After months of hearings, editorials, and one very chilly rally on the State House, yesterday the long-awaited ‪Massachusetts‬ ‪Public Records‬ Reform bill passed the Senate with unanimous support.

MuckRock’s Beryl Lipton was there, and she live-tweeted the whole thing, withdrawn measures and all. You can read her coverage embedded below, or on Storify.

So what’s next? Now, the bill heads to the conference committee, where the House and Senate will attempt to reconcile the differences between the two versions. This being Massachusetts, they will of course be doing this in secret.

We’ll be checking in on the process in the coming months, and according to the Globe, we’ll be likely looking at a final version come summer - almost a full year since the initial public hearing.

Here’s hoping that the Senate’s stronger - and much more transparent - bill wins out.

Image by Kevin Rutherford via Wikimedia Commons and is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0