GREENFIELD — Ellen Story, the Amherst Democrat who served for 24 years in the state House of Representatives, had plenty of tales to tell Tuesday from under the gilded Beacon Hill dome.
Speaking to about 50 people at a Greenfield Community College Senior Symposium, Story brought humor to bear as she described working under four House speakers — three of whom were indicted — as well as struggling for years to get a single bill passed, and also finding herself in “an exclusive club,” where as part of an eight-member leadership team under current Speaker Robert DeLeo, she cringed at being greeted with the title “Madame Leader.”
“I’d say to people, ‘M.L. will do,’” she joked.
Story, whose district most recently includes Amherst, Pelham and part of Granby, at one time also represented Shutesbury.
She told the audience of mostly seniors, about one of her favorite episodes, when the state became the first in the nation to allow same-sex marriage in 2004, as well as “one of the most difficult” — when she voted to support casino gambling in the state in 2011, even though she was “totally against” it.
As the only western Massachusetts House member on the eight-member leadership team appointed by DeLeo, a fifth-generation Winthrop resident who had grown up with Suffolk Downs as an extension of his part of in his family and saw the casino bill as a way of restoring the race track’s glory to his community, Story said she told him when he called her at home,” ‘I’ll be with you, Mr. Speaker.’ …. If my vote had been the deciding vote, it would have been different. But he had way more than majority that he needed. … I knew if I voted against it, he would have to put me off of that group. It was more important for me to have a seat at the table.”
Story was derided in plenty of letters to the editor at the time, she recalled. And looking back on the vote today, she said, “We botched it so much.”
Story, an Oklahoma City native who earned a degree at the University of Texas, and worked for 17 years at the Family Planning Council of Western Massachusetts, eventually becoming its associate executive director before being elected in 1992 to fill the House vacancy left by current state Senate President Stanley Rosenberg, has been a champion of women’s issues on Beacon Hill.
“Women are a quarter of the Legislature, but we’re 51 percent of the population,” she told her audience. “So we’re not there yet … It’s very male in the Legislature.”
When the House passed a measure to legalize breastfeeding in public, she said, “You should have seen the guys. … They were just contorted having to talk about this.” It passed in 2008.
Similarly, when Story inserted into the budget a $10,000 “diaper care” line item to provide for plastic diapers at the Amherst Senior Center, she said, “The guys couldn’t deal with that. They changed the name to ‘infant care.’”
Story admitted, “It takes a while to get things done in the Legislature,” illustrating with a pay equity bill that she first introduced in 1995 and was finally signed into law last summer.
“Eager young people come in and it’s hard,” she said. Her seat was by Solomon Goldstein-Rose of Amherst, less than a year out of college. “They want things to happen like this,” Story said, snapping her fingers.
For years, Story said, she’s filed anti-bullying measures, and following a committee hearing this week on a Pregnant Mothers Fairness Act to ban discriminatory workplace behavior that she likened to bullying. She guessed that it’s likely to come up for a vote this spring.
“How do you vote against that? It’s a public accommodation,” she said.
Asked by audience members for three bills that she’d like to see passed now, Story pointed to the graduated income tax constitutional amendment as well as increased funding for the Department of Mental Health and for public higher education.
In talking about the connection between the public and their lawmakers, she advised the crowd, “Most people have no idea who their state legislators are. We all walk around this gorgeous building with marble floors, and feel so important and most people have no idea who we are or what we do. And we don’t hear from many of our constituents. So not only should you know who your state rep is, and who your state senator is, but they should know you. … You have much more power than you think you do.”
You can reach Richie Davis at rdavis@recorder.com
or 413-772-0261, ext. 269.