In a state where over 10% of the population lives in poverty, activists, public officials and members of the public have now pitched solutions to the problem to the lawmakers tasked with coming up with solutions.

A legislative commission charged with creating recommendations to reduce poverty in the next 10 years faces a Dec. 31 deadline. Over the last four months, they’ve held public hearings in Springfield, Cambridge and Dartmouth to hear testimony from organizations and individuals working to alleviate poverty, or experiencing it. The commission is chaired by Sen. Sal DiDomenico and Rep. Marjorie Decker.

According to the most recent census, 10.4% of Bay Staters live in poverty compared to 12.5% of people in the United States.

At the final public hearing last week in Dartmouth, Phineas Baxandall of the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center made a distinction between income and creating wealth.

“Currently, anti-poverty programs overwhelmingly focus on income inadequacy rather than wealth. There are many reasons that makes sense, but the choice also causes us not to focus on certain economic disparities that have deepened over time. By contrast, targeted asset building programs, like baby bonds, do target wealth gaps,” he said.

Baxandall recommended Massachusetts automatically enroll children born in the state into so-called baby bonds – a publicly funded account created for children shortly after their birth and allowed to grow until they become adults – based on their eligibility for Transitional Aid to Families With Dependent Children (TAFDC) or participation in the foster care system.

He said legislation filed this session (S 1999 / H 1157) would have created such a program. Connecticut launched a program in 2023 that automatically enrolls children covered by the state’s Medicaid program, he said.

A version of the bill filed by Sens. Paul Feeney and DiDomenico and Treasurer Deb Goldberg got a favorable recommendation from the Committee on State Administration and Regulatory Oversight; and the House bill, filed by Rep. Andy Vargas received a favorable report from the Committee on Financial Services. Both bills, however, met dead ends in each chamber’s respective Ways and Means committee.

A baby bonds task force out of Goldberg’s office in 2022 found that a “medium” initial investment of $6,500 per child would yield $15,643 by the time that child reached adulthood. If they let that money continue to mature, it could grow to be $28,092 over 30 years, the report found.

“Recipients of baby bonds – children with little or no preexisting wealth – are far more likely to be people of color, as a result of past and ongoing systemic racism. Baby bonds are a way to help bridge the racial wealth gap by providing a subsidized savings mechanism for children who otherwise would have little ability to accumulate wealth,” Baxandall said.

Other policy recommendations included a dedicated line item for Fuel Assistance, a state program to help pay for diapers and automating the criminal record sealing process.

Liz Berube, executive director of Fall River- and Taunton-based community action agency Citizens for Citizens said the low-income families and individuals they serve have been put under significant stress in recent winters by heating costs.

“CFC services over 13,000 households through our Fuel Assistance program, and although the funding comes from the federal government, our network has had to reach out to state legislators for supplemental funding to get our low-income, elderly and disabled households through the winter months,” Berube said. “In those years when the federal allocation has not met the heating needs of our most vulnerable populations, we have been able to rely on our state government to help appropriately fund this lifesaving program. However, there’s no guarantee, since it is based on the health of our state’s revenue.”

She advocated for a line item in the budget for Fuel Assistance for the most vulnerable, with the possibility of extending to manage a cooling program as well, if funds are available.

Berube said the community agency has also had success administering a federally-funded diaper pilot program. CFC was chosen to operate as a hub to distribute tens of thousands of diapers and wipes throughout the South Coast, she said.

“This program has provided significant financial relief to these families, while we are hopeful that supportive data will lead to a fully funded federal program,” she said. “Therefore, we would ask for the consideration of a state-funded pilot program for diapers, since we can only service 100 diaper-age children. Currently, diapers are extremely expensive, and a family lacking diapers or enough diapers can certainly cause medical issues.”

Pauline Quirion, director of the CORI and reentry project at Greater Boston Legal Services, said a way to reduce poverty in the state would be to automate criminal record sealing.

After people have served time in prison, she said, they should be given a clean slate. Instead, they are often barred from housing and employment, and it continues the cycle of poverty, and increases the chances of reincarceration.

“Studies show that about 5% of people who are eligible for sealing pursue sealing,” Quirion said. “And I see people on a regular basis, I can think of like three gentlemen I met last week who could have sealed maybe 20 years ago, and they’ve continually suffered with their records, because they didn’t know that they could seal.”

After holding three public hearings, the commission has the next three months to finalize its findings and recommendations to try to steer the Legislature’s work on addressing poverty.