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Post Office Box 1147 ●
Marblehead, Massachusetts 01945 ●
(781) 639-9709
“Every Tax is a Pay Cut ... A Tax Cut is a Pay Raise”
45 years as “The Voice of Massachusetts Taxpayers”
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their Institutional Memory — |
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CLT UPDATE
Saturday, January 12, 2019
The
natural culture of Bay State governance
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By the end of next week, cities and towns
may know how much more education and local aid funding Gov.
Charlie Baker plans to recommend and the vast majority of
bills will be filed for consideration during the new
two-year legislative session.
House and Senate leaders are in no rush to
start legislating in 2019, as the newly sworn in members
still don't know their roles in the new Legislature, the
rules the branches will operate under, their permanent
offices, or any type of concrete schedule for the weeks and
months ahead....
Friday is the deadline for lawmakers to file
legislation with the clerks in each branch. Bills filed by
that biennial deadline are considered "timely filed" in
Beacon Hill parlance, but additional bills are offered
throughout the two-year session and regularly introduced as
"late files."
State House News Service
Friday, January 11, 2019
Advances - Week of Jan. 13, 2019
UMass President Martin Meehan and other
UMass administrators are living a very good life, thanks to
the hard work of the humble taxpayer. Meehan received a
$87,312 bonus on top of his $571,856 annual salary in 2018,
bringing his total haul to more than $659,000.
James Glasheen, Executive Vice Chancellor
for Innovation and Business Development, whose annual salary
is already $477,327, got nearly $194,000 in added payments.
Not be be outdone, UMass Amherst Chancellor Kumble
Subbaswamy got more than $104,000 in bonuses, bringing his
annual take to $579,302 in 2018.
The median household income in Massachusetts
is about $77.5K. Imagine a bonus of more than $100K? A
bonus? UMass Dartmouth Chancellor Robert Johnson can. He
received $112,500 in extra payment, hauling in a grand total
of $466,731, according to payroll records.
Don’t for a moment assume that it’s just the
University of Massachusetts payroll saturated by a cash
tsunami. The Herald’s “Your
Tax Dollars at Work” report leaves no stone unturned....
The total payroll for the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts was $7.74 billion last year — an enormous
number. “It’s unsustainable,” said Greg Sullivan, the former
state inspector general now at the Pioneer Institute. “We
have very large unfunded liabilities. … The Legislature
would be well advised to try to constrain the growth of the
state budget and focus on paying what we owe,” Sullivan
added.
There is no excuse for billions of the
taxpayer’s dollars to be shoveled into the hands of those
lucky enough to land a state job. It reeks of malfeasance
and greed and though technically legal, it is still an
immoral racket. State employment means membership in a
not-so-secret society where perks, benefits and salaries
dwarf those within the private sector often under the guise
of “public service.”
There can be no crying poor mouth about
state budgets when the architects and beneficiaries live the
good life.
A Boston Herald editorial
Saturday, January 12, 2019
Taxpayers feed fattened state payroll
A Massachusetts legislative panel has been
disbanded after failing for two years to reach an agreement
on whether to expand the public records law to cover the
Legislature, judiciary, and governor’s office.
The Special Legislative Commission on Public
Records missed its final deadline last month to file a
report making recommendations, disappointing some lawmakers
and advocates for open government.
“The inability of the commission to find
common ground is an epic failure that weakens our
democracy,” said Mary Connaughton, director of government
transparency for the Pioneer Institute, a Boston think tank.
“The Legislature has kicked the can down the road again, and
with it the public trust.”
Massachusetts is the only state in the
nation where the Legislature, judiciary, or governor’s
office all claim to be completely exempt from state public
records laws. And even when agencies are covered, the law is
laden with exemptions that state agencies routinely cite to
deny a wide variety of records, ranging from police reports
of officers caught driving drunk to résumés for new hires.
The Boston Globe
Thursday, January 10, 2019
State lawmakers fail to reach consensus on whether to expand
public record law
After holding on to their public records law
exemption in a landmark 2016 reform law aimed at making
government more transparent, lawmakers assigned to come up
with ways to open up the Legislature have now blown past two
deadlines and are entering 2019 without consensus
recommendations.
