Mariano Signals Continued Resistance To Massachusetts Legislative Audit

By Alison Kuznitz

While the House recently retained outside counsel to manage legal aspects of Auditor Diana DiZoglio’s planned probe of the Legislature, House Speaker Ron Mariano said Tuesday he does not intend to bring the issue to court.

“I can’t say definitively what’s going to happen about anything, so it’s really up to her,” Mariano told reporters Tuesday morning when asked whether the branch hiring CEK Boston indicates the House expects that the sparring over Question 1 will “definitively” head to court.

“We don’t intend to take it to court, but I’m not going to tie up my staff and the House counsel with an issue that is going to just slow us down and bog us down, and that we think we totally disagree with,” Mariano said.

Mariano and Senate President Karen Spilka have repeatedly resisted DiZoglio’s quest to audit the Legislature, citing constitutional separation of power concerns. DiZoglio has accused the Legislature of breaking the new voter law by not complying with records requests from her office to start the probe.

The House hired CEK Boston, led by former First Assistant Attorney General Thomas Kiley, as outside counsel on Jan. 9. That was just days after the effective date of the widely backed voter law giving DiZoglio’s office the explicit authority to audit the Legislature.

In a scrum with reporters Tuesday, the Quincy Democrat added he does not want House counsel to become entrenched in an issue “that really isn’t of any consequence to the immediate needs of our constituents.”

The Legislature began its new session on Jan. 1 but representatives and senators have not been assigned to committees, hearings on bills have not begun, and the branches have not adopted new operating rules.

“What we want to do is we have to get our committees set up,” Mariano said. “We have to start hearing bills, and that’s what we want to do.”

Mariano and Spilka pledged on the session’s opening day to bolster transparency for the public, though they have resisted the implementation of Question 1, which nearly 72% of voters supported in November.

Mariano, asked about constituents approving the referendum, said, “Yeah, and they approved it with what we think is a constitutional problem … We want an answer to that.”

Mariano said House officials have met with CEK Boston to discuss their concerns about Question 1, particularly constitutional separation of powers. He said he was unaware of the timeline for CEK Boston, which was hired through a public bidding process opened in December, to offer advice to the branch.

“They’re going to do the research,” said Mariano, who added the firm “would take a look at it and get back to us with the right recommendations on how to proceed.”

The Senate has not hired new outside legal counsel to manage issues surrounding Question 1, but existing outside counsel can be consulted with new legal issues, according to Spilka spokesperson Gray Milkowski, who declined to identify the existing outside counsel.

Mariano spoke with reporters late Tuesday morning as a Senate subcommittee handling the voter law met with staffers from DiZoglio’s team.