The Governor of Massachusetts has proposed legislation that will prevent access to birth, marriage, death, and other previously-public records by anyone but the person requesting the record, or his/her parent or attorney. In Massachusetts, these records have been available to everyone (after a lapse of time in some cases) since 1641, in colonial and state repositories (archives and registries) as well as town and city halls. They have been a principal and critical source of genealogical information. Steve Eastman has recently posted an alert about the proposed legislation in his blog (https://blog.eogn.com/2020/01/31/massachusetts-governor-seeks-to-cut-access-to-public-domain-records/). The Massachusetts Genealogical Council has issued a "Call to Action" to oppose the legislation; further information, including ways to register opposition to the legislation, is available at https://www.massgencouncil.org/call-to-action.

Stephen KATZ
(KATZ (Novograd-Volynskiy, Ukraine), KAPLAN (Stakliskes, Lithuania), VITKIN (Kaunas, Lithuania), TEPPER (Rovno and Novograd-Volinskiy, Ukraine)