Latest news with #QuestionOne
CBS News
09-03-2025
- Politics
- CBS News
State auditor Diana DiZoglio says right to audit Mass. legislature not up for debate. "It is the law."
State auditor Diana DiZoglio says there should be no debate when it comes to her quest to audit the Massachusetts legislature. House Speaker Ron Mariano told WBZ-TV in a March 2 interview that DiZoglio's push to move forward with the authority to audit the legislature granted by voter approval of Question One on the 2024 ballot isn't about financial matters, but is instead "a political audit for some issues that she's been railing again since [she] first got into the House." "Absolutely false," DiZoglio said during her turn on the WBZ-TV set. Massachusetts legislature audit debate DiZoglio said the time for politics was over when the voters passed Question One with 72% support. "The voters decided they wanted an audit of the legislature," she says. "Now that this is passed into law ... it is no longer up for discussion. It is the law." Legislative leaders beg to differ, and it seems as if the issue will have to be resolved in court. But Attorney General Andrea Campbell, the lawyer of first resort for a case of this nature, has publicly clashed with DiZoglio, claiming in an interview last week that she can't proceed until the auditor provides more information about the scope of her intended audit. "The auditor and her team know that, so to proceed forward, we need them to tell us what is the scope of your audit? Not in big terms, in specificity and correspondence to our office. Then we can proceed," Campbell said. "So if we do not have certain basic information that we've asked for over and over again, politely and lovingly without demonizing anyone's staff, then we cannot proceed." "That's just simply untrue," DiZoglio responded. "We've actually given the Attorney General everything we possibly can. She's simply asking us over and over again about the scope of our audit. We repeat the same answers back to her that we repeated to her, because those are our answers. This is not the responsibility of the auditor's office, to convince the Attorney General to do her job. The Attorney General is the chief law enforcement officer of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and if the law is being violated, it is her duty to enforce the law. We have been practically begging the AG's office to help us. I'm not an attorney. I have asked for her assistance, and what we have been just repeatedly hearing is essentially more stall tactics giving the legislature more time." MBTA Communities Act DiZoglio also rebutted Campbell's contention that by ruling the MBTA Communities Act was an unfunded mandate on the cities and town it requires to change their zoning laws to accommodate more multi-family housing, she is putting out "misinformation" that obstructs progress in creating more housing. "It seems as though this issue is being weaponized against my office because we're pushing the AG and the governor on the legislative audit," DiZoglio said. "So instead of simply taking our recommendations to just fix the issue, very simple to do, this issue is being weaponized. Our office is being blamed for something that's actually the responsibility of this administration. The administration has the responsibility to fund this. It's well within their authority to do so. So as soon as the administration does their job, gets their fiscal impact statement out, the legislature can appropriate the funds, and we can analyze it and say, this is funded."
CBS News
02-03-2025
- Politics
- CBS News
Why Massachusetts House Speaker opposes Diana DiZoglio's attempt to audit legislature
Massachusetts House Speaker Ron Mariano (D-Quincy) said he is "worried" about the situation in Washington, D.C. and the effects it could have on Massachusetts if federal funding is cut. He also defended local lawmakers' resistance to State Auditor Diana DiZoglio's efforts to audit the legislature. How losing federal funding could impact Massachusetts Mariano has been around the track a few times in his long career as a teacher, school committeeman and legislator. He's hard to startle. But as he surveys the scene in Washington and its potential impact on Massachusetts, "I am worried," he said during an interview with WBZ-TV. "It's hard to have any idea how this thing is going to play out. I just know that we rely on our federal partner for about $15 billion coming into the state over the course of the year in a myriad of programs. So if that's cut significantly, then we are in a difficult position," he said. Ron Mariano on audit opposition But there's another challenge being confronted these days by Mariano and his fellow legislators. DiZoglio is scorching for their resistance to her proposed audit of the legislature, a right she was granted by the voters when they overwhelmingly approved Question One on the November 2024 ballot. In a tweet last week after the House rejected a Republican effort to accept DiZoglio's audit plan, the auditor accused Mariano and his "henchman" Majority Leader Mike Moran of working to "continue to hide whatever it is they do with your taxpayer dollars." "It's very inflammatory, and it's kind of a nonsensical response to the activities that happen in the legislative debate," Mariano said. "We have an honest disagreement, an honest difference of opinion. We think there are constitutional issues involved in the separation of powers and what she wants to do and what that valid question allows her to do. And that's the way she deals with disagreements, I guess, is…tweet." Meanwhile, the House last week approved new rules that Mariano cast as partly a response to the public frustration with the slow pace of legislative activity that was reflected in the Question One vote. In an effort to end the bi-annual logjams where important bills don't get passed by the session's end, "we've set a rolling deadline for the committees," said Mariano. "They get 60 days to hear a bill and move it. We want it out in the membership. We want, the chairman to take a more active part in determining what's going to be in the agenda, and we're hoping that this …will force us to deal with these issues before they stack up and we have to combine them," Mariano said. "We hope it will make us more efficient. We've opened up the process. We're going to include our votes. We're going to include our attendance. We want people to know who's at the hearing, how they're voting. We want to open that up, and we want to process these bills before we feel the crunch of the time coming to an end." Mariano also discussed recent concerns about potential conflicts of interest in House committee leadership during the interview, which can be viewed in its entirety here.
