After a low-profile couple of months, Massachusetts Auditor Diana DiZoglio reignited her fight with the Legislature on Wednesday, describing the majority-Democrat body as an “authoritarian regime” as she seeks to force it to open its books.
“We talk about authoritarian regimes in D.C. — what about here on Beacon Hill?” she said during an appearance on GBH’s “Boston Public Radio” program. “There is an authoritarian regime in the Legislature on Beacon Hill right now.”
Lawmakers on Beacon Hill have spent months resisting the Methuen Democrat’s efforts to get them to comply with a November 2024 ballot question authorizing her to audit the Legislature.
Voters overwhelmingly approved the question, which is now state law.
Lawmakers have argued that the audit violates a constitutional separation of powers, and the two sides have spent months duking it out in meetings and in the press.
In July, DiZoglio did an end-run around state Attorney General Andrea J. Campbell, who typically represents elected officials in court cases, instead hiring the Boston law firm of Donnelly, Conroy & Gelhaar to pursue the matter in court.
Michael Minogue, a high-profile Republican donor who also has been mentioned as a 2026 GOP gubernatorial candidate, is footing the bill, according to The Boston Globe.
A spokesperson for Campbell told GBH that any potential legal action would be dismissed under state law.
That’s because “any lawful litigation brought by state officials or state entities must be authorized by the Attorney General’s Office,” Campbell’s spokesperson, Sydney Heiberger, told the station.
DiZoglio scoffed at the notion.
“It is a dictatorial style of government. It is not democratic. It is, in fact, anti-democratic,” DiZoglio told GBH. “We’re just trying to get before a court right now, and we can’t even get our constitutional right to get an impartial hearing recognized by the top law enforcement agency of this commonwealth.”
DiZoglio told GBH that the Legislature has refused to ask the state’s highest court to delve into the matter, arguing that the No. 1 “goal of everybody involved in this on Beacon Hill is to keep us out of the courtroom so that we can’t get a decision so that this will linger on forever.”
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