Massachusetts’ state legislature is one of the least transparent in the country, so we can’t help but wonder: what do they have to hide? This is why PHENOM has officially added our support for an audit of the Massachusetts state legislature.
We stand by Dianna DiZoglio’s bold proposal of last year to audit the Commonwealth’s highly secretive, unaccountable lawmaking body. While once a gold standard of transparency, the Massachusetts state legislature now consistently refuses to represent the interests of Massachusetts citizens.
So just how bad is the lack of transparency of Massachusetts’ state legislature, how does it hurt democracy and breed corruption, and what does the legislative audit do to fix this problem?
Massachusetts’ state legislature does not legally require listing how members vote on bills, how committees are formed, doesn’t record finances, doesn’t allow citizens to attend sessions or even view them from outside (despite ironically being one of the first states to allow this in 1766).
Written testimony from constituents is not publicly available, bills’ status go unupdated for a year or more, and the legislature can send bills to be studied but have no obligation to detail the process of developing the study or even implementing the study. There is also no system for recalling politicians who have failed their constituents.
Because all of these policies prevent us from knowing how our elected officials are actually voting, and how they are running the legislature, they routinely get away with legalized corruption.
Since voters are left in the dark about how their legislators really vote on issues they care about, it is harder to run challengers against them or scrutinize their record. In turn, with voters cut off from actual voting, and with no oversight of finances, the legislators’ leaders have a tyrannical grip over their regular members. The lack of voting records combined with the lack of regulations on studying bills has made “sending a bill to be studied” into just a way to quietly kill a bill.
Lack of transparency of finances, as well as no transparency on committee formation, means these leaders – such as today’s House Speaker Ronald Mariano and Senate President Karen Spilka – can reward loyal members with committee positions and money for their districts and punish ones who dare to think for themselves.
These structural advantages for the elites running the legislature compound. First, the lack of records on how members vote allows legislators to get away with voting against the desires of their constituents and in line with what lobbyists pay them to support. Next, the money these entrenched politicians accumulate allows them to shut down any free-thinking challengers to them or their buddies. The temptation of selling out to lobbyists and falling in line with committee chairs and legislature bigwigs leads once-passionate public servants away from their original ideas for change.
The hopelessness of resisting also drains the spirit of many an idealistic member genuinely trying to deliver for their constituents. The sheer dominance of the leadership leads any challenges to their authority to be met with the loss of any chance at rising through the ranks at best, and at worst can make the establishment and their lobbyist overlords to fund challengers to primary them.
The results: Massachusetts has been getting failing grades for its government transparency year after year. Meanwhile, it is one of the least politically competitive states in the nation: thanks to the lack of transparency on voting, committees and finances, two thirds of its legislators ran unopposed. Bills on climate change, Medicare for All, Immigration and Sex Education all went nowhere despite exceptional public support.
It has even refused to implement bills the public voted to pass via a ballot initiative. Despite voters passing an income tax reduction in 2000, it took Governor Charlie Baker to finally put it into effect 20 years later.
With the lack of records on what’s going on behind closed doors – since the public is already not allowed to attend sessions – these politicians have gotten away with forcing a vote on bills and entire budgets the day after legislators get it. The legislature hasn’t had an audit in over a century.
But state auditor Dianna DiZoglio started the hard fight to change that. In her call to audit the legislature in 2023, she argued we needed to once and for all see what shady activity the legislature was hiding. A poll found 64 percent of Massachusetts residents supported an audit of the legislature.
“We hear all the time nowadays about policies getting voted on behind closed doors, we know that we have one of the least transparent state legislators in the entire nation, not subject to public records laws, not subject to open meeting laws,” DiZoglio said.
“Bills were able to get passed in the middle of the night with no recorded roll call votes. That is not the Massachusetts that we know and love… Folks are fed up with excuses and they’re ready for change.”
Not too surprisingly, the state legislature leadership has balked at the fight to make them more accountable to the public and actually do their jobs. Senate President Karen Spilka and House Speaker Ronald Mariano, the legislature’s two top dogs, both have refused to comply. The attorney general backed them up and argued DiZoglio lacked the authority as state auditor to, you guessed it, audit the state legislature.
Of course, an audit of the legislature would only be the start of a long yet worthy battle to make our state legislature democratic again.
Most crucially, we will need to start recording the voting record of each bill on the website to show all voting members’ voting records; record all committee votes; actually make studies a structured, scrutinized process, not just an excuse to quietly kill a bill; ending the legislature, judiciary and governor’s office’s exemption from public records law; more detailed records on a bill’s progress; making the legislature’s finances a part of the public record; and having at least a viewing gallery for citizens to watch legislative sessions.
A legislative audit is the key that unlocks all other doors, though. We truly have no idea the extent of the corruption that the lack of transparency has allowed to fester at the center of our state democracy. We have no idea how many game-changing bills could have passed if it weren’t for the dictatorial leadership either shutting them down without debate or scaring members from even proposing them. We don’t know how much lobbyists truly control our elected officials. But auditing the legislature will shine a light on the ugly truth for all to see, and allow us to get Massachusetts back to being the City on a Hill it was always meant to be.