A recent opinion column in the Gloucester Daily Times characterized my vote for the House of Representatives’ government transparency legislation as a vote to “narrow” the State Auditor’s authority and, ultimately, as a vote against transparency. The column argues that because Massachusetts voters overwhelmingly approved Question 1 in 2024, legislation that defines the scope of the audit amounts to frustrating the voters’ wishes. I disagree with that assessment. Unfortunately, I was not given the opportunity in that column to address the issue, so I hope to do so here.
I understand the frustration — and often confusion — that this topic engenders. Massachusetts government should be transparent and the Legislature should be subject to meaningful outside financial scrutiny. However, an audit cannot meaningfully take place while the Auditor and Legislature fundamentally disagree about what the Auditor has the constitutional authority to examine. This is not merely a technicality, but rather is the dispute that has prevented the audit from happening.
The purpose of the House legislation I voted for was to resolve that dispute by establishing a clear scope for an audit within the constitutional separation of powers — allowing the Auditor to examine the Legislature’s finances while preserving the Legislature’s constitutional independence over its inherently legislative functions. As my colleague Representative Andy Vargas put it when the House passed the legislation, the House was “choosing solutions over constitutional stalemates.” That is how I view my vote.
The Voters Spoke Clearly
Question 1 passed with 72 percent support in the fall of 2024. The initiative petition changed the Massachusetts General Laws to expressly authorize the Auditor to audit the state legislature, known as the General Court. However, saying that the Auditor has the authority to conduct an audit does not answer every question about the scope of that authority.
It does not tell us whether an audit means reviewing expenditures and contracts or examining how legislation is developed. It does not tell us whether an auditor can question legislative employees about internal deliberations. It does not tell us whether committee organization, pending legislation, legislative rules, or other functions constitutionally assigned to the legislative branch are subject to executive branch review. Most importantly, because Question 1 changed the General Laws rather than the Massachusetts Constitution, it could not eliminate the Constitution’s separation of powers requirements.
The will of the voters deserves respect, and so does the constitution that the voters have entrusted elected representatives to uphold. Those principles have to be reconciled, not placed in opposition to each other.
A Dispute of Scope
In 2023, the Auditor wrote that her planned audit included not only budgetary, hiring, spending, and procurement information, but also information concerning active and pending legislation, the process for appointing committees, the adoption and suspension of legislative rules, and legislative policies and procedures. That is a very broad definition of an audit, with some of those subjects plainly concerning finances and administration, while others go directly to how the legislative branch organizes itself and performs its constitutionally-defined lawmaking responsibilities.
That distinction is at the heart of this entire disagreement. Should an outside auditor be able to review the Legislature’s expenditures, budgets, settlements, and financial transactions? I believe the answer is unequivocally yes. But should an officer of the executive branch be empowered to oversee the processes by which committees are appointed, examine active and pending legislation, or review how the Legislature adopts and administers its internal rules? That raises a very different constitutional question.
The Massachusetts Constitution itself protects the Legislature’s freedom of deliberation and expressly commands that the legislative, executive, and judicial branches not exercise each other’s powers. Article XXX says this separation exists so that Massachusetts may be “a government of laws and not of men.”
The disagreement over scope is real, and as long as it remains unresolved, every disputed document, interview, or line of inquiry risks becoming another legal battle rather than part of an audit.
The Common Ground
Fortunately, both the Auditor’s November 8, 2024 letter to the Legislature and the Auditor’s recent litigation before the Supreme Judicial Court show how much common ground actually exists between what the Auditor said she wanted to examine and what the House legislation authorizes.
In the November 2024 letter, the Auditor announced a performance audit of the House, Senate, and joint legislative committees. She said the audit would begin with areas she considered high risk, specifically identifying state contracting and procurement procedures, taxpayer-funded nondisclosure agreements, and the Legislature’s balance-forward line item, including relevant financial receipts and information.
Compare those priorities with the House bill. It authorizes the Auditor to review expenditures of funds appropriated to the Legislature and specifically provides access to a listing of transactions involving those funds, including the balance-forward line item. It authorizes access to monetary settlement agreements involving members, officers, or employees. It authorizes review of official legislative budgets and official legislative audits. The overlap is significant.
