Massachusetts Food, Resource, and Commodity Assurance Act, Ballot Language

MASSACHUSETTS FOOD, RESOURCE, AND COMMODITY ASSURANCE ACT

                            SCARCITY IS A POLICY CHOICE

Version 2 (Massachusetts adaptation; Cromwell-Mode 26-item re-weave, Option B restructure, May 23, 2026).

Filed with the Secretary of the Commonwealth Certified by the Attorney General of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts

Initial Signature Requirement: 74,574 valid signatures (Three percent of the total number of votes cast for Governor at the preceding biennial state election)

Additional Signatures if General Court Fails to Act: 12,429 valid signatures (one-half of one percent of the total votes cast for Governor) to place on ballot at the next state election

BALLOT TITLE

SHALL THE COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS ESTABLISH THE MASSACHUSETTS FOOD, RESOURCE, AND COMMODITY ASSURANCE ACT, AND, IN CONNECTION THEREWITH:

    (1) CREATING A MASSACHUSETTS FOOD ASSURANCE PROGRAM OPERATED BY
    THE DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURAL RESOURCES TO SELL GROCERY PRODUCTS
    AT AT-COST PRICING TO ALL RESIDENTS OF THE COMMONWEALTH THROUGH
    COMMONWEALTH-OPERATED FOOD ASSURANCE CENTERS, WITH NOT FEWER THAN
    FIVE PILOT CENTERS WITHIN TWO YEARS AND TWENTY CENTERS STATEWIDE
    WITHIN FIVE YEARS, MODELED ON THE 159-YEAR UNITED STATES MILITARY
    COMMISSARY PRECEDENT (10 U.S.C. SECTION 2484);

    (2) CREATING A MASSACHUSETTS ESSENTIAL GOODS PROGRAM THROUGH THE
    EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT TO PRODUCE AND
    DISTRIBUTE CLOTHING, HOUSEHOLD SUPPLIES, HYGIENE PRODUCTS,
    SCHOOL SUPPLIES, AND OTHER ESSENTIAL GOODS AT BELOW-RETAIL
    PRICING THROUGH FOOD ASSURANCE CENTERS AND DEDICATED
    DISTRIBUTION POINTS;

    (3) APPROPRIATING EIGHTY-FIVE MILLION DOLLARS ($85,000,000)
    FROM THE GENERAL FUND FOR FISCAL YEAR 2028 (THE INITIAL
    APPROPRIATION; SIXTY MILLION DOLLARS FOR THE FOOD ASSURANCE
    PROGRAM, TWENTY-FIVE MILLION DOLLARS FOR THE ESSENTIAL GOODS
    PROGRAM), SCALING OVER FIVE YEARS TOWARD A TABLE 1 BASELINE OF
    APPROXIMATELY $4.36 BILLION PER YEAR (APPROXIMATELY 7.55 PERCENT
    OF THE FY2026 GENERAL FUND OF $57.7 BILLION), WITH THE FIVE-YEAR
    PHASE-IN COINCIDING WITH THE FEDERAL SUPPLEMENTAL NUTRITION
    ASSISTANCE PROGRAM ADMINISTRATIVE COST-SHIFT (PUBLIC LAW 119-21
    / H.R. 1, 2025) EFFECTIVE OCTOBER 1, 2026?

SUBMISSION CLAUSE

    [ ] YES / FOR THE MEASURE

    [ ] NO / AGAINST THE MEASURE

BALLOT TEXT

This measure amends the General Laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to create the Massachusetts Food, Resource, and Commodity Assurance Act, a food and commodity assurance bill with two operative programs and a closing public-health evidentiary block establishing the structural rationale.

SCOPE NOTE: This is a food and commodity assurance bill. The education and public service provisions of an earlier draft were extracted in full and travel to a separate forthcoming Education bill, per the Option B restructure adopted across the Historical Apoplexy series 2026-05-21.

