Bill Humphrey is a multi-term Newton City Councilor with a career of public service, who is committed to working for the public on the important public policy decisions of our time with the time, energy, and thoughtfulness they deserve. He is a millennial living in a multi-generation household, a fifth-generation Newton resident, and a public school graduate. He believes Massachusetts should be a Commonwealth for everyone. Based on his many years of knocking doors to speak directly with residents, Bill has always taken a constituent-services-first approach to public service, coupled with a broader vision for the future.
Here is where Bill stands on the major issues that are on the horizon for the Legislature (backed by his passionate work on the City Council Finance Committee to understand the needs, challenges and opportunities in public finances in Massachusetts government right now at the state and municipal levels):
Featured Issues
CLIMATE AND ENVIRONMENTAL ACTION
Bill Humphrey has been endorsed in 2024 for State Representative by the Massachusetts Sierra Club and IBEW Local 103 (specializing in renewable energy).
Environmental pollution and greenhouse gas emissions are already driving up our healthcare costs, flooding our homes, and reducing our quality of life. Massachusetts is one of the fastest-warming states in the country, along with the rest of the New England states, due to climate change in the Gulf of Maine. Urgent measures are needed at the state level to prepare our communities physically and financially for climate resilience and pollution reduction mandates.
Bill Humphrey is an environmental champion and climate action advocate who has previously been endorsed for Newton City Council by Sierra Club and Sunrise Boston for his prior activism and advocacy for cutting off the reliance on and new exploitation of fossil fuel resources. He is now Vice Chair of the Programs & Services Committee, which is one of the two committees that deals most directly with environmental impact and resilience work. Most recently, he helped shepherd through the passage of a significant reform to the protection of trees on private property in Newton, and he also supported and strengthened the city’s plastic waste reduction ordinance.
Getting off gas – Bill has also been a vocal opponent of the private natural gas utility industry’s lack of repair efforts to leaking pipes and the legacy of costly, damaged roads from its digging to expand infrastructure. Our state regulators need to do more because municipalities are not allowed to do much about this. He has supported Newton’s cutting-edge efforts to reduce and green our energy usage, but now we need additional financial support to help people and businesses with this transition, to decarbonize and weatherize their buildings. Bill also championed prohibiting new construction hookups to natural gas in Newton, before anyone else on the Council got on board with the idea, and eventually Newton was granted permission from the Legislature as part of the Ten Communities pilot (an effort led by activists in the Town of Brookline) to formulate a local ordinance to this effect.
It’s time to set some binding mandates and timetables for complete electrification of Massachusetts, keeping fossil fuels in the ground instead of the atmosphere and ending the installation of (soon-to-be) stranded assets. We can help everyone get there, but the time for kicking the can down the road and vaguely promising a distant future “net zero” is long past.
Energy reform – We need our heating and energy to be clean and green, in residential spaces and large buildings, and we need to electrify and build out our transportation infrastructure. We need to stop building brand-new fossil fuel infrastructure. We need regulatory reform on the approvals process for responsible renewable energy sites.
Environmental justice – Sadly, too often, our society has allowed dangerous pollution to be released into our air and water, with enormous health consequences. Disproportionately, those impacts have fallen on low-income and minority individuals and communities. We need to use existing law, swiftly and fairly, to ensure elimination of pollution, provide meaningful and substantial compensation for those affected, and impose punishment for those responsible. Environmental public safety should not be taken lightly or be treated as an afterthought corrected by an occasional minor fine.
Resilience investments – Rightly there has been a heavy focus on coastal areas until now. They need state and federal support, which Bill will continue to support, but we also have begun to see significant effects in the state’s interior, too, including our own 12th Middlesex District in Newton and Brookline. Stormwater overflow and inland flooding will affect most or all cities and towns in Massachusetts in the coming years due to climate change, and many have already begun experiencing severe effects during major storm events. There are thousands of culverts, bridges, and dams on streams large and small that are vulnerable to collapse. These would be prohibitively expensive to replace en masse, but we know that naturalistic “green” infrastructure that mimics the effects of wetlands and woodlands on slowing down the flow of stormwater can reduce the impact of generations of paving and development that results in water reaching drains and culverts more quickly than it otherwise would during or following severe rain or rapid snowmelt. This green infrastructure, including bioswales, is much less expensive than traditional infrastructure capacity projects, and the state should help local municipalities pay for it.
