The ongoing battle between state Auditor Diana DiZoglio and her fellow Democrats on Beacon Hill reached a new level Tuesday as DiZoglio filed a lawsuit with the state’s highest court.
The lawsuit, which names House Speaker Ron Mariano, Senate President Karen Spilka and the clerks of the House and Senate as defendants, seeks to enforce a 2024 voter-passed law granting DiZoglio the power to audit the Massachusetts Legislature.
Fifteen months after that vote, DiZoglio says she’s still being stonewalled. Legislative leaders have maintained the audit would violate the state constitution’s separation of powers among branches of government.
State Attorney General Andrea Campbell has declined to represent DiZoglio in taking the matter to court, saying she hasn’t been provided with the necessary information.
“This is not just about an audit anymore,” DiZoglio told reporters Tuesday. “This behavior is permeating state government and it is causing people to lose trust and faith in their state government, in their leaders, in their courts, in their lawmakers, across the board.”
DiZoglio’s complaint was filed with the Supreme Judicial Court by her office’s general counsel, Michael Leung-Tat.
It asks the court to allow the auditor to bring on an outside lawyer to represent her office as a special assistant attorney general, and for an order requiring the House and Senate to turn over the documents DiZoglio has requested.
“I think a court needs to step in at this point so that justice can proceed,” Leung-Tat said.
Mariano declined to comment on the lawsuit. In 2023, before the ballot law passed, he said DiZoglio’s intended review was “wholly unnecessary as the public currently has full and ready access to the House’s financial information.”
Spilka’s office deferred comment to Sen. Cindy Friedman, who leads a Senate subcommittee on the ballot law. In a statement, Friedman said the Senate has tried to work with DiZoglio “to understand what she is seeking to audit beyond the independent, professional audits that the Senate already undergoes each year.
“To date, the information the Auditor has provided the Senate regarding what she is seeking has been vague at best, much like the questions she has left unanswered when asked for specific information regarding the scope of the audit by the Attorney General,” Friedman said. “Given that, and that an independent, professional audit is done annually, we must assume that the Auditor’s intentions are purely political.”
DiZoglio said she is seeking financial documents that would be public information for other government bodies.
“It is unacceptable that any one of our lawmakers would defend withholding taxpayer-funded financial receipts or state contracts,” DiZoglio said.
DiZoglio is not the only one seeking to have a court resolve the audit standoff. Republican U.S. Senate candidate John Deaton announced his own lawsuit Monday, making the case that legislators are unlawfully spending public money to resist the audit and that some federal funds should be withheld from Massachusetts until they comply.
Anne Brensley, a Republican running for lieutenant governor, sued last October, arguing that the refusal to provide audit materials deprives her and other candidates of information.
