The Audit

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More than 2.3 million voters in Massachusetts voted overwhelmingly to approve an audit into our state legislature — but now the legislature says, actually, it doesn't want to comply with what over 70% of us voted for directly. We'll chat about what exactly this audit is, what the legislature is trying to change it to be, and why it's so important for all of us to see it through.

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Transcript

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Anna Callahan

00:00:02 - 00:00:44

Hello and welcome to Incorruptible Mass. Our mission is to help us all transform state politics because we know we could have a state legislature that truly serves the needs of all 7 million of us who live here instead of the wealthy and powerful. And today we are going to be talking about whether the legislature should be audited and the whole thing that's going on with the battles between the Speaker of the House and the auditor and all sorts of stuff happening. So— You'll hear the real goss today. But before we do, I am going to have my illustrious co-hosts introduce themselves, and I will start today with Jonathan.

Jonathan Cohn

00:00:44 - 00:00:56

Hello, Jonathan Cohn. I'm he/him/his. I've been active on progressive electoral and issue campaigns in Massachusetts for over a decade now, and I'm joining from Boston in the South End.

Anna Callahan

00:00:58 - 00:00:59

And Jordan.

Jordan Berg Powers

00:00:59 - 00:01:13

Hi, my name is Jordan. I see him. And, um, I used to be a nonprofit director who was audited by the IRS twice, as well as had to have official audit documents sent to the state every single year. And I'm in Worcester.

Anna Callahan

00:01:13 - 00:01:38

Um, I am Anna Callahan, she/her, coming at you from Medford, where I'm a city councilor. I have, uh, knock on wood, never been audited. We'll see. Maybe I will. As soon as this is published, we'll find out about that. But all right, I am going to go ahead today. I think I'm going to have Jordan kick it off because, you know, you're talking about some hot goss of like what's happening.

Jordan Berg Powers

00:01:38 - 00:03:07

Yeah. So we were— Jonathan and I beforehand were talking about the Commonwealth Beacon editorial from Speaker Ron Mariano, in which he has a public tantrum about the fact that people are complaining about his— the House's response to the audit, in which he accuses Auditor DiZoglio of, quote, a campaign to audit the legislature fueled by misinformation, political ambition, and personal attacks, for which Jonathan and I said most of those are actually true, but that's still a reason to be for it. And in it, the irony, of course, is that Ron Mariano, the Speaker Ron Mariano, lies In it is fueled by personal ambition and only personal ambition, certainly not the welfare of the Commonwealth, and is doing so by lauding personal attacks. Like, the whole thing is personal attacks. That's the editorial of personal attacks. It's fact-free and it's ridiculous. And so I think the things that for the listeners who don't know about it, I think it's really important to know what the House did. So the House did two things together, which it often does. It did something that no one likes and something that people want. Put them together to try to make it sound like. that what they did was good. So the things that people wanted are they made it so that there would be open, that there'll be actually oversight of them, that they'll finally be— will no longer be the only state in the country that has no open meetings. I'm sorry, no—

Jonathan Cohn

00:03:07 - 00:03:10

Public records law applying to the governor and legislature.

Jordan Berg Powers

00:03:10 - 00:03:38

Applying to the governor and the legislature. And so they did something real, which is they made it apply to themselves and they put some money behind it so that they can actually comply. And they did so in a way that will actually form some sort of compliance clients for public records. So they did this good thing and they talked to some people that they said they needed to talk to to do something that literally every single municipality already does easily and every single DA's office already does easily. But somehow they thought they needed a special way to do it.

Anna Callahan

00:03:38 - 00:03:40

And every other state does as well.

Jordan Berg Powers

00:03:40 - 00:03:41

Yes.

Jonathan Cohn

00:03:41 - 00:04:40

Quick interjection on this. The thing that's so— that I always like bringing up when talking about the issue of the legislature applying public records law to itself or not. Is that back in 2016, which was the last time that the legislature updated the public records law, that they ended up creating— the issue of whether or not the public records law should be extended to the governor and legislature came up. And in true legislative fashion, they created a commission to, like, a special legislative commission with a group of state reps and a group of state senators. And they held hearings. They held all the hearings to talk about whether or not the public records law should apply to them. I have to add, the, the, there are actual minutes from these hearings that are available online. Shout out to a rare bit of good transparency where you can see all the advocates who came to talk about why they should do this and what it would look like. And then after holding all of these hearings and hearing from all of these stakeholders, the commission dissolved with no recommendation.

Anna Callahan

00:04:40 - 00:04:46

Because they mistakenly thought it was being sent to study, which means kill. They didn't realize they were actually supposed to do something.

