Let Diana DiZoglio audit the Legislature’s books, within limits

There’s likely more the public can and should know about how lawmakers spend tax dollars on their own operations — including staffing levels or whether those legislative per diems are too high.

S tate Auditor Diana DiZoglio is certainly on target when she says, as she did Wednesday, that people want to know “their officials are not playing games with their taxpayer dollars.”

That should be part of her mandate — and that mandate certainly should include the Legislature, whose leaders continue to insist that they are exempt from the auditor’s investigatory reach. Now DiZoglio, stymied by legislative leaders, has taken her fight to Attorney General Andrea Campbell, urging the AG “to support our effort … to increase transparency, accountability, and equity throughout state government, including the Legislature.”

“Folks are fed up; they’re tired. They want access,” DiZoglio said at a news conference to announce her formal request to the AG. “They want to know that they can trust their elected officials, and it’s nearly impossible to be able to trust elected officials with the tax dollars that you’re giving to the government if those elected officials will not give access to basic information about how those tax dollars are being spent.”

DiZoglio’s aim of shedding light on how taxpayers’ dollars are spent is entirely worthy. But it ought not to be allowed to run afoul of such clear legislative prerogatives as how the House speaker and Senate president select their committee chairs or conduct closeddoor party caucuses.

DiZoglio clearly hopes the AG will help fight her battle in court, should it come to that. But there are ways short of a court fight in which the attorney general’s office could use its legal expertise to help the auditor sort through this political thicket without inviting a constitutional battle.

In her letters to legislative leaders, DiZoglio has said her performance audit would include, in addition to hiring policies, “spending and procurement information, information regarding active and pending legislation, the process for appointing committees, the adoption and suspension of legislative rules, and the policies and procedures of the Legislature.”

So it’s no wonder that, as DiZoglio put it, her office has been “stonewalled.”

In a lawyerly 27-page letter to Campbell, DiZoglio has stated her case, including historical precedent for allowing the auditor’s office to audit the House and Senate, some of it dating to 1850 but one instance as current as 2006, all presumably without running afoul of the separation of powers clause.

In an equally lawyerly letter, House counsel James C. Kennedy argues otherwise, noting that DiZoglio’s expansive notion of a performance audit “is indeed the kind of ‘interference by one department with the power of another department’ that the [state] Supreme Judicial Court has held” the separation of powers clause “‘scrupulously’ protects against.”

Campbell’s office has promised, “Consistent with our statutory role and responsibility, we will review and respond in due course.”

It would, of course, be helpful to have some legal clarity on the issue more current than a 1931 opinion by then-Attorney General Joseph E. Warner or even the 1994 opinion letter written by then-Assistant Attorney General Peter Sacks. Now a well-regarded Appeals Court judge, Sacks ultimately suggested a legislative remedy to specifically give the auditor authority to audit the Legislature.

House Speaker Ron Mariano and Senate President Karen Spilka have insisted that the Legislature’s annual expenditures of some $80 million are all matters of public record, privately audited and available on the state comptroller’s website. Well, yes — and no. Salaries indeed are listed on the CThru website along with every bill paid by the state treasury for the House, Senate, and joint committees. That includes the three bills submitted this month by the auditing firm of Ernst & Young ($21,515, $27,070, and $21,005), along with a $1,593 bill for goodies for the Senate from Baker’s Best and at least three credit card bills, including one for $4,123 charged to “Joint Legislative operations.”

But there’s likely more the public can and should know about how lawmakers spend tax dollars on their own operations — including staffing levels or whether those legislative per diems are too high. And that would be truly worthy of DiZoglio’s attention. She would be well advised to clarify exactly what it is she needs access to.

It shouldn’t have to take a “we’ll see you in court” moment to do that. In fact, a well-crafted memorandum from the attorney general that provides an onramp to increase the transparency of legislative spending and an off-ramp to DiZoglio’s ill-advised expansionist aims would be incredibly useful.

It could also turn this political hot potato Campbell has been handed into a useful teaching moment for the auditor and legislative leaders alike.