001[Music] hi and welcome to another edition of all politics is local on this episode of all politics is local we're going to be talking about question one which is on the ballot the state AUD Auditors authority to audit the legislature a yes vote would specify that the state auditor has the audit has the authority to audit the legislator a no vote would make no change to the law relative to the state auditor Authority in other words to look at what the house and the Senate are doing up on Beacon Hill and audit those we brought on the program tonight a former State Rep and I've been working with the state auditor's office on this question for quite some time Lenny mea Lenny welcome to all politics local thanks for joining us John thanks for having
002me on pleasure to be here it's an honor to have so let let's tell the audience a little bit of your background a little bit I mean you were a former State Rep uh we're a state rep for quite some time tell us a little bit about your background and then more importantly how you got involved with question one yeah so I was a state rep for 10 years representing the second Essex district and I came into the legislature ran for the first time in 2012 and that just happened to be the same time that Diana ran the state rep for the first time as well she was a State Rep from methan and we both represented part of haal for a number of years so we've worked on issues before and we think very
003much alike uh we're very good friends um I got her on speed dial she's got my number too and so when she was embarking on this you know one of the things we always agreed on was the very desperate need of more openness and transparency on Beacon Hill something that's severely lacking it's it's actually quite an embarrassment that we have one of the least transparent states in the entire country and we think that leads to a very bad place it leads to a lot of waste and Corruption and so this is just one small step that we can take to address that and so when she wanted to uh audit the legislature uh she had asked her permission and they weren't about to give it so she took this rout of putting it on the
004ballot and that of course required uh two separate instances of collecting signatures to get it on the ballot and it took quite a bit of work uh because a lot of the signatures that we gathered were discarded for whatever reason a stray Mark or a fold on a ballot sheet so we had to collect over and above the number necessary to get on the ballot we did that twice uh and we were successful and it is now on the bout it will be question one and uh we're feeling very good about it let's back up a little bit because um as you know you and I were talking before the camera started rolling here today you know I was a selectman uh been in local government for quite some time in state government for some
005time like you said you were a State Rep when I was the chairman of the board of Selectmen uh you know I had foyer requests done on me all the time I had public records requests done on me all the time and I never sh shied away from it yeah I mean there were a couple times when I had to call the local newspaper and go I didn't say what you have you know in quotes around me but that's a little bit different than even like the public records request but when you were in the legislature those same laws that applied to me as a local official didn't apply to you as a State Rep or a state senator and I think 95% of the public goes really I we would just assume that they
006the laws would be the same but they're not right that's exactly right we've Exempted our well the legislature Exempted itself from open meeting laws and so they don't have to discuss anything in the uh in the open they the public will never know how they debated any kind of Bill we're Chef John our legislation doesn't even know let the public know how our members vote in committees so we submitt a lot of bills every year we submit over 6,000 bills and um if you submit them by a certain dat they supposedly get a hearing quote unquote a hearing but the public will never know what was said about those bills they'll never know how the members voted on those bills nor will they see any of the testimony given on those bills even with a
007foe request and I can't think of another state in the entire country that does this it is just outrageous people should know not only how the rest of the um not they're all state repid state senator but they should know how all the State Rep and state senators voted on a bill in committee and they can't even find that out now to clarify will question one change any of this let's let's say you're successful with question one and it gives the state auditor the audit will that will any of that change or will this just give the auditor to publicly disclose you know audit findings yeah that's a great question but if you look up the role of the auditor um you will see that it has an official um explanation and description of the
008job it's to conduct audits investigations and studies to promote accountability and transparency improve performance and make government work better and you know it's it's going to lead to something that um a dirty little secret it's not a secret anymore uh the Boston Globe is done a good job reporting on all the additional titles and positions created by leadership in both the House and Senate and to put it bluntly John like the house Speaker created a whole bunch of phony baloney titles and positions that come with gigantic raises in tens of thousands of dollars and of course to get one of these positions all you have to do is do whatever the speaker tells you to do and that's what leads to our current situation uh with an embarrassing lack of transparency so to to become
