The Massachusetts auditor will be able to use a special prosecutor to try to compel the Legislature to comply with an audit, Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell said Tuesday.
After more than a year of acrimonious wrangling over a voter-approved law that gives the state auditor the authority to audit the Massachusetts Legislature, Campbell said that she will allow Auditor Diana DiZoglio to hire a special attorney general to represent her in her standoff with the House and Senate. Lawmakers have refused to comply with DiZoglio’s audit request.
“I have a letter that will come from my office to the auditor allowing her to proceed to appoint an attorney to then go into court with respect to those four things” — four audit areas identified in a Supreme Judicial Court hearing last week — “and this will move forward,” Campbell said on GBH’s Boston Public Radio.
At this point, host Jim Braude clarified: “You will allow the appointment of a special attorney general to represent [DiZoglio’s] office should there be continued noncompliance by the Legislature?”
“Absolutely,” Campbell responded. “And why is this? Because the court forced some clarity and specifics we had been seeking, which was this: ‘These four things, auditor, you can proceed with those, but you have to keep your audit within those four things’ — which was not something [DiZoglio] was willing to say to us initially. So we’re going to move forward. That letter will be coming very soon to the auditor.”
DiZoglio sued top lawmakers in February, without the attorney general’s backing, to try to force the Legislature to turn over financial and personnel-related documents. Last week, after a hearing in which the Supreme Judicial Court made it clear it wanted to see an end to the impasse, the SJC ordered Campbell to decide within 30 days whether she would represent DiZoglio as she seeks four specific types of information for Fiscal Years 2021-2024: official House and Senate budgets, financial settlements hashed out by the House and Senate with former or current employees or members, financial transactions involving the House and Senate’s balance forward line items, and copies of official audits of the two chambers.
DiZoglio’s ongoing inability to audit the Legislature, despite the passage of a new law in 2024 which was backed by 72% of voters, has been a repeated source of frustration to the law’s backers and become a cause célèbre across the political spectrum.
Since the ballot question became law, legislative leaders have refused to comply with an audit request from DiZoglio. Campbell has also previously refused to represent the auditor in court or appoint a special attorney general, saying that she supports a legislative audit but that there are limits on what the state auditor can review.
While Campbell has been representing legislative leaders in the ongoing standoff, she said Tuesday that once her office has officially signed off on DiZoglio’s hiring of a special attorney general, Campbell’s role in the process would be done for the foreseeable future. She said the Legislature will also have a specially appointed attorney general.
“We’re out of it,” Campbell said. “The only reason we would be pulled back in, which is always a possibility, is if the court came to us and asked us our opinion on something.”
For example, Campbell acknowledged, DiZoglio could expand the types of information she is seeking, which would lead to future appearances before the state’s highest court.
“We will visit that when it comes,” Campbell said.
In an emailed statement, DiZoglio spokesperson Alysha Palumbo Garvin welcomed Campbell’s announcement and said DiZoglio planned to continue working with attorney Shannon Liss-Riordan, who recently represented the auditor before the SJC.
“We are pleased that the AG has now publicly committed to allowing our office to appoint an attorney of our choosing to represent the will of the People in our pursuit to enforce the legislative audit in court,” Garvin wrote. “Attorney Shannon Liss-Riordan did an excellent job representing the 72% before the SJC and we are thrilled to be moving forward with her generous offer to take on this important case.
”We are cautiously optimistic that this also means the AG will be withdrawing her motion to strike on behalf of the Speaker and Senate President,“ Garvin added. ”We look forward to receiving the letter the AG publicly promised today, allowing our office to finally proceed with the voter-mandated audit of the Legislature.”
