NOTES BETWEEN PRINTED EDITIONS

STATE HOUSE, BOSTON, June 3, 2026…..The vast majority of House Democrats on Wednesday voted to narrow the scope of a voter-approved legislative audit and create a formal process to govern public access to legislative records.

The House approved the bill (H 5469) 125-28, with Democrat Reps. Mike Connolly, Jim Hawkins and Alan Silvia voting to join Republicans in opposing the measure.

“I take the duty to honor the will of the people very seriously, along with our duty to uphold the constitution,” Connolly told the News Service after the unusually lively debate on the House floor. He said the bill’s passage “seems like we’re pulling the rug out from under” the auditor “without even a committee hearing on this new audit bill language.”

“I mean, the headline almost writes itself, right? ‘Legislature passes transparency bill out of the cover of darkness,’ ” he said.

Democratic leaders argued the bill preserves the constitutional separation of powers between the legislative and executive branches, where the auditor’s office is positioned. The bill would limit the auditor’s power to investigate the branch to four categories of administrative functions, rather than the more expansive language outlined in the 2024 ballot law.

The legislation would also create a new statute establishing a legislative records request process and codifying which records would be public — most of which are already publicly available — and subject the governor’s office to the public records law from which they currently claim an exemption.

House Speaker Ron Mariano gave a rare floor speech Wednesday afternoon as he introduced the legislation, using the platform to criticize Auditor Diana DiZoglio’s tactics and promote the bill.

Mariano said representatives took an oath to “uphold the Legislature’s role as a co-equal branch of government, the branch closest to the people,” and said that constituents aren’t a “proxy for the whims of a single politician.”

“For you all know, the House does not oppose an audit,” Mariano said. “The House is already audited every year by an independent auditing firm, the results of which are posted on the Legislature’s website upon completion. What we oppose is a politically motivated audit conducted in violation of the Constitution, which is why we didn’t see a path forward until recently, when the auditor finally specified the scope of the audit before the Supreme Judicial Court.”

The bill stops Secretary of State William Galvin’s office (who usually oversees public records inquiries) from interfering in requests to the Legislature, but allows a path of judicial review, while simultaneously barring the courts from resolving disputes between the auditor and lawmakers.

The provision barring judicial review in the case of constitutional questions around the legislative audit drew some of the most harsh feedback on the bill. Democrat leaders say this is a separation of powers issue.

“We heard a lot from the rostrum about separation of powers, and I wholeheartedly believe that that’s such an important principle,” Connolly said. “We, as Democrats, can’t say we don’t care about the separation of powers one day and then point the finger at Donald Trump the next day when he violates it. But all that said, we don’t draw those lines. Ultimately, in our system of government, it’s the judicial branch that draws constitutional lines.”

Republican Minority Leader Brad Jones filed five amendments to the bill, all of which he withdrew ahead of the debate. One of them would have allowed the auditor’s office to have judicial recourse if its request for records from the Legislature was denied.

Asked by the News Service why he withdrew these amendments, in doing so not forcing a roll call vote on any of them, Jones said the supermajority of Democrats “were not receptive” to amendments.

“It became clear from talking to the caucus, we weren’t going to make it any better, they were not receptive to any amendments today,” Jones said.

He criticized the process by which leadership rolled out the bill — holding no public hearing on it, and giving representatives about 24 hours to review it before taking a vote.

“They caucused yesterday. It was clear from what we heard that they did not want any amendments, there wasn’t any receptivity to amendments, they were going to do what they were going to do today,” he said.

Republican Rep. Todd Smola, who is the ranking minority member of the House Ways and Means Committee, questioned the process during a speech from the floor.

“Nobody saw this legislation 24 hours ago,” Smola said, adding that the committee had 34 minutes between when the poll landed in their inbox and they had to vote on it.

He continued, “Yet, we had to respond to that poll and ultimately weigh in as members of the committee. We had members on both sides of the political aisle that were calling each other back and forth to say, ‘Can you explain this portion?’ That’s how confusing some components of this legislation were when we saw it for the first time yesterday.”

The bill received a favorable 21-0 vote from the Committee Ways and Means on Tuesday, though nine representatives reserved their rights and four took no action on the poll.

Rather than have the House and Senate take separate approaches to responding to DiZoglio’s requests for documents and a Supreme Judicial Court order from last month allowing her to proceed, Jones said the audit face-off “could and should have been handled” by the Legislature seeking the opinion of high court as to whether the 2024 voter law violates the constitution.

“I felt comfortable allowing the Supreme Judicial Court to review the constitutionality of the past ballot question and to weigh in on where to draw the lines, and so it just doesn’t sit well with me that after 18 to 20 months of pointing to the Constitution, which I think is very relevant here, as soon as the auditor wins her day in court, it seems like we’re pulling the rug out from under her,” Connolly said.

Despite the vocal minority against the bill, 125 lawmakers, Democrats and one Independent voted in favor of it.

