A local Massachusetts town board is stepping up for Bay Staters who approved the audit of the state Legislature, demanding House Speaker Ron Mariano and Senate President Karen Spilka open their books.<\/p>\n
The Reading Select Board has voted to send a letter to the top Beacon Hill lawmakers, expressing its \u201cstrong support\u201d for the will of the voters to be respected and the legislative audit to be conducted, over 15 months after approval.<\/p>\n
In November 2024, Reading voters overwhelmingly approved Question 1, with 66% of the 16,650 ballots cast, or 10,987 residents, in favor of the audit. That closely matched the 72% of Bay Staters who signed off on the measure.<\/p>\n
Select Board Vice Chairwoman Melissa Murphy, who requested her colleagues to approve sending the letter to Mariano and Spilka, said in a Facebook post Monday that she hopes other local boards and councils across the Bay State join Reading in \u201curging the Legislature to honor the will of the voters.\u201d<\/p>\n
Murphy added that she finds it interesting that the Massachusetts Legislature is one of only four states that don\u2019t follow public records law.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t do a (public records request) on a legislator, but they can do one on us,\u201d she told colleagues at a meeting last week. \u201cWe don\u2019t see their financials ever; they do their own private audit. It is clear that not only did Reading residents support this audit, but the residents of Massachusetts did.\u201d<\/p>\n
This comes as the fight over the audit remains red-hot on Beacon Hill.<\/p>\n
Auditor Diana DiZoglio and Attorney General Andrea Campbell have been locked in a legal tug-of-war since voters approved the audit.<\/p>\n
Siding with legislative leadership, Campbell has claimed that DiZoglio has not answered basic questions on the scope of the legislative audit. The AG argues that the auditor\u2019s review may also violate the state Constitution.<\/p>\n
The state Supreme Judicial Court earlier this month denied DiZoglio\u2019s request for a special assistant attorney general to represent her in court \u2013 another setback in her legal battle to carry out the Legislative audit.<\/p>\n
Campbell is representing Spilka and Mariano in the case.<\/p>\n
The state Senate Republican Caucus has also called on Spilka to formally request the SJC to issue an advisory opinion \u201cto effectively resolve any remaining issues\u201d regarding the voter-approved Legislative audit.<\/p>\n
Spilka and Mariano did not immediately respond to the Herald\u2019s requests for comment on Tuesday about the missive from Reading.<\/p>\n
\u201cReading officials understand that taxpayers deserve access to the government they pay for,\u201d DiZoglio said in a statement shared with the Herald. \u201cI commend them for stepping up to call out the outlandish lawbreaking by our Legislative leaders.\u201d<\/p>\n
Voicing his frustration over the lack of audit enforcement, Reading Select Board Chairman Christopher Haley highlighted how residents last year approved projects to build a new elementary school and a center for active living for residents 60 and older.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the five of us decided, \u2018You know what? We\u2019re not going to do it,\u2019 that\u2019s what\u2019s happening with the audit,\u201d Haley said last week. \u201cThe state approved something, and people are just making their own decisions, determinations, interpretations of how things should work.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is just unbelievable that the will of the voters isn\u2019t being endorsed on this,\u201d he added. \u201cIt\u2019s unacceptable. If any of us did that up here, we\u2019d get called out.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A local Massachusetts town board is stepping up for Bay Staters who approved the audit of the state…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":225037,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[97753,128,130,129,97754],"class_list":["post-225036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-massachusetts-karen-spilka-attorney-general-andrea-campbell-state-auditor-diana-dizoglio-supreme-judicial-court-politics-republicans","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-reading-select-board"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225036\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/225037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}