Election season is in full swing!
The Democratic convention is taking place today in Worcester. You can find Act on Mass at a table there, talking to convention attendees about our legislature’s appalling lack of action against Trump and gathering signatures for the public records law ballot question.
On Thursday night, we co-hosted a state rep forum in Cambridge’s 25th Middlesex district, focused entirely on the topic of transparency and accountability in the state house. Incumbent Rep. Marjorie Decker and challenger Evan MacKay faced off on questions of legislative efficiency, compliance (or noncompliance) with new transparency rules, and the conflicts of interest generated by the legislature’s stipend system. The room was standing-room-only, with hundredsof Cambridge residents in attendance. It was yet more evidence that transparency and accountability will be a decisive issue on the ballot this November. I hope other incumbents are paying attention.
Still, the sad fact is that many of them won't have to worry about it. With nomination papers due to the Secretary of State’s office this week, we have a clearer picture of what state elections will look like this fall. As it stands, 59% of state house races will feature only one candidate come November. For the vast majority of districts, state house incumbents will cruise to re-election without a challenge.
At Act on Mass, we’re working on a tool to hold your representative accountable, whether they have a challenger or not. With other progressive organizations, we’re developing a “Good Government for Mass” pledge that can be used to hold representatives in all districts accountable to transparency promises. We’re excited to launch that in the coming weeks and take it on the road this summer. Please keep an eye on your email, or join us in person on June 7th in Concordfor more details!
Speaking of which, we’ve got just a week left in our spring fundraiser. We’ve been blown away by the generosity of our grassroots supporters. It’s allowed us to dream bigger about what this year might look like for us, and raise our fundraising goal to $10,000! With just a week left, can you commit to attending our fundraiser on June 7th or contributing to help us reach our goal?
RSVP TO SING WITH THE AUDITOR ON 6/7>>
CAN'T COME, BUT I'LL SUPPORT THE FUNDRAISER!>>
Thank you for your support!
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State House Scoop
After years of stonewalling, Senate votes to give audit documents to the People’s Auditor
Well, well, well.
We’ve got a long-awaited update on the legislative audit approved by voters in November 2024.
State Auditor Diana DiZoglio has sought to perform an audit of the legislature since voters first elected her in 2022, on a campaign promise to do so.
Legislative leaders were, unsurprisingly, not thrilled about an independently-elected auditor getting the chance to examine their books. They first claimed that state law did not grant the state auditor the authority to audit the legislature, although the auditor’s office had historically done so. So, DiZoglio took the question to the ballot, asking voters to clarify that the state auditor had the authority to audit the legislature. Famously, voters in every city and town in the state approved the initiative with a resounding 72% in favor statewide.
Then, legislators really dug in their heels. In December 2024, they claimed that the law had not yet come into effect. In January, the auditor made a request for four initial types of documents to start her audit, including financial receipts and state contracting and procurement documents. The Senate responded by forming a subcommittee tasked with addressing the “constitutional concerns” of the audit, further delaying compliance.
Despite their claims that the audit was unconstitutional, legislative leaders seemed reluctant to let the issue be decided by the Supreme Judicial Court (SJC), which is the only body in the state that can rule on constitutionality. The auditor tried to initiate legal proceedings to the SJC to compel the legislature to fulfill the requests; this brought the audit to the attorney general’s office, where it has stalled for the last year and a half.
AG Campbell was in a tough spot, asked to confront the legislative body that sets her office’s budget every year. She chose to delay granting the auditor legal representation rather than side against the legislature. For a review of the audit background and the AG-Auditor standoff, I recommend reviewing our March webinar with attorney Jeanne Kempthorne: “MA voters approved a legislative audit. What's blocking it?” Long story short: this legal stalemate was odd, because the only party with a “ripe” grievance was the Auditor, whose requests for specific documents had been ignored. The legislature was claiming “unconstitutional!” about something that hadn’t happened yet, due to their own stonewalling—not grounds for a legal dispute.
