STATE AUDITOR Diana DiZoglio is pressing ahead with her bid to conduct a “performance audit” of the Legislature, urging Attorney General Andrea Campbell to lend a hand by litigating the issue.
DiZoglio said she talked to Campbell Wednesday morning and sent her a legal memo making the case for her authority to audit the Legislature. The memo puts Campbell in the awkward position of having to choose sides in a fight that has been brewing for some time between DiZoglio, a fellow constitutional officer, or the Legislature, which controls the purse strings for her office.
Campbell’s immediate response was noncommittal. “We have received the Auditor’s letter and accompanying materials. Consistent with our statutory role and responsibility, we will review and respond in due course,” said a statement issued by the attorney general’s office, which represents state agencies in most litigation.
DiZoglio declined to say what her next step would be if Campbell doesn’t champion her cause. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” she said.
DiZoglio has long had a stormy relationship with the Legislature, dating back to 2011 when she was working as an aide to a House lawmaker. Fired after discredited rumors about her personal behavior surfaced, she negotiated a severance agreement with the speaker’s office that included a nondisclosure agreement barring her from talking about it. She subsequently won election to the House and violated her own nondisclosure agreement in a speech to the chamber where she accused former speaker Robert DeLeo of lying to the chamber.
She has pushed in the House and later as a member of the Senate for elimination of nondisclosure agreements. She also has been critical of the Legislature for its handling of sexual harassment incidents, its inadequate staff pay, and its lack of transparency.
At a press conference in her office Wednesday, DiZoglio made clear that she thinks the Legislature is dysfunctional in many ways but she tried to couch her push for an audit as an effort to promote good government and not a personal vendetta.
“The intent of our audit is to work alongside the Legislature to help increase accountability, transparency, and equity, and to help make government work better,” she said.
DiZoglio first raised the idea of auditing the Legislature during her campaign last year. The idea was dismissed by the current auditor at the time, Suzanne Bump, who said it was not allowed under the law. Bump ended up supporting DiZoglio’s opponent in the Democratic primary.
DiZoglio was not deterred. After winning office, she attempted to kickstart an audit of the Legislature only to be rebuffed by House Speaker Ronald Mariano and Senate President Karen Spilka, who said in letters to the auditor that she lacked the statutory and constitutional authority to conduct such an audit.
The two legislative leaders said an audit was unnecessary because House and Senate financial information is already publicly available. As for DiZoglio’s stated desire to do a performance audit centered on how employees are hired, committees appointed, the adoption and suspension of rules, and the policies and procedures of the two chambers, the two lawmakers said such an audit would be unconstitutional because it would infringe on the Legislature’s authority to conduct business as it sees fit subject only to the authority of the voters who elect lawmakers.
“For an executive officer to claim any authority over the General Court is to suggest an authority over the people themselves,” Mariano said in a March 24 letter to DiZoglio.
Spilka made similar arguments in her own letter to DiZoglio, and said the statute laying out the authority of the auditor’s office “makes clear that the General Court is not among the entities over which the Auditor has authority.”
But DiZoglio said the fact that the statute laying out the auditor’s powers does not mention the authority to audit the Legislature does not mean that power does not exist. She said the opposite is true – that the fact that the Legislature is not mentioned means it is subject to her audit authority.
She also said the Legislature is a “department” as the statute governing the auditor’s office defines it, and she pointed out that the auditor’s office has done 113 audits of the Legislature or legislative committees, the most recent in 2006 and the oldest in 1850.
“These audits you see before you provide irrefutable and clear evidence that our office has repeatedly and regularly audited the state Legislature,” she said.
The 2006 audit came while Joseph DeNucci was auditor, which is surprising given that DeNucci, according to Bump, filed legislation when he was in office seeking the power to audit the Legislature. That legislation did not pass.
Most of the earlier audits of the Legislature dealt almost exclusively with financial accounting matters, but DiZoglio said she wants to conduct a performance audit that would cast a wider net. She noted, for example, that an audit is warranted because the Legislature is one of the least – if not the least – transparent in the country.
She criticized Mariano and Spilka for trying to avoid being audited. “We have two legislators who were elected by a very small fraction of the state twisting and weaponizing both Massachusetts General Law and the Constitution against the people of the entire state of Massachusetts to try and shield themselves from basic public accountability that is supported by law, the Constitution, and undeniable historical precedent,” she said. “It’s completely unacceptable.”
She said it’s not hard to find dysfunction in the Legislature – the long delay in approving a budget for the current fiscal year, Senate and House members of a key legislative committee fighting with each other and refusing to meet together, and Senate and House leaders not speaking with each other at times.
“Folks are fed up. They’re tired. They want access. They want to know their officials are not playing games with taxpayer dollars,” she said.
“Our Legislature is the only state entity that is refusing to cooperate with our office,” DiZoglio said. “You would think that this was an FBI investigation. We’re not the FBI.”