Debate shows frustration over human trafficking policy

Yahoo

23-05-2025

BOSTON (SHNS) – A day after adopting significant prescription drug pricing policy into the budget it could pass later in the day, the Senate spent an hour Thursday debating whether to do the same with a long-discussed policy meant to combat human trafficking in Massachusetts and came to a different decision.
A parade of Senate Democrats said they agree that human trafficking is a problem in need of attention here and no one spoke explicitly against Sen. Mark Montigny's idea to require human trafficking recognition training for employees at hotels. But the New Bedford Democrat won the support of only the Senate's five Republicans and six other Democrats (Sens. Nick Collins of South Boston, William Driscoll of Milton, James Eldridge of Marlborough, Michael Moore of Millbury, Adam Gomez of Springfield, and John Velis of Westfield).
The amendment (#924) was sunk on a 12-28 vote with Senate President Karen Spilka making her opposition clear by voting 'no' first.
'Normally, I'd say, 'let the process take place, we're in the first year of the session.' BS, we're in the seventh year of the bill being heard, studied, deflated and killed,' Montigny said during a speech in which he recounted many of the 20-plus anti-human trafficking amendments and bills he has tried to get through the Legislature since he became involved with the issue in 2005. The hotel worker training language was first filed in 2018. 'Seven years is enough. And all it does, all it does, is say that hotel workers will be trained, that the attorney general will approve it, and that these establishments will ensure that it actually helps catch the trafficker.'
Now the longest-serving senator, Montigny said in March that he was getting 'less patient and more angry' about what he sees as a lack of legislative action on human trafficking. He made that point repeatedly Thursday and said the survivors of human trafficking he talks to constantly ask, 'Why is there so much inaction on Beacon Hill?'
Senate Ways and Means Chair Michael Rodrigues was the first to argue against adopting Montigny's proposal as an amendment to the state budget.
'While the goals are certainly laudable, this is a situation where you really don't create a mandate that every hotel employee — whether they are front desk, janitors, dishwashers, window washers, everyone — to be trained to recognize human trafficking without having extensive discussions with our friends in Local 26, the labor unions that represent the employees, with those that are going to be instituting the training programs, if they have enough staff, enough availability, enough capacity to accommodate this mandate, which could arguably be tens of thousands of individuals in the commonwealth of Massachusetts,' Rodrigues said.
Montigny pointed out that the Massachusetts Lodging Association and the American Hotel and Lodging Association has endorsed his legislation that seeks the same training mandate (S 1729). He also said the idea has 'across-the-board support from the attorney general, from workers, from unions' and that 'no one has spoken against it.'
'There's nothing left to study. It has been studied for seven years. So either we admit that committees, when they study things, don't study anything, or we say they've studied it to death and it's time to act,' Montigny said, referring to one of the most common ways a piece of legislation is sunk on Beacon Hill.
Following a roughly 15-minute recess shortly after Montigny introduced his amendment and asked for a recorded vote, Sen. Cindy Friedman argued against it, saying she developed a bill (S 1116) in conjunction with survivors of the sex trade 'and in those talks with them, they have stressed that they want a commission that does a number of things.'
'Now, I am not a commission person. I'm not somebody who thinks that we need to continue to talk and continue to talk. But what I want to say and be clear about is the advocates that we have worked with — and it has been across the board. It has been the AG's office. I can give you the names of the advocates that have been involved in this — and they have asked for a special commission to look at all aspects of the sex trade,' Friedman said. She added, 'What matters here is that this is what the advocates have asked us for.'
A number of other Democrats rose to say that they supported both the idea of Montigny's amendment and Friedman's bill, but would be voting against the amendment to instead work towards Friedman's legislation.
Worcester Sen. Robyn Kennedy, a cosponsor of Friedman's bill, said the legislation 'seeks to follow the Nordic model that partially decriminalizes sex trafficking, so that we stop holding victims accountable.' She told Montigny that she's also frustrated by a lack of progress on human trafficking bills, and she is only in her second term in the Legislature.
'I stand in a very difficult moment, because I 100% agree that human trafficking is a problem. And I want to acknowledge that right now, in this commonwealth, across the state in almost every hotel, there is very likely somebody, most likely a woman, statistically, being held against their will, and we have to act to do something,' Kennedy said.
Montigny countered the opposition by saying that he has omnibus legislation 'that speaks to every single one of these things [and] that has been killed for 23 years here.' He said he didn't offer that as a budget amendment because he didn't want to propose even more significant policy in the budget.
'Every session, I'm stupid enough to believe that we will actually do what we should do with joint committees, and we will actually pass policy so we don't have to be activists in the budget,' he said.
The dean said his decision to push for his amendment Thursday was influenced by the Senate's vote Wednesday to add a major prescription drug price control measure authored by Friedman into the budget. If a policy like that is OK in the budget, he argued his should be as well.
'When you're trying to help people, and particularly when you do support and vote for a 23-page piece of policy that's far more complex, it's really hard to look survivors in the face, as I do, because I represent them also. So very hard to say, 'Sorry, we just didn't get to your policy,' ' he said.
Montigny told colleagues repeatedly to 'vote your conscience.'
He said, 'Let's vote the way we feel. I judge no one, but let's not in any way think that there are a bunch of struggling survivors saying, 'Please take a couple more years and study this, senator.''
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