Let’s take a moment to praise a Democrat who thinks for herself — and isn’t a puppet for the people who wield all of the power on Beacon Hill.
Massachusetts Auditor Diana DiZoglio led the effort to get Question 1 on the ballot in Massachusetts this November. It would give the state auditor the power to audit the Massachusetts legislature, something the power brokers on Beacon Hill vehemently oppose.
If you haven’t voted yet, please vote Yes on Question 1.
Doing so could help bring forth much-needed transparency on Beacon Hill, which would be great for journalism and promote a healthier democracy.
Not only do we live under one-party rule in Massachusetts where nearly every rank-and-file member of the state legislature has a near-identical voting record to the House Speaker and Senate President, but we also live in one of the most opaque states in the country.
Massachusetts is the lone state where the governor’s office, state legislature, and courts claim an exemption to our public records laws. It’s also a state where committee votes aren’t public, meaning innocuous pieces of legislation die in committee, and we don’t know why. The state also passes major pieces of legislation on voice votes, such as the Massachusetts Senate voting to legalize sports gambling that way.
Plus, our state passes major bills, like budgets, in the wee hours of the morning, and Democrats in power repeatedly vote against measures that provide lawmakers with ample time to read said bills, along with all other transparency measures.
To put it lightly, Beacon Hill is a rotten place with backroom deals and politicians beholden to special interest groups. It’s also a place where the powerful use taxpayer-funded non-disclosure agreements to silence those who have had lousy experiences up there and have been mistreated by people in power.
To be clear, letting DiZoglio audit the Massachusetts legislature won’t automatically change any of this, but it will provide greater attention to such issues and put greater scrutiny on the Democratic supermajority who oppose these basic principles that would make our government more transparent, less corrupt, and, likely, more efficient.
The measure will likely pass because the only people with any reason to oppose this measure are corrupt hacks running our state’s government; 65 percent supported the measure, while 19 percent opposed it, in a UNH poll released on Monday, November 4. However, politicians from the party that claims to love democracy so much will take this measure to court, alleging that it violates some separation of powers. It’s a ridiculous argument because Bay Staters want DiZoglio to have this power. The people in this state want good government; they might not want a limited government like constitutional conservatives, but, to their credit, they want their government to work for the people — not for Ron Mariano, Karen Spilka, and whomever they want to appease or owe favors to.
As far as the other four ballot questions, I’m probably not the right person to ask. I’m not an educator; I’ve barely used Uber and Lyft and was only briefly a member of the Boston Newspaper Guild; drug policy isn’t my forte; and I’ve never worked in a restaurant or owned a business that employed others. However, as someone with experience in political journalism in this state, I can attest that more transparency would benefit the industry by making it easier to hold people in power accountable for their actions.
Remember, the Healey administration won’t even tell us how it’s spending $1 billion on migrants because it claims an exemption to public records law; just imagine how wildly inefficiently the administration is spending that money. Plus, voters have less information going into elections because private committee votes prevent lawmakers from having to take public positions on many issues. It took about a decade to pass a revenge porn ban; I’d love to know who kept voting to kill such a well-meaning bill.
Massachusetts deserves better than this opaque status quo.
Vote Yes on 1 on Tuesday, November 5.
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Diana DiZoglio 