In late 2017, as a statutory deadline
approached for a commission tasked with studying the public
availability of legislative records and information, the
group had yet to meet, and lawmakers gave their colleagues
on the panel another year to complete their work.
The extra year, however, did not lead to the
delivery of recommendations. The group of six
representatives and six senators charged with examining
legislative transparency and whether to apply public records
law standards to the state Legislature is entering the
2019-2020 session, and near-term rules debates, with no
report.
State House News Service
Thursday, January 10, 2019
Legislative commission whiffs on public records report
Excuse us for being naively optimistic that,
finally, lawmakers would open the doors -- and the records
-- of these three branches of state government. When
lawmakers voted reforms to the state public records law in
2016, they kept exemptions for those three branches, opting
instead to set up a commission to study it. In the end,
commissioners couldn’t agree on much, leaving Massachusetts
the only state where all three branches of government are
exempt from public records laws.
A Salem News editorial
Thursday, January 10, 2019
Transparency elusive in state government
Would it really amount to a threat to
lawmakers if they couldn’t keep their records secret?
Doesn’t seem that way to us. But that’s one
of the faulty assumptions embedded in Beacon Hill’s latest
excuse for failing to improve the state’s inadequate public
records laws....
It’s true there’s been some progress on
government transparency over the last few years; the 2016
law strengthened provisions that apply to state agencies and
municipalities. But when it comes to state government,
Beacon Hill still seems to be looking for any reason to
avoid facing the sunlight that it needs.
A Boston Globe editorial
Friday, January 11, 2019
Beacon Hill whiffs on public records law reform
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Chip Ford's CLT
Commentary
Next Friday is the deadline for
legislators to file bills and have them considered
"timely," though that doesn't prevent further
"late file" bills from popping up, well, later.
We'll be watching for one bill in particular:
Return of the "Community Benefits District" assault on
property-owners ― a devious
end-run around our Proposition 2½.
It's sponsor then, Sen. Brendan Crighton
(D-Lynn), vowed to resurrect it when
we prevented it from passing at the end of July
during the closing very late-night moments of the last
legislative session.
If ever adopted as law, so-called
"Community Benefits Districts" would establish an
entirely new level of government
― neighborhood
government ― with an
entirely new power to tax ―
the neighborhood property tax. It would be
imposed in addition to the municipal property tax
― added on top of it.
If not for
Citizens for Limited Taxation and our members, along
with a unique coalition of groups on the left that
joined our opposition for their own interests, the
Community Benefits District bill would easily have been
the law now, and homeowners would see their property tax
burden increased dramatically.
Once again CLT
saved homeowners and property taxpayers millions of
their dollars, for now. But taxpayers must
remain vigilant. This threat will be back,
sooner rather than later.
"The total payroll for the Commonwealth
of Massachusetts was $7.74 billion last year — an
enormous number," The Boston Herald reported.
"There is no excuse for billions of the taxpayer’s
dollars to be shoveled into the hands of those lucky
enough to land a state job. ... There can be no crying
poor mouth about state budgets when the architects and
beneficiaries live the good life."
But that is and has been for too long
the very nature of self-serving government in
Massachusetts, where "[s]tate employment means
membership in a not-so-secret society where perks,
benefits and salaries dwarf those within the private
sector often under the guise of 'public service.'”
At the heart of the system, this is a primary factor
which literally defines the Massachusetts
political culture. It's why the Legislature
schemed to provide themselves with such shameless
"automatic" compensation hikes, and why they feel so
entitled to them.
"Massachusetts
is the only state in the nation where the Legislature,
judiciary, or governor’s office all claim to be
completely exempt from state public records laws," The
Boston Globe reported.
The Salem News added: "Excuse us
for being naively optimistic that, finally, lawmakers
would open the doors -- and the records -- of these
three branches of state government. When lawmakers voted
reforms to the state public records law in 2016, they
kept exemptions for those three branches, opting instead
to set up a commission to study it. In the end,
commissioners couldn’t agree on much, leaving
Massachusetts the only state where all three branches of
government are exempt from public records laws."
