Here is a question I've been asked as I run for State Senate: what is this job, actually?

If you watch how most of Beacon Hill operates, you would think the job description reads something like this: Advocate for your platform, then leadership tells you what's going to be in a bill. Then send out a newsletter modeled after a press release (written by leadership) celebrating whatever passed as a historic victory, whether or not it delivers for your constituents. If a bill falls short, keep your mouth shut, stick to the talking points, and wait for permission to push for more. Anything else is "rocking the boat."

I call this the wait and see culture, and it is the reason a supermajority blue state has one of the least transparent and least productive legislatures in the country. It is also the reason corporations get their agenda fast-tracked without most people ever noticing, while people put on the margin are expected to wait their turn on Beacon Hill.

Because here is the thing about wait and see culture: it does not just make the legislature slow. It creates the perfect conditions for corporate giveaways to be snuck quickly through with no debate, no record vote, and no one watching.

Let me show you how this works with a real example, one that is still costing us nearly half a billion dollars every year.

After the 2017 Trump tax law, the federal government created a provision called GILTI (global intangible low-taxed income), which is pronounced "guilty" or "taxing the GILTI," heh. Taxing the GILTI targets a specific kind of corporate tax dodging: multinational corporations shifting their profits onto the books of subsidiaries in offshore tax havens so those profits cannot be taxed here. It's how the largest tech companies do lots of business in Massachusetts but don't pay taxes in this state because all their intangible assets are held abroad. Under the new federal law, 50 percent of those shifted profits get pulled back into the tax base and would be taxed.

Our neighbors followed the federal standard. Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, and Rhode Island all include 50 percent or more of these offshore profits in their state tax calculations.

Massachusetts only taxes 5 percent of that income, or in other words, our state grants a 95% exemption on income earned in offshore tax havens. For comparison, think about how much of your income from your labor is exempt from taxes…

How did that happen? In 2018, language was tucked into the outside sections of a mid-year supplemental budget that decoupled Massachusetts from the federal provision and reclassified these offshore profits as "repatriated dividends," slashing the amount subject to state taxation by 90 percent. That bill was enacted in October 2018 during informal session, when a handful of legislators can pass legislation with no recorded vote, as long as no one objects.

No one objected. Because hardly anyone was even in the room.

Think about what that means. A tax change worth nearly half a billion dollars a year to the largest multinational corporations on earth, the kind that took months of federal debate to enact in Washington, was undone for Massachusetts in a near-empty chamber. Meanwhile, our schools are facing painful cuts, hundreds of thousands of people are losing MassHealth, and the MBTA continues to defer maintenance on the order of tens of billions of dollars.

There is no vote you can look up. There is no legislator you can hold accountable. That is not a glitch in the system. That is the system working as designed. And it's the dire consequence of wait and see culture.

I studied that 2018 machination closely, because I wanted to understand exactly how the trick works so I could stop it from working again.

Since then, I have caught and helped block corporate tax breaks that leadership tried to move the exact same way, snuck into large bills we only have a few hours to review with no debate and no recorded vote, including a corporate tax break that would have sailed through if no one had been paying attention. This time it was removing a limit on how much large corporations could deduct for the interest paid on their debt.

However, unlike GILTI, this tax break was blocked. I worked with a small caucus of legislators and built up political pressure with grassroots organizations and pushed the narrative in the press that this is fundamentally wrong.

Blocking a corporate giveaway does not require seniority, a committee title, or leadership's blessing. It requires all of us working together, building up strategic coalitions to make it impossible for powerful people to tell us no.

So back to my question. What is a state senator actually supposed to do?

I will be a state senator who fights for our community over corporate greed.

That starts with the courage to name what is really happening, even when it is unpopular or considered off limits on Beacon Hill. It is the job as I understand it, and it is the job I have already been doing. I tell the stories Beacon Hill does not want you to hear, whether they come from inside a solitary confinement cell, from the fine print of a secret AI contract, or from a climate bill written by the same corporate polluters it was supposed to rein in. The tax break that vanished into an empty chamber in 2018 is one of those stories, and the reason you now know it is that telling them is what this newsletter is for. Remember at the top when I described newsletters modeled on press releases written by leadership? This is the alternative.

Because here is the truth about courage in that building: it does not take any to go along with the Speaker's budget and celebrate it on cue. It takes courage to stand up to corporate power when staying quiet would be easier, when speaking up costs you committee titles and leadership's favor, and when the entire culture of the institution is telling you to wait your turn.

If you want a senator who will name the problem and take it on, not just vote when it is safe, I am asking for your support.

Whether it is stopping corporate tax breaks from being snuck through, getting ICE out of Massachusetts, or lowering your utility bills, that is the job I am asking you to elect me to do.

The primary is September 1. I hope to earn your vote.

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Paid for by Committee to Elect Erika Uyterhoeven · Somerville, MA
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