house floor speeches in this 🧵

10/🧵