Emergency leadership – To meet the challenge of sufficient climate change mitigation action in the coming years, Massachusetts should consider declaring a Climate State of Emergency and establishing a Climate Emergency Commission, staffed by a mix of climate scientists, environmental attorneys, former lawmakers, and former regulators with no affiliation to the energy industry. Such a Commission's purpose would be setting executable emergency regulations on greenhouse gas emissions, energy production, and emergency resource and response management for climate-related disasters, as well as developing critical climate action legislation for the legislature to adopt. The Legislature’s rules should also give their proposals priority pathways to debate and passage.
The climate crisis is likely to transform the Massachusetts economic structure and society, regardless of our choices now. It is our responsibility to ensure this transformation is a positive one that benefits our entire Commonwealth and the people who live in it.
Housing
Bill Humphrey has been endorsed in 2024 for State Representative by the Framingham-Newton Building Trades Council, IBEW 103 electricians, and the Ironworkers Local 7 – and has received additional support from the United Union of Roofers, Waterproofers & Allied Workers Local 33, Carpenters Local Union 339, and Pipefitters Local 537
In the Boston area, the cost of renting or buying even a modest home can be prohibitive for many residents. Housing is a human right. Currently the Commonwealth is experiencing a serious housing crisis, affecting the middle class, working class, and the very poor. As a Newton City Councilor, Bill Humphrey has been a vocal proponent of affordable housing and tenant protections. In addition to supporting the formation of Newton’s Affordable Housing Trust and helping to pass and secure Newton’s new “by-right” ordinance for small Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs), he has advocated for a modest, local option real estate transfer fee to generate special municipal revenues for the construction and renovation of low-income housing in each community. He has also supported expansion of the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit until we can establish more direct public financing mechanisms, and he has spoken out in defense of the “right to shelter” law and for additional funding for emergency shelter. Bill would continue to be a housing and tenant advocate in the legislature.
Simply put, we need new affordable housing in our communities to house public employees, service workers, the lowest-income populations, and the middle class. Every community needs these available locally, if we don’t want to force long, congested commutes on most workers. And we need to make sure that housing is connected to the wider community, not isolated.
Bill Humphrey is an advocate of preserving and protecting open space for public recreation for all and believes this can serve the residents of new housing, too, rather than being a conflicting goal.
We also need new housing for seniors to downsize to affordably within their own communities, so that they can age in place if they don’t want to move away. Currently, municipal governments do not have local flexibility from the Commonwealth to promote this policy objective.
And one of the best things we can do to stabilize people's lives and communities is to help them remain where they are living already whenever possible. Our programs and laws should promote this goal. During the early phase of the pandemic, Bill Humphrey pushed for the creation of an emergency rental and mortgage assistance program in Newton and went door-to-door to Ward 5 rental properties distributing information from the city on how to access that help.
Bill Humphrey supports tenant protections such as right-to-counsel, no-fault eviction record sealing, tenant opportunity to purchase (already present in mobile home parks), rent stabilization local options, and other measures currently being considered by advocates and legislators to help people avoid losing their homes.
Healthcare
Bill Humphrey has been endorsed in 2024 for State Representative by the Massachusetts Nurses Association and 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, as well as the National Association of Social Workers - Massachusetts.
The cost of healthcare services and health insurance are one of the biggest sources of the cost-of-living crisis for many Massachusetts residents. In the current system, health insurance also represents an unsustainable cost driver for many businesses and municipal governments. Health care – including mental health, dental, and vision services, as well as reproductive services such as abortion, full spectrum pregnancy care, and gender-affirming care – is a fundamental human right that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts must secure for every resident.
We also need healthcare to be free at the point of service and people should not be on the phone arguing with their insurance company from the hospital. (Doctors also shouldn’t be having to spend all their time fighting an insurance company for prior authorization of necessary treatments.) Bill Humphrey supports a greater state or federal role in rationalizing the healthcare system and the health insurance system to provide better service, more widely, at a lower cost to patients. A progressive taxation system is a better basis for funding in the long run than the current health insurance premiums model. (This is often referred to as “Medicare For All” or “single payer.”) The private systems for delivering care itself are also broken for most patients (and for many healthcare professionals), and a public system would make more sense there too. In the meantime, we can always make meaningful improvements to the systems we have now to give people a better experience. Eventually, we will need to orchestrate a much bigger transition.
Bill Humphrey also supports prescription drug pricing reform for patients. No one should ever have to risk financial insolvency for the medications they need.
To meet additional demand for healthcare services by people gaining better access, the Commonwealth should invest in educating more nurses and doctors and making this an affordable educational path.
