Public outrage over the appearance of a backroom deal to boost legislative pay and phase-out the capital gains tax led Beacon Hill pols in 1995 to put in place a deadline to halt formal lawmaking in July of each even-numbered year when state elections are held.

But nearly three decades later, Democrats who hold super-majorities in the State House appear set to rework the summertime cutoff date established to prevent lame-duck policy slinging after they consistently failed to complete their work on time during each of the past several sessions.

It is a consequential calendar shift that could open the door to major proposals clearing the Massachusetts House and Senate after the November elections in the second year of a legislative term — a scenario the original supporters of the deadline wanted to avoid.

At the time legislators installed the July 31 deadline in May 1995, then-House Minority Leader Edward Teague, a Yarmouth Republican, called it “a step in the right direction.”

“Shorter sessions will force the Legislature to operate more efficiently, and allow lawmakers more time to deal directly with issues in their home districts,” the Herald reported him saying in 1995. “Republicans have been trying to shorten the legislative session for years. I’m glad the Democratic majority has finally started to listen to us and is agreeing to our suggestions.”

House Speaker Ron Mariano and Senate President Karen Spilka have said they are open to reworking the 30-year-old July 31 deadline after a chaotic end to formal business over the summer and the passage of a legislative audit ballot question championed by State Auditor Diana DiZoglio.

Spilka, an Ashland Democrat, said earlier this month she wants to allow lawmakers to continue working on bills past July 31 if they have made it into a six-person conference committee tasked with negotiating compromise legislation.

In an interview this past week on WCVB, Spilka said that the summertime deadline is “totally arbitrary, artificial.”

“We should continue with conference committee bills, not other major bills, past July 31 because, as I mentioned, the conference committee bills have already been discussed, vetted and debated and voted on, on both the House version and the Senate version,” she said.

During a speech earlier this month, Mariano said he wants to take a look at “potential changes to the legislative calendar.” At an event in November, the Quincy Democrat called the July 31 cutoff date an “arbitrary deadline.”

Outrage over ‘quid pro quo’ in 1994 prompts major legislative deadline

The spark that gave rise to the July 31 deadline flared during a sleepy December in 1994 — the end to that two-year legislative session — when lawmakers pushed through a legislative pay raise and then, to the apparent surprise of most pols, approved a capital gains tax cut.

Then-Gov. Bill Weld, a Republican who had filed the capital gains phase-out since 1991, signed the legislative pay raise into law — the first since a hike approved in 1987 was repealed in 1988 — a day after the tax cut made it to his desk.

The timing left many legislators with the impression of a backroom deal during the dead of winter and after the 1994 state elections when pols already knew whether they would be returning to the State House or not.

Many legislators claimed they had no idea the capital gains phase out language had been attached as an amendment from Teague to a larger bill from Weld that called for tax changes intended to benefit lower income families.

“I think it looks like a quid pro quo, which we were assured was not happening. I didn’t disagree with the substance. I just didn’t like the way it was done. We as a legislative body should know what’s going on,” then-Rep. Frank Hynes, a Marshfield Democrat, said in early December 1994.

In the days and weeks that followed, Weld repeatedly denied that there was a secret agreement to trade legislative pay raises for a capital gains tax cut. But the appearance of a deal and the post-election lawmaking prompted pols in May 1995 to create the July 31 deadline.

A successful rules reform package that month introduced the due date, which then-House Minority Whip David Peters of Charlton described at the time as “one of the most significant reforms I’ve seen since I’ve been in the building.”

Lawmakers then said the July 31 cutoff date would prevent post-election, lame-duck sessions, and suspending the rule would be “very involved” and not easy to invoke, as then-Senate Majority Leader Louis Bertonazzi put it when the rules were approved.

“I think these are rules the public’s going to appreciate and understand,” then-House Majority Leader Richard Voke of Chelsea said at the time.

Failure to manage deadline last year led to calls for reform

The push to rework or kill the deadline this year comes after lawmakers failed to find agreement on several high-profile bills, including an economic development proposal, a climate change and renewable energy measure, and healthcare reform legislation.

And though the House and Senate eventually passed each one of the bills before the end of the year, the hectic close to formal business over the summer prompted an outcry for reforms aimed at making the Legislature more efficient after years of blowing past due dates.

Sen. Jamie Eldridge, a Marlborough Democrat who has repeatedly filed legislation aimed at making the Legislature more transparent, said he supports working past July 31, including on more than just bills in conference committees.

He said he is not concerned about passing legislation during lame-duck sessions.

“I think that there were earlier eras in the Legislature where there was questionable, more self-serving legislation passing. I really think that those days are over and I think that ultimately the public wants to see us as a full-time, professional Legislature. They want to see us taking action throughout the two-year session,” Eldridge told the Herald.

House Minority Leader Brad Jones, who joined the Legislature in 1995, said he is too open to working past July 31 but wants to see a more detailed plan from Democrats who are in charge of the House and Senate.

The North Reading Republican said he is also not concerned about passing major bills after the election, arguing some people are “lame ducks as soon as they decide not to run so does that mean they shouldn’t participate in anything for the last eight months or year?”

“I think that gets to be something of an arbitrary argument,” he said. “I certainly do think trying to nestle it all in and around the holidays where people’s attention is understandably elsewhere is a problem too. So I certainly think you can move the deadline. I think there’s some constructive, modest ways you can do it.”

Materials from the Herald archives and State House News Service were used in this report.