State activists take transparency fight to the ballot box

Advocates for a more open government in Massachusetts are racing against a quickly approaching deadline. By Nov. 19, they need more than 74,000 signatures to secure a spot for two questions on the 2026 ballot, both aimed at pulling back the curtain on Beacon Hill.

The petition drives mirror two transparency bills that were introduced in the Senate earlier this year but saw little progress. One, filed in January, would reduce leadership stipends for legislators, making them less financially dependent on the House speaker and Senate president. The other would reform public records laws. 

Massachusetts consistently ranks among the bottom 10 state legislatures in the nation for lawmaking productivity. Over 10,000 new bills were introduced and just 391 were passed by the end of the 2023-24 session, which was a dramatic decrease from laws passed the session prior. Thousands of bills died with little to no explanation — a consistent trend in the state that has left constituents wondering if legislators are living up to their responsibilities.

In June, in response to criticism on transparency issues, the House and Senate adopted joint rules that include a 60-day deadline on committee reporting, allowing public committee votes and giving committee chairs the ability to make testimony public. Those changes mark steps toward improving transparency, advocates say. Still, they see room for improvement.

Reforming leadership stipends

All legislators on Beacon Hill receive the same base pay, currently set at more than $82,000. Legislators in leadership roles, from committee vice chairs to the Senate president, receive a range of additional pay, totaling a combined $4.3 million, to compensate for added responsibilities. The ballot measure aims to change that structure. 

Critics say the House speaker and Senate president assign and withdraw these lucrative roles as a tool of power. The ballot measure would reduce the incentive for legislators to fall in line with leadership to retain their salaries, said Scotia Hille, a steering committee member for the initiative’s primary sponsor, Coalition to Reform Our Legislature. She sees Beacon Hill’s lack of transparency as a symptom of hierarchy, and says control of these leadership positions have helped create a top-down concentration of power. 

“There have been numerous instances where vice chairmanship, which carries an additional stipend, is dangled as an incentive, and numerous instances in which someone loses their lucrative position because of a vote that they took,” Hille said.

The proposed reforms would add a stipend to increase the base pay for everyone and break leadership stipends down by tier. The highest-ranking leaders in Group 1 would earn no more than 75% of the base pay, and lower-ranking leaders in Group 4, would receive no more than 33%. Additional rules would apply to legislators who serve in multiple committees. Advocates say this would potentially lead to less additional pay for the highest-ranking legislators, but would soften the gap for rank-and-file members.

Advocates also hope the measure will increase committee activity. Some legislative committees produce many more bills and hold many more hearings than others, analysis by The Light and other publications has found. Under the proposal, for legislators to still receive a stipend, they would have to meet certain transparency standards, like holding public markup sessions and reporting bills out of committee.

State Auditor Diana DiZoglio, a former lawmaker and frequent critic of the Legislature, echoed Hille. She said that the House speaker and Senate president use leadership appointments as a way to maintain control of committee votes. 

At a rally on the steps of the Statehouse early this month in support of a legislative audit and these measures, DiZoglio encouraged attendees to sign. Giving their signature, she said, would “let Beacon Hill know that this is not a politician’s house, this is the people’s house.”

Reforming public records law

Massachusetts is currently the only state that does not subject the governor, Legislature or judiciary to public records law. The ballot measure would make most of the governor and Legislature’s records public, with exceptions for “documents related to the development of public policy” and constituents’ requests for individual services from legislators.

Under the current law, government emails, memos and documents are public unless they come from these entities, which claim exemption. While lawmakers have introduced multiple public-records reform bills in the last decade, only a handful of updates have been added — including the establishment of a supervisor of records in the Secretary of State’s office.

Justin Silverman, executive director of the New England First Amendment Coalition, said a main goal of the ballot measure is to strengthen enforcement. The supervisor of records does not have any enforcement authority, leaving disputed records requests to be settled in court. Other states, he said, have independent commissions which hear records disputes without requiring an attorney. 

“I think for most legislators, it is a very difficult sell to pass a bill that would open them up to more public scrutiny, more accountability, and require more transparency than our current law affords,” Silverman said. “It’s difficult for members of the public to persuade legislators to do something that is going to open them up to more public scrutiny, but it needs to get done.”

Rep. Antonio F.D. Cabral of New Bedford has repeatedly filed legislation to establish a public records commission. Those bills have gone to study orders or died in the House Ways and Means Committee.

The ballot measure has received little outspoken support from legislators. Just 12% of state legislators said they should be subject to public records law. Eleven percent said it should be extended to the governor and the majority provided no response, according to a recent poll by The Boston Globe. Cabral said that if this petition came across his desk, he would need to determine if the language addresses his and Silverman’s enforcement concerns before signing.

Measures receive nonpartisan support

Both measures have garnered support across party lines, with many nonpartisan groups endorsing them. 

John Griffin, managing partner of strategy for Partners in Democracy — a nonprofit advocacy group for democratic reform — said support for the initiatives has been largely nonpartisan because they would give voters an opportunity to keep high-ranking legislators accountable. 

Bob McConnell of Fairhaven, a former Republican state House candidate,  has been collecting petition signatures for stipend reform on the South Coast. He also believes that voters are rallying around transparency because they want to hold legislators accountable. In municipalities like New Bedford and Fairhaven, where impacts of federal cuts will hit especially hard, he said, residents want to know exactly what their state tax money is going toward.

“Beacon Hill has a rainy day fund of $8 billion when the towns are just really struggling, and a lot of that money should be coming back to the towns’ purposes,” McConnell said. “Instead, we’re finding out about all these other expenditures that people don’t even know about.”

South Coast voters can sign the petition for legislative stipend reform on weekdays between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. at the DeMello International Center at 128 Union St. in downtown New Bedford, or on Sundays between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. at the Stop & Shop at 211 Huttleston Ave. in Fairhaven, McConnell said.

Evan MacKay, a former Democratic state representative candidate and outreach director for the Cambridge Committee for Transparency and Democracy, said that the positive response to both petitions reveals the public’s lack of trust in Beacon Hill. According to MacKay, Gov. Maura Healey, before taking office, identified as a staunch supporter of public records reform, but reversed course after being sworn in, saying her office would evaluate requests on a case-by-case basis. MacKay said cases like that have made it necessary for voters to take a direct stand.

Griffin, Hille and MacKay noted that while activism varies by region — it’s especially intense in Cambridge neighborhoods where MacKay petitions — the transparency measures are gaining support statewide.

Next steps for ballot measures

The signature-gathering campaign is only the second step in a long process to enact these reforms.

This year, 47 new ballot initiative petitions were submitted to Attorney General Andrea Campbell’s office. Forty-four, including the stipend and public records measures, were approved. 

After signatures are gathered, petition sheets must be submitted to town clerks by Nov. 19 for verification by Dec. 3. Upon approval, they advance to the Legislature, which will determine whether or not to act. Advocates like Hille and MacKay said the measures are unlikely to gain approval from Beacon Hill, meaning petitioners would need to gather an additional 12,429 signatures by July 1, 2026, to secure a spot on the November ballot.

Hille said the coalition is on track to obtain the needed signatures for the stipend question by the deadline. MacKay said he does not have exact numbers but is optimistic that both questions will advance. Even if they do not, the petition process alone is progress, because it gets people talking, he said.

Isabelle Oss is a graduate student in journalism at Boston University, covering state government for The Light as part of the Boston University Statehouse Program.