009a committee chair you just do whatever the speaker says and you'll get a gigantic raise and like the globe reported a lot of these committees aren't even meeting like they haven't met once the entire session um we we Consolidated power on Beacon Hill so that a tiny number of individuals maybe three four five people and the whole building decide every bill that gets passed or doesn't get passed and and the public never hears discussion on that and their State Rep State Centers have virtually no say and um they've been bought they've been bought and paid for and it's shameful um and it's our hope that an audit will expose this like who is getting these positions how much are they getting paid and and what is being traded in exchanged for that because it's not
010supposed to work this way that's not democracy when we have 160 State reps and 40 Senators okay so 200 legislators legislators and all the decisions are made by like three or for them it's not supposed to be that way not to oversimplify it and please correct me if I I misspeak here uh essentially a state rep's job everybody's tax dollars flows to Beacon Hill a state ref's job is to make sure that your proportionate money flows back to your district is is am I over that's one of the many jobs you have yeah absolutely and if there's no transparency how can you look your constituents in the eye and go well yeah you're getting you know western Mass is getting you know the same as you know uh North sure prove it to me you
011can't prove it you know so I mean will that will the this allow for more transparency about where the money's going as well yeah I think it will so keep in mind that the House and Senate get their own budgets it's in the millions of dollars and so speaks to spend his budget the way he wants and Senate President Karen SP gets to spend her money the way she wants to and it's in the millions of dollars and we don't really know how and where it's getting spent I mean I think we do an outside audit that gives just broad perimeters in dollar amounts but it doesn't really tell the whole story you know I think one of the things they're afraid of is it might show something embarrassing like they spent a million dollars
012fixing a bathroom in the Senate chambers or something ridiculous like that but they should still make that public and just get it out there and just press up to it but the the real secret is how much is being spent um on these extra committee assignments these extra titles and are they needed um the public has a right to know that and it's it's something that is shielded it's it's hidden from View and even people in the media aren't able to find that information uh the globe has started to report on it they're doing a fairly good job um but I don't think it tells the whole story you know it's a nonpartisan rant uh but I'm also a housing commissioner I'm a governor appointee to my local housing authority and we get audited every
013year and I look that's right I look forward to it and I appreciate it you know I've literally had Auditors tell me did you really need that box of pins did you really need did you really need to you know buy that doormat yeah we did you know I mean yeah we bought a box of pins in a doormat and like you're giving me a hard time about it like you know and we won't buy it next year because you know but so it's good that the transparency is there but then we're hearing millions of dollars in the house in the Senate are not are not being audited uh I I think this is going to be great so what are you hearing on the ground when you go I know Diane is I thought
014it you know my words and I mean it complimentary I thought it was wonderful how she's doing this walking tour right now uh I think the videos were great uh I think they were very effective and she's literally walking across the state trying to get this thing past let's talk a little bit about what you're hearing on the ground yeah she is walking from west to east across the entire commwell and you'll see pictures and videos yeah literally walking and you'll see pictures and videos posted on social media on Facebook here's the thing what you mentioned she is posing with everybody a lot of Democratic town committee people are meeting with her um the Republican Party the mass go came out and helped her collect signatures for this um this is a nonpartisan issue it
015should not be partisan here's the other thing John not only should it not be partisan it should not be controversial this is something the legislators should just agree to and they could and in fact they used to agree to audits on a regular basis so she to a Committee hearing um that the legisl put on for all the questions and of course they questioned her about this and said you know why do you need to do this we never did before and she was ready she knew they were going to go down this path and she had a cart full of books full of previous audits we used to audit all the time you know 100 years ago we were doing audit so what happened within the last 100 years that makes this current CR
016legislators think that they don't have to be audited if anything this problem more than any before them needs to be audited um I think they used to be subject to open meeting laws uh and for your requests and now they're not so now more than ever they should just simply agree to the audit and they are not and it's absolutely shameful we shouldn't have to go through this process but we are and we think it's going to PEX we find that it's popular with everyone the only people we're finding that are not in favor of this um are uh the Democrats in the House and Senate they're the only ones uh the the Republicans I talk to in office seem to have no problem with this offit with this audit uh Ju Just you know