The Commonwealth also needs to do more to support rural healthcare, to improve outcomes for nearby residents and reduce the growing pressure on the major urban hospitals. The private sector is failing on providing stable, reliable, accessible rural and community healthcare in Massachusetts and all over the United States, and this affects all of us downstream in one way or another.
Public Childcare and Education
Bill Humphrey has been endorsed in 2024 for State Representative by SEIU Local 509, the Mass Teachers Association, the Newton Teachers Association, and the Boston Teachers Union.
Many residents struggle with the costs of childcare, higher education, and education debt. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts can work on this:
Public Daycare and Pre-Kindergarten – Childcare costs in Massachusetts are higher than in any other state, on average. Every child should have the option from birth to attend free daycare and pre-kindergarten provided by the Commonwealth or municipalities directly. We should also provide free after-school programs for older children. Additionally, we need to expand the state’s compensation program for relatives and neighbors who provide unofficial childcare to working families or are raising grandchildren and other younger family members while a parent is unable to do so.
K-12 – Every child has the right to a free, high-quality public K-12 education, just like the one Bill Humphrey received from the Newton Public Schools and our incredible public schools educators. This principle builds on a core principle of Massachusetts, exported to the rest of the nation, for 180 years. Let's make sure every child in the Commonwealth, regardless of zip code, has the same high-quality level of public education. And let’s make sure their teachers and aides have the support they need and the compensation they deserve. Bill Humphrey will be an advocate for increased state aid to support local public education.
In recent years, between the pandemic and the rise of social media and smartphones, as well as other societal factors, the educational experience has dramatically shifted for children everywhere. The Newton and Brookline Youth Risk Behavior Surveys show very concerning levels of anxiety and potentially deadly mental health crises, and our educators in the buildings generally report the same concerns. In a spring 2024 candidates’ event with high school students, most students cited mental health support as one of the most important policy issues right now. We should commit state resources to provide additional mental health support staff, programming, and curriculum education, including for social-emotional learning for all our public school students at every grade level, so that our students can not only thrive academically but also be behaviorally prepared for the highs and lows of adult life and their future careers.
Higher Education – Just as we already provide free public education for K-12, every resident should qualify for higher public education or vocational training in Massachusetts without tuition or fees. To meet this new demand, the Commonwealth will need to fund new construction of capacity and hiring of additional permanent teaching faculty. Finally, Massachusetts should relieve the student debt burden of those residents already beyond the tertiary education system.
Eldercare and Long-term Disability Care
Bill Humphrey has been endorsed in 2024 for State Representative by the Massachusetts Nurses Association and 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, as well as the National Association of Social Workers - Massachusetts.
780,000 people in Massachusetts provide unpaid caregiving for family members and friends who are elders or have a long-term disability or both. This saves our society collectively billions of dollars annually, but it can be a personally costly and sometimes exhausting responsibility – and we have a duty to help lighten the load.
Long-term home eldercare and long-term disability care has been a part of Bill Humphrey's entire life. Aging relatives with physical and mental health challenges were either living in the house when Bill was a child or were living at other close relatives' houses until 2017. Bill’s father is a stroke survivor, and Bill’s maternal grandparents are likely to move in soon, after an Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) can be built to accommodate them. As in many families, this caretaking was not always an easy role for the family to take on, but other options were often even less appropriate (or simply unaffordable). Nursing homes and assisted living centers came with their own distinct challenges, too, when relatives re-located there. Addressing these growing issues for many young families, seniors, and people with disabilities is critical – and a good solution for everyone involved will require vision.
We should establish universal, publicly-provided eldercare, adult daycare, and long-term disability care system – both in home and in facilities, depending on resident need. This will help address several of our growing challenges with an aging population, while also relieving stresses on the Medicaid system that it is not equipped to handle.
A huge volume of Medicaid dollars now go toward providing long-term care for elderly residents and people with permanent disabilities. Not only is the program not really designed to serve this purpose, but also the income and asset requirements for eligibility often force seniors to spend away or give away assets before they can qualify for assistance from the government.
We need to rethink our approach completely because of the expected surge in demand for nursing home capacity, home care, and adult day care in the coming decades as our population with advanced years and significant care needs grows rapidly.
Additionally, we need a better system for assisting our young population of people with disabilities who wish to work part-time, so that we do not keep them in eligibility limbo based on their hours or consistency.
