Time to end legislature’s covert ops

It’s a lesson in gluttony. Even with their pockets newly engorged by a spate of pay raises in the past few years, lawmakers stuff themselves with trays of General Gau’s chicken, rice, noodles and other delicious dishes, and stick the taxpayer with the bill.

As the Herald’s Joe Dwinell reported, House Speaker Robert DeLeo spent $4,745 in taxpayer money lavishing his fellow lawmakers with a Chinese takeout spread as they slogged though this year’s long and drawn-out budget process. Maybe a food coma was to blame for the delay.

“We delivered it all to the State House along with a whole bunch of appetizers,” a Hong Kong Dragon worker told the Herald Tuesday about the April 22 special delivery.

Sticking the taxpayer with almost five thousand dollars worth of grub from his hometown eatery is arrogant and disrespectful but there is a darker aspect to all this. The taxpayers — on whose behalf the legislators purportedly work — were never meant to find out about the mega meal to which they’d treated lawmakers.

House Speaker Bob DeLeo and the entire legislature are exempt from the state’s public records laws. That means they can operate in darkness with no accountability. Good for the Hong Kong Dragon, bad for you.

That food drop was just part of $49,622 racked up on the House chamber’s taxpayer-paid credit card, or “P-card,” last fiscal year.

P-cards are handled by the state comptroller and so in this particular case the Herald was able to procure summary records through a public records request. The process shines a tiny bit of sunlight on the secretive activities undertaken by legislators.

It goes far beyond fortune cookies.

DeLeo has refused to divulge how much has been paid out by the House in nondisclosure agreements in sexual harassment cases. Again and again the House budget process is done in secret. This year, deliberations took place under wraps in Room 348 in the State House. Government watchdog groups called the process a “charade,” a “joke” and a “scam.”

Even when legislators pay lip service to transparency and accountability, for example recently, while working on a bill designed to boost local journalism, they insist on the need for secrecy for themselves. State Sen. Brendan Crighton (D-Lynn) told the Herald that “it’s critical to a healthy democracy to have all the information possible to hold us accountable,” in explaining the rationale behind his latest legislative initiative.

But when asked if the Legislature’s exemption to the state’s public records laws should also be abolished to boost transparency, Crighton said firmly, “No.”

“There’s times when members need to communicate with each other in private,” Crighton said.

When pressed on the covert nature of the people’s business on Beacon Hill, DeLeo reflexively points to the various audits, panels and studies that are conducted whenever the people raise enough of a fuss.

This is not acceptable and everybody knows it.

There must be no exemption for state legislators. They must comply with the law like everybody else. No more operating in secrecy and laundering accountability through panels and studies and bland statements.

The legislative body demands transparency from all within their purview while exempting themselves from the same standard. It is the height of hypocrisy.

We must demand compliance now. Or vote them out.