Catia believes in equity and justice for all.

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 Our criminal justice system is designed to punish, not to rehabilitate or improve public safety.  People of color, people from low-income backgrounds, and people with behavioral health conditions are forgotten by public policy.  As a result, they end up swept into a punitive and violent system that only serves to prevent their success and interrupt public safety.  Catia seeks to reduce mass incarceration while promoting a vision of freedom from poverty, disease, and homelessness as public safety.

• Reduce arrest, detention, and mass incarceration rates.
• Improve health and behavioral health care in jails and prisons.
• Expand programming in jails and prisons to help people be successful upon release.
• Ensure that detention (when people are still "innocent until proven guilty" doesn't carry the same punishment as conviction of a crime.
• Address racial disparities in arrest, detention, and incarceration.
• Tackle violent and coercive population management techniques in prisons.
• Address public safety gaps like deficiencies in our 911 system.

  The Boston area is the second most expensive housing market in the country after San Francisco.  Somerville is one of the most densely populated cities in the area.  Affordability is a crisis that affects people across the income spectrum.  Housing ought to be considered a human right.  Somerville cannot solve this problem alone; it takes a regional approach to address housing prices.

• Increase housing stock across categories to address cost by removing barriers to construction using a regional strategy.
• Address the availability and accessibility of affordable units of multiple sizes for people and families below the median income level.
• Investigate and challenge other factors leading to the development and conversion of units into high-priced luxury units that drive up prices.
• Improve programs designed to assist home buying among people of color, those with limited income or credit, and those buying homes in low-income neighborhoods.

 Massachusetts is a national leader in health care coverage, but there is still more to do.  Care fails to prioritize prevention over treatment of serious conditions, especially in behavioral health.  Our system is too complex for the average person to navigate, and care suffers as a result.  Catia will push to expand access and affordability of high-quality behavioral and physical health care for all Massachusetts residents.

• Ensure that all residents have access to affordable, high-quality comprehensive health and behavioral health care.
• Address the parity in payment and access of behavioral health to physical health.
• Create a comprehensive mental wellness strategy for the state that includes education, promotion of mental wellness activities, and early prevention of escalating symptoms.
• Improve the acceptability of health and behavioral health services, including by addressing workforce challenges that are particularly acute among workers with cultural competency in non-English speaking communities and those with specialties like with justice-involved or homeless clients.
• Address drug affordability through pricing and reducing the impact of intermediaries like Pharmacy Benefit Managers on consumer prices.

 A thriving and equitable economy requires the infrastructure to support workers.  Our current system fails to do this.  More reliable, safe, and equitable transportation options will not only improve commutes and expand economic investment in our area, but can also help us to reach our climate goals.

• Invest in not only fixing and maintaining the MBTA, but upgrading antiquated technology and infrastructure that limit our options for faster, more reliable service.
• Improve bus service to improve equity and accessibility for residents who cannot afford to live near subway stations by increasing frequency of major routes and considering whether current routes suffice for current population patterns.
• Create infrastructure for alternative transportation modalities like biking and walking to improve safety and encourage utilization.

 Human-caused climate change is a global catastrophe.  As time goes on, we are left with fewer and fewer options for addressing our contribution to permanent disruptions in ecosystems.  We must work to mitigate our impact going forward, remediate pollution from the past, and develop approaches to improve the equity and resilience of our communities to the change we cannot address.

• Reduce release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, in part by investing in creating green jobs in the Massachusetts technology economy through the Clean Energy Center.
• Remediate pollution that has already occurred.
• Address injustice in the impacts of pollution on communities of color and other disadvantaged groups.
• Build resilience to climate change.

 Massachusetts in general and Somerville in particular has one of the best-educated populations in the country.  But the number of masters degrees among residents hides educational and workforce inequities.  We need an economy and school system that can ensure that all residents have the opportunities they need to succeed.

• Working families deserve childcare that is less expensive than in-state tuition at UMass.
• Our students deserve K-12 schools that provide a world class education and opportunities for success.
• Our teachers deserve pay that reflects their vital role in our prosperity.
• We ought to invest in an array of career-preparatory educational opportunities, including vocational and technical high schools and higher learning institutions.
• We need to address who can afford to attend college, if that is their choice.

  Government programs are critical to a well-functioning society.  But we don't often set goals for those programs, monitor our success at achieving those goals, and publish successes and failures in an accountable way.  Catia has spent her career bringing data and social science to bear to establish systems for performance and accountability, and plans to bring these ideas to the State House. 

The City of Somerville is a state (and, frankly, national) leader in promoting good government and accountability through the SomerStat program.  Catia seeks to promote a similar outcomes-oriented approach at the state house, building upon her work developing systems to monitor performance of social services through pay for success contracts while working at the Executive Office for Administration and Finance for the state.

Government services can be vital in providing equity of opportunity, supporting our most vulnerable residents, and regulating potential harm that may come to one member of society to the benefit of another member. Tax revenue is needed for these important roles, but ought to be collected not only in a way that does no harm to any one segment of society, but that also fosters the same values of equity, access, and fairness.

Our tax system in Massachusetts currently fails to live up to these values. If you add up all types of taxes for each category - sales, income, payroll, etc. - you find that low income residents of Massachusetts pay far more than their fair share compared to the highest earners. Catia worked on a plan under Governor Patrick to increase tax fairness. From that role, she knows about the loopholes and tax credits that disproportionately benefit high earners, and how making up for those lost revenues through high sales taxes disproportionately hurts our most vulnerable residents.

Catia is in favor of improving tax fairness so that the way the state raises revenues follows the same moral principles that Catia espouses in how it spends those dollars: equity and justice for all.