House suspends joint rule to allow sick leave bank petitions and advances multiple sick-leave bills

The Massachusetts House on Sept. 11, 2025, voted to suspend Joint Rule 12 so that a joint petition could be considered to establish a sick leave bank for Katherine Roderick, an employee of the Chief Medical Examiner's Office. The committee on rules, acting concurrently, recommended suspension of Joint Rule 12 on the joint petition of Donald R. Berthiaume Jr.; the House approved the suspension after a motion on the floor.

Later in the same session the House advanced several bills establishing sick leave banks for individual state employees. The clerk reported third-reading actions and the House passed or ordered to be engrossed multiple bills, including an act establishing a sick leave bank for Gregory Baker, an employee of the Suffolk County Sheriff's Office (Senate number reported in the transcript), and acts establishing sick leave banks for employees of the Department of Correction identified in the transcript as Akita Jandara Patel/Anita Jendra Patel and John C. Murphy. For at least two bills the emergency preamble was adopted following division counts reported as two affirmative votes and none negative in the transcript; the clerk recorded that the emergency preamble was adopted and the bills were passed.

These measures are special or local relief bills that create a sick leave bank for a named public employee and require the House's separate procedural steps; the transcript records the committee reports, suspension of joint rule 12 to allow consideration, and passage or advancement to be engrossed and enacted for multiple named sick leave bank bills. The transcript does not include roll-call lists tying individual yeas or nays to members, and some personal names in the transcript contain transcription errors; the article uses the names as recorded in the hearing record.