With Ballot Question 1, A Test of Trust in the Massachusetts State Legislature

The Massachusetts State Legislature is facing a referendum of sorts on Nov. 5 after a chaotic last two years has sparked a drumbeat of negative headlines.

Ballot Question 1 will ask voters whether to expand the state auditor’s power to investigate government agencies to encompass the state legislature, potentially opening up at least a part of the body’s workings to the public eye.

An audit could also place particular pressure on members in leadership positions, many of whom represent Cambridge and Allston-Brighton. House Majority Leader Michael J. Moran; Sen. William N. Brownsberger ’78, a former president of the Senate; and Rep. Kevin A. Honan, the body’s longest continuously serving member, all represent Allston-Brighton.

And Rep. Marjorie C. Decker, who represents part of Cambridge and chairs the powerful Joint Committee on Public Health, narrowly survived a primary challenge last month from Evan C. MacKay ’19, who sought to tie her to the Beacon Hill status quo. She won by 41 votes.

The question comes after the current state auditor, Diana DiZoglio, unsuccessfully tried to launch an audit last year. “Everyone should have equitable and transparent access to and information about all state-funded agencies, including the Legislature,” she wrote in a statement at the time.

Now, Massachusetts voters will be deciding whether to dramatically expand DiZoglio’s oversight — even as scattered opposition, including from the legislature, argues that the proposal violates the separation of powers and could even be unconstitutional. The state’s Attorney General has also mentioned “constitutional concerns” around auditing the legislature if the ballot passes.

For proponents — who now boast polls showing more than 70 percent support for the measure — it nevertheless represents an important chance to reform a broken institution.

This summer, the legislature passed the state budget a month late for the 14th straight year, a record unmatched by any other state. Days later, they closed the legislative session without passing a host of bills on climate, economic development, and maternal health which took months to develop.

“The scrap pile was bigger than the list of accomplishments,” wrote GBH on Aug. 1, the morning after the session ended. State House leaders promised to reconvene in informal sessions in the coming months to pass at least some of their unfinished work.

DiZoglio’s predecessor, former state auditor Suzanne M. Bump, said that the proposition went “beyond the bounds of legitimate government auditing.”

An audit of the legislature, she said, would be inherently subjective, given there are no hard legal standards for how the legislature should legislate.

“I’m sure, indeed, there are steps that could be taken to open up more of the legislative process to scrutiny, but this idea of auditing the deliberative processes of the legislature is not the way to go,” she said. “This is not a matter that’s going to be resolved at the ballot box.”

But two organizers who spoke with The Crimson on Sunday said the proposition was a chance for voters to get more information about how their government works.

Jonathan Cohn, policy director at Progressive Mass, pointed out that it was difficult to get any internal information about the legislature’s workings. Neither its committee votes nor hearing testimony are available to the public.

“We hold the status of being the only state where the governor’s office, the legislature, and the judiciary, all claim full exemption from the public records law,” he said.

The legislature, Cohn added, “doesn’t view information, in general, as the public good” — though he conceded that the measure was likely to face a lawsuit if it passes.

If the proposition passed, primary legislative functions like voting and committee assignments would still remain exempt, according to analysis by the Tufts Center for State Policy Analysis. The Tufts report also emphasized that the legislature would have “a lot of leverage to resist investigations,” like refusing to consent.

But for Marisol Santiago, policy and organizing director at MassVote, the measure is a first step toward a more accountable legislature.

“I think that this Question 1 is a starting point to say, ‘We want to get transparency,’” she said.

—Staff writer Jack R. Trapanick can be reached at jack.trapanick@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @jackrtrapanick.