The House legislation also expressly authorizes the categories of records that became the framework for the Auditor’s recent litigation before the Supreme Judicial Court. Following the SJC’s May 7, 2026 order, the House defined auditable administrative functions around those same categories: the official budgets of the House, Senate, and joint legislative operations; official audits of those entities; expenditures of appropriated legislative funds; and monetary settlement agreements.
So we have two important points of comparison. There is substantial overlap between the House legislation and the financial areas identified in the Auditor’s own November 2024 letter, and the House legislation expressly authorizes the four categories of records that formed the framework of the Auditor’s litigation following the SJC’s order. That is difficult to square with the claim that the purpose of the legislation is to hinder an audit. The much more accurate description is that the House legislation defines the audit so that one can actually occur without repeatedly returning to court over its constitutional boundaries.
The two sides are not identical in every respect. The Auditor has stated that she is seeking broader — and in my opinion, unconstitutional — oversight of the Legislature’s constitutionally-reserved functions, while the House legislation draws a more defined line around financial and administrative functions. But that is precisely the point: the disagreement is not whether the Auditor should be able to see where the money went. The disagreement is over how far beyond following the money an executive branch officer may go into the internal and constitutionally-defined operations of the legislative branch.
Checks and Balances are not Supervision
Jerold Duquette and Lawrence Friedman make a useful point in their Massachusetts Law & Politics Project analysis of the audit issue. Checks and balances are sometimes discussed as though the term simply means that every branch of government should exercise oversight over every other branch. However, this is not an accurate assessment. Checks and balances are part of a constitutional structure designed to ensure that no branch can overwhelm or subsume another. Think of them as a block by one branch against another, rather than control by one branch over another.
Massachusetts made the principle of seperation of powers extremely explicit in its constitution. Article XXX provides that:
“The legislative department shall never exercise the executive and judicial powers… the executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers… [and] the judicial shall never exercise the legislative and executive powers.”
That concept has deep roots. Baron de Montesquieu wrote in The Spirit of the Laws:
“When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty.”
The point was not that governmental branches should operate without accountability, but rather that liberty is threatened when governmental powers that are supposed to remain institutionally separate begin to accumulate in the same hands. Separation of powers is itself an accountability mechanism. To erode that institution would be at our own peril.
Imagine Congress was considering giving an executive branch official broad authority to enter Congress and conduct a performance audit. That official could appropriately examine federal expenditures if Congress authorized it. But suppose the authority also extended to examining active and pending legislation, questioning congressional employees about internal legislative operations, reviewing committee assignments, or investigating the adoption and suspension of congressional rules.
Would we consider that healthy oversight? Would people concerned about the power of the current federal administration be comfortable allowing an executive officer working within that branch to determine for itself how far it could investigate the internal operations of Congress? I would not, and I don’t think most defenders of legislative independence would either.
Fundamentally, none of this has anything to do with the current Auditor, the current Legislature, or anyone who currently holds office. Constitutional rules should never be designed around how much we trust a particular person or group of people. Government powers belong to offices, not individuals, and the current holders of these offices will not hold them forever. The question to ask is: would you be comfortable giving such authority to every future holder of an office, including someone whose judgment, motivations, or politics you profoundly distrust?
This is the purpose of constitutional boundaries, to protect democratic institutions when personalities change.
Respecting the Voters Means Making the Audit Work
I believe the overwhelming passage of Question 1 created an obligation to develop a workable framework for an outside audit of the Legislature. However, respecting the will of the voters cannot require pretending that the Massachusetts Constitution ceased to exist on election day. Nor does it serve the voters to leave the scope of the audit undefined and guarantee continued fights over every disputed request.
The House legislation takes the voters’ demand for an audit and attempts to make it operational. It gives the Auditor access to budgets, official audits, expenditures and transaction information, monetary settlements, and the balance-forward line item — substantially overlapping with the areas the Auditor herself identified in November 2024 and those that became the framework of her SJC litigation. At the same time, it draws a boundary around constitutionally-protected legislative functions.
I do not see these objectives as contradictory. We can demand to know where taxpayer money goes without giving one branch of government supervisory authority over the other. We can substantially expand access to legislative records without opening internal legislative decision-making to potential executive interference. We can respect the overwhelming vote for Question 1 while also respecting a separation of powers that has been embedded in the Massachusetts Constitution since John Adams drafted it.
The goal should not be to keep fighting about the audit, but to conduct the audit. That requires a clear, workable, and constitutional framework. I believe the House legislation provides that, and it is why I voted for it.