As the Current recently reported, voters statewide do not seem like they will get the chance to repeal the MBTA Communities Act in next November’s election, as the proponent of such a question, John T. Kolackovsky of Rockport, does not appear to have gathered the required 74,574 certified signatures by the Dec. 3 deadline.
One measure that has cleared the initial hurdle is long overdue, however.
This proposed law would make most records held by the Legislature and the governor’s office public records under the Massachusetts Public Records Law. The only documents exempt would be ones related to the development of public policy and communications between legislators and their constituents, “if those communications are reasonably related to a constituent’s request for assistance in obtaining government-provided benefits or services or interacting with a government agency,” according to the official summary of the proposal.
In recent weeks, State Auditor Diana DiZoglio has grabbed the reins of the proposal, even donating $150,000 from her campaign account to get it over the finish line. DiZoglio has linked the effort to the measures voters approved last year to give her office the power to audit the Legislature. Her efforts to follow through on the voters’ will have since been bogged down by resistance on Beacon Hill, where DiZoglio is seen as throwing the constitutional balance of powers off kilter.
But even if DiZoglio’s audit had never been thwarted, subjecting the Legislature and governor’s office to essentially the same level of scrutiny municipal officials face would still be a good idea.
As the New Bedford Light noted recently, Massachusetts is currently the only state that does not subject the governor, Legislature or judiciary to public records law, and Michigan is the only other state where both the governor’s office and the Legislature claim not to be bound by their public records laws, according to the Boston Globe.
This should be a source of great embarrassment for our state legislators, yet there is scant evidence they will remove this black mark without a push from the voters.
When the Boston Globe surveyed the state’s 198 lawmakers earlier this year, just 12 percent of them said they thought they should be subjected to the state’s public records law. The vast majority of lawmakers — 78 percent — simply ignored multiple emails, calls or text messages over several weeks from reporters to find out where they stood.
“That indicates to me that transparency is just not a priority — and it needs to be and the public should demand nothing less,” New England First Amendment Coalition Executive Director Justin Silverman told the Globe.
The New Bedford Light noted that its state Rep. Antonio F.D. Cabral has repeatedly filed legislation to establish a public records commission, only to have those bills sent to study orders or die in the House Ways and Means Committee.
As the Commonwealth Beacon noted, lawmakers always have the option of simply passing a proposed ballot question into law. But nothing in the Legislature’s history suggests it will seize the opportunity to be proactive.
Then again, maybe it will read the room. In a recent Suffolk University/Boston Globe poll, none of the proposed ballot questions was viewed more favorably than the proposal subjecting the Legislature and the governor’s office to the public records law, with 84 percent of those polled saying they would support it.
It’s not yet a fait accompli that voters will get that chance, as several would-be ballot referendums have been thwarted by legal challenges in recent years.
We hope that’s not the case with this proposal. While in some instances, special interest groups have used ballot questions to hijack the legislative process, this is not such an instance. After all, all passage of the ballot question on the public records law would do is subject the Legislature and governor’s office to the same level of scrutiny as their counterparts in most of the rest of the country.
If it makes it to the ballot, we look forward to supporting this measure — and to taking it out for a spin if it becomes law.
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.
