Less than a week after State Representative Ruth Balser sent an email to her constituents telling them that she is planning to retire from the Legislature at the end of the current session, Bill Humphrey, Ward 5 Ward Councilor, has announced that he is a candidate for that seat. Now in his third term on the City Council, Mr. Humphrey says he is running for the open seat because the Legislature offers him an opportunity to expand his priorities. His cites fourteen “key issues”: Housing; Healthcare; Public Childcare and Education; Eldercare and Long-term Disability Care; Public Transit; Mental Health and Substance Use; Environmental Action; Reproductive Freedom; Labor and Economic Justice; Gun Control; Human Rights, Inclusion and Accessibility; Arts, Culture and Historic Preservation; and State and Municipal Relations.
“I am running for State Representative because I can help the residents of this district to navigate state agencies and because I will bring new energy and perspective to finding creative policy changes that will benefit everyone in the Commonwealth,” he told Fig City News.
Mr. Humphrey is a fifth-generation Newtonian and lives with his parents in his childhood home in Waban. He attended Angier Elementary School, Brown Middle School, and Newton South High School, and he graduated from the University of Delaware, where he was the President of the College Democrats.
Since returning to Newton, Mr. Humphrey has focused on progressive grassroots politics. He is an enthusiastic door-to-door canvasser for the candidates he supports. He says he “always learns something about people’s lives” from talking with them at their doors, and he has found that helpful in running for his Ward Council seat. His City Council predecessor, John Rice, was focused on helping residents with their local problems – a characteristic that Mr. Humphry noted in Rep. Balser as well. He remembered that she had responded to a letter he wrote to her about Echo Bridge long before he could vote.
In campaigning for John Rice’s seat, Mr. Humphrey knocked on most of the doors in Ward 5. “Ward 5 has billionaires and people who are really poor and live in very low-income housing,” he told Fig City News. But it was the vote in Upper Falls that put him “over the top” in his first election.
Addressing housing affordability, Mr. Humphrey believes the state ought to allow local municipalities to charge real estate transfer fees to provide for the construction or renovation of low-income housing.He also favors expansion of the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit as means of financing affordable housing. Without more affordable housing, older people who want to downsize, cannot remain in Newton because they cannot find housing they can afford. At the same time, teachers, firefighters, police – the City’s workforce – can’t afford to live here, either. “Federal and State government aren’t making local affordable housing possible,” Mr. Humphrey said, noting that the local preference provisions in affordable and 40B housing have not made much progress in solving the affordable housing crisis.
He has a long agenda of issues he wants to address, and he is aware that it can take decades to pass a particular set of bills, but Mr. Humphrey believes that “anyone who runs for the legislature has to be prepared for the long haul to get things done.” Passage of bills takes time and adjusting priorities, he says. Mr. Humphrey has been a long-time supporter of Senator Ed Markey because he admires the senator’s decades-long climate advocacy.
Mr. Humphrey plans to begin his door-knocking campaign toward the end of February. The process will help him define constituent concerns and establish essential connections. He believes that government’s role is to provide the supports people need to become productive and engaged in the community. He admires Rep. Balser’s legislative accomplishments on behalf of people with mental health and substance use.
Besides his role on the City Council,, Mr. Humphrey was chair Progressive Newton but stepped down to run for the state legislature. He is also a member of Friends of Hemlock Gorge.