Jonathan Cohn

00:04:49 - 00:04:50

And that just always felt so on brand.

Jordan Berg Powers

00:04:50 - 00:06:04

And so the other piece that they did, which is totally abhorrent, is they absolutely gutted Tezoglio's actual desire for an audit by saying that they'll hand over a smattering of documents that are already publicly available. They'll do things like give the receipts, but not like what it paid for. So you'll just have some money, but no idea of the context for it. And they'll tell you what bills they passed, but they won't give you any of the information about what led to them passing it, like who, like what lobbyists came in and lobbied them on those things in a way that's easily understandable beyond just sort of like disclosures that the state requires them to, the lobbyists to do in the end. And the kicker for this for me is I find that when you do something that's totally legal and you think is totally justifiable, the thing you do is you exempt yourself from oversight, which is what they did. They said that you both, that you cannot sue them for it. You cannot go to the courts for it. And you, anything that D'Zaglio finds, she has to give to them and not to the public. Wow. Because that's, I mean, certainly.

Jonathan Cohn

00:06:04 - 00:06:35

It's been shocking to me. The whole drama about whether or not she has the ability to be, have legal representation was fascinating to me. Because, like, I just remember with the court case where she had an attorney representing her, Shannon Liss-Riordan, and that Shannon was going to be going into this case not knowing if she would even be recognized as an attorney fit to represent her client by the court, which is just such a bizarre element of the whole audit saga.

Anna Callahan

00:06:35 - 00:07:03

And I just want to pause for one second because we've been talking about public records law, like, at the state level where they have basically had no— there's no way to find out who voted for what, when it was voted on. You have no idea whether this is all being done in backroom deals or if it's being done by a body or anything. When they agreed to do some public records law, what did that mean in practice in the legislature?

Jonathan Cohn

00:07:03 - 00:07:46

So I think that for the legislature itself, it was largely kind of a codification codification of some of the rules changes of like about committee votes being public documents, about testimony being public documents, of some things that are already largely public being public documents. But, but creates a system which I'd say when it comes to testimony, like having something that creates a more standardized system than what— as it currently exists. Ask the chair's staff and see what they give you if they feel like they need to. Having something that's more of like an actual formal system is definitely better. I think that it's still not as good as in other states where they literally just post it on their website.

Jordan Berg Powers

00:07:46 - 00:07:47

Yeah.

Jonathan Cohn

00:07:47 - 00:08:15

I always appreciate California. Like, California doesn't post the actual testimony, but what I do appreciate about California's website is that they actually list everybody who testified for and against a bill, which is just really helpful. Because if you're like, if you see a piece of legislation, you're like, this sounds good, but is this sus? And then you look and you see like that money there and you're like, okay, that information is really helpful kind of in that regard.

Jordan Berg Powers

00:08:15 - 00:08:16

Yeah.

Jonathan Cohn

00:08:16 - 00:08:58

Some of the stuff that like is clearly already a public document that they listed as being kind of becoming a public document. What's one thing that's not there that I would love to see eventually come to be? And this is something that when they like do a next go around on rules, would definitely want to be pushing for, and frankly, they should just push it, put it a part of any public record stuff, is the timeliness of making committee votes available, available because they did agree in their rules for the current session to make committee votes public, like to post them online. But they can sometimes take months. And there's no need for that. It's not a— it's not a terribly complicated system.

Anna Callahan

00:09:01 - 00:09:01

Yep.

Jordan Berg Powers

00:09:01 - 00:09:45

I just think I want to say that I think that I want to explain my dismissiveness about this. It's not that I don't think those things are good or we shouldn't happen. It's that they made a big to-do for something that's actually really easy and everyone else does. And to hear legislators talk about how difficult it is to get testimony, they literally— I will just name names like Kristi Barber has in her script that the reason they couldn't do it, which they've now done, she voted for yes, they couldn't do it. She had in her script that the reason they couldn't do transparency is because of the sensitive testimony that people give. And like, on the very rare chance that that happens, like, just redact it. Like, it's so simple. Like, they make it—

Jonathan Cohn

00:09:45 - 00:09:46

Yeah.

Jordan Berg Powers

00:09:46 - 00:10:00

I think my incredulousness about this, and not to wade into a Senate race that I don't want to wade into, but just like, I just think it's instructive for how for how stupid the response to all this is, is that this is common for everyone. DAs have public records.

Jonathan Cohn

00:10:00 - 00:10:01

Exactly.