Rep. Susannah Whipps, the one Independent in the Legislature, voted for the legislation.

“We’re co-equal branches of government, which I don’t think people realize when they bring up ‘independent,’ ” Whipps told the News Service. “And we’ve provided her with what she told the court she wanted from us, so it’s a done deal.”

Sen. Cindy Friedman said her chamber handed over records to DiZoglio on Monday. A spokesperson for Mariano did not immediately answer a News Service question about whether the House had done the same.

Mariano said in his remarks that the House bill “gives the auditor access to financial documents that she requested — providing ample insight into the House’s finances… In other words, as a result of this legislation, the auditor will be able to conduct the audit that the voters have called for.”

“And despite the baseless accusations from the auditor, there is nothing that anyone can say that erases the incredible work that this institution has been responsible for,” he said. “For as long as I’m speaker, there will be no bigger supporter of the members and staff who come to work everyday for the purpose of bettering their community. You have my word.”

[Alison Kuznitz contributed reporting.]

Sam Drysdale is a reporter for State House News Service and State Affairs Pro Massachusetts. Reach her at sdrysdale@statehousenews.com.

STATE HOUSE, BOSTON, June 3, 2026….The House and Senate are preparing to coalesce around proposed changes to the fraught process of funding county sheriffs, but officials say it’s “not the final word.”

The conference committee tasked with settling differences between the House and Senate versions of the next state budget met for the first time on Tuesday. They have less than a month to resolve their differences before the fiscal year starts on July 1.

The chambers are mostly aligned on proposals changing the sheriff budgeting process, which Inspector General Jeff Shapiro this week deemed “chaotic with chronic underfunding and illegal overspending” in a final oversight report filed this week.

Shapiro described sheriffs’ offices “uncontrolled spending with little to no oversight” and a Legislature and governor’s office complicit in the issue by a “lack of common understanding” of how their budgets work. He said it has become the norm for sheriffs’ offices to be underfunded in the annual budget and supplemented by additional spending throughout the year, but that blame also lies with sheriffs offices that routinely overspend.

The House and Senate both recommend overhauling how sheriffs are funded, adopting structures that break appropriations into four line items covering payroll, operations, medication-assisted treatment, and no-cost calls for incarcerated individuals.

“It’s certainly not the final word on sheriff’s funding,” Senate Ways and Means Chair Michael Rodrigues said Wednesday, about the resolution between the chambers that will be included in the final budget.

“I think our proposals, both in the House and Senate versions of the budget, are very, very similar, and it’s a very good starting point,” Rodrigues said. “We have a lot of work to do to create a surety that we’re not just constantly having supplemental budgets to backfill deficits in sheriff’s offices.”

The House proposed $812.1 million for the offices, a $52.6 million increase from fiscal 2026. Their proposal would split the funding into $88.1 million for operations, $660.6 million for payroll, $12.4 million for no-cost calls, and $13.5 million for medication-assisted treatment. The Senate proposed $811.2 million, with payroll at $660.6 million, treatment at $14.3 million, $12.5 million for calls, and all other operations at $123.8 million.

Rodrigues and House Ways and Means chair Aaron Michlewitz both said Wednesday that they had not yet read Shapiro’s report from Monday, but that they spoke to the inspector general.

“I’ve seen, run into some sheriffs around the building, and have a little bit of conversations with them related to it,” Michlewitz said. “I think we’ve been given a good roadmap in some respects of what we need to get done here.”

He added, “But again, I think it’s going to be an incremental process of trying to take steps. I think we’ve taken steps in both budgets here that are pretty substantial in terms of trying to right the ship, but I think we still have some work to do.”

When he rolled out the proposal to better monitor sheriff spending in April, Michlewitz said, “We’re putting our marker here for now, and feeling that this is an appropriate step to be taking, and also trying to get to a more appropriate number that is more sustainable long-term, as opposed to budgeting for the numbers on the back end of the fiscal year.”

Shapiro wrote in his final report that the civil process fees and expenditures operate outside state controls and laws governing the process are “out of date and needlessly complex.” His “biggest concern” was the use of private bank accounts outside of the oversight of the state Treasury and comptroller.

Neither of these issues are addressed in the House or Senate budget proposal.

Rodrigues said the inspector general offered to sit down with the Senate Ways and Means Committee to go through his recommendations in detail, “and it’ll be a work in progress.”

Lawmakers agreed Tuesday to help backfill sheriffs’ deficiencies from fiscal year 2025. They previously withheld supplemental funding as they awaited Shapiro’s final report. But House and Senate negotiators announced a compromise bill that includes $54.5 million to help the offices chip away at deficiencies, which Michlewitz said will cover roughly half of the cost overruns.

Sam Drysdale is a reporter for State House News Service and State Affairs Pro Massachusetts. Reach her at sdrysdale@statehousenews.com.

Before the House voted to protect many legislative activities from Auditor Diana DiZoglio’s office, Minority Leader Brad Jones called the measure “a slap in the face to the voters” and said the Legislature should instead seek an opinion of the state’s highest court to try to resolve the stalemate.

