WELLFLEET — First-term state Rep. Hadley Luddy spent two hours at the Wellfleet Public Library on March 3 as part of a series of biweekly “office hours” in the seven towns she represents — the four Outer Cape towns plus Orleans, Chatham, and Harwich.
She talked with 25 or so constituents and heard concerns both global and local, from the war in Gaza to consumer protection and the Outer Cape’s dire housing situation.
A young trans man spoke of his fear under a second Trump administration. Organizers from Wellfleet for Palestine asked Luddy to back H.2984, which would divest state pension funds from companies supplying military equipment to Israel. Wellfleet resident Robin Robinson asked Luddy to support HD.363, a bill that would add information on financial abuse resources to ATM receipts.
Luddy is three months into her first term in the Mass. House, but she served for nearly a decade as executive director of the Homeless Prevention Council in Orleans. Before that, she worked at Community Connections, a nonprofit that serves people with disabilities, and at Big Brothers and Big Sisters of the Cape and Islands.
She has four committee assignments: the House committee on intergovernmental affairs; the joint committee on agriculture; the joint committee on bonding, capital expenditure, and state assets; and the joint committee on tourism, arts, and cultural development. (State Rep. Kip Diggs of the 2nd Barnstable District is on the joint committee on housing, as is Cape and Islands state Sen. Julian Cyr, who chairs it.)
“People in the 4th Barnstable are consistently talking about the same issues,” Luddy told the Independent. “They’re worried we don’t have enough housing for the year-round workforce. They’re worried about the cost of living. And they care deeply about our environment.
“We need to double down on a combination of housing opportunities, long-term employment, and meaningful economic support to make it more manageable for folks to live here,” she said.
Luddy said she’s been working closely with Cyr to advance the state’s new seasonal community designation, part of the Affordable Homes Act passed last year. Both Luddy and Cyr are on the Seasonal Communities Advisory Council that will recommend new policies to help towns that accept the designation. (See related story on page A1.)
Tax incentives for year-round rental housing and Provincetown’s “Lease to Locals” program are two examples of policies that could be included in the seasonal communities designation, she said.
Luddy and Cyr are co-sponsoring several housing-related bills this session, including HD.4363, which would allow seasonal communities to impose a real estate transfer fee on the portion of transactions over $1 million.
H.3962, the Maggie Hubbard Rental Safety Act, would require smoke and carbon monoxide detector inspections in short-term rental properties.
House Rules
Last November, 68 percent of district voters supported Ballot Question #1, which called for an independent audit of the state legislature. State Auditor Diana DiZoglio has pledged to investigate “high-risk areas” in the legislature, including procurement practices, nondisclosure agreements, and financial oversight.
“I joined the House, as did many of my new colleagues, eager to be a part of a class of representatives committed to transparency,” Luddy said. But on Feb. 25, she was one of 127 House members who voted against a Republican-sponsored amendment that would have required compliance with DiZoglio’s audit. Only one Democrat, freshman Rep. Michelle Badger of Plymouth, voted in favor.
Luddy said her vote was shaped by legal and constitutional questions raised by party leadership. “I don’t think there’s any disagreement about the audit itself,” she said. “It’s about how the audit will come to fruition. The consensus was to get the legal opinion on how the audit should be implemented.”
She pointed to new Joint Rules and House Rules passed the same day — which she called the most consequential in House history — as important progress toward transparency.
The new rules require plain-language summaries of bills, public posting of committee attendance and votes, and earlier deadlines for committee action to avoid the logjam that sank major legislation last July 31. They also lay out clearer frameworks for financial oversight and public access to testimony.
Luddy also pointed to the Cape and Islands delegation’s bipartisan pushback against Gov. Healey’s plan to close the Pocasset Mental Health Center in Bourne as a recent success. After releasing a budget in late January that would have closed the only state-run inpatient psychiatric center on Cape Cod, Healey reversed course a month later and announced a “pause” on that part of her plan on Feb. 24.
