Rausch Reports on Legislative Wins, Ongoing Efforts in District
September 10, 2024
• State Sen. Becca Rausch held a community town hall in Needham on Monday to discuss her recent budgetary achievements and policy work at the State House.
Plastics and small businesses emerged as front and center issues during Rausch’s stop at Needham Town Hall. The two-term senator represents the Norfolk, Worcester and Middlesex District, composed of 11 municipalities, including Needham.
The presentation attracted about a dozen attendees from around the district, including Select Board member Josh Levy and Chair Kevin Keane, and Needham dominated much of the discussion.
For FY 25, Needham secured $17.2 million in Senate funding, far exceeding surrounding towns. Highlights within that funding include $50,000 toward the ongoing town seal and rebranding, $100,000 for stormwater infrastructure and $100,000 for the Charles River Center. Needham also received behavioral health funding, which Rausch said was a joint effort between her and outgoing Rep. Denise Garlick.
Needham residents contacted Rausch’s office nearly 2,500 times over the last legislative session, Rausch said, and district-wide, constituent connections totaled more than 12,000. Rausch stays in touch with the district through a monthly newsletter called the Rausch Report and her social media accounts, she said.
The senator’s Small Business Advisory Council also boasts Needham representatives, including Dave Volante of Volante Farms and Patrick Gatto of Gatto Agency, who waged a campaign for Garlick’s seat.
The council successfully led to the creation of a small business state grants portal in 2022, and last year passed a “wildly successful” budget amendment called Green the Garbage, which Rausch said provides start-up funds for businesses to create two streams of garbage: trash and composting.
Most recently, the council worked to institute a $125,000 plastics alternatives pilot program, which aims to help local businesses transition to more environmentally friendly products. The initiative resembled similar efforts by Green Needham to ban certain types of plastic, with some success.
“As businesses are trying to shift away from single-use plastics toward more sustainable and eco-friendly products, again those start-up and shift costs are sometimes cost-prohibitive,” Rausch said, “so we’re able to provide some state funding to help make those changes.”
Out of this past legislative session, Rausch celebrated the passage of the Affordable Homes Act, gun violence prevention, salary transparency and parentage equity, which recognizes non-birth parents such as same-sex couples and those using IVF.
The state’s $58 billion budget also provided for free community college, another year of universal school meals and about $3 million to the Genocide Education Trust Fund, which accompanies Rausch’s other efforts to address the rise in anti-semitism.
Rausch also highlighted a $50,000 allotment toward substance-free student housing, which received support from the Becca Schmill Foundation.
A number of bills, however, were left on the table after the end of the session, including health care cost containment, clean energy siting and an effort to lower prescription drug costs. A nearly $3 billion economic development bond authorization bill — also left unfinished — included a bipartisan effort Rausch co-filed that would establish an arts laureates program.
Rausch is also waiting on the fate of the Plastics Reduction Act, which passed through the Senate but now sits in limbo. As the “architect of this legislation,” Rausch called the bill the “most robust, most significant single-use plastics reduction legislation in the history of the Commonwealth.”
“Reducing single-use plastics is absolutely essential to our overarching climate action goals,” Rausch said. “Plastics are made from fossil fuels, period. They’re harmful to the environment and to our personal health from pretty much the moment they even start getting created, getting made.”
A former attorney and law professor, Rausch said she’s “using those skills to advocate for and advance legislation.” In Rausch’s first term in office, she made history as the first woman and Jewish legislator to represent several district communities in the Senate.
Rausch now leads on a number of boards, including the Joint Committee on Environment and Natural Resources — on which she serves as Senate Chair — as well as the Joint Committee on Children, Families and Persons with Disabilities.
At Town Hall, when asked about drug overdose deaths in the state — which totaled 2,125 last year — Rausch referred to Hey Sam, a youth mental health text line that she said provides an important resource.
Rausch also fielded questions from attendees regarding the lack of transparency in the State House, calling it “a tough nut to crack” and saying “culture is hard to change.” Rausch said she publicizes her votes online and is a proponent of sunshine legislation, which would open the legislature and Gov. Maura Healey’s office up for public records requests.
As other legislators begin to share their votes with constituents and request for roll call votes alongside her, Rausch said change is happening, just slowly.
“For the Senate stand-alone committees, all of those votes are published on the legislature’s website. Not so for the House committees,” she said. “So there’s a difference of approach, shall we say, and leadership hasn’t been able to reach agreement on that.”
Until recently, Rausch was running uncontested for a third term, but she will now face a Republican challenger from Franklin who staged a write-in campaign to get on the November ballot. Dashe Videira, who chairs Franklin’s Republican Town Committee, gathered the required 300 votes in the state primary to qualify.
Rausch will stop in Franklin for a second town hall Sept. 24.