Too often, the daily and long-term care of our elderly or permanently-disabled loved ones is outsourced to a marketplace that does not work for many people. It is critical that a public eldercare system be truly public, not just in funding and availability, but also in how we provide it. This is not a matter of creating yet another insurance program and letting the market decide how much and what quality of care to supply. No one should be turned away from a public care service for cost or capacity reasons.
The care workers in these services must be paid a living wage commensurate with the incredibly challenging work they perform every day to care for our loved ones, and we need affordable housing options in proximity to clients.
Family members caring “unofficially” for elders should be compensated by the state to help ease the financial strain on both the families and on the economy from workforce withdrawal to provide care. There are some programs and modest tax credits on this front, but not everyone benefits from these mechanisms, and we can do more.
Public Transit and Infrastructure
Public Transit – Bill Humphrey is a public transit rider and enthusiast as well as the son of a retired public transportation planner. Unfortunately, Green Line and MBTA Commuter Rail service in and around our district is deteriorating. The public transportation policy priority in Massachusetts should be investing in bringing service to a level of reliability that riders can count on every day. These improvements should also be coupled with other traffic congestion mitigation efforts such as improved and safer bicycle and pedestrian access.
Public transit funding increases should come from equitable and progressive taxation, not constant fare hikes. Bill Humphrey supports a fare-free system of buses and subways to increase ridership and ease of use.
Public transit workers should be public employees, and they should be unionized – and public transit operations should not be outsourced either. The economics of public transportation do not support privatization, and public services like transit should remain fully state-owned and state-operated. We must continue to oppose any privatization efforts and end the outsourced operation of commuter rail.
Bill Humphrey is a longtime supporter of improving disability access on public transit, including the current Green Line station platforms and ramps projects and the commuter rail stations in need of upgrades in Newton. Transit accessibility is a vital link to independent living within a fully inclusive society.
Public Roads, Bridges, Tunnels, and More – The rest of our infrastructure is also in a dire state of repair, often due to deferred maintenance and insufficient in-house capacity for planning and execution of projects. Most Newton and Brookline residents are frustrated with the deteriorating condition of local and state roads. State funding, including local reimbursement aid, has not come close to keeping pace with the rising costs of roads maintenance.
We also need to make our roads safer for all users, including drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians. Legal and regulatory changes at the state level can support local advocacy and re-engineering for improved road safety.
Bill is committed to improving the safety of our bridges, tunnels, underground pipe infrastructure, and dams (including dam removal where appropriate).
Safe Design – Public safety from infrastructure is not just about maintenance, but also design. We need to keep pedestrians, cyclists, wheelchair users, and drivers safe from collisions with other vehicles and with public transit. Bill Humphrey is a supporter of the Vision Zero campaign to eliminate these kinds of dangerous or fatal crashes through safer design standards (and improved sight lines) that secure better outcomes permanently, unlike public awareness campaigns or temporary police monitoring. All road users should be safe as they move through our transportation networks, and it should be possible to use any mode of movement safely to get between any two points. This will require new regulations and new funding to make these upgrades systematically.
Mental Health and Substance Use
Bill Humphrey has been endorsed in 2024 for State Representative by the the National Association of Social Workers - Massachusetts Chapter, the Massachusetts Nurses Association, and 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East (and the SEIU Massachusetts State Council).
Mental Health – No one in our communities has not been touched by a mental health emergency in a family or friend, even if they have not experienced one themselves. We know that lifetime outcomes for those experiencing mental health crises or grappling with mood disorders are so much better with rapid intervention and mental healthcare treatment. Currently, we don’t have enough beds and programs available to be able to help everyone who needs it right away, which means telling people to white-knuckle it and hope they can make it to the next available opening--if they can even afford it. This is a costly, inhumane disaster. Local 911 calls for mental health distress situations have been rising rapidly, but police feel they are not the appropriate specialists to be able to help in these emergencies. Bill Humphrey has championed proposals for non-police mental health first responder teams, and the Commonwealth could help make that possible.
Massachusetts must set and reach a goal of zero teen and pre-teen suicides, while also working to prevent as many adult suicides as possible. Massachusetts's incredible public health research community should also be given support by the Commonwealth in studying the relationships between mental health problems, chronic pain, other physical disabilities, and addiction, so that they no longer reinforce or exacerbate each other and prevent people from living full lives.
