Dear Friends,
Welcome back to the fourth edition of my Beacon Hill Update, a quarterly newsletter from my office where you can find updates about my work on Beacon Hill and the District. This newsletter is separate from my campaign letter that many of you may be subscribed to as well.
This edition includes district and legislative updates from the weeks before the August recess through the start of the fall formal session.
I look forward to continuing to work with my colleagues on pressing issues facing our Commonwealth, including making Massachusetts more affordable, equitable, and climate resilient.
As always, please do not hesitate to contact me with questions or if you are in need of assistance. Currently, our office is seeing an influx of unemployment cases due to the Department of Unemployment Assistance’s (DUA) delay in processing claims. I have spoken to Secretary Jones about this, and a statewide systems fix is in process. Meanwhile, please be sure to share my office as a resource for your friends and family in the district who may be in need of assistance, whether that be with DUA (give them a month on a determination, but much longer is inexcusable) or any other state agency. You can reach out to my new Legislative Aide, Alex Trantos, at alexandra.trantos@mahouse.gov for assistance.
Additionally, please contact our office if you, a family member, friend, business, or organization within the 8th Middlesex district is having an event to celebrate an occasion or achievement. I would be delighted to provide an Official Massachusetts House Citation to acknowledge and celebrate your special event.
I hope to see some of you at the upcoming office hours (see graphic that follows). We moved this fall’s office hours to Saturday to accommodate those with long work weeks/childcare conflicts; we will keep moving them around to accommodate all. This winter, we will host weeknight virtual/Zoom office hours.
It is my honor and pleasure to continue serving the residents, organizations, and businesses of the 8th Middlesex District, and I wish you all a wonderful 2025 holiday season.
James
Interesting that you didn’t mention anything about the audit we voted for. Any update on that?
Actually if you read the newsletter it’s in there!
AND WHAT ABOUT THAT AUDIT OF THE LEGISLATURE? NEW HOUSE RULES
To be clear, I support a full independent financial audit of how the legislature spends every public dollar, and that the results of the audit should be made public and available. To try an accommodate the ballot issue passed last year, the House ceded authority to the State Auditor to set the framework for the financial audit and to choose an independent auditing firm to conduct the actual audit, and to make the audit available to the public.
The sticking point with the State Auditor is not the financial audit, but what we see as tantamount to a political audit. One stated issue is how the House chooses chairs of committees, but that is within our purview as the Legislature. As a democratically elected legislature that publicly votes for our leadership, we give leadership that decision-making authority. (I sometimes note it would be like arguing that the Legislature should have oversight of who the State Auditor selects for Deputies, but that is within her purview, not ours.) Many see this disagreement as a separation of powers/constitutional issue. We do have a Judiciary branch of government to rule on these disagreements. The House Speaker has said he will abide by any court decision in this matter, but the State Auditor has chosen not to take the issue to court – why?
Some of this stems from legacy concerns around transparency. I think we have more work to do, but we have made good progress and, for the first time, have new House rules that I supported as a candidate: committee votes will be made public, all testimony will be made public (with reasonable privacy protection by request), and timelines have been established requiring committees to report out legislation. And though it doesn’t impact me personally (I serve full-time), July 31 may serve as a guideline, but not an automatic close/ 4-month recess with so much work to do.