A Boston Globe editorial concluded:
"[W]hen it comes to state government, Beacon Hill still
seems to be looking for any reason to avoid facing the
sunlight that it needs."
As with almost if not all bills sent
back for "further study" or the creation of "special
commissions," they are intended to stall for time until
an issue that attracts constituent attention and calls
for action fades in intensity, so it can be killed off
quietly down the road. The last thing our
self-perceived rulers want is an open window into their
shady machinations.
This is but one more defining aspect of
Massachusetts state government: Treating its
citizen like mushrooms, keeping them in the dark and
well-fertilized.
Unlike some, I am not "naively
optimistic." Long experience has rewarded me with
a healthy, well-earned cynicism. The "rulers" of
The People's Democratic Republic consider themselves
beyond accountability, and in fact they remain so as
long as they define what the law is with impunity,
without consequence or blowback. They have no
intention of ever weakening that advantage voluntarily.
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Chip Ford
Executive Director |
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State House News Service
Friday, January 11, 2019
Advances - Week of Jan. 13, 2019
By the end of next week, cities and towns may
know how much more education and local aid
funding Gov. Charlie Baker plans to recommend
and the vast majority of bills will be filed for
consideration during the new two-year
legislative session.
House and Senate leaders are in no rush to start
legislating in 2019, as the newly sworn in
members still don't know their roles in the new
Legislature, the rules the branches will operate
under, their permanent offices, or any type of
concrete schedule for the weeks and months
ahead.
Baker on Jan. 23 plans to unveil his fiscal 2020
budget proposal and municipal officials on
Friday are hoping to learn more about Baker's
local aid plans at their annual meeting in
Boston, especially since the governor served
notice in his inaugural address that he's going
to update the formula used to dole out billions
of dollars in K-12 education funding.
Baker and Senate President Karen Spilka have
already delivered high-profile speeches touching
on their priorities and next week it will be
Boston Mayor Martin Walsh's turn. Walsh this
week needed four days to roll out his
far-reaching legislative agenda, which will
likely be a focus of his State of the City
address Tuesday night.
House Speaker Robert DeLeo usually gives an
important stage-setting speech in late January,
though a timeframe for that address is not
locked down yet, according to an aide.
Friday is the deadline for lawmakers to file
legislation with the clerks in each branch.
Bills filed by that biennial deadline are
considered "timely filed" in Beacon Hill
parlance, but additional bills are offered
throughout the two-year session and regularly
introduced as "late files."
DeLeo and Spilka are both in the market for Ways
and Means chairs, slots that are vacant. "You
really want to try to get the right person in
the right position for each of those people, so
obviously it's going to take some time," DeLeo
said this week.
Republicans, who remain a small minority both
among registered voters and elected officials,
are also looking for a new leader, with the
party's state committee members set to meet
Thursday night in Framingham to pick a successor
to Kirsten Hughes.
Also next week, four Democrats who cruised to
re-election in statewide campaigns will be sworn
in for new four-year terms -- Secretary of State
William Galvin, Attorney General Maura Healey,
Treasurer Deb Goldberg and Auditor Suzanne Bump.
The Boston Herald
Saturday, January 12, 2019
A Boston Herald editorial
Taxpayers feed fattened state payroll
UMass President Martin Meehan and other UMass
administrators are living a very good life,
thanks to the hard work of the humble taxpayer.
Meehan received a $87,312 bonus on top of his
$571,856 annual salary in 2018, bringing his
total haul to more than $659,000.
James Glasheen, Executive Vice Chancellor for
Innovation and Business Development, whose
annual salary is already $477,327, got nearly
$194,000 in added payments. Not be be outdone,
UMass Amherst Chancellor Kumble Subbaswamy got
more than $104,000 in bonuses, bringing his
annual take to $579,302 in 2018.
The median household income in Massachusetts is
about $77.5K. Imagine a bonus of more than
$100K? A bonus? UMass Dartmouth Chancellor
Robert Johnson can. He received $112,500 in
extra payment, hauling in a grand total of
$466,731, according to payroll records.
