Six years after the Federal Election Commission ruled federal candidates can use campaign funds to pay for child care, Massachusetts is poised to do the same.
Massachusetts lawmakers on Thursday passed a long-sought change to state law that would allow politicians to cover child care costs using their campaign accounts, removing a barrier for working parents, particularly women, hoping to vie for state or local office.
The measure is among the hundreds of policy riders lawmakers tacked on to a nearly $4 billion economic development bill that the state Legislature sent to Governor Maura Healey’s desk on Thursday following a pair of rare lame-duck formal sessions.
Advocates and lawmakers have pushed the campaign finance proposal for at least seven years, arguing that the ballooning costs for child care in Massachusetts make it difficult for many women to even consider running — either for a seat in a Legislature that remains disproportionately male or one of their local offices.
“With this passing, I plan to run in this upcoming election,” said Nicole Coakley, a 43-year-old mother of five and a full-time therapist. Coakley has run twice for Springfield City Council but said she was unsure if she’d try again for a seat on the panel, until now.
During her earlier campaigns, Coakley often took her youngest daughter, now 6, with her to campaign events. She’d then rely on her campaign manager to watch her as Coakley spoke with voters. “For somebody like me, a single parent, we can’t afford that additional financial cost to help cover child care,” she said. With this proposal, “Massachusetts is moving to level the political playing field.”
Lawmakers sent the economic development package to Healey after closed-door talks over the legislation extended months after the chambers initially wrapped up formal lawmaking for the year.
The compromise lawmakers ultimately passed included a variety of measures, including language that would funnel hundreds of millions of dollars toward the state’s life sciences sector and pave the way for a new stadium for the New England Revolution on the Everett waterfront. House and Senate members both returned to Beacon Hill on Thursday to take rare post-Election Day roll call votes to pass the bill, including the proposed change to campaign finance laws.
State rules already allow candidates to spend their campaign cash on tuxedos, body armor, or expensive parties, as long as it’s for the “enhancement of [their] political future” and is not “primarily for personal use.”
They have not been allowed, however, to use political donations to pay a baby sitter while they campaign door to door or attend an evening fund-raising event.
Massachusetts already boasts some of the highest child care costs in the country, if not the highest, according to one measure. A child care center in Massachusetts costs an average of $19,961 annually for a toddler, and family- or home-based care costs $13,344, according to a 2023 report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Both were the highest of any state in the US.
“Even if you raise the money, you can’t spend it on something you need. And it’s much more valuable to campaign door to door than it is to pay for a mailing,” said state Senator Patricia D. Jehlen, a Somerville Democrat who has pushed the campaign finance proposal in the Massachusetts Senate.
“If you don’t have relatives or friends to take care of your kids while you’re campaigning, it’s almost impossible to do it,” she said. “This is just one more barrier.”
At least 30 states already allow candidates to use campaign funds for child care, as does the federal election system, according to Vote Mama Foundation, which supports mothers running for public office.
Many have used it, too. Since 2018, at least 68 federal candidates have tapped their campaign for child care funds, spending nearly $718,000 collectively, according to data Vote Mama Foundation published earlier this year. A little more than half of those candidates were women, and 46 percent of those who spent campaign money on child care were people of color.
Still, Massachusetts has long lagged in making the change. A legislative effort in 2017 to allow candidates to expense child care to their campaigns failed. In 2020, a legislative commission recommended the change, arguing it should be allowed when it’s the “direct result of the candidate’s campaign activities.” The state Senate then twice approved language last session, but it never reached then-governor Charlie Baker’s desk.
Supporters saw an opening this session at a time when State House leaders were roundly committed to trying to ease the state’s child care woes.
The proposal included in the economic development bill will allow candidates to spend campaign money on “baby-sitting services,” either by an individual baby sitter or a center, that “occur as a result of campaign activities.” It will bar candidates from paying their family members for child care, unless those relatives run or are employed by a professional child care service.
“We know that moms take the brunt of house work, the child care work. Even if they’re working moms, even if they’re career politicians, they still have to be moms,” said Shaitia Spruell, executive director of the Massachusetts Commission on the Status of Women. “This will absolutely increase the number of women running for office — and hopefully the women in office.”
By some measures, Massachusetts has made notable gains on that front. Five of the state’s six statewide constitutional officers are women, including Governor Maura Healey, the first woman to be elected to that office in state history. She and Kim Driscoll are also one of the country’s first female governor-lieutenant governor duos.
Elsewhere in the State House, however, representation is lacking. Women currently make up 30 percent of the Legislature, but 51 percent of the state’s population. The House and Senate are slated to begin their next two-year session in January with fewer women (61) than it started this session with, according to the Massachusetts Caucus of Women Legislators.
“If you want a diverse legislative body, then you have to be intentional about creating opportunities and removing barriers. And that’s what we did here,” said state Representative Joan Meschino, a Hull Democrat who has cosponsored bills with Representative Mike Connolly of Cambridge to allow candidates to expense child care to their campaigns.
“The bill helps break down those economic barriers,” she said. “That’s going to help open the door.”
Matt Stout can be reached at matt.stout@globe.com. Follow him @mattpstout.