For Massachusetts, no news of a new state seal or motto

Six months in the past, members of a particular fee unanimously agreed that Massachusetts ought to change its state seal and motto. Now, time is working out for them to advocate what these replacements needs to be.

The fee has mentioned varied design parts — a lot of them nature-based, like pine timber, cod, chickadees and hills — however after greater than a yr of conferences, it hasn’t coalesced behind an idea. Now, the fee has newly awarded state funds at its disposal, however its sluggish progress is now working up towards a Dec. 31 deadline that state lawmakers haven’t opted to increase.

Advocates for years have been pushing for Massachusetts to alter its present state seal, which depicts a Native American man with a bow and arrow standing beneath an arm holding a sword. The state’s official motto says, in Latin, “By the sword we search peace, however peace solely below liberty.” The Massachusetts flag bears each the seal and motto.

A regulation Gov. Charlie Baker signed in January 2021 created the fee to assessment the seal and motto, together with any options “which may be unwittingly dangerous to or misunderstood by the residents of the commonwealth,” and tasked it with recommending revised or new designs. The panel consists of lawmakers, cultural and historic consultants, and representatives of Native American tribes “with a historic presence” in Massachusetts.

The regulation initially set an Oct. 1, 2021, date for the fee to finish its work, however lawmakers twice pushed that deadline again after the group’s first assembly in July 2021. Commissioners had been hoping to safe a 3rd extension, till March 2023, to offer them time to solicit public enter.

Whereas lawmakers eliminated language for an extension from the ultimate model of an financial growth invoice enacted final week, that invoice did allocate $100,000 to the fee.

“That places us in a novel place, in a collection of distinctive positions this fee has been in, to now have funds and little or no time with which to expend them below our present constitution,” fee co-chair Brian Boyles mentioned Tuesday.

He mentioned commissioners have been speaking to lawmakers to determine their choices, together with whether or not the cash must be spent by the tip of the yr or whether or not it might be handed alongside to a different to-be-determined entity to proceed work the if the fee dissolves on the finish of the yr as scheduled.

At a digital assembly Tuesday, fee members mentioned the opportunity of steering the cash towards a survey that may gauge what Massachusetts residents need in a brand new state seal, or utilizing it to rent a graphic designer. They didn’t choose a plan, and co-chair Brian Weeden mentioned the panel’s leaders would return with suggestions at a future assembly.

Past simply its dwindling time-frame, the fee may face an added problem if it strives to discover a new design that resonates with a big swath of the general public. An October UMass Amherst ballot discovered a mixture of opinions on whether or not the state ought to change its seal and flag in any respect, with 30% strongly opposed, 23% strongly in favor, and 25% neither for nor towards.