SECTION 2, MASSACHUSETTS FOOD ASSURANCE PROGRAM (Chapter 20A, added by this Act):

    - A Massachusetts Food Assurance Program operated by the
      Department of Agricultural Resources, establishing
      Commonwealth-operated food distribution centers where all
      residents may purchase the full range of grocery products at
      at-cost pricing (production cost plus a facility surcharge not
      exceeding 5%);

    - Not fewer than five pilot centers within two years: two in
      Greater Boston (including Gateway City locations), one in the
      Springfield-Holyoke Pioneer Valley, one in Southeastern
      Massachusetts (New Bedford or Fall River), and one in Central
      Massachusetts (Worcester or Fitchburg);

    - Expansion to twenty statewide centers within five years, with
      at least one center per congressional district and at least
      three centers serving Gateway Cities as designated under
      M.G.L. c. 23A, § 3A;

    - Massachusetts-first procurement: 50% Massachusetts-sourced
      within three years, increasing to 65% within five years,
      prioritizing Commonwealth farms, fisheries (New Bedford
      scallops, Gloucester cod and lobster), cranberry bogs, and
      Connecticut River Valley agriculture;

    - Acceptance of all forms of payment including cash, EBT, SNAP
      benefits, and WIC vouchers;

    - Operation without profit motive, with all revenue above
      operational costs reinvested in program expansion.

SECTION 3, MASSACHUSETTS ESSENTIAL GOODS PROGRAM (Chapter 23A sections 66 through 70, added by this Act):

    - A Massachusetts Essential Goods Program operated through the
      Executive Office of Economic Development to produce and
      distribute essential goods (clothing, household supplies,
      hygiene products, school supplies, basic home furnishings,
      basic tools) at below-retail pricing through manufacturing
      partnerships and direct procurement;

    - Three distribution categories by replenishment frequency:
      consumable goods through food assurance centers; semi-
      permanent goods on a need-based schedule with reasonable
      limits; permanent goods on a one-per-household basis through
      dedicated distribution points;

    - Currency survives for luxury, custom, and specialty goods not
      covered by the program. The bill is a floor, not a ceiling.

EVIDENTIARY BASIS:

The USDA Economic Research Service Food Dollar Series establishes the farm share of the food dollar at 24.3 cents, with 75.7 cents in markup [SOURCE: USDA ERS, 2023 release]. The United States military commissary system has operated at-cost food distribution for 159 years under 10 U.S.C. section 2484, through 236 stores, delivering 17 to 25 percent savings in the continental United States and up to 64 percent overseas, to 2.8 million authorized users. The Defense Commissary Agency commissary at Hanscom Air Force Base in Bedford operates on Massachusetts soil; Joint Base Cape Cod, USCG Base Boston, and Westover Air Reserve Base in Chicopee complete the Commonwealth's military commissary footprint. Massachusetts taxpayers fund the commissary system through federal taxation and are excluded from the benefit they fund.

The U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Soldier Systems Center at Natick, Massachusetts, twenty miles west of Boston, is the Army's primary food science laboratory. The military's food science is a Massachusetts operation.

In 2024, food insecurity affected more than one in three Massachusetts households, approximately two million adults [SOURCE: Project Bread "Hunger by the Numbers" 2025; Greater Boston Food Bank Fifth Annual Statewide Food Access Report 2025]. The Commonwealth distributed $2.6 billion in federal SNAP benefits in FY2024 through commercial retailers where 75.7 cents of every dollar pays for markup [SOURCE: FRAC SNAP Factsheet 2025]. New Bedford, the #1 commercial fishing port in America by revenue ($443.2 million, NOAA 2022, 84 percent scallop), is simultaneously one of the Commonwealth's poorest cities.

The Boston Tea Party was a protest against the middleman's cut on tea. This act addresses the middleman's cut on food.

THE COMMONWEALTH LINEAGE:

The Massachusetts Constitution of 1780, drafted by John Adams, is the oldest functioning written constitution in the world. Adams drew on James Harrington's "The Commonwealth of Oceana" (1656), which argued liberty depends on broad distribution of the material substrate of life. The four American Commonwealths (Virginia 1776, Pennsylvania 1776, Massachusetts 1780, Kentucky 1792) inherit a shared republican self-understanding under which the common wealth, the material substrate of civic life, is properly understood as a public concern. This act is consistent with that Commonwealth tradition.

THE PUBLIC-HEALTH EVIDENTIARY CLOSE:

This bill establishes food and commodity assurance as a public- infrastructure intervention with a documented physiological rationale, not as charity. Sir Michael Marmot's Whitehall Studies (1967-present, 10,308 subjects) established the lowest grade civil servants had three times the mortality of the top grade, with standard risk factors explaining less than 40 percent of the gradient. Dr. Robert Sapolsky's thirty-year Serengeti baboon research, Dr. Carol Shively's macaque research, and the Nobel Prize-winning telomere research of Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn (2009) together establish the hierarchy itself, independent of absolute deprivation, produces lethal health outcomes. The gap is the gradient. Hierarchy itself kills. The food and commodity assurance program established in this act addresses the material rung of the gradient directly. This is not charity. This is engineering.

