First-term State Auditor Diana DiZoglio has made auditing Beacon Hill her signature issue, much to the dismay of her fellow Democrats in the state house who claim she lacks the authority to undertake the investigation. She spoke with WAMC this spring.
“We are frequently ranked as one of the least transparent state legislatures in the entire nation, not subject to public records laws, not subject to open meeting laws," said the auditor. "Bills are able to be passed in the middle of the night, sometimes with no recorded roll calls. Committee votes are not recorded.”
With the legislature resisting the audit, DiZoglio is backing a ballot question in November’s election that, if passed, would pressure the body into compliance.
“If the legislature does not adopt this measure and does not agree to adopt the verbiage that was sent to them of including the general court in the language of the law – because we did get 75,000 signatures already to get this issue on the ballot – if they don't accept what the voters want and what the voters have already proven that they wanted via those signatures, then what happens is, we will need to go back to the voters in May and collect another over 12,000 signatures in order to gain ballot access,” she told WAMC.
Attorney General Andrea Campbell told WAMC in February that she doesn’t believe DiZoglio has the authority to conduct the audit.
“Based on our thorough analysis, including reviewing all the materials that the auditor sent us, it was crystal clear that she does not currently have that authority to audit the legislature as she has described that she wants to do," said Campbell. "There’s- Of course, there’s a separate ballot initiative. We approved that ballot initiative that she is also pursuing, and that's up to the voters. If it gets to stage, it will show up for them to vote on, and we’ll proceed from there.”
Members of the Berkshire legislative delegation are unsurprisingly siding with both House leadership and the attorney general.
“I'm not a lawyer, but the Attorney General has sided with the legislature," said 3rd Berkshire District State Representative Smitty Pignatelli. "I mean, as far as I'm concerned, our books are open. I think the auditor can look at them any way she wants. It may not be an official audit under her definition, but I think it's been an open book. The attorney general has backed us up, and she's going to have a ballot question in the fall, and then we'll see where it goes from there. But like I say, I think there's far bigger things to deal with as a political agenda than this particular issue here right now.”
2nd Berkshire District State Representative Tricia Farley-Bouvier also opposes DiZoglio’s audit.
“There seems to be confusion, or some misinformation about this, and one is, there's an argument that audits happened regularly years ago, and that is true," she told WAMC. "But that was before we had an inspector general in Massachusetts. And so, I think that's important to put that into context. And the other thing that is the most important, the central issue for me, is, you know, I took an oath to uphold the constitution, and this very much appears to be, you know, unconstitutional."
DiZoglio has vowed to fight on despite the intraparty turmoil.
“We have demonstrated clear precedent that the legislature was always audited, and it was always audited up until just recent years, when some speakers decided to push back and decided that they were above the law and above being audited and that the auditor shouldn't have the authority to hold the legislature accountable like every other state entity," she said. "And they stopped complying."
The general election is November 5th.