Substance Use – The militarized approach to combating substance use disorders in our country and in our communities has failed and caused immense damage to many lives without ending substance abuse and addiction. We should shift our policies, responsibly and fairly, to a more appropriate treatment and harm reduction regime. We must also recognize the social and economic components of addiction. Many people, young or old, turn to substance abuse because they are struggling with despair and severe emotional pain in their lives. If there are not enough resources and mental health beds available and accessible, substances become a cheaper but more dangerous alternative. Discouraging drug use should therefore be moved out of the responsibility of local law enforcement and to social and public health authorities, who need more funding. Bill Humphrey supports scientifically-proven harm reduction models overseen by public health professionals, instead of a total prohibition approach. Shifting strategies away from a “War on Drugs” also means looking back and trying to correct and make amends for the damage past approaches have caused, particularly in low-income and minority communities.
Reproductive Freedom
Bill Humphrey has been endorsed in 2024 for State Representative by Reproductive Equity Now.
In his very first campaign in 2016, Bill Humphrey was endorsed by NARAL Pro-Choice Massachusetts (now Reproductive Equity Now) for his unwavering support for significantly expanding reproductive freedom and abortion access in Massachusetts. People in Massachusetts, including minors without parental interference, have an inalienable right to make autonomous and independent decisions about their bodies and their reproductive choices in consultation with their physicians. This right is under constant assault across the United States at this moment by lawmakers and reactionary extremists. It is no longer sufficient for those who make our laws to maintain an ambivalence on the question of access to this vital, life-saving healthcare.
As a Newton City Councilor, Bill Humphrey introduced a proposal to try to regulate disinformation on reproductive healthcare by phony clinics, and as a State Representative he will support any efforts to expand and protect abortion rights and access in Massachusetts. As a civil liberties advocate who has been campaigning against public and private surveillance for many years, Bill also supports efforts to prevent outside parties from purchasing data to track people seeking reproductive healthcare, including across state lines.
Bill Humphrey also supports bills to promote improved maternal health outcomes, full spectrum pregnancy care without cost barriers, universal public childcare, and other childhood welfare measures, so that everyone can successfully have and raise children on their terms. As someone with close family members who have relied on maternal assistance programs for survival, Bill understands the vital role state governments play in giving everyone a fair shot at raising a family.
Bill Humphrey is a firm supporter of comprehensive, inclusive, age-appropriate sex education in public schools and of removing barriers to obtaining safe contraceptives.
Bill Humphrey also worked on the trans rights campaign in Delaware and supports gender-affirming healthcare being fully accessible.
Labor and Economic Justice
Bill Humphrey has been endorsed in 2024 for State Representative by Mass Alliance; Progressive Mass; the Massachusetts Nurses Association; the SEIU Massachusetts State Council (and individually 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, SEIU Local 509, and 32BJ SEIU); the Mass Teachers Association, Newton Teachers Association, and Boston Teachers Union; Framingham-Newton Building Trades Council and the Ironworkers Local 7; the United Autoworkers Region 9A; the United Food & Commercial Workers Local 1445; IBEW Local 103; and more!
As the proud son of a union nurse, Bill Humphrey is a strong proponent of the social and economic benefits of a vital organized labor movement, and he also supports greater legal protections and safety nets for all our residents, regardless of union status. Labor will be an integral part of our work on a Green New Deal and addressing the housing crisis.
Massachusetts has historically been at the forefront in the United States on worker safety and labor rights, compensation, activism, and organizing. Without organized labor, there is no significant force representing our workers on an equal level with management and owners. Bill will champion policies to expand union density, make it easier to unionize (in both the private and public sectors), strengthen collective bargaining, promote project labor agreements, and reduce workplace accidents. He supports fair, durable, and forward-thinking public employee union contracts. He backs campaigns like the minimum wage increase.
We also have a sacred obligation to take care of and meet our collective promises to those who are retired and those who are unable to work.
Bill Humphrey is committed to opposing worker “misclassification” because he himself has often been an “independent contractor” worker, even when it was sometimes basically a permanent job. We need greater protections and rights for these workers, so that they are not assuming all the risks and costs of doing business for the companies they work for under the pretense of “flexibility.” (One specific sector where this is a huge problem is “tech” companies operating transportation networks and ride-shares.)
The Commonwealth also needs to take stronger action on wage theft and must eliminate the separate tipped minimum wage, which creates too many opportunities for managers and employers to abuse, exploit, and under-pay service and restaurant employees. Bill Humphrey also supports ending the separate (lower) wage standards for agricultural workers. We need to ban zero-hour/on-call contract scheduling for part-time non-union employees, so that workers can schedule childcare, second jobs, or other needs ahead of time. This will also reduce opportunities for harassment and abuse by managers exploiting the power of scheduling.