Don’t for a moment assume that it’s just the
University of Massachusetts payroll saturated by
a cash tsunami. The Herald’s “Your
Tax Dollars at Work” report leaves no stone
unturned.
Unless you were riding on it or paying for it,
2018 was a great year for the MBTA, which
shelled out $10 million more in overtime cash —
a 14 percent increase — than it did in 2017,
according to state data. The T served up $82
million in overtime in 2018.
Bus drivers, though not always great at being on
time, nonetheless excelled at earning overtime,
pulling in $13.4 million. The lowest rank of T
cops raked in $7.2 million in OT, and rail
repairers snagged $5.25 million, according to
the state data. Employees in the carmen’s union,
which includes bus drivers and repairmen, made
$32.8 million in OT last year.
The Massachusetts State Police — an agency where
shady payroll activity has led to several
indictments — has also made the list of
standouts on the Herald’s new 2018 state payroll
report. The state police payroll jumped by
almost $12 million last year, with some troopers
doubling their pay with overtime shifts. The
overall state police budget climbed to $355.26
million in 2018, up by $62 million over the year
before.
Scores of state police officers still took home
$200,000-plus in gross pay last year — with many
logging massive extra shifts.
The total payroll for the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts was $7.74 billion last year — an
enormous number. “It’s unsustainable,” said Greg
Sullivan, the former state inspector general now
at the Pioneer Institute. “We have very large
unfunded liabilities. … The Legislature would be
well advised to try to constrain the growth of
the state budget and focus on paying what we
owe,” Sullivan added.
There is no excuse for billions of the
taxpayer’s dollars to be shoveled into the hands
of those lucky enough to land a state job. It
reeks of malfeasance and greed and though
technically legal, it is still an immoral
racket. State employment means membership in a
not-so-secret society where perks, benefits and
salaries dwarf those within the private sector
often under the guise of “public service.”
There can be no crying poor mouth about state
budgets when the architects and beneficiaries
live the good life.
We must hold elected leaders and state employees
accountable. It starts with information and that
starts at the Herald’s “Your
Tax Dollars at Work: New 2018 state payroll
report” database.
See Also:
Your Tax Dollars at Work: New 2018 MBTA payroll
The Boston Globe
Thursday, January 10, 2019
State lawmakers fail to reach consensus on
whether to expand public record law
By Todd Wallack
A Massachusetts legislative panel has been
disbanded after failing for two years to reach
an agreement on whether to expand the public
records law to cover the Legislature, judiciary,
and governor’s office.
The Special Legislative Commission on Public
Records missed its final deadline last month to
file a report making recommendations,
disappointing some lawmakers and advocates for
open government.
“The inability of the commission to find common
ground is an epic failure that weakens our
democracy,” said Mary Connaughton, director of
government transparency for the Pioneer
Institute, a Boston think tank. “The Legislature
has kicked the can down the road again, and with
it the public trust.”
Massachusetts is the only state in the nation
where the Legislature, judiciary, or governor’s
office all claim to be completely exempt from
state public records laws. And even when
agencies are covered, the law is laden with
exemptions that state agencies routinely cite to
deny a wide variety of records, ranging from
police reports of officers caught driving drunk
to résumés for new hires.
The Legislature overhauled key aspects of the
public records law in 2016, including requiring
state agencies and municipalities to designate
someone to field requests, setting new limits on
fees, and giving people the opportunity to
potentially recoup legal fees if they are forced
to sue to obtain public records.
But the House and Senate put off dealing with
the long list of exemptions in the 2016 law,
instead deciding to set up a commission to
consider whether to expand the law to the
Legislature, judiciary, and governor’s office
and creating a separate panel, made up primarily
of lawmakers, law enforcement officials, and
open-records advocates, to examine restrictions
on law enforcement records.
In the end, neither group could reach any
consensus on potential legislation or new rules.
And the commission charged with exploring
whether to expand the law to the Legislature and
other bodies never even issued a report.
“I am really disappointed that the commission
was not able to file its report within the time
frame allowed,” said Representative Jennifer
Benson, a Democrat from Lunenburg, who
co-chaired the committee. “I am committed to
continuing to look at this issue and finding
ways to increase openness in the work in the
Legislature.”