The delayed legal proceedings finally got some resolution earlier this month, when the SJC admonished the attorney general’s office for stalling resolution on the constitutional questions and set a 30-day deadline for her to decide whether she was representing the auditor. Within a week, Campbell agreed to let DiZoglio appoint outside legal representation for a lawsuit against the legislature based on the four original documents requested.
This week, we learned that the State Senate would rather fold than risk a ruling from the SJC on the audit's constitutionality. They voted Thursday to finally comply with the documents request and release the four types of documents to the Auditor’s office. The motion passed in a lengthy and convoluted resolution that leaves room for them to protest the constitutionality of further documents requests.
An excerpt: “Resolved, that the Senate, in providing said records, does so voluntarily but does not concede that it may be audited pursuant to section 12 of chapter 11 of the General Laws without violating the constitution of the Commonwealth.”
Ok, buddy. Sounds like you lost.
We’re glad that the Senate is taking steps towards compliance with Massachusetts state law. Still, it’s frustrating that it took years of wasted time, taxpayer resources, and public trust to get here.
For some members of the Senate, the resolution didn’t go far enough. All five Republican senators and Democratic Senator Mark Montigny voted against the resolution, saying that the “partial compliance” would not do enough to resolve the constitutional questions and public interest surrounding the audit.
Indeed, the ballot measure passed by voters didn’t say “the Auditor can audit four specific document types as long as it’s okay with the Senate.” Massachusetts state law now states that the auditor’s audit mission applies to the legislature. If her office needs additional information to complete an audit, do Senate leaders want us to go through a years-long legal process every time? (Short answer: yes. Of course.)
It also seems like the House is taking a different tact. On Thursday, Speaker Ron Mariano sent an email to House members, writing: “following extensive conversations with the Senate about this issue over the past few weeks, House leadership concluded that a resolution would not be the appropriate method of affirming our legislative prerogative as a coequal branch of government — nor would it allow us to address future inquiries or resolve the endless legal disputes that have come to define the audit ballot question.”
First of all, let’s note that this is the leader of an ostensibly democratic body, informing rank-and-file members via email of a decision made by “House leadership.” All 160 representatives represent constituents who voted for the audit and may have concerns about the state house’s approach to it. Avoiding a resolution may have the benefits the Speaker mentions; it also ensures that any debate or disagreement is behind closed doors.
Secondly, they might be right: the Senate’s piecemeal compliance approach is unlikely to resolve the wider legal issue surrounding the audit. What I’m curious about is what the House will propose instead. Speaker Mariano referenced a House plan to work with “leading transparency experts to craft comprehensive legislation that will provide long-term solutions” to the audit issue and the public records law question proposed for this fall.
Now, before you ask: no, they haven’t reached out to me yet. But, if there’s major transparency legislation on the docket this session, you know we’ll be mobilizing. The strength of public support for transparency and accountability has continued to make this a salient issue for state house leaders, as much as they would prefer to ignore it. Unfortunately for them, we’re not stopping anytime soon!
Do you know how your legislators stand on the audit? What are they doing to ensure that the will of the voters is respected expeditiously? Use our template to send them an email today!
ASK YOUR LEGISLATOR: WHAT ARE YOU DOING FOR AUDIT??>>
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Isabel's Vol Call
Happy Saturday! I’m super excited to share with you guys that we have lots of ways to get involved this summer! So, I wanted to put out my very first 
vol call! You will get these in your Scoop every now and then, and to kick them off I will be putting out a call every week in June. Just to give a little overview, this summer we will be:
- Collecting signatures for Auditor DiZoglio’s public records ballot question. You can learn more about the question here!
- Supporting our endorsed candidates (canvassing, phone-banking, etc!)
- Continuing our Transparency on Tour campaign by tabling in key districts around the Commonwealth
So keep an eye on your inbox, I will be going into more depth on each of these initiatives in the June editions of the Scoop.