017for the viewing audience so they understand it will this apply to the governor office as well I think the governor's office already gets audited so does the Attorney General's office so does our Judiciary so this argument that it's Crossing you know the lines of of the different branches of government I think is a fallacious argument she audits every entity like you said every housing authority every Transportation agency and if she can audit the Attorney General's office and if she can audit the Judiciary then she ought to be able to audit the legislature I mean b basically the Senate holds the checkbook in the Commonwealth right the House and Senate control the pocketbook the CSE strings correct so and if you don't want to a I mean if you don't audit your own checkbook how do
018you even know what you're spending money on that's exactly right and I just it's checks I think everybody just wants to know hey you know how much money do we have this month you know I don't think that you're going to find this but let's just say you find out you have more money and you can you know give it to you know law enforcement you can give it to schools and stuff like that or more importantly to find out where the boat is laking because I want to talk a little bit about this because the boat is leaking in Massachusetts you see you know uh revenue is down especially in Boston state revenue has been down what 10 out of the last 11 months I think the revenue has been down it's fair to
019say costs have been up because of the migrant crisis uh and uh so I think the timing is great on this bill uh to come in and audit the legislature but let's let's just talk a little bit about you know the the health of the Commonwealth I mean what are your concerns as a as a former legislature where where's your head at on that I think is great when we have a growing economy and revenue was coming in above expectations and for most of um the eight years on Charlie Baker that's what we had revenues came in higher than expectations and so we did something very smart we put a lot of it in our rainy day fund okay I think we have a record amount like five billion dollars in that rainy day fund
020which is great because it helps our bond rating which lowers our borrowing costs uh it's a good thing all around but then you know the economy doesn't grow every year John you and I have been around logging up to know that it's always expansion and contraction we're going to have it a recession at some point and so revenues will come in below expectations so what are we going to do when that happens like you said we have a migrant crisis uh in the state that is costing us billions of dollars and here's the scary part I don't think there's a single person anywhere in the state that knows what we're spending on migrants or on immigration both legal and illegal I don't think anyone is keeping tabs on all that because this will cost uh
021for every aspect of it we just had to come up with another billion dollars for emergency housing for them but that doesn't include the food the clothing the health care doesn't include what we spend on having their kids in our schools because we have something called English English language Learners elll that requires us to teach in their language so now we have to hire additional teachers to teach in their language so what is that costing us and better yet what's the long-term plan we're coming up with emergency funding to fund the costs right now but what about next year or the year after that and what happens in a recession if if revenues come in below expectation and we still have this migrant crisis and then in the background of all of it is of
022course the housing crisis where we don't even have enough housing for our current residents so it adds up to a very bad place well it's going to drive up the price of housing because it's supply and demand supply and demand always drives up the you know cost of housing so you know kids coming out of college getting into the workforce you know want to get out of mom and dad's house how they can't there's no Supply two that Supply just went up6 s $800 a month and you're you're fighting against you know other people for that apartment um so you're driving up the price of Housing and like I said I have a lot of experience as a housing commissioner and I get so frustrated every good politician will run an ad and say we
023need more affordable housing and I'm right there with him we do need more affordable housing but what is definition of what is Affordable housing number one and number two where are you going to build it and you know the most and you know this from being in a legislator the most powerful force in all of politics is nism not in my backyard where in Massachusetts that is predominantly built out for the most part are you going to build these millions of homes that you need to solve this migrant crisis and even the regular housing crisis for normal people and we haven't even touched on low-income senior citizens or homeless veterans yet so I mean uh it's Madness it's the math doesn't work uh you know uh so how's it going to work and how much
024billions of dollars are going to have to be spent to make it work billions of dollars gonna have to be spent no matter what but you actually touched upon something else that um got exposed um through this process of of you know a lack of transparency I'm I'm talking about 3A or MBTA housing something that is immensely unpopular here in eastern Mass where just about every city in town now has this mandate to create more housing so the state is forcing cities and towns to set aside a certain number of acres for multif family housing and the way that it came down is absolutely shameful we never should have passed that bill um but here's what happened a bunch a tiny number of people were working on this housing aspect with the bill and um