The North Reading Republican said the bill, which narrows the scope for DiZoglio to audit the Legislature and creates a formal process for public access to legislative records, “is a shit sandwich with extra pickles. So if you like pickles, you can find something in there that you’re happy about.”

None of the 25 Republicans in his caucus like the bill, he said, but Jones said he was especially irritated about the part of the bill that would remove the courts from being able to officiate disputes between the auditor and the Legislature.

“I find it offensive. I find it a slap in the face to the voters of the commonwealth. I find it particularly amazing in legislative session where we’ve had — understandably, I get it — ‘no kings, no kings, no kings.’ And we’re acting like a monarchy … things are walled off, this is what the auditor can do, that’s it. There’s no disagreement, and if there is, too damn bad. Just note it in your report,” he said.

Jones said cutting the courts out of disputes between the auditor and Legislature doesn’t jibe with the argument from Democrats that DiZoglio’s attempted audit runs afoul of separation of powers principles. “We’re treating that branch as if it doesn’t even exist,” he said of the judiciary. “I find that amazing.”

Rather than have the House and Senate take separate approaches to responding to DiZoglio’s requests for documents and a Supreme Judicial Court order from last month allowing her to proceed, Jones said the audit face-off “could and should have been handled” by the Legislature seeking the opinion of high court as to whether the 2024 voter law violates the constitution.

“And there would have been three answers to that: ‘Yes it is, strike it down.’ ‘No it isn’t, comply.’ Or somewhere in the middle, ‘No, it’s not unconstitutional to do these things, but things that get over this line are a violation.’ Everybody would have known,” Jones said.

He added, “The reality is we’re right back to where we should have been post-November 2024, which is let’s get this to the court.”

Jones said he doesn’t know why Democrats have not agreed to seek certainty from the court. In the Senate, Republicans have made repeated calls for the branch to send questions about the audit law and lawmakers’ responsibilities under it to the SJC.

STATE HOUSE, BOSTON, June 3, 2026…..More than eight months after the Senate passed its data privacy bill, House leadership on Wednesday said it will follow suit with its own this week, touting a proposal that strikes “an important balance between encouraging innovation and protecting the privacy rights of Massachusetts residents.”

The House Ways and Means Committee proposal (H 5472) would give consumers the “rights” to confirm whether their personal data is collected, processed or accessed, and to “opt out” of the collection and processing of personal data for the purposes of targeting advertising, the sale of data or “profiling in furtherance of solely automated decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects concerning the consumer,” according to the bill.

“This legislation is about ensuring that the Commonwealth’s laws keep pace with the challenges of an increasingly data-driven world, where technology is embedded in nearly every aspect of daily life. Consumers deserve meaningful protections for their personal information and greater control over how that information is collected, used, and sold,” House Speaker Ron Mariano and House Ways and Means Chair Aaron Michlewitz said in a statement. “This bill establishes common-sense safeguards for sensitive data, strengthens transparency, and promotes accountability for entities that profit from personal information.”

The bill cleared the Ways and Means Committee Wednesday on a 20-0 vote and Mariano and Michlewitz said they look forward to “passing this critical legislation tomorrow.”

The bill defines “sensitive data” to include data revealing a consumer’s racial or ethnic origin, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, health data, personal data of a minor, and more. It prohibits the collection and processing of said data without obtaining the consumer’s affirmative consent, according to a fact sheet. 

The Senate unanimously passed a data privacy bill (S 2619) in September. The House Ways and Means redraft of the Senate bill prohibits the sale of “precise geolocation data” and prohibits the collection or processing of personal data “for targeted advertising or selling personal data if the controller has actual knowledge or willfully disregards that the consumer is a minor.”

The bill would apply to any company but exempts banks, educational nonprofits and government entities.

Asked Tuesday why they carved out those entities, Michlewitz said it was to “level the playing field” between public and private schools, “particularly on the university side.”

“If you just did government entities and not educational nonprofits, because you have public schools and private schools and they would be living under different rules, and we felt that was not necessarily the right direction to go,” he said.

He added that they were “hearing from many folks through this process” about it.

A reporter asked Michlewitz if he had heard concerns from arts and cultural organizations about the impacts of targeting advertising restrictions.

“We heard those concerns. That was a conversation that we had throughout the process,” he said. “We’re still having those conversations, and I’m sure there will be some amendments filed to this bill, and we’ll discuss those amendments as they come, probably in the next 24 hours.”

The bill grants the attorney general authority to bring a civil action against any controller or processor other than a “large data holder” for violations. The attorney general would also “create, maintain and monitor a mechanism” for consumers to report potential violations and issue a report on any enforcement actions taken and their outcomes, according to the bill.

[Sam Drysdale contributed reporting]

Ella Adams is a reporter for the State House News Service and State Affairs Massachusetts. Reach her at ella.adams@statehousenews.com.