There is a reason the fight over the audit law has dragged on for over a year, despite being approved by 72% of voters.
The original ballot question was clear and it passed overwhelmingly.
Massachusetts voters did not ask for a negotiated audit, a limited review, or for the Legislature to define its own terms.
The people approved an independent audit of the Legislature.
Now, the response from Beacon Hill is a bill that:
• Narrows the scope of what can be examined
• Allows the Legislature to decide what records will be provided
• Prevents courts from stepping in when disputes arise
Who has ever heard of an independent audit where the entity being audited gets to decide what can be investigated?
At the same time, lawmakers are presenting this as a “transparency package.”
But even they acknowledge that many of the “new” public records provisions simply codify documents that are already available today.
So what is actually changing? The audit.
And that is exactly where the restrictions are being added.
As Auditor
@DianaDiZoglio warns in this clip, this is not an expansion of transparency. It is a restructuring of a voter mandate into something Beacon Hill can define, limit, and control.
For the people of our state, the core question is straightforward:
Should the Legislature be able to redefine a law that 72% of voters already passed when it becomes inconvenient?