025they snuck this 3A rule into a broader Economic Development package a back a bill that was over a thousand pages long and then they dump on the legisl said okay we're voting on this tomorrow well no one read a thousand Pages overnight nobody did and it didn't matter anyways because you know 90% of the legislature is Democrat and like I said just about every one of them is bought and paid for by leadership they just do whatever the speaker and the Senate President tell them so this got push through without any real debate and the public never got a chance to look at it or hear about it the legl I don't remember anything about um this NBTA zoning in that bill but it the way it read is that even the small towns where
026I live at okay I live in Georgetown I had Groveland West Newbery Bost little towns that are nowhere near an NBTA station we don't have a we don't even have a bus stop here but somehow we're in MBTA town and so this mandate got that's got slapped on us and the residents justifiably are spitting mad over it and you know part of it is nimia like you mentioned John but a part of it is we had no say in this and now we have no control over this and this is what happens in a secretive legis that does not do its job appropriately by not having public hearings and debates on important bills like MBTA housing and now we're saddled with this thing and here's the the worst part I don't think it's really going
027to work I don't think it's really going to see a lot of housing built they're saying you their their number is 200,000 I'd be surprised if they got even half that amount through MBTA hous because of the way it's being implemented and cities and towns don't want it uh and in fact today I heard Milford I think or Milton ended up in the courts for the SJC just this morning I don't know what happened but they're fighting it tooth and nail as are a lot of cities and towns but it just points to another reason why we need much more transparency and openness in our legislation because things like this will keep happening John if we don't do something about it you know this is a snowballs effect like you said nobody in the legislature
028read a thousand page bill either no way find me a town counselor or a select board member that's read thousand pages of that and has explain to them or and no disrespect to any counselor or select board member or any Town counsil find me a town C what town is going to pay your Town Council sit down and read that thousand page document and come back and dumb it down for the rest of our board and explain it to them oh by the way here's the bill you know that's gonna be even on a retainer that that it's going to cost a city or town a lot of money so nobody really understands what's in it and like you said it's probably not going to work I applaud the effort to build more housing but
029I don't think this Avenue is going to work that's why transparency in government is so important and that's why you know one is so important exactly right let's talk about it I I'm confident that question one is going to pass because I think both you know like nonpartisan people want transparency you know yeah uh I think people appreciate transparency uh I think people appreciate accountability hopefully this will bring it so what happens on November 5th this gets voted in unanimously in or you know you win you know 8020 I think is what you're going to get what's the process after that yeah that's a really good question so the question is what happens next session when the new legislature gets sworn in in January so will these new state reps and state senators vote to
030support the will of the voters or are they going to side with their party's leadership and that is the big question because this has happened before uh we had allocations on tax cuts on capital punishment on campaign Finance reform and voters you know voted emphatically on those ballot questions uh thinking that okay this will be the new law only to learn in a few months that the new legislator just decided no we're not we're just going to do what we want and we're not going to honor the will of the voters and that is just criminal it is catastrophic and it shouldn't happen but you know that was years ago uh we talked earlier about that tax cut we in back in the year 2000 we voted to lower the tax rate to 5% we
031got there but it took 20 years to get there um but that was a different time uh now with with social media uh and the way news travels fast on the internet I'm hoping that the public will be more aware of what the legislature is doing and that they you know hold them accountable and and tell their state reps and State Centers no we want this we want the legislature to get audited and we expect you to vote in support of our wishes and um and if there's State Rep state senator does not do that I hope they're held accountable um which by the way would be a help keep in mind uh um most of our seats go uncontested we actually have one of the least competitive elections in America which is another thing
032that you know it's not to be proud of and uh maybe this helps change that so so the legislature could just ignore the will of the people let's hope that it doesn't happen but they could ignore the will of the people what then it is the recourse for the people can this go to court does this get uh mitigated in court or is it just you're going to have to vote out the people who don't want the transparency that's a great question um and if and if I had to bet if I had to whip out my crystal ball I'm predicting that it's probably GNA go to court no matter what because I the legisl might try to challenge it in court first to give them an out to not follow it um I hope