Though the commission couldn’t agree on any
recommendations as a whole, its Senate members
wound up filing a report of their own a week ago
with the Senate clerk’s office.
The Senate report recommended the Senate and
House make several changes, including giving the
public access to written testimony filed with
committees, making committee votes available
online, and giving the public at least 72 hours
notice before holding a hearing. It also
recommended studying ways to increase openness
in the rest of government and contained
summaries of the testimony the commission
received.
House members did not file a report of their
own.
However, Benson, the House co-chair, said the
Legislature could be limited in what it can do
to expand the law to the governor’s office and
judiciary.
Lawrence Friedman, law professor at New England
Law, told the commission that the Legislature
could potentially face constitutional questions
if the law “could be seen as interfering with
the functioning of the executive and judicial
departments.”
“We are the only state in the union that
broaches the subject in our Constitution,”
Benson said. “We cannot change the Constitution
with legislation.”
The commission, which held five public hearings
last year, was originally slated to file its
report by the end of 2017, but lawmakers
extended the deadline for a year after initial
delays in setting up the panel. The commission
then missed the December 2018 deadline as well.
This time, the Legislature didn’t extend the
deadline and the commission automatically
dissolved.
Meanwhile, various branches of government
continue to withhold records that would be
public in other states.
The judiciary recently refused to release
information about tens of thousands of cases, in
which clerks declined behind closed doors to
issue criminal complaints, even when clerks
acknowledged there was than more than enough
evidence to justify the charges. And the State
Police have refused to release payroll records
for some employees.
“The state’s weak public records law will now
continue to bar citizens from exercising their
constitutional right to hold government fully
accountable,” Connaughton said.
State House News Service
Thursday, January 10, 2019
Legislative commission whiffs on public records
report
By Katie Lannan
After holding on to their public records law
exemption in a landmark 2016 reform law aimed at
making government more transparent, lawmakers
assigned to come up with ways to open up the
Legislature have now blown past two deadlines
and are entering 2019 without consensus
recommendations.
In late 2017, as a statutory deadline approached
for a commission tasked with studying the public
availability of legislative records and
information, the group had yet to meet, and
lawmakers gave their colleagues on the panel
another year to complete their work.
The extra year, however, did not lead to the
delivery of recommendations. The group of six
representatives and six senators charged with
examining legislative transparency and whether
to apply public records law standards to the
state Legislature is entering the 2019-2020
session, and near-term rules debates, with no
report.
In the absence of an agreement with the House,
the committee's Senate members -- Chairman
Walter Timilty of Milton and Sens. Cynthia Creem
of Newton, Paul Feeney of Foxborough, Donald
Humason of Westfield, Joan Lovely of Salem and
Mark Montigny of New Bedford -- filed a set of
recommendations on their own with the Senate
clerk's office on Dec. 31.
"Despite best efforts, the Commission was unable
to come to an agreement on joint recommendations
prior to the deadline," the senators wrote,
adding that their recommendations "find a
balance between transparency and a deliberative
policy making process."
The senators also gave voice to the idea of
keeping the commission around. They said the
recommendations could be "helpful for continued
discussions" if the commission is "revived and
continued." They suggested convening a similar
commission every five years "to further
transparency in state government."
Rep. Jennifer Benson of Lunenburg chaired the
commission on the House side, with Reps. William
Galvin of Canton, Paul Donato of Medford,
Michael Moran of Boston, Mathew Muratore of
Plymouth and James Murphy of Weymouth serving as
members.
"I was really disappointed we didn't come to
consensus," Benson told the News Service
Tuesday. "My staff and I and the House members,
as well as all the members of the commission,
really took this seriously, did a lot of work
and research around this issue and tried to
understand every facet of not only the concept
of public records, but exactly how we can make
this more robust and accessible and transparent
to the public and ways specifically to do that,
and unfortuantely we just did not agree on ways
to do that."
The House side of the panel did not file
recommendations. According to a House official,
the House and Senate clerks took different
stances over whether the commission could file a
report past its deadline.
