|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
The Massachusetts House passed a bill Wednesday that would give the state auditor access to the Legislature’s fiscal records, but not to all information required by the 2024 ballot measure. The bill would also prevent the auditor from taking any audit-related disputes to court.
House leaders have framed the bill as a significant step toward a more transparent state government and a turning point in the long-running audit dispute. Still, Auditor Diana DiZoglio and some advocates say it falls far short of meaningful transparency reform.
Every Republican representative voted against the bill. During the debate, several Republicans argued that the process itself lacked transparency because most House members did not learn of the bill until the previous morning.
The House vote came after the Senate last week passed a resolution to provide DiZoglio with financial information she requested as part of a 2024 initiative law. The documents, from fiscal years 2021-24, included each chamber’s official budgets and audits, all transactions related to legislative funds carried over from previous years, and all monetary settlement agreements with any current or former employees or elected members.
At the time of the Senate vote, House Speaker Ron Mariano’s office said the House wouldn’t adopt a similar resolution because it wouldn’t be the right way to protect the Legislature’s constitutional powers and wouldn’t “resolve the endless legal disputes” about the audit.
Instead, he said the House would craft “comprehensive” transparency legislation that would provide “long-term solutions.”
The resulting House bill would provide DiZoglio with documents similar to those listed in the Senate resolution. DiZoglio would only be able to access documents dating back to fiscal 2021, but unlike the Senate resolution, the House bill does not cap the records at fiscal 2024.
In an effort to avoid “endless and costly litigation,” the bill would prevent audit-related disputes from being litigated in court. Instead, as the “exclusive remedy,” the auditor could write a “detailed explanation” of the dispute in the final audit report.
Rep. Steven Ouellette, D-Westport, said he supports the bill because it would give the auditor “everything she requested for perpetuity.”
Despite the House’s confidence that the bill would end the ongoing audit debate, DiZoglio remains unsatisfied.
“The People have a co-equal right with the Legislature to create laws, and the courts have a constitutional right to adjudicate laws,” DiZoglio said in a statement provided to The Light. “With this proposed bill, and under the guise of transparency, your state representatives are not only throwing the 72% voter-mandated law in the dumpster — they’re taking a match and lighting that dumpster on fire, violating the People’s constitutional rights and undermining democracy.”
In a 10-minute video posted to X, DiZoglio said that preventing the courts from weighing in on audit disputes “violate[s] the power of the court.” She added that no one contacted her office before announcing the bill.
Rep. Christopher Markey, D-Dartmouth, said he supports the bill because it gives DiZoglio access to monetary documents, which is “an acceptable part of the function of an auditor,” but not information about how lawmakers are appointed to positions. This balances transparency with the legislative independence and separation of powers that the constitution “demands,” he said.
The 2024 ballot measure permitted DiZoglio to audit the “accounts, programs, activities and functions” of the Legislature.
Rep. Christopher Hendricks, D-New Bedford, said the bill provides DiZoglio with all of the information she requested in May as part of a Supreme Judicial Court case.
“I think [the bill is] good because it creates a process for the auditor not to just do an audit relative to [the 2024 ballot measure], but in perpetuity this process will always be there,” Hendricks said.
In a written statement to The Light, Rep. Mark Sylvia, D-Fairhaven, said he voted yes on the audit ballot question in 2024 to “emphasize the importance of transparency while also knowing there are constitutional issues related to the audit.” He said he supports the House bill because it would allow DiZoglio to audit the Legislature within the parameters established by the May court case and perform an annual financial audit, rather than having the House commission its own independent audit.
“I firmly believe that openness isn’t a threat to good government,” Sylvia said. “It’s the foundation of it.”
Public records
The bill also attempts to address a DiZoglio-backed question moving toward the November ballot that would apply the state’s public records law to the Legislature and the governor’s office. Currently, Massachusetts is the only state where the Legislature, the judiciary and the governor’s office are all exempt from the law guaranteeing access to public records, and one of only two states where both the Legislature and the governor are exempt.
The House bill would not submit the Legislature to the existing public records law, which House leaders say would be unconstitutional.
Instead, it would create a specific process for people to request “legislative records” from 17 categories. Accessible records include committee votes and reports; financial records provided to the Comptroller; communications regarding the official appointment, resignation or removal of a legislative appointee to any commission, board or task force; and more.
Markey said creating a separate public records process for the Legislature makes sense because the legislative branch is “different.” He compared the Legislature to a jury, arguing that while its final decisions should be public, its deliberations should remain private.
Hendricks also said he supports the proposed processes because the categories encompass a wide range of records, adding that allowing the public to access legislative communications is a “huge step.”
In a written statement to The Light, Rep. Antonio F.D. Cabral, D-New Bedford, said he has advocated for more transparency on Beacon Hill for years.
“In the interest of transparency and stronger governance, any legislation expanding transparency and making institutions subject to the public records laws represents meaningful progress,” he said.
But according to Scotia Hille, executive director of Act on Mass, almost all of the listed records are already public, aside from legislative communications.
“House leadership devised this ‘transparency’ bill behind closed doors with no public input,” Hille said in a news release sent to The Light. “Rather than improving transparency in our broken legislature, this legislation would create separate legal standards for legislators to continue avoiding public scrutiny … This proposal is disappointing and fails to meet the demands of the popular movement for transparency in Massachusetts.”
Hille also raised concerns that the Legislature would process legislative records requests “in-house” and that legislative committees would have “broad authority to modify or reverse” requests. In a House news release, other advocacy groups, including Common Cause Massachusetts and the ACLU of Massachusetts, praised the bill.
ACLU Executive Director Carol Rose said the House bill “builds on a framework for public access that we and fellow advocates have long supported.”
“In a healthy democracy, people should know what elected officials are up to,” Rose said. “We hope the legislature will work to swiftly get this historic reform to the Governor’s desk, strengthening our democracy and giving the public access to important information about how state government functions.”
The bill would apply the existing public records law to the governor’s office, but people would only be able to request records created on or after Jan. 7, 2027.
The House bill must also pass the Senate before it becomes law. Mariano said he spoke with the Senate about the bill, but some Senate leaders said it was unexpected. Sen. Mark Montigny, D-New Bedford, declined to comment on the bill because it was “just polled by House Ways and Means [yesterday].”
Jamie Perkins is a graduate student in journalism covering state government for The Light as a summer intern. Email them at jperkins@newbedfordlight.org.