Massachusetts must stop the exploitation of non-union immigrant workers who are used and abused by management to undercut prevailing standards.
We should establish a right to 20 days of paid leave for all employees in Massachusetts, based on prevailing international standards for an advanced economy. Harmonizing our economic labor practices with the rest of the developed world can facilitate international hiring and investment partnerships.
Bill Humphrey supports the effort to change the law to allow the unionization of the legislative staffers in Massachusetts. Their union has been seeking recognition for some time now.
Gun Control
Bill Humphrey is recognized as a 2024 Gun Sense Candidate by Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America.
Massachusetts has been one of the safer states when it comes to gun violence, and that is no coincidence. Our rational laws and regulations are the reason why. And there is always room to improve, which will continue to reduce gun violence (including suicides and intimate partner violence) and accidental discharges (including by children).
Firearms manufacturing, ownership, and possession should be carefully regulated and licensed for public and individual safety with at least as much care as our manufacturing, regulation, and licensing of automobiles. This is critical as technological changes create unregistered and unidentified “ghost guns.”
Massachusetts must maintain and strengthen reasonable steps to keep firearms out of the hands of people who should not have them (including minors) and to limit unnecessary and intimidating public displays of firearms.
Our state’s “red flag” laws for the temporary removal of guns from people deemed to be an immediate danger to themselves or others have been called “underutilized” and we need to change that.
Bill Humphrey supports secure storage laws and will always support strong background checks for purchase and license denial powers.
As a Newton City Councilor, Bill Humphrey supported the successful creation of a legally defensible strict control zoning map for firearms-related businesses with extensive buffering away from sensitive locations and the addition of a special permit requirement that made public health a criterion for eligibility to open such a business and reserved the right of the City Council to vote to reject an application on that basis.
As part of a consumer protection approach, guns sold in Massachusetts should include biometric trigger locks to render them functionally useless to children and unauthorized use (including after thefts). The technology has improved to the point where there is negligible delay in being able to use the weapons in an emergency.
Bill also endorses civil liability to gun manufacturers for deaths and injuries their products are connected to.
Bill opposes legislation to allow hunting on Sundays, which is currently prohibited in Massachusetts, so that non-hunters can enjoy using public lands at least one day per week during hunting season without fear of a firearms accident nearby.
Criminal Justice Reform
Bill Humphrey has been endorsed for State Representative in 2024 by the National Association of Social Workers - Massachusetts Chapter
In recent years, Massachusetts took key steps towards reforming the criminal justice system, but there is always more to be done. We need a fair-minded criminal justice system whose goals far surpass those of trying to be “tough on crime” for its own sake and which is instead focused on achieving justice for all and helping get people’s lives back on track.
Bill has been a longtime opponent of the cash bail system (in contrast with a real risk and safety assessment), a vocal supporter of the call for a moratorium on building a new women’s prison (in favor of diversion for more women), an advocate for parole reform, and a supporter of simple measures to help get returning community members set up for success instead of setting them up to fail and be re-arrested. Bill also backed the recent successful campaign to stop the practice of charging exorbitant fees for those inside to be able to talk to their loved ones outside and maintain those important relationships that help improve re-entry outcomes.
For our state's residents who struggle with severe mental health challenges, we must provide real treatment, not incarceration. Our goal should be to keep mentally ill defendants out of prisons and in supportive programs.
We must raise the juvenile justice age to account for modern understanding of cognitive development in youth and in recognition of the research demonstrating that young offenders have much lower re-offending rates if sent through the juvenile system than through the adult system, controlling for other factors.
We need to reduce revolving-door recidivism and keep people out of our jails and prisons in the first place. Ultimately, we need to replace our current prison system completely with a rehabilitative orientation – including, for example, diversion for non-violent offenses, restorative justice for all types of offenses, and a different model for long-term detention of violent and dangerous offenders (likely based on emerging models in Europe).
Bill Humphrey is an advocate for prison safety and will exercise the legal privilege guaranteed to Massachusetts legislators to make unannounced inspections of correctional facilities. He is also an opponent of punitive solitary confinement.
Bill supports the efforts to require the state to supply identity cards to incarcerated people when returning to society, to help them get jobs and housing more readily.