Jordan Berg Powers

00:10:01 - 00:10:04

They have much more sensitive data that can be easily—

Anna Callahan

00:10:04 - 00:10:11

Every city in Massachusetts and almost every single state, like, why? What are they complaining? It's not like we're reinventing the wheel here.

Jordan Berg Powers

00:10:11 - 00:10:46

Yeah. And so they wrote a press release and they just— I just wanna finish this thought. They released a press release and they literally are like, we talked to experts, we talked to constitutional experts, we have the ACLU, And like, shame on the ACLU, who I give money to, and shame on Comic-Con for like being a part of this silliness. Like, they don't need you to do something that is easy. It is easy. They could have easily done this at any time. It requires little to no work to have done this more than everyone else does. And to go along with this show like it was a big deal is laughable. We should be laughing in their faces about it. Sorry, Jocelyn.

Jonathan Cohn

00:10:46 - 00:11:06

Wait, I just wanted to quickly comment when it comes to the fact of like how we all know that like people can black out stuff public records requests all the time because you just have— there are various types of redactions that they make. It reminded me of one of my definitely top 10 favorite Onion articles from 2005. CIA realizes it's been using black highlighters all these years.

Jordan Berg Powers

00:11:06 - 00:11:07

Yes.

Jonathan Cohn

00:11:07 - 00:11:26

Yeah. And it's like, why did it go on for this long? And like, in this far, Sid Gross, like, in a press conference called shortly after the report's release, I'm as frustrated as anyone. You can't read a single thing that's been highlighted. Had I been there to advise the former CIA director, I would have suggested the traditional yellow color.

Anna Callahan

00:11:26 - 00:11:29

Yeah, I guess I just—

Jordan Berg Powers

00:11:29 - 00:12:32

it's just, it's just like, it's just so silly. It's just all so silly. And so to the accusation that Ron Mariano made, this is all about political ambition and misinformation, right? Like, they put out a press release to make it sound like the thing that they did, which is super dumb and terrible, and needlessly attacking the auditor is the same as this other thing they did, which was constitutional around public records. And they did talk to real experts, and they didn't need to because they literally had a commission. Everyone else has already complied, and it's actually really easy to comply with. Like, it's actually not difficult to do this compliance. I mean, yes, you need a compliance officer. Yes, you need some money. Like, it's not nothing, but it's not— it's not that big a deal. And they could have done it this whole time. And like, Every single one of your state reps who lied to your faces, who told you how terrible it was, how they couldn't do it. Also, my other thing about all this is they always say, like, you know, 5 years ago they were like, anybody who pushes this is toxic. It'll never happen. Well, guess what? They've caved on everything. We have won everything we've asked on.

Jonathan Cohn

00:12:32 - 00:12:57

That's what's always so fascinating whenever, like, when they took up, like, public committee votes at the beginning of this session. And it's like, you have all of these people who gave floor speeches. They talk about why this was a terrible idea, why it will destroy the legislature, and then they vote for it and then they issue a press release about how proud they are of the historic achievement.

Anna Callahan

00:12:57 - 00:13:18

Well, this is the other thing that like just generally across the country, I think people are so incredibly frustrated that like the Republicans, they take power and then they do way more than they said they were going to do. Like they hide their agenda. And then they, they do like, they go so far beyond the most extreme craziness of what they ran on.

Jordan Berg Powers

00:13:18 - 00:13:19

Yeah.

Anna Callahan

00:13:19 - 00:14:13

Whereas the Democrats are like, oh, we're gonna do this thing, this, you know, mediocre like crumbs of a thing. And then instead of doing it, they're like, oh gosh, it's too hard. Oh, there's a process and we couldn't follow the process. And like, you don't realize that like, oh gosh, it's like really difficult to like redact and put like a, you know, take a black highlighter. Like, it's so difficult. We can't possibly do it. do it. And, you know, they just won't even pass the tiniest of things that they run on. And then we're like— and then they're shocked and appalled when people who actually run on real change are getting elected. And they're like, how dare you take over our Democratic Party? What are you— how could you? Like, why are you burning it all down? They're calling it burning it all down to get people elected who are like, no, we're going to run on real change. And then guess what? We're actually going to do it. And that apparently is burning the party down. So I don't know.

Jordan Berg Powers

00:14:13 - 00:15:15

I just— so I just want to say, because I think Jonathan has a really good beat on this, that Jonathan and I, to some level of degrees, are both auditor skeptics. We don't actually think the audit will unearth things of interest, really. But the reason I've been for the audit is because it's like watching people lose tic-tac-toe to a chicken. at a county fair. They're so predictably bad at politics. They're so predictably dumb. They're so predictably going to dig in and make an easy-to-fix situation worse that I was like, let's push this forward because they will do all of the predictable, autocratic, really dumb responses, and we will get to beat them up about it because they will do it. And I was like, reps will take bad votes. They will take that they'll regret later, that they'll go back on, and we will have it on the record that they are absolute shills for this system and do not put us first, but put the system first and put themselves first. And like, that's why I was for it. Like, I was like, yes.