A records law overhaul Gov. Charlie Baker signed
in June 2016 featured new methods to make
government more transparent and responsive to
public records requests, but left in place the
exemption for the Legislature, the Judiciary and
governor's office from the records law that
applies to most municipal and state agencies.
Instead, the law created the commission,
charging it with studying the accessibility of
information about the legislative process --
including the scheduling of legislative sessions
and committee hearings and the publication of
committee records -- and "the constitutionality
and practicality of subjecting the general
court, the executive office of the governor, and
the judicial branch to the public records law."
The commission was initially assigned the Dec.
30, 2017 deadline. In November 2017, lawmakers
then amended a spending bill to push back the
commission's reporting deadline to Dec. 1, 2018.
The group met for the first time in February
2018. According to the report, the commission
held five public hearings in locations both
inside and away from the State House.
The senators did not make recommendations around
extending the public records law to cover the
Legislature, governor and Judiciary, but
included a copy of testimony from New England
Law professor Lawrence Friedman, which they said
"was found to be credible and his conclusions to
be persuasive, particularly because they are
consistent with the law of other jurisdictions."
Friedman wrote that portions of the state
Declaration of Rights and state Constitution
provide a basis for exempting the Legislature
from certain public records requests, and that a
statute subjecting the executive and judicial
branches to the records law could raise
separation of powers concerns "to the extent
public records requests could be seen as
interfering with the functioning of the
executive and judicial departments."
The bulk of the Senate recommendations focused
on legislative committees and their hearings.
They also suggested "further study be made into
improving transparency with regards to open
records throughout all levels of government in
the Commonwealth."
Processes and requirements for committees are
spelled out in a joint rules package that the
House and Senate typically adopt at the start of
each two-year legislative session. Committees
also have their own rules.
After launching the new session on Jan. 2, House
and Senate members are preparing for biennial
debates over joint rules and House and Senate
rules for 2019-2020, which could occur this
month.
The joint rules from last session specify that
all committee meetings "shall be open to the
public, unless a majority shall vote otherwise,"
that hearings and executive sessions be
scheduled "to the extent feasible" not to
conflict with meetings of other committees or
formal legislative sessions, and that hearings
be limited to a maximum of 50 bills unless "all
of the bills being considered are of the same
subject matter."
The senators recommend further limiting hearings
to "a reasonable restriction of four hours in
length," requiring public notice of a hearing 72
hours in advance, and making committees'
electronic poll or executive session votes
available on the Legislature's public website.
They also call for committees to make available,
upon request, "a brief and easily understandable
summary" of bills they are considering and
written hearing testimony.
Benson said she expects talks around
transparency on Beacon Hill to continue.
"There's never an end to this conversation,
whether it's the commission or not," she said.
"We constantly have to strive to be more
accessible and to make information readily
available so that people can really see what
we're doing, how we're doing it and why we're
doing it."
The lack of agreement among the commission
echoes the path of a separate panel created
under the 2016 law, this one tasked with
exploring the topic of police department
records.
The police records group noted in its December
2017 report that it "could not reach consensus
on proposed legislation," and highlighted "areas
of concern" in current statute that could merit
further examination.
The Salem News
Thursday, January 10, 2019
A Salem News editorial
Transparency elusive in state government
Rep. Jennifer Benson, a Lunenburg Democrat and
co-chair of a legislative commission studying
ways to make the Legislature, governor’s office
and judiciary subject to the state public
records law, said she was “really disappointed”
her commission of six House members and six
state senators couldn’t agree on any
recommendations, after two years of meetings.
Mary Connaughton, director of government
transparency at the Pioneer Institute (and the
former CFO of the state Lottery), said the
commission’s dead end was “an epic failure that
weakens our democracy,” according to
Commonwealth Magazine.
Excuse us for being naively optimistic that,
finally, lawmakers would open the doors -- and
the records -- of these three branches of state
government. When lawmakers voted reforms to the
state public records law in 2016, they kept
exemptions for those three branches, opting
instead to set up a commission to study it. In
the end, commissioners couldn’t agree on much,
leaving Massachusetts the only state where all
three branches of government are exempt from
public records laws.
