Massachusetts State Auditor Diana DiZoglio is taking her long-fought campaign to audit the commonwealth’s legislature that dates back to 2023 to the courts.
In 2024, Massachusetts voters approved a ballot question that confirmed her office's authority to open Beacon Hill's books amid ongoing pushback from legislative leaders.
In her new complaint filed in Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, DiZoglio includes the leaders of both the State House and State Senate as defendants in her request for the state’s top judiciary body to force the legislature to comply with her audit.
The complaint also accuses Democratic Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell of acting “arbitrarily and capriciously” by choosing to not represent her office in its efforts to pry documents from the legislature.
The auditor, who is running for a second term, explained what she hopes to achieve from her legal effort to WAMC.
WAMC: For those unfamiliar with this legal mechanism that we're entering into now, can you walk us through, in layman's terms, what exactly this gesture you've taken is, what you hope its outcome will be, and what the path forward is from here?
Certainly. The law requires that the Office of State Auditor and all state entities go through the Office of the Attorney General in order to file a lawsuit. But what is a state agency to do when the Attorney General is vehemently opposing your effort to access a court? There aren't many options. So, we have tried over the course of the last year to ask the Attorney General to, at a bare minimum, allow our office to be represented by a special assistant attorney general of our choosing- Essentially, a private attorney, since she refuses to help us. She won't even let us get a private attorney, though, to represent us, even one that's at no cost to the taxpayers. So, this isn't about the attorney general thinking that this is unconstitutional, it's not a case where there's just a simple disagreement over what the law says- The Attorney General is working overtime to obstruct our access to the justice system by denying to even allow us access to our own attorney to represent our office on behalf of the people. So, we are bringing this case to a single justice in the Supreme Judicial Court and asking that single justice for the right to appoint an attorney so that we can get these issues resolved through the courts where these matters should be resolved, where these matters should be adjudicated. It's not up to legislators to decide what the law says, that's a power of the court, and it's not up to the Attorney General to decide what the law says, that's also a power of the court. So, we really need to get access to the courts, folks, and this is essentially our last-ditch effort to try to get access, and we hope that the courts see the value in supporting the will of the people.
And if you clear this hurdle, how much closer to this take this whole process to getting the full audit that you've been fighting for?
If we clear this next hurdle, what it will do is essentially grant us access to the documents that we have requested, which is access to financial receipts and documents and state contracts. That's all we've asked for this audit. It's been said that we're trying to access legislative powers, or that we're trying to exercise the power of the legislature- That's complete nonsense. Our office is full of CPAs and accountants who are simply trying to access some of these financial records right now, with respect to how the legislature is spending our tax dollars, and we're also trying to take a look at how they engage in state contracting using millions of dollars in taxpayer funds. They're denying us access to these records, and if the court sides with the people on this, our office and the people of Massachusetts will finally have access to those receipts.
Is there anything about this I've not thought to ask you that you want to make sure the broader populace understands about this newest chapter of the saga?
We just had two judges decide that for the first time in history, they are not going to comply with audits from the Office of State Auditor, and they did so by citing the Attorney General's strong support for the legislature's refusal to be audited by our office. So, the courts — the appeals court, and the trial court in particular — are not being audited by the Office of State Auditor anymore. Neither are they subject to the state's public records laws, because they exempt themselves. So, we are in a position where we are losing confidence in the court's ability to be able to judge this issue impartially as is needed, due to the fact that they themselves seem to be benefiting from the legislature's refusal to be audited. It seems as though some of these judges — not all, but some — are taking advantage of the legislature's law breaking and essentially saying that they want in on it as well. So, it's a very disappointing situation. We are cautiously optimistic that we will get a judge who decides to support the will of the people, but considering recent occurrences where the courts themselves have been denying our office the ability to audit them for the first time when they have been audited for years by our office, even under my predecessor, many, many times, we have a lot of concerns about the ability for the courts to be impartial here, but it's all we have. So, that's the road that we're pursuing.
AG Campbell, her office in a statement said that this is- She described this gesture from you as a “ploy to sidestep the required approval of your office that will not bring you closer to auditing the legislature” and that you don't have the authority to do this. Just broadly, obviously it's a pretty thorough condemnation of this effort. What do you say to that?
The Attorney General is showing you exactly who she is by attacking us publicly on our efforts to audit the legislature. Believe her. She means what she says. She does not support us in this effort. She is trying to get this dismissed from court. She doesn't want us to have the ability to access the court, and she'll be fighting to have the courts dismiss this case. Shame on her for doing so. With the fact that judges are appointed by Beacon Hill and our own Attorney General is fighting against us publicly to try to have this case dismissed, we do have little chance of actually getting a win on this issue in court, but I've heard that if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you can move a mountain. So, I'm taking my mustard seed and I'm heading to court anyway and praying for the best. Thanks so much. Josh.
