It’s unusual that on this period of presidency transparency and accountability, no person on Beacon Hill desires to be clear or accountable.
Not the Home, not the Senate, and not even the state courts. All are kicking, screaming and stonewalling to maintain State Auditor Diana DiZoglio from taking a look at their books.
And their closed-door stance is defended by Legal professional Basic Andrea Campbell, who payments her workplace at “The Folks’s Regulation Agency,” whereas refusing to signify the folks.
These are the folks — 2, 282,333 of them (72%) — who voted in 2024 in favor of a poll query authorizing DiZoglio to audit the books of the Legislature.
The folks spoke, loud and clear.
However Campbell, for one motive or one other, has refused to signify DiZoglio in court docket to power the cussed Legislature to conform, thereby siding with the politicians over the folks.
The Legislature maintains that DiZoglio has no authority to audit it because the Legislature is a separate department of presidency that audits itself anyway.
Campbell’s protection of the Legislature over the need of the folks has given rise to the suggestion that Campbell change the motto of her workplace to “The Politician’s Regulation Agency.”
The Democrat-controlled Legislature rewarded her defiance of the favored vote by boosting her finances by $7 million.
Campbell final week repeated that DiZoglio has not supplied her workplace with sufficient info to proceed to court docket to get the Legislature to conform. DiZoglio hotly disputes this.
In an surprising flip of occasion, two state courts — the Trial (Superior) Courtroom and the Courtroom of Appeals — final week joined the Legislature in refusing to adjust to proposed state audits, one thing DiZoglio maintains the auditor has carried out for years.
“Our workplace has audited the judiciary for many years,” DiZoglio stated to the State Home Information Service. Why, she requested, “would the court docket resolve to cease taking part in routine audits? What’s the public good that might come out of this determination?”
The audits to be carried out had been over the accessibility and lawful compliance with the courts’ web sites.
Officers of each courts, citing a 2023 letter by Campbell, advised DiZoglio that the courts, just like the Legislature, had been unbiased branches of presidency and never beneath her purview.
The chief justice of the Trial Courtroom is Heidi Brieger and the Chief Justice of the Appeals Courtroom is Amy Lyn Blake.
Nevertheless, in that ruling which involved the Legislature and never the courts, Campbell stated that whereas DiZoglio had the authority to audit all departments of the Commonwealth, the Legislature was not a “division,” however an unbiased physique of state authorities.
Campbell, in a line that Daniel Sullivan, basic counsel of the Trial Courtroom, jumped on, was Campbell’s conclusion that the phrase “division…ought to basically embody solely govt department departments” and never the Legislature.
Campbell additionally stated that “settled ideas of statutory building and judicial selections, cited above, along with prior opinions of this workplace, all dictate that ‘division’…doesn’t embrace the Legislature.”
Ergo, by stretching the Campbell ruling, court docket officers squeezed within the courts, although Campbell was speaking concerning the Legislature. Irrespective of, loophole legal professionals all the time discover a manner.
Additionally, nowhere in that lengthy letter of authorized mumbo jumbo is there any point out of the 72% of the individuals who voted in favor of auditing the Legislature. They’d additionally possible vote in favor of DiZoglio auditing the courts too, if given the chance.
Some years in the past, 79% of the folks voted in favor of a poll query lowering the scale of the Massachusetts Home from 240 to 160 members. The folks spoke and the politicians listened. Regardless of many obstacles It was achieved.
Now, all these years later, the folks spoke once more. Solely this time State Home politicians, like Campbell, are combating in opposition to the folks and never for them.
It’s transparency for thee however not for me.
Veteran political reporter Peter Lucas might be reached at: peter.lucas@bostonherald.com.