In spite of the stalemate, the six senators on
the commission – including Joan Lovely of Salem
– actually did something, filing their own
recommendations with the Senate clerk’s office.
“Despite best efforts, the commission was unable
to come to an agreement on joint recommendations
prior to the deadline,” the senators wrote,
adding that their recommendations “find a
balance between transparency and a deliberative
policy making process.”
Benson expressed some hope, telling State House
News Service she expects the discussion to
continue.
“We constantly have to strive to be more
accessible and to make information readily
available so that people can really see what
we’re doing, how we’re doing it and why we’re
doing it,” she said.
The senators laid important groundwork that
might lead to more transparency. But it’s up to
these – and many more – lawmakers to put the
public’s interest first and make changes in the
law that will open those doors.
Hats off to Sen. Lovely, commission co-chair
Walter Timilty of Milton and Sens. Cynthia Creem
of Newton, Paul Feeney of Foxborough, Donald
Humason of Westfield, and Mark Montigny of New
Bedford for their work and going on the record
about it.
The Boston Globe
Friday, January 11, 2019
A Boston Globe editorial
Beacon Hill whiffs on public records law reform
Would it really amount to a threat to lawmakers
if they couldn’t keep their records secret?
Doesn’t seem that way to us. But that’s one of
the faulty assumptions embedded in Beacon Hill’s
latest excuse for failing to improve the state’s
inadequate public records laws.
Here’s the background: Despite reforms in 2016,
the state has the weakest public records law in
the nation, one that exempts all three branches
of government — the governor’s office, the
judiciary, and the Legislature — from disclosure
requirements. Citizens have no right to see, for
example, Governor Charlie Baker’s records, any
communications the Senate president and House
speaker might have had with lobbyists, and other
documents that members of the public might
legitimately want to read.
Two years ago, the Legislature convened a
commission to study whether the law should be
expanded. That commission recently disbanded
without any report. It was a far cry from what
the state needs, and what the governor and the
Legislature should back: a strong public records
law that covers all parts of government,
including themselves.
Now, the House, Senate, and governor could
impose some disclosure rules on themselves. But
that’s a subpar solution. Legally binding
requirements that can’t be waived like a pesky
term limit would be better.
Members of the commission from the Senate did
issue a report, and it suggests why the group
failed to act: Lawmakers found a convenient way
to read the state constitution that would
prevent the Legislature from imposing a public
records law on either itself or other branches
of government. Of course, the fact a law might
be challenged doesn’t mean that challenges would
actually succeed.
Take the concerns raised in the Senate’s report
about whether the Legislature can subject itself
to a public records law. The authors of the
state constitution wanted lawmakers to have the
freedom to fully debate laws, without being
afraid that what they said or wrote in the
course of making legislation would get them in
hot water later. The state constitution says:
“The freedom of deliberation, speech and debate,
in either house of the legislature, is so
essential to the rights of the people, that it
cannot be the foundation of any accusation or
prosecution, action or complaint, in any other
court or place whatsoever.”
What does any of that have to do with public
records, you might ask?
Well, a law professor told the commission that
“such broad language reasonably should be
understood to include public records requests,
which are ‘actions’ that could serve to
undermine the constitutional goal of free
deliberation in the General Court in much the
same way as a criminal prosecution or a
defamation suit.”
But a public records request isn’t punishment.
It doesn’t hurt the recipient — or anyone else.
Providing records doesn’t undermine free
deliberation in the Legislature — it just allows
the public to see it. Getting a public records
request can’t be compared to a criminal
prosecution.
And it’s not at all clear that the courts would
see a public records law applied to the
Legislature in such punitive terms. “It’s
certainly not a settled matter of law one way or
another,” said Pam Wilmot, the executive
director of Common Cause Massachusetts, which
backs greater disclosure.
It’s true there’s been some progress on
government transparency over the last few years;
the 2016 law strengthened provisions that apply
to state agencies and municipalities. But when
it comes to state government, Beacon Hill still
seems to be looking for any reason to avoid
facing the sunlight that it needs.
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