With Mass. House set to vote on its rules, is transparency a priority or a talking point?

As the Massachusetts House of Representatives prepares to vote on its 2025-2026 rules, which may increase transparency in the legislature, lawmakers and activists are split — do our politicians care about transparency, or is it all for show? 

Last year saw critical news coverage of the state legislature’s effectiveness, a growing political movement for transparency and a ballot question giving State Auditor Diana DiZoglio authority to audit the legislature, which garnered over 70% of the vote.

The Senate adopted rules that contained transparency reforms on Feb. 13. This week all eyes are on the House, which released proposed rules reforms Monday and is set to debate and vote on rules beginning Tuesday.

The Senate reforms would tighten the timeline for committees to act on legislation and require lawmakers to submit summaries of the bills they file, among other reforms. According to the House rules package released Monday, the House will also debate transparency reforms, most notably a proposed 60-day deadline for committees to vote on a bill after a hearing. 

Jonathan Cohn, the policy director at Progressive Massachusetts, said that this reform would increase efficiency and help supporters of bills know whether their bills are dead or still up for discussion. Most bills die in committee on an unclear timeline, Cohn said.

Proposed House rules reforms also include making committee votes public — something transparency advocates have long asked for — along with attendance records for legislators at hearings. The House rules also propose publishing bill summaries, but the House would have committee co-chairs write those, not the lawmakers who propose them.

The House released its proposed rules package in full Monday, just over 24 hours before the formal session at which the House will debate these rules. One criticism of the legislature has been aimed at the short timeframe  legislators and the public have to read legislation before a vote. 

Act on Mass, an advocacy organization focused on transparency, wrote in a press release Monday that this timing “inhibits public participation in the process at the very moment that House leaders claim to be expanding it.”

The proposed House rules would require members to be physically present to participate in hearings. The Senate reforms would increase notice time for joint committee hearings from 72 hours to five days.

At an action hour on government transparency that Progressive Massachusetts and other organizations hosted Feb. 19, Cohn suggested that the public should have as much time to prepare for a hearing as they need to request time off from work — at least two weeks.

Once the House and Senate both adopt rules, they move to a conference committee of both branches. In recent history, this is where things have slowed down. The branches have not adopted any joint rules since 2019.

Sen. Michael J. Rodrigues, D-Westport, said that the Senate has long supported public committee votes, which the House has historically rejected. Rep. Christopher Hendricks, D-New Bedford, said he was surprised to hear the proposed House rules include public committee votes, but is not opposed to adopting them. 

“I just always thought that was a hard line the House was going to dig into,” Hendricks said.

Public committee votes in both chambers would be a win for transparency activists like Scotia Hille, the executive director of Act On Mass.

“Key pieces of legislation that are very popular will die in committee year after year after year, and be refiled and die in committee again, and no one has any idea who’s blocking that bill, what’s actually happening to it,” Hille said. “It would not be a silver bullet, but it would go a long way to really start opening up that process of what is happening to bills and committees, because right now it’s just a complete black box.”

Both branches seem to be looking towards transparency more than they have in recent years. But adopting rules almost two months into the legislative session means legislators still don’t have their committee assignments. Individual legislators don’t have much to say about transparency, and some blame the fact that committee assignments are hanging in the balance. 

DiZoglio, who is still fighting for a legislative audit, said she thinks many rank and file legislators do care about increasing transparency. But, she said, committee assignments are used to “control the membership.” 

“I have folks saying to me, ‘I support you, but I just have to get through committee assignments,” DiZoglio said. “They want to make sure they don’t upset the Senate President or Speaker before committee assignments happen, because then they’re not going to be given what they want.”

New Bedford’s House reps say they’re open to reforms 

New Bedford’s five House members — Reps. Antonio F.D. Cabral, Christopher Hendricks, Christopher Markey, Steven Ouellette and Mark Sylvia — emphasized their personal commitments to transparency in interviews with The Light. None felt strongly about specific reforms, but all except New Bedford’s Hendricks said they looked forward to seeing reforms in the House rules.

Ouellette, a freshman representative who previously served on Westport’s Select Board, said transparency hasn’t been his number-one priority, but that he has no problem answering any questions.

