Just in time for Sunshine Week — the annual event designed to shine a light on the importance of public records and open government coordinated by the University of Florida’s journalism school, celebrated this year March 16-22 — “transparency” has very much been a buzzword within our state government.
But when it comes to sunshine, the forecast for Beacon Hill remains, as ever, “mostly cloudy.”
First, the good news: As the week was ending, lawmakers had sent to Gov. Maura Healey another extension of pandemic-era policies allowing remote access for public meetings.
The legislation (H.62) would keep in place language granting public bodies flexibility to hold meetings virtually or in hybrid formats, one of a number of COVID-era policies set to expire March 31. The extension would stretch until June 30, 2027.
Once the extension is finalized, next on the agenda in the Senate would be working on a permanent hybrid meeting law, according to Senate President Karen Spilka. Healey offered a plan to permanently enshrine the option for hybrid public meetings as part of a local option tax bill she filed in January, the State House News Service reported.
The Legislature is also reportedly open to debating whether to require public bodies to offer remote access to their meetings.
The extension, which appears imminent, is welcome news, given that many residents, including those with mobility challenges, have come to depend on remote meeting access, at least with the boards that offer hybrid attendance options, like the Select Board, Board of Health, Historical Commission and School Committee.
However, several regulatory boards still conduct business exclusively in person, including the Board of Assessors, Cemetery Commission, Recreation and Parks Commission, Harbors and Waters and Water and Sewer Commission. If our state’s elected leaders enact a remote access mandate — and we think they should — we hope and expect that the state would also provide sufficient funding to allow cities and towns to respond to the technological challenges that such a mandate would present.
However, beyond the extension of hybrid meeting access, the news is less positive on the transparency front.
Beacon Hill lawmakers are still resisting an audit that 71.4% of voters in the state and 70.7% of voters in Marblehead approved as Question 1 on last November’s ballot. The House recently voted 128-23 against an amendment that would have enforced compliance with the audit.
This is a matter on which there is some room for reasonable minds to differ.
As Marblehead state Rep. Jenny Armini noted, the House is on record as being open to a financial audit and even having Auditor Diana DiZoglio choosing the firm to conduct it. She charges DiZoglio instead with seeking to conduct a “political” audit of the sort that would violate the separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches.
While that may be true, we believe it paramount that our legislators find a way to honor the spirit of last November’s vote — and soon.
Another long-standing issue on Beacon Hill, to which the Boston Globe brought some renewed attention last week, is the fact that Massachusetts maintains the dishonorable distinction of being the only state in the country where the governor, Legislature and judiciary all claim that the state’s public records law does not apply to them.
The Globe’s survey of the state’s 198 lawmakers found that just 12% believe they should be subjected to Massachusetts’ public records law, and even fewer said the governor (11%) or judiciary (7%) should have to turn over government emails, memos and documents when asked.
The vast majority of lawmakers — 78 percent — did not respond at all to the survey, failing to return multiple emails, calls, or text messages from reporters over several weeks, the Globe reported. (Armini declined to comment.)
Given those dismal results, it is hard to disagree with Justin Silverman, executive director of the New England First Amendment Coalition, who told the Globe, “That indicates to me that transparency is just not a priority — and it needs to be and the public should demand nothing less,” said.
Our local government officials, who are peppered with records requests regularly by the Current and concerned citizens alike, don’t need to be told what a nonsensical dichotomy this is. That it has persisted so long makes it no less outrageous.
As the Globe noted, the Legislature has been making some positive noises about making more votes public and explaining better the bills they’re proposing. One Democrat even described the body’s newfound attitude as one of “extreme transparency.”
But until the Legislature’s — and the governor’s, and the judiciary’s — exemption from the public records law is ended, those words will continue to ring hollow.
The Current Editorial Board
The members of the Current’seditorial board are Bob Peck, chairman of the Current; Virginia Buckingham, president of the Current's board of directors; board member Brian Birke, Current editorial staff member Kris Olson, and Joseph P. Kahn, a retired Boston Globe journalist.