To kick things off, this week I want to highlight our open social media volunteer positions! We are looking for folks that would be interested in updating AoM’s social media pages, namely Instagram and TikTok. If you have a passion for civic engagement, grassroots organizing, and state-level politics, as well as a desire to learn more about issue-based nonprofits and support a small team of staff, this role may be a good fit for you! Here’s the description, if you’d be interested, please feel free to reach out to me at isabel@actonmass.org.
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Lily's Lowdown: As municipalities feel the squeeze, Fair Share Amendment rakes in cash for the Commonwealth
Since the success of the 2022 ballot question—also referred to as the Fair Share Amendment—the state has continued to generate revenue off of a 4% surtax on annual household income over $1 million dollars. Due to adjustments in the cost of living since its passage, the surtax now only applies to households making $1.1 million or more annually.
In fiscal year 2025, the surtax generated more than $3 billion, far outpacing earlier projections. Now, in fiscal year 2026, with two more months still to be counted, it has already generated $3.1 billion in revenue for the state. This is great news, proving that asking the wealthy to pay their fair share does in fact lead to revenue increases (shocker) and does not result in the mass exodus of the wealthy from Massachusetts. Still, the story is more complex than a happy surprise of extra cash flow.
The crux of the issue is, as Phineas Baxandall of Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center puts it, that the Legislature is already using these funds as a crutch to make up for dried-up funding for childcare and the MBTA. Because of rapidly rising costs of healthcare and education, lagging Unrestricted General Government Aid (UGGA) from the state house, and the limitations of Prop 2 1/2, municipalities are feeling the squeeze. But much of the Fair Share Amendment money is getting tied up to fill existing budget holes, not boost local aid.
In the Boston Globe reporting on the funding bump, a Tufts economist pointed out that this revenue bloating is a direct result of the stock market’s peaks, and that relying on this money is far from a foolproof avenue for funding programs in the future. So if the ebbs and flows of the ultrawealthy’s cashflow aren’t going to sustain funding, what will? As important as it is for the state’s wealthiest to contribute their fair share, it’s relatively unsurprising that a tax-the-rich program on a small scale can only go so far.
This is where—you guessed it!—actual policies passed by our supposedly progressive Legislature could help close the ever-widening funding gap. An Act Combatting Offshore Tax Avoidance, for example, would generate more additional revenue for the state by taxing the profits companies stow away in offshore tax havens like Bermuda and the Cayman islands. This would tax corporations who operate in Massachusetts but do legal backflips to shift profits and property to low-tax foreign countries. Most other New England states already include 50% of these foreign assets in corporate tax calculations; in Massachusetts, that number is only 5%.
Of course, this is just one of a host of solutions the State House could pursue to at least ease some of the pain brought on by the funding deficit. (Keep in mind here that the municipal funding crisis has been boiling under the surface for years, and that we have known federal funding would be cut from the moment Trump was elected almost two years ago). But instead of proactively passing policies that would produce material benefits for the state, and therefore, Bay Staters, State House leadership would rather sit on their hands, wag a finger at the Trump Administration, and then pose for a photo for their "Response 2025" publicity campaign.
Correction: A previous version of this "Lowdown" included the wrong figure for the income generated by the Fair Share Amendment. It is $3.1 billion, not million. The text has also been updated to better contextualize that number.
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Missed a Scoop or two? You can find a full archive of all past Saturday Scoops on our blog.
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Take action
Join AOM for a spring fundraiser! - June 7th, 2 - 4 pm in Concord
Join Act on Mass, Concord Indivisble, and Indivisble Acton Area for our musical spring fundraiser, featuring Auditor Diana DiZoglio!
SING WITH THE AUDITOR ON 6/7>>
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Thanks for reading and for taking action! We'll be back next week!
In solidarity,
Scotia
Scotia Hille (she/her)
Executive Director, Act on Mass