“I don’t know the ins and outs of why everything wouldn’t be out there [publicly],” Ouellette said. “But I’ve always ran my meetings out in the open and add agendas and all that good stuff, so I don’t have anything to hide.”

Rodrigues said the Senate has always been proud of the transparency measures in its rules. 

Sen. Mark C. Montigny, D-New Bedford, wrote in an emailed statement to The Light that he has consistently advocated for increased transparency, including public committee votes, bill summaries and more time to review legislation following a conference report filing. Montigny wrote that he is in full support of the Senate’s current proposal to move the joint committee bill reporting deadline earlier, from February of the second year of a term to December of the first.

Montigny described the lack of transparency in the Statehouse as “the insidious Beacon Hill culture of cozy dealmaking and lobbyist-driven agendas,” in an emailed statement to The Light.

Montigny wrote that he has long battled against that culture and believes the Senate’s rules package would make progress. He also pointed to his cosponsoring of a successful rules amendment that prohibits members and their immediate family from unjustly benefitting from any pending matters.

“Transparency and integrity are absolutely important to my constituents, and I remain steadfast in my commitment to both,” Montigny wrote.

Sen. Kelly Dooner, R-Taunton, said she’d like to see more transparency in the Senate, particularly as a minority caucus member. As a freshman senator, she said she was disappointed to learn some bill amendments don’t get an individual voice vote in the Senate. On the Taunton City Council, where she served previously, Dooner said all her votes were recorded, posted and easily accessible.

Dooner said transparency is about self-accountability, and that she’ll always share her own votes with her constituents, especially those that matter to them. 

“All it takes is one person to ask me that question, and I’m going to put that information out there,” Dooner said.

“We have residents reaching out to us, saying they need more transparency,” Dooner added. “There’s a reason they’re asking for more transparency, so I think it’s our job to come up with any way to be more transparent.” 

Hendricks, however, said he doesn’t think most residents care about transparency, despite the popularity of Question 1. Last week, before the House released a summary of proposed rules, he said he didn’t see a need for transparency reforms.

“I think the system works that way, the way it is, OK,” Hendricks said. “I’m sure if you ask a lot of reps, you’ll get the same answers.”

After the House released its summary of proposed rules on Thursday, Hendricks said he was surprised, because he saw public committee votes and other transparency issues as a “media concern, not necessarily a constituent issue.”

But, he added he is not opposed to the reforms, and doesn’t imagine he’ll have an issue with voting for them. 

“More transparency is great,” Hendricks said, “but is this something my neighbors down the street are concerned about?”

Advocates say it’s time for the legislature to open up

For transparency advocacy organizations, the answer is yes. 

“Something that [legislators] say often is, ‘Oh, this isn’t what my constituents care about. I’m not hearing about this; they want me to work on substantial issues,’” said Hille of Act on Mass. “We really need to get the message to them that substantial issues only matter so much as the process is just, and clearly legislators have been stymied in their ability to work on substantial legislation by just how broken our democracy is.”

Act on Mass and Progressive Massachusetts, along with 28 other activist organizations, drafted a list of reform recommendations for the House and Senate rules, one of which — public bill summaries — the Senate adopted and the House included in its summary of proposed rules.

Hille and Cohn, of Progressive Massachusetts, credit the growing political movement for transparency with increasing pressure for the proposed rules reforms. Both are hopeful about the House and Senate adopting reforms, but said those can only go so far. 

“We know that the legislature can suspend its own rules. They do it all the time,” DiZoglio said, referencing former House Speaker Robert DeLeo’s 2015 reversal of a term limit he originally championed, which allowed him to serve for 11 years. “They create a rule to create the appearance that they’re going to be transparent and accountable, but then they suspend it.”

Cohn also credits Cambridge’s Evan MacKay with pushing the legislature toward rules reforms. MacKay ran against long-time incumbent Rep. Marjorie Decker last year, losing narrowly after a campaign that criticized the legislature for lack of transparency and consolidation of power. 

“I think that they’re mindful of not wanting to give challengers talking points against them,” Cohn said, “and if that means doing the things that we’re criticizing you for not doing and not making public, I take that as a win.”

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