033it doesn't go that way I mean like I said what what should happen John is the Senate President and the house speakers should just say okay the people have spoken we should do what the people have asked us to do just get audited that's what should happen um but like I said history shows that um Beacon Hill doesn't work that way so it's a very good question and you know what your guess is as good as mine as to what will happen next session interesting uh you know the auditor was a former State Rep and state senator and now she works she still works up at the State House you know in the at Beacon Hill in the office you know I mean like anything you hear chatter inside the hallways uh what you know
034is she getting the cold shoulder from her former colleagues or is she you know quietly getting hey you know good job you're you're doing a real great job with this I mean what what's the reaction to be I mean because I've been on both sides of an argument before you know like they say if you want a friending politics get a dog because your your best friend today might be your work tomorrow so what what's what's the feedback up on Beacon Hill I mean other than you know the power Brokers you know of course yeah that's a great question so I'm not in the building much anymore I I went to tell find a couple of bills that I had for them that was about it um talk to as many legislators as I can
035I write a newsletter called the mirror memo where I talk to them as well and write about it um I think right now the ranking file are kind of just taking a hands-off approach okay we're only hearing from speaker Mariano and president Stila uh we're not really hearing from the rank and file so much so I've been writing a newsletter about races and I only asked two questions and it's about question one do you support the Otter's attempts to a leg and and number two do you support the safe communities act which would make Massachusetts a sanctuary State those are the only two questions I asked and so every single Republican I've talked to said no I don't support either one of those uh but the Democrats are just not answering the question so it's
036a you bring up a good point joh what are they going to do next session if they're still in office are they going to support the will of the voters or are they going to support their party's leadership uh I'm not hearing anything from the rank and file on the the Democrat side so Lenny we never have enough time here on all Politics as local but I want I want to run down a couple things real quick before we let you go we're we you're here to talk about question one and we really appreciate the Insight that you brought tonight question one the state auditor authority to audit the legislature question two on the ballot and like I said all politics is local these things are more important than you know what's going to happen
037between Trump and Harris you know Trump and Harris probably AR going to affect Lenny's life and John life all that much I mean they can but on a on a local level you can be affected a lot more and this is a big one elimination question too elimination of mcast is a high school graduation requirement uh that's probably going to be a contentious one on the at the polls yeah it is mcast or keep the mcast so and it's a complicated one too because um when I served a lot of a lot of Educators wanted to do something about we spent a lot of time and effort on M and on testing in general um you know we have SATs lsats we have entrance exams to colleges and so it's a lot of time and
038money on testing and it's a lot of stress on students and so when I first started to hear about this mcast question I was thinking all right maybe we can alleviate some of the expense in time question two wouldn't do that we would still have mcash John the only thing question two would do is take away the graduation requirement from it and a lot of people are against it because they think that a a high school diploma at that point will be meaningless it'll be worthless because it doesn't really show anything and so you know it took a long time to get mcast passed was passed a long time ago it took a lot of effort to get there but I think once we passed it it improved the schools in Massachusetts and in fact
039I would go out on a limb here and say that Massachusetts you know we we criticize our state for a lot of things but we get education right and I dare say we have the best public educational system in America today I went to Public Schools graduate from W High School I sent my two sons to public high school we moved to this area because I wanted to go to Pentucket High School where they got a great education um and because of mcast I think we you know we have what is probably the best educational system in America today so taking away the requirement I don't think is a good thing and um I'm kind of siding on a no vote I think we should keep the uh requirement only because we're running out of
040time the elections on Tuesday November 25th 2024 you can do early voting now you can also you know vote by mail if you've already probably received your ballots Lenny give a 30 second recap of question one and why people should uh pay attention to it yeah you know like I I written before any government entity that claims it should not be audited should absolutely be audited uh for too long we've had this embarrassing reputation as the least transparent state government in America um that's not something to be proud of it's something that leads to a very bad place uh so I hope the voters get out there on November 5th and vote how you want up and down the ballot you're going to vote for a president you're going to vote for a US senator
041please vote Yes on question one uh it's for the betterment of the entire commonweal it is a nonpartisan issue it should not even be a controversial issue I hope it passes by a wide margin we say it here all the time on all politics is local if you don't vote you lose your right to complain it's an important for many different reasons here so get out and vote Tuesday November 5th 2024 you've been watching all politics is local and we'll talk again real soon [Music]