You don’t audit us, and we gained’t audit you.
That is what House Speaker Ron Mariano ought to or may very well be saying to Diana DiZoglio.
DiZoglio is the 39-year-old new state auditor who has induced consternation on the State House — and notably among the many legislative management — along with her vow to audit the Legislature, starting with the 160-member House and ending with the 40-member Senate.
Both branches are managed by Democrats. DiZoglio is also a Democrat who served in each the House and Senate earlier than being elected auditor within the final election.
She promised to audit the Legislature throughout her marketing campaign and is now planning to take action.
Mariano and Senate President Karen Spilka keep that DiZoglio, below the three equal however separate branches of state authorities — the Legislature, the Judiciary and the Executive — doesn’t have the authority to conduct such audits.
DiZoglio believes she does.
“Maybe she thinks she’s uber-powerful,” Mariano stated. The Legislature, he and Spilka keep, is an unbiased physique, that makes its personal guidelines and conducts its personal audits and investigations. He accused DiZoglio of getting “a political agenda.”
DiZoglio says she goes forward it doesn’t matter what Mariano thinks.
And whereas Mariano and Spilka imagine that DiZoglio has no authorized authority to audit the Legislature and that there is no such thing as a precedent for such an audit, DiZoglio has dug up a handful of dusty previous audits of the Legislature that presumably provides her that energy.
She additionally believes that the General Laws of the Commonwealth give her that authority.
The regulation states that the state auditor “shall audit the accounts, programs, activities and functions of all departments, offices, commissions, institutions and activities of the Commonwealth, including those of districts and authorities created by the General Court (Legislature).”
One of these audits, finished on the request of the lawyer common, was a 1992 audit over $124,550 funds to a former House court docket officer who was not entitled to obtain the cash.
Another was a 1991 audit to find out the consider the accounting practices of the Legislative Research Bureau.
A 3rd was an intensive 2005 audit of the Legislature’s Information Technology and Legislative Information Services’ virus safety program.
Were he one to hunt reprisals — which he isn’t — Mariano may launch his personal investigation of the auditor’s workplace if he felt it was needed, simply because the Legislature does with different state departments or businesses, just like the MBTA or the Holyoke Soldier’s Home.
The Legislature has the facility to research something it needs, together with the governor’s workplace and the Supreme Judicial Court
And he may do it via the House or Joint Post Audit and Oversight Committee.
If Mariano have been desirous about payback, all he has to do is unleash the committee on the state auditor. The committee has sweeping investigative authority.
The committee, which has subpoena energy, is allowed to research any state “authority, board, branch, bureau, commission, constitutional office, county government, department, division, institution, office, officers, or public corporation.” The solely exception is the Legislature.
“If they want to come in and audit or investigate the auditor’s office, I welcome it,” DiZoglio stated. “I have nothing to hide. This is about accountability. The taxpayers need to know where their tax dollars are spent.”
One of the Ironies on this confrontation over DiZoglio’s authority to conduct an audit of the Legislature—and any potential probe of DiZoglio by the Post Audit Committee—is a fourth audit that DiZoglio got here throughout coping with the Legislature.
This is a 1981 audit by then State Auditor John J. Finnegan of the Legislative Post Audit and Oversight Bureau’s fiscal standing, later reorganized into House and Senate committees.
If DiZoglio can audit the Legislature, or its committees, as she believes she will, the Legislature and its committees have the facility to audit the auditor.
So, the phrase of the day is, should you don’t audit us, we gained’t audit you.
But should you do, could the most effective audit win.
Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”