The Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance joined State Auditor Diana DiZoglio on her “Walk for Sunshine” in Framingham today as MassFiscal announced it will be ramping up its support for Yes on Question 1, which seeks to codify state laws to allow the State Auditor to conduct audits of the legislature.

MassFiscal plans on launching a campaign to educate voters on the importance of voting this November in support of Yes on 1, to bring more transparency and accountability to the State House.

“Increased government transparency has long been a core goal of MassFiscal and this question would go a long way towards helping Beacon Hill get better on that issue. As it stands now, Massachusetts is the least transparent state in the country, as it remains the only state in the country where all three branches of our state government—the executive, the legislative, and the judicial—exempt themselves from open records laws and that’s an attitude that shows in almost everything they do. It’s time to let the state auditor shine some light on the State House,” said Paul Diego Craney, spokesman for the Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance.

“We’ve been supportive of the Auditor’s efforts to audit the legislature since she first took office and have publicly stated since the beginning that we already feel her office has the right to do this. Since she launched the ballot campaign to codify this power and remove all doubt about her authority to audit the legislature, we’ve helped out wherever we could, particularly in the signature gathering portion of the effort. Now is time to bring this effort home and we intend to ensure that voters, some of whom may feel their vote doesn’t count in Massachusetts, are aware and informed about the issue and its importance, and get out to vote it through,” noted Craney.

“After this ballot question passes, MassFiscal will continue to hold State House politicians accountable. Our work bringing transparency and accountability to the State House is never finished. Only in Massachusetts are the legislature and Governor both exempt from the state’s public record and open meeting laws. Massachusetts is always the last state to pass its annual budget, even though the legislature is required to meet certain deadlines which they proudly ignore. As a candidate for Governor, Maura Healey promised to be an administration that ushers in more transparency but as the Governor, she has actually made things worse as she jet-sets across the world without telling the public where she’s going and restricting access to records. Even with this ballot question before the voters, Speaker Ron Mariano and Senate President Karen Spilka are flaunting the idea that they will pass very controversial bills into law during the lame-duck, informal legislative session. It's clear our State House leaders are using a broken system to their advantage at the expense of the taxpayers and good government watchdog organizations like MassFiscal must hold them accountable through whatever tools are available and this ballot question does just that,” concluded Craney.