ROMNEYCARE'S LESSON:

Massachusetts achieved near-universal health insurance coverage in 2006 under Chapter 58 of the Acts of 2006, maintaining a 2.8 percent uninsured rate (lowest in the nation). The Affordable Care Act was modeled on it. Despite near-universal insurance coverage, the Marmot gradient PERSISTS in the Commonwealth. Black residents of Boston have shorter life expectancies than white residents despite comparable insurance access (Boston Public Health Commission, "Closing the Gap," 2026; WBUR coverage 2026). Insurance addresses access. Insurance does not address food access, status, stress, or environmental quality. Romneycare proved insurance alone is insufficient. This act addresses the material rung insurance cannot reach.

BREAD AND ROSES:

On January 12, 1912, in Lawrence, Massachusetts, over 20,000 textile workers, largely immigrant women, struck for "bread and roses". Material security AND human dignity. This act is the bread the Lawrence textile workers demanded, one hundred and fourteen years overdue, from the Commonwealth where they struck.

PROPONENT STATEMENT

This citizen initiative proposes a state-level food and commodity assurance program modeled on the United States military commissary precedent, which has operated at-cost food distribution continuously since 1867.

THE BEST-CASE FAILURE:

Massachusetts ranks first in education nationally, has the lowest uninsured rate in the nation (2.8 percent), hosts the densest concentration of elite universities on earth, and is the birthplace of the American revolution. The Commonwealth nonetheless has approximately two million food-insecure adults, persistent health disparities along racial and geographic lines, and Gateway Cities (Springfield, Lawrence, New Bedford, Fall River, Holyoke) with poverty rates comparable to the Deep South. If the best-performing state in America cannot solve food insecurity through the current distribution system, the current distribution system cannot solve it. The problem is not implementation. The problem is architecture.

THE COMMISSARY PRECEDENT, ON MASSACHUSETTS SOIL:

The Defense Commissary Agency has operated at-cost food distribution under 10 U.S.C. section 2484 for 159 years, since the Military Commissary Act of 1867. The commissary stores at Hanscom Air Force Base in Bedford, at Joint Base Cape Cod, at USCG Base Boston, and at Westover Air Reserve Base in Chicopee operate on Massachusetts soil. Massachusetts taxpayers fund this system through federal taxation. Massachusetts residents who are not military families or retirees are excluded from the benefit they fund. This act extends the same model to all residents of the Commonwealth.

THE FISCAL CONVERGENCE:

The arithmetic says ending the food insecurity gap costs single- digit percentage of the markup the Commonwealth already pays. The operational template has run for 159 years inside the same federal apparatus the Commonwealth already funds. Massachusetts is not asked to attempt something untested. Massachusetts is asked to deliver to its own residents what its military families at Hanscom Air Force Base, at Joint Base Cape Cod, at USCG Base Boston, and at Westover Air Reserve Base have received from the United States military commissary since 1867.

THE FEDERAL COST-SHIFT:

Federal H.R. 1 (2025) increased the state share of SNAP administrative costs from fifty percent to seventy-five percent effective October 1, 2026. The Commonwealth currently routes $2.6 billion in federal SNAP benefits annually through commercial retailers where 75.7 cents of every food dollar pays for markup. At at-cost routing through this act, approximately 95 cents of every dollar reaches the recipient as food, a 3.9-fold increase in delivered food value per SNAP dollar that independently offsets the federal cost-shift.

THE COMMONWEALTH TRADITION:

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts holds a distinctive position among the four American Commonwealths. Its 1780 Constitution, drafted by John Adams, is the oldest functioning written constitution in the world. Adams's invocation of Harrington's Commonwealth of Oceana is the most explicitly documented Commonwealth-philosophy lineage in American constitutional history. The Commonwealth name carries political-philosophical weight under which the common wealth, the material substrate of civic life, is properly understood as a public concern. This act is consistent with that Commonwealth tradition.