As a Newton City Councilor, Bill Humphrey is noted for his vocal opposition to the use of prison labor for municipal production needs, which is promoted under current state law. The government of Massachusetts and municipal governments currently source a vast quantity of physical goods from prison labor receiving rock-bottom hourly wages, a tiny fraction of minimum wage. This is not only deeply unethical and immoral, but it also undercuts workers and manufacturers in the Massachusetts economy outside of the prison system. This abuse and damage must be brought to an end with a restructured, voluntary, fair system. These workers need to be able to accumulate savings from their working wages for their expenses inside and out, including supporting family outside.
Human Rights, Inclusion, and Accessibility
Bill Humphrey has been endorsed for State Representative in 2024 by the Bay State Stonewall Democrats and the immigrant-oriented 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East and 32BJ SEIU, among others.
Bill Humphrey is a longtime campaigner and advocate for LGBTQ rights (including working on the marriage equality and trans rights legislative campaigns in Delaware, where he attended college), racial justice, immigrants, people with disabilities, and all marginalized or disempowered populations. One of the responsibilities of a State Representative is to protect and advance these rights in every corner of Massachusetts, not just our own communities of Newton and Brookline.
While Massachusetts is ahead of the curve on some of these issues, these rights are not yet fully secure and we must remain vigilant in safeguarding them. Attempts to ban books in our public schools and libraries are among the highest in the nation in Massachusetts, generally to restrict access to inclusive information about people’s identities, which is an essential right to knowledge for all members of the public, including children. Bill supports the pending efforts to stop book banning in Massachusetts.
Disabilities Inclusion — When we build a society for full inclusion and accessibility, where everyone’s basic human rights are safeguarded and affirmatively advanced, everyone’s life gets tangibly better, even for those people who are not considered to be direct beneficiaries. A society is strongest and most resilient when it embraces human differences.
The Americans With Disabilities Act is older than Bill Humphrey and has still never been fully implemented. In many cases, this is a question of directing resources to support compliance projects by local municipalities, small institutions, or state agencies. We will have a better society for all as we continue to make this accessibility a greater priority. Bill Humphrey also supports reforming the sub-minimum wage system for workers with disabilities, while understanding that this is partially affected by federal and state regulations concerning Social Security benefits for people with disabilities. Bill will also work with constituents with disabilities to help them navigate state agencies to obtain the benefits they need to live independently in the community or to thrive in other appropriate settings they choose.
Immigration & Refugees — Bill supported Newton becoming a “Welcoming City” for all immigrants and as a City Councilor he worked with city staff to promote multilingual information on important city initiatives and to more accurately count our newest neighbors from abroad during the 2020 Census. He will continue to be an advocate for immigrant inclusion and emergency shelter resources.
Arts, Culture, and Historic Preservation
Arts, culture, and tourism are a $27 billion industry in Massachusetts, employing 130,000 people and often serving as the gateway introduction to Massachusetts for out-of-state skilled talent and business owners. Historic preservation is also a specialist, high-value jobs engine that maintains unique local character even as our state evolves.
Bill Humphrey has been a lifelong supporter of public funding for arts and culture and a proponent of historic preservation. As a Newton City Councilor, Bill has served for over four years on the Programs & Services Committee, which has the closest relationships with our Parks, Recreation, & Culture Commission and the Community Preservation Commission.
Bill’s late grandfather was a publicist for the Boston Symphony Orchestra and his late grandmother was a Mass Art student and published a book of sketches of symphony members at work (as well as illustrating a children’s book). Arts, culture, and recreational opportunities are often the things that give our lives meaning, purpose, aspiration, and ambition. They get some of us up in the morning. They give some of us something to look forward to at the end of each day or week. In some cases, the arts are our daily work, while in other cases cultural activities are a calling and passion that transcends labor and remuneration. Arts and culture fill our hearts and fortify our spirits. They should be by and for the people.
Our outgoing State Representative often worked closely with local officials and community members to address concerns at DCR-managed state parklands in our district, and Bill hopes to continue that tradition. He is currently a board member of the Friends of Hemlock Gorge.
As a lifelong Newton resident and the son of a historian, Bill has a deep appreciation for local history and an understanding of the expenses required to preserve and maintain that history. As a Newton City Councilor, Bill Humphrey supported reforms to the local landmarking ordinance and then successfully petitioned for local landmark status for the iconic Strong Block of Waban Square. He supports zoning and regulatory reforms that make preservation more feasible from a cost standpoint to property owners by changing what they can do with their properties while protecting what already exists.
Bill Humphrey is also a champion for and regular patron of public libraries, which are not only an incredible free resource of books, information, multimedia, and tools, but are also a refuge and safe haven for people of all ages and backgrounds. Bill helped lead the successful charge to stop the proposed budgetary elimination of Sunday Newton Free Library hours in 2020. Bill is also a staunch opponent of library censorship and surveillance.
