Watchdogs: Bay State gets F in transparency
Fails to keep public records open
Massachusetts earns poor grades when it comes to government transparency with watchdogs knocking the state for keeping the public in the dark about the actions and finances of the governor, Legislature and judiciary.
“There’s no way that you can say that Massachusetts is a good place when it comes to government transparency,” said Noel Isama of the Sunlight Foundation, a national protransparency organization. “You don’t want to be the state that’s known for being this opaque.”
Isama added: “When you create an environment of secrecy, that creates mistrust.”
Massachusetts is one of only four states in the country to give the Legislature a blanket exemption on records requests. Gov. Charlie Baker is the latest in a series of Bay State governors to interpret state law as also giving his office the right to deny all the records requests.
“We are the only state in the country where the governor and Legislature are fully exempt from these laws, so that’s a concern,” said Bob Ambrogi, a lawyer who runs the Massachusetts Newspaper Publishers Association. “We have one of the most secretive public-records and openmeeting regimes in the country.”
Ambrogi said the Open Meeting Law suffers from a “lack of teeth” that lets officials get away with flouting it. That plus the gaps in the Open Records Law breed mistrust, he said.
“Public officials are supposed to be accountable to the public,” Ambrogi said.
The Legislature in 2016 passed a law that made what advocates say are positive changes to the open meeting and public records laws. It also created the Special Legislative Commission on Public Records — which fizzled out with the legislative session in December without making any substantive policy recommendations.
“That was a missed opportunity to take a serious look at some of these issues,” said Pam Wilmot of the Massachusetts advocacy group Common Cause. “Transparency is really how we hold our government accountable, and it’s really most important to know how our money is being spent, and how the government laws are applied to individuals.”
The state continues to be panned for lack of access to records. The Center for Public Integrity’s latest state-by-state scorecard gives the Bay State an F grade for access to public information. That grade was handed out in 2015, but the core issues remain the same.
Isama, the Sunlight Foundation senior researcher, said, “It’s way below what most states have.”