Mass. committee hears dueling views on ballot measure to extend public-records law to legislature and governor

The Special Joint Committee on Initiative Petitions on March 3 heard competing testimony on initiative petition H5004, which would make the records of the Massachusetts General Court and the governor's office subject to the state's public-records law while creating several carve-outs for deliberative materials and constituent communications.

State Auditor DeZoglio, who led the proponent panel and said her office has struggled to obtain receipts and procurement documents, told lawmakers the measure targets "administrative and business records" such as contracts, invoices and budget documents. The auditor said there are examples she has been unable to obtain through existing channels, and cited what she described as about $1.95 million in Senate spending on management consultants over the past two and a half years as the kind of expenditure the public should be able to verify. "Knowledge is power," she said in testimony arguing for parity between the legislature and municipal governments on records access.

Proponents Jesse Littlewood, campaign manager for the Coalition for Healthy Democracy, and Scotia Hilla, executive director of Act On Mass, framed the proposal as narrow and routine: Littlewood said the initiative would simply "apply the same public records law that governs every city and town in Massachusetts to the state legislature and the office of the governor," while Hilla noted national rankings that place Massachusetts among the least transparent states and said the change would give journalists and residents better tools to hold officials to account.

Experts called to explain the legal landscape offered caution. William Clark of the National Conference of State Legislatures described wide variation across states in how legislative records are treated, reviewed common exemptions (drafts, internal memoranda, personnel records) and summarized court decisions that sometimes exempt legislatures and sometimes require disclosure depending on statutory language and constitutional provisions. Rebecca Murray, general counsel and director of the Division of Public Records in the Secretary of the Commonwealth's office, told the committee that state agencies reported 22,572 public-records requests in 2017 and 47,776 in 2025, and said appeals and RAO petitions have risen sharply; she warned that expanding the law's coverage could increase workload and resource needs for agencies and the supervisor of records.

Lawmakers focused on two fault lines: (1) scope and privacy — which records would be covered and how constituent privacy and deliberative processes would be protected — and (2) constitutional authority — whether a statutory ballot initiative can lawfully regulate the internal practices or oversight of the legislature or whether the change would require a constitutional amendment. Several committee members asked proponents to point to specific lines in the draft text that exempt constituent services or interactions with nonprofits; proponents said the draft includes exemptions but acknowledged that statutory language and future judicial interpretation will determine the boundaries.

Opponents emphasized separation-of-powers risks. Professor Gerald Duquette, a political scientist and co-founder of the Massachusetts Law and Politics Project, testified that the initiative repeats constitutional defects he says were present in an earlier legislative-audit petition and argued that vesting enforcement or coercive authority over the legislature in executive-branch officers would be legally problematic without a constitutional amendment. "A constitutional amendment is the only legally appropriate mechanism to seek such a change," Duquette said.

Committee members also asked about campaign funding and the ballot campaign's use of paid signature gatherers; proponents and the auditor confirmed both voluntary and paid signature gathering were used and that campaign contributions supported signature drives.

The committee did not vote; Chair Cindy Freeman closed the hearing by inviting written testimony through Friday, March 6 at 5 p.m. before the committee deliberates further. The initiative faces a statutory path to the ballot if the legislature does not act by the constitutional deadline and proponents would need to collect an additional 12,429 valid signatures for placement on the 2026 ballot if the body declines to enact the measure.

Sources: Testimony to the Special Joint Committee on Initiative Petitions on March 3, 2026; data provided in testimony by the Office of the Secretary of the Commonwealth; presentations by the National Conference of State Legislatures.