The Governor’s Council meets every Wednesday at noon in Room 360 of the Massachusett’s State House (within the Governor’s office) and other times as scheduled. Meetings are open to the public, and notice of upcoming hearings are posted on the Governor’s Council website here.

The hearings are also streamed on YouTube here.

Watch Past Hearings

Past hearings that are streamed can be found on YouTube here. In addition, videos of hearings from before 2020 can be found on this website maintained by Patrick McCabe.

Click on this spreadsheet to find Governor’s Council votes from 2015 to 2022.

The Rules of the Governor’s Council were updated in December 2023 for the first time in over 30 years.The old rules may be found here and the new rules are included below. The current rules deal with parliamentary procedures, noting for example, how to address the governor, give notice of meetings, and keep records.

The new rules do not address the following, all of which have been problematic for the Governor’s Council:

• No digital recording of votes; votes are only maintained on an Excel spreadsheet that must be accessed manually.
• No procedures for live streaming of hearings or directions for how the public can obtain remote access.
• No prohibition on cell phone use by councilors during hearings.
• No requirement for continuous attendance during hearings in order to vote; councilors routinely come and go.
• No protections against arbitrary rulemaking by the chair; for example, there are no rules governing the length of testimony by witnesses.