Massachusetts is unique — for its secrecy
Massachusetts is the only state where the governor, Legislature, and courts are all totally exempt from the public records law
Last week, I appeared on Incorruptible Mass, a great podcast about Massachusetts state politics hosted by Jordan Berg Powers, Jonathan Cohn, and Anna Callahan. We discussed the uniquely secret state government in Massachusetts, where the governor, Legislature, and courts are all totally exempt from the public records law.
You can listen here:
Below are a few of my quotes, which I pulled from the transcript.
The Value of Transparency
Public records law is basically a way to not just take people at their word in government, but to find out what’s actually going on. It allows you to request records, which could be emails or written documents. It could also be videos, photographs, audio recordings. Pretty much any form of documentation could be a record. And this is basically how I do a lot of the investigative journalism I do.
I’m primarily focused on police and the justice system. But I’m also just very interested in the public records law itself and sort of transparency in government as a value separate from any particular issue. … [T]ransparency is important because you can’t affect government if you don’t actually know what’s going on.
If people are meeting behind closed doors and making decisions and we don’t know who they are, what their motives are, what’s going on, then you can’t really have any say. And I just think that having strong public records law is very important for that. But unfortunately, there are a lot of problems with the public records law in Massachusetts, which I write about all the time.
The Uniquely Secret Mass State Government
[T]here are exemptions to the public records law. So there’s things like privacy. There’s something called the deliberative process exemption, which is like when there are policy-making discussions that are ongoing, certain records you keep from the public until the discussion is over. There’s a similar thing for law enforcement investigations. There’s all sorts of exemptions.
But for the governor’s office and also for the Legislature and the courts, there’s a total, complete exemption. So technically, if you send them a public records request, they could literally just ignore it and there’s nothing you could do. They don’t even have to send you a courtesy letter saying, Hey, we’re not even responsible for this.
They could just completely ignore you if they wanted to. And that is something that is actually unique about Massachusetts. Massachusetts is one of only two states, along with Michigan, according to reporting from The Boston Globe, that the governor’s office specifically is exempt.
So that puts us as an outlier right there. But then on top of it, Massachusetts is the only state in the entire country where all three of the branches of state government, the governor, Legislature and the courts are totally exempt from the public records.
Why the Governor Should Be Subject to the Public Records Law
[The governor] is the most powerful person, single person in state government. They can line item veto stuff in the state budget, they can do this or that. They have the ability to declare emergencies and do all these executive things unilaterally.
They have tremendous power, tremendous influence in terms of the agenda for state government. And it just doesn’t make sense that, say, the mayor of Boston or the mayor of Framingham, a much smaller city where I live, is responsible for responding to these public records requests. But then someone who has even more power and is in control of things that affect the entire state doesn’t have to follow that same standard that we expect of not just cities, but towns.
Towns with like a couple of hundred people might have to follow this law. So why wouldn’t the governor have to follow [it]? It just doesn’t make sense. And the only explanation is just that people in state government don’t want sunlight on what they’re doing.
If you’d like to read more on this topic, I wrote an in-depth piece for Sunshine Week in March.
Also, a recent episode of Lights Out Mass focuses on Governor Maura Healey’s broken promise to voluntarily comply with the public records law.
If you’d like to rein in secrecy in state government, there’s a bill by Senator Becca Rausch (S.2064) that would apply the public records law to the governor and the Legislature. You can contact your state legislators about the bill here and the governor’s office here.
And if you’re interested in making public records requests, you can read my advice for beginners here.
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Also, make sure you check out more episodes from Incorruptible Mass. Here’s the description from the podcast’s website:
Our goal is to help people transform state politics. We investigate why it’s so broken, imagine what we could have here in Massachusetts if we fixed it, and report on how you can get involved. If you believe in fighting for social justice, in reducing inequality, in health care for all, in affordable housing, in reforming our criminal justice system, and if you want to be part of getting these policies — and more — passed, then this is the podcast for you.
That’s all for now.