Who’s their best at 3 a.m.? Not the Massachusetts Legislature. – The Boston Globe

Just after 8:30 a.m. on Thursday as the Senate prepared to vote on a major housing bond bill, Republican Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr took the floor. Members, he said, had gotten the $5.16 billion bill after pulling an all-nighter, with no time to review it, hours after formal legislative sessions were supposed to have concluded at midnight. “We can’t accept this,” Tarr said. “It can’t become normal. It can’t be institutionalized. Members deserve better than that. Citizens of the Commonwealth deserve better than that.”

Tarr is right. A legislative process that starts with months of inaction and ends in a flurry of overnight lawmaking — where important legislation is left on the cutting room floor simply because time expires — does not serve members or the public.

To its credit, the Legislature completed one of its most important tasks this session. Lawmakers reached agreement on a housing bond bill that will invest in building all kinds of housing that the state desperately needs to address sky-high prices, a homelessness crisis, and a cost of living that threatens to chase companies out of state. The bill will provide money for affordable housing, public housing, mixed-income housing, market-rate housing, and the conversion of commercial to residential properties, among other initiatives. It will allow accessory dwelling units to be built without special permits everywhere in Massachusetts.

While the housing bill was a top priority of Governor Maura Healey — who introduced her version of it last fall, giving the Legislature ample time — there were real differences between the versions passed by the House and Senate, and passage wasn’t assured until a compromise was reached early Thursday.

Lawmakers also passed a bill increasing access to benefits for veterans. They sent Healey a bill — which this board supported — modernizing parenthood laws in cases when a parent uses assisted reproduction or surrogacy and does not have a genetic tie to their child. They also sent Healey a bill phasing out PFAS chemicals in firefighting equipment.

But lawmakers failed to pass important bills related to health care, economic development, and the environment.

On health care, the House and Senate both passed complicated bills aimed at lowering the cost of prescription drugs, ensuring better oversight of for-profit health care companies, and improving long-term care facilities. But while the topics had been discussed for months, the House only passed its version of a prescription drug bill in July, and the Senate waited until July to pass its version of the long-term care and market oversight bills. Lawmakers were simultaneously considering bills related to substance use and maternal health, which presumably required expertise from lawmakers on health care committees.

House Speaker Ron Mariano said health care negotiators were trying to consider the hospital oversight and prescription drug bills together, and it simply became too difficult at the last minute. “I’d rather have a good bill than bills with errors and mistakes,” Mariano told reporters.

The economic development bill — a $3.40 billion bill in the House and a $2.86 billion bill in the Senate, according to the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation — also fell through. Those bills included major investments in climate technology and life sciences. They were also loaded with policy priorities, many of which differed between the House and Senate, ranging from allowing happy hour to advancing a proposed Everett soccer stadium.

Legislation related to energy project siting also fell through, even though there was agreement on core parts of the bill; the Globe reported key negotiators blamed the collapse on differences related to natural gas usage policy.

The House and Senate each passed a flurry of last-minute bills in the last few days on topics as diverse as Boston property taxes, animal rights, and safe injection sites. But as Mariano himself said — a line Senate President Karen Spilka repeated back to him — passing a bill at the very last minute “tells me you’re not serious about getting the bill done.”

To be sure, there’s nothing like a deadline to motivate action. Key lawmakers defended the flurry of last-minute lawmaking as the way Beacon Hill has always done business. Representative Paul Donato, a Medford Democrat and a representative for 23 years, said lawmakers working on conference committees “have to stay here as long as we can until we figure that we can’t do anything else.” Mariano called all-night sessions “the nature of the business we’re in.” Senate Ways and Means Chair Michael Rodrigues said there is less overnight work today than 20 or 30 years ago when “working around the clock happened all the time.”

Caffeine-fueled levity powered lawmakers through the night. Representative Brian Ashe, a Longmeadow Democrat, said he would offer a quote — then snored loudly. Retiring Representative Smitty Pignatelli, a Lenox Democrat, said he was “humbled that in my last formal session my colleagues don’t want me to leave.”

But on a more serious note, Pignatelli called it “frustrating” and “disappointing” that lawmakers failed to agree on the economic development bill. “The bond bills give everybody across the Commonwealth opportunities to get some money and put it to work,” Pignatelli said. Ashe added, “Staying this late, sometimes you might expect that. What you hope is you get the results with it.”

While buying coffee at the State House café, Representative Rodney Elliott, a Lowell Democrat, called it “disappointing” given the urgency of climate change that lawmakers failed to pass an energy bill.

The Legislature will meet in informal sessions through the end of the year, so there will be opportunities to pass more bills — and lawmakers can and should keep working. Both Spilka and Mariano said they would. But the objection of a single lawmaker can derail a bill in informal sessions, and bond bills like the economic development bill can only pass in formal sessions since they require approval by a two-thirds majority of members in a roll call vote.

Legislative leaders did find time to pass hundreds of thousands of dollars in state budget earmarks benefiting their districts, the Globe reported. Democratic senators found time to hold a 9:30 a.m. fundraiser on July 31, according to State House News Service. It’s a shame they couldn’t find time to pass vital legislation affecting the health, environment, and economic prosperity of the people of Massachusetts.

Editorials represent the views of the Boston Globe Editorial Board. Follow us @GlobeOpinion.