25-06-2025
How Beacon Hill bosses quietly buried reform bills that threatened their power
In case you're wondering, in our fractured times, what it takes to get Democrats and Republicans to agree on something, here's your answer.
And it's not much: It's just the dire need to fix the famously opaque and almost entirely challenger-proof Massachusetts Legislature.
And if you're thinking 'Hey, wait, we live in a blue state that's praised for being a bastion of progressivism. Whaddya mean the Legislature is opaque and uncompetitive?' consider just these three factoids:
Ninety-nine percent of incumbents — both state and federal — who ran for reelection in Massachusetts in 2024 kept their jobs, according to an analysis by Ballotpedia.
Two-thirds of incumbent state lawmakers ran without opposition during last year's campaign cycle, according to an analysis of state data by Commonwealth Beacon.
Also, the state's public records law is among the least transparent in the nation. And efforts to get the majority-Democrat House and Senate to open their books — as state Auditor Diana DiZoglio (also a Democrat) has been experiencing firsthand — are nearly impossible.
Enter the Coalition to Reform Our Legislature, a bipartisan coalition of good government advocates that can fit both former U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, a Democrat, and state Republican Party Chairperson Amy Carnevale under its big tent.
On Tuesday, the group gathered at the Church on the Hill, across the street from the State House, to hold what it described as a 'People's Hearing' to shine a light on a pair of bills calling for reforms that it filed in January and that Beacon Hill's establishment has effectively banished to the Island of Misfit Legislation.
'Both the House and Senate failed to assign the bills to a committee for a hearing and consideration. Unfortunately, it appears our Constitutional rights were reduced to filing a bill in the bottom drawer of a file cabinet in the [House and Senate] clerks' offices,' Peter Enrich, an emeritus law professor at Northeastern University, who sits on the coalition's steering committee, said in a statement.
The first of those bills, each of which has companion House and Senate versions, would reform how state lawmakers get paid.
State legislators currently get a base pay of $82,000. But those who serve in leadership positions, which is nearly all of them, get thousands of dollars more in stipends tacked onto their salaries.
The activist group argued that the current system gives powerful legislative leaders too much control over compensation for rank-and-file legislators, encouraging them to come to heel for better pay.
'In no other state are so many legislators dependent on their chamber leader for a large share of their pay,' Jonathan Hecht, a former lawmaker who represented parts of Watertown and Cambridge in the state House of Representatives, said in that same joint statement.
All but 51 of the 200 members of the state House and Senate serve in some kind of leadership position, while legislative leaders control $5 million in taxpayer money to boost their pay, Hecht, who left the House in 2020, said.
'Most of these stipends were created in the last 25 years, and reward little or no work,' he added.
The other bill would authorize the creation of independent legislative research and fiscal analysis bureaus — similar to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office — that would provide lawmakers with independent analyses of the blizzard of legislation they're called to vote upon in every two-year session.
Advocates argued the bureaus would give lawmakers the tools they need to write bills that are 'based on objective data' instead of relying on special interests.
The Legislature used to have such an office, but shuttered it in 1992 in the name of reducing waste, according to State House News Service.
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Senate President Karen E. Spilka, D-Middlesex/Norfolk, pointed to efforts the upper chamber has made this year to boost public access and accountability.
She specifically pointed to open meetings of a House and Senate conference committee that's still trying — more than four months into the current session — to get a deal on the joint rules that smooth the flow of legislation between the two chambers. She also pointed to the public posting of votes on the Senate clerk's website.
" So we are working really hard," the Ashland Democrat said.
But Spilka was noncommittal when she was asked about the proposals offered by those good government advocates.
" We'll take a look at it," she said.
A spokesperson for state House Speaker Ronald J. Mariano, D-3rd Norfolk, did not respond to MassLive's request for comment.
The way the advocates see it, meanwhile, the need for reform remains urgent and long overdue.
'One of the questions that we are considering is whether to take one of these, one or both of these issues to the ballot,' Jay Kaufman, a former lawmaker, told State House News Service. 'There's some significant consequences to doing that, but we're actively weighing it.'
He joked that he expects they'd 'get the same 72% that the auditor got last year, and the same greeting across the street,' referring to DiZoglio's successful push to audit the state Legislature.
Eight months after voters overwhelmingly approved that ballot measure, DiZoglio is still no closer to auditing her former colleagues.
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