THE WAMPANOAG ORIGINAL DIVISION I:

The Mashpee Wampanoag and the Aquinnah Wampanoag (Gay Head) provided food security to the colonists at Plymouth in 1620. Four hundred years unreturned. This act's procurement protocols coordinate with the Wampanoag tribes on a government-to-government basis, respecting tribal sovereignty and food sovereignty.

DENIAL IS NO LONGER NEUTRAL:

Inaction by a legislature possessing the authority, the capacity, and the documented need to act constitutes active harm. The burden of justification rests on denial.

Originally proposed: 2016 (Sassafras and Maple Research Foundation, Colorado DPOS registration; founded by Imran Stanton Cooper). Massachusetts adaptation: March 5, 2026. Current revision: May 23, 2026 (Cromwell-Mode 26-item re-weave, Option B restructure). All authorship attributable to Imran Stanton Cooper.

FISCAL IMPACT SUMMARY

(Prepared pursuant to Article XLVIII, The Initiative, requirements)

INITIAL APPROPRIATION: $85,000,000 from the general fund for fiscal year 2028.

BREAKDOWN:

    Massachusetts Food Assurance Program:    $60,000,000 (0.10%)
    Massachusetts Essential Goods Program:   $25,000,000 (0.04%)

PERCENTAGE OF GENERAL FUND: approximately 0.15% of the FY2026 General Fund of approximately $57.7 billion [SOURCE: MassBudget FY2026 GAA Analysis; budget.digital.mass.gov; VINTAGE: 2025].

FIVE-YEAR RAMP TO TABLE 1 BASELINE:

    Year 1 (FY2028):  $85 million initial appropriation
    Year 3 (FY2030):  approximately $1.5 billion (Table 2 floor,
                      $309 per person per year, ~2.6% of GF)
    Year 5 (FY2032):  approximately $4.36 billion (Table 1
                      baseline, $609 per person per year, ~7.55%
                      of FY2026 GF; calculated against MA
                      population 7,154,084 per FRED MAPOP January
                      2025)

The five-year ramp coincides with the federal SNAP administrative cost-shift schedule (Public Law 119-21 / H.R. 1, 2025) effective October 1, 2026.

PROJECTED SAVINGS:

    SNAP delivery efficiency: at-cost pricing delivers approximately
    95 cents on the dollar to recipients (production cost plus a 5
    percent facility surcharge) versus approximately 24.3 cents on
    the dollar through commercial retailers (USDA Food Dollar Series
    farm share). The 3.9-fold increase in delivered food value
    independently offsets the federal cost-shift.

    Healthcare cost reduction: improved nutrition and reduced
    hierarchy stress projected to offset program costs within ten
    years, based on Marmot's documentation of hierarchy-related
    healthcare utilization.

CONTEXT:

    Commonwealth FY2026 General Appropriations Act:
        approximately $60.9 billion total (Healey signed July 4,
        2025; MassBudget; MMA)
    Commonwealth FY2026 General Fund (state-only operating):
        approximately $57.7 billion
    Commonwealth FY2027 Governor's budget proposal:
        $62.8 billion (Healey filed January 28, 2026)
    Commonwealth SNAP spending (FY2024):
        approximately $2.6 billion (FRAC SNAP Factsheet 2025)
    Initial appropriation as share of FY2026 General Fund: ~0.15%

SIGNATURE LINES

I, the undersigned registered voter of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, do hereby petition the General Court, or, alternatively, do hereby petition the Secretary of the Commonwealth to submit to the registered voters of the Commonwealth an amendment to the General Laws, concerning the establishment of the Massachusetts Food, Resource, and Commodity Assurance Act, as set forth herein:

Print Name: ___________________________________________

Signature: ____________________________________________

Address: ______________________________________________

Date: ___________________

County of Residence: __________________________________

(Repeat as needed: 74,574 valid signatures required for initial filing; 12,429 additional signatures required if the General Court fails to act)

END OF BALLOT LANGUAGE

MASSACHUSETTS FOOD, RESOURCE, AND COMMODITY ASSURANCE ACT Citizen Initiative Petition Pursuant to Article XLVIII of the Amendments to the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts

Prepared by Imran Stanton Cooper Originally proposed: 2016 (Sassafras and Maple Research Foundation,

                            Colorado DPOS registration)

Massachusetts adaptation: March 5, 2026 Current revision: May 23, 2026 (Cromwell-Mode 26-item re-weave,

                                Option B restructure)

    "We want bread, and roses too."
    Lawrence textile workers, January 12, 1912

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