On Tuesday, March 26th, I had the opportunity to provide testimony to the Joint Committee on Initiative Petitions regarding the pending ballot initiative that would explicitly authorize the state auditor to audit the General Court (i.e. the MA state legislature). I had previously expressed my take on the measure HERE and HERE. All of the invited testimony can be viewed HERE. My rather energetic testimony begins with 35 minutes, 12 seconds left in the video and lasts about 20 minutes.
As luck would have it, I testified last, which is to say, I was the last speaker who had been invited to speak by the committee. One of those who spoke before me was the state auditor Diana DiZoglio. While I have opposed her position on this issue all along, her testimony, which was very passionate, made me realize that her campaign to force greater transparency on Beacon Hill by turning the state auditor’s office into a legislative transparency cop isn’t just wrong headed. It’s also dangerous.
In her testimony, the Auditor simply waved away all the experts who have rightly concluded that the power she seeks (and actually believes she already has) is unconstitutional and entirely inappropriate. She testified as if the devastatingly clear and compelling critiques of former state auditor Suzanne Bump and state attorney general Andrea Campbell (which can be read HERE and HERE) didn’t exist. She thundered away at the committee about their “cherry picked” experts and insisted that “the people are the experts” and that she has the authority to demand legislative transparency in their name.
Needless to say, for anyone who knows me at least, the auditor’s disrespect of experts and her over-the-top demagogic rhetoric didn’t sit well with me and I made little effort to disguise this fact in my testimony.