State-Municipal Relations
Local options – As a third-term member of Newton City Council’s Finance Committee and the Vice Chair of its Programs & Services Committee, Bill Humphrey has had a front-row seat to the challenges of local aid from the Commonwealth to municipal governments and the struggles to undertake local experiments and pilot programs without the Home Rule process bogging everything down. Bill will be a new voice on state-municipal government relations in the Legislature, advocating for modernization and flexibility of this relationship to grant more specialized autonomy to our many varied forms of local government as well as calling for increases in local aid for education, infrastructure, and more, where they have not kept up with cost inflation. Bill supports the proposed set of new local options for revenue sources and also would support state reforms to the fees and fines methodology for local enforcement of policy.
Senior aid – Bill Humphrey also wants Massachusetts to strengthen and expand local options on tax relief for senior citizens on low, fixed-incomes, which he has supported as a Councilor on the Finance Committee over the past two terms. A rapidly growing and already sizable share of our population are seniors. Most of our seniors hope to remain Newton or Brookline residents, as many of my relatives did. Their active presence and engagement in our communities is vital to sustaining our local civil society – because retired residents are a core volunteer base – and this is a critical piece of the puzzle in building a truly multi-generational community where everyone is welcome. Overwhelmingly, older residents have lived here for 25 years or more and represent key institutional knowledge and memory in our community. In knocking on doors over the years, Bill has regularly met seniors who are struggling to afford not just their taxes but also home maintenance.
Climate resilience – Stormwater overflow and inland flooding will affect most or all cities and towns in Massachusetts in the coming years due to climate change, and many have already begun experiencing severe effects during major storm events. There are thousands of culverts, bridges, and dams on streams large and small that are vulnerable to collapse. These would be prohibitively expensive to replace en masse, but we know that naturalistic “green” infrastructure that mimics the effects of wetlands and woodlands on slowing down the flow of stormwater can reduce the impact of generations of paving and development that results in water reaching drains and culverts more quickly than it otherwise would during or following severe rain or rapid snowmelt. This green infrastructure, including bioswales, is much less expensive than traditional infrastructure capacity projects, and the state should help local municipalities pay for it.
Legislative Accountability And Transparency
Massachusetts should be a Beacon for the nation and a bastion against conservative policies from other parts of the United States. Instead, on issues ranging from reproductive rights and LGBTQ or immigrant protections to environmental action and housing policy, we have been repeatedly paralyzed by total inaction, except from the offices of the Governor and Attorney General. The Massachusetts legislature has become one of the least transparent and least accountable state legislatures in the country, especially on the House of Representatives side.
Too much legislative work is done inside a black box where voters have no way to know whether their representatives supported or opposed specific components of proposed bills. Few amendments receive votes instead of being withdrawn and many bills seem to evolve suddenly outside of the normal committee process. Committees themselves schedule meetings and hearings suddenly, with little advanced public notice, making it difficult for experts and constituents to share their knowledge and stories.
Legislative work that should be happening every day over a term increasingly occurs in a chaotic, last-minute scramble in the final weeks of a session where huge bills pass with little review and often missing critical pieces that had been considered essential.
Lack of delegation of authority to the relevant committees and their expertise leads to a bottleneck of inaction and drafting errors in lawmaking, even on completely uncontroversial proposals with overwhelming support. Hundreds of bills each term are voted out of committee each term and expire without a vote in the full House of Representatives because the clock runs out and they seem to be lost in the shuffle.
Legislative inaction at a basic level also keeps resulting in laws being pushed to the referendum process, where voters are asked to evaluate complex issues because their elected officials failed to make a decision after several terms.
Bill Humphrey has a record of combining effective and collaborative legislative strategy with an independence and integrity that does not yield to a "go-along-to-get-along" culture. He also previously served on the Rules Subcommittee of the Newton City Council and has endorsed the Sunlight Act to expand Public Records access to legislators and to put committee testimony into the public record. He will be a supporter of changing how things get done in the Massachusetts House of Representatives because the current system is not serving the people of our state efficiently and effectively.
Bill will also be a full-time State Representative focused on constituent services, district communications, and developing strategic efforts to advance policy through the process bottleneck.
Learn more about legislative accountability in Massachusetts in the following report:
"The Massachusetts Legislature: Democracy in Decline: Report of the Legislative Reform Working Group" of Progressive Democrats of Massachusetts