Anna Callahan

00:15:15 - 00:15:19

Even if the audit doesn't do anything, the process of putting it out there—

Jordan Berg Powers

00:15:19 - 00:15:27

The process of pushing it, because they're predictable. They are predictable. They will lose to tic-tac-toe to a chicken.

Jonathan Cohn

00:15:29 - 00:15:39

I think that only like the threat, the, the like audit question was one of the, I think was one of the main drivers behind the House and Senate even taking up various transparency reforms.

Jordan Berg Powers

00:15:39 - 00:15:39

For sure.

Jonathan Cohn

00:15:39 - 00:17:28

Because we had been pushing for that stuff for years. And I don't— and like, and all of the push for years, I think definitely like helped to make it so that they realized that, okay, we can do that instead. And suddenly it feels less like beyond the pale to do the things people have been asking them to do for years. But the thing that's always fascinating to me with a lot of the audit discourse as it exists in public narrative is I feel like a lot of discourse around the audit unites two very different things. It unites a conservative discourse about how, like, the Democrats are corrupt and terrible and they're up to no good. And with a progressive discourse of these people are doing nothing and they aren't accountable to anybody. And what's interesting and really to me is that latter one is one that they can actually solve, right? The first one of like, there's nothing that you as a Democratic incumbent can ever do to stop conservative voters from having conspiracy theories. Since there were conservative voters, there were conservative voters with conspiracy theories. But when it comes to progressives thinking that you're not doing stuff, the response to that is to do stuff. And to be like actually doing agenda-setting, strong, meeting-the-moment legislation such that like the number of actual standalone bills that you've taken up by the end of the session would be a large number and you don't bundle everything together into large bills that make it— make regular people unable to understand what you're doing.

Anna Callahan

00:17:28 - 00:17:55

But I think that the viewpoint is quite different, actually. I think that the viewpoint is, oh, some Republican is complaining about me. That puts me in a good— I want that. That puts me in a good light because now I can be seen to be pushing back against the other side. Right. But a progressive who is pointing out that I'm actually doing a crappy job, that's dangerous. That's a big threat. And I better attack that progressive and make sure they lose. You know, like, that's the way they see it.

Jordan Berg Powers

00:17:55 - 00:18:18

I mean, I don't know what you're talking about, Jonathan. Are you saying that giving dead billionaires tax cuts and gutting climate change legislation are not achievements? I mean, they should definitely be proud of gutting climate change legislation and making our energy bills literally higher to appease National Grid and Eversource lobbyists. I mean, they made the Eversource lobbyists and natural gas lobbyists very happy.

Jonathan Cohn

00:18:18 - 00:18:28

Wait, this reminds me of one of my lines recently. Do you want to— do you know what you call an interview with somebody who paid the estate tax?

Anna Callahan

00:18:28 - 00:18:29

What?

Jonathan Cohn

00:18:29 - 00:18:33

You call it a séance.

Anna Callahan

00:18:33 - 00:18:35

I like it.

Jordan Berg Powers

00:18:35 - 00:19:10

Yeah. I mean, it's just like it's— it's— yes, the answer is, of course, robust legislation. But there And I think the other piece too that's about this, Anna, that I want to, I think highlights is that it's such a farcical process that the way in which they even try to pass legislation is through bond bills so that they can say that they've done things. But bond bills are not spending money, so they're not doing it. They're literally going through, again, to use Mariano's things, misinformation to feed political ambition.

Anna Callahan

00:19:10 - 00:19:10

Yeah.

Jordan Berg Powers

00:19:10 - 00:20:00

About things they're not doing. Like they did pass a housing bill. They don't pass how the only real housing policy they passed is a tax cut for realtors to gentrify Black and brown neighborhoods because they hate Black and brown people. Like that's the only legislation they passed around housing. They did pass a bond bill around housing, and they left up what got spent, how it got spent, how much of it got spent to the governor. But they didn't spend it. They didn't do it. They don't have a housing policy. They the House hasn't. picked up real housing policy of any sense since Charlie Baker had the idea to actually pass the MBTA Act, which is a good act. And again, that's only zoning reform. That's not even a housing policy. So it's just like, even the things they do are, to an extent, fake because bond bills are not real. They're not money. You're not taxing and spending.

Jonathan Cohn

00:20:00 - 00:20:01

Yeah.

Jordan Berg Powers

00:20:01 - 00:20:13

You are borrowing. You are giving the governor the ability to someday borrow over an extended amount of time money at her leisure that she could or could not. And most of the bond bills don't get spent.

Anna Callahan

00:20:13 - 00:21:16

And if I may, I am going to say that we are going to be talking about housing soon. And if you want to hear that conversation, I encourage you to donate. There's a link below. You can give us the price of a cup of coffee. You can give us half of your paycheck. It's all up to you, whatever you think this is worth. But we're going to be talking about housing coming up soon, especially what's happening from the governor and what their goal— the goals of the state are, which we think are paltry and nowhere near enough and what we should be doing. And we'll be talking about many other things. So if you appreciate this podcast, first of all, forward it to your friends. And second of all, do give a little donation to the show, which does not go to us, but goes to our lovely young folks who do a lot of the backend work of editing and graphics and all of those things. And on that note, I am gonna suggest that we all pick our sort of closing statements on this audit. And we'll round it out for today. Who has— who's ready to go? Has something?

Jonathan Cohn

00:21:16 - 00:22:04

I want to say that one of my other comments that I would like to make as a closing one is how one of the things I would like for the legislature to respond to for this, not that I'll hold out hope, is just a more transparent, like more deliberative way of passing bills. Because one of the things that they don't do that again feeds into all wider narrative is the phenomenon of like you give people an hour to read a bill before you vote it out of committee, which means nobody's actually reading the things that they're voting on. Right. Or give them no time to actually file amendments, which was a part of the terrible process by which they passed the bill we were talking about before, or the House's tendency now to not even withdraw amendments anymore. They just bundle them into consolidated amendments, hollow out all of the, all of the content, and leave people unclear about what even happened.

Anna Callahan

00:22:04 - 00:22:04

Yeah.

Jonathan Cohn

00:22:04 - 00:22:12

And I think that if they want to build public trust, The best way to build public trust is to operate in a way that builds public trust.

Anna Callahan

00:22:12 - 00:22:14

Right on.

Jordan Berg Powers

00:22:14 - 00:23:36

Yeah. I just think, yeah, I mean, I think everything Jonathan said, I think, you know, I just want to echo that, like, Rod Mariano has a dictatorial power over the legislature, and I want him to put us first. Like, we have real issues around housing affordability. We have real issues around the growth of AI without really thinking about job security, job futures. Our education system is crumbling under the underfunding, the inflation, and the weight of continuing to try to push standardized testing when we should be investing in our kids and teachers. Our healthcare system is totally broken and inaccessible, and we have real issues. Just pass things and people will be less upset. Like, this is an out, you know, when we, whenever I talk about the audit, whenever people talk about it, it blows up, but it blows up because people are frustrated and they're frustrated. They want you to do something and they want, and for the, you know, state reps listening to this, they want you to put their constituents first. You're putting your job first. You're putting your boss first, the, you know, the person who you actually work for, Ron Mariano. You're putting him first. But what we're saying is put us first. We have real issues. Please tackle them. What you're doing is insufficient.

Anna Callahan

00:23:36 - 00:24:44

Well, my final word is going to be about strategy. And I have to say, I am very excited because I feel like finally the left is beginning to act strategically. So we are also going to talk about the rent control bill, not today, but we're going to be talking about that one, which was this amazing piece of strategy of putting something on the ballot that was more than we've been asking for as a threat, and then being like, okay, legislature, if you don't want that, you better pass something, some enabling legislation or something a little bit smaller. And I think this audit is also one of those. It's like, you know what? We're going to fricking audit you if you don't do some of the things we've been asking for for year after year after year after year. And guess what? It worked. And now they're starting to pass some of those. things that we have been asking for, the rules reforms, the putting the committee votes on record, and some of these things that none of this other pressure really worked for. And I also am seeing, you know, Mamdani, who is, you know, he's endorsing people that are going to be—

Jonathan Cohn

00:24:44 - 00:24:45

Mm-hmm.

Anna Callahan

00:24:45 - 00:25:18

They're not going to go with the flow. He's endorsing against incumbents. So I think people on the left, we are beginning to not just hope that the establishment will do what we want if we just keep asking nicely. And we are learning to use our power as the voters and the people. And that to me is incredibly exciting. So I'm looking forward to it. And I'm looking forward to being in touch with all of you. Of course, you two who are wonderful, as well as all of our listeners. Looking forward to chatting with you all next week.