You don’t audit us, and we won’t audit you.
That is what House Speaker Ron Mariano should or could be saying to Diana DiZoglio.
DiZoglio is the 39-year-old new state auditor who has caused consternation at the State House — and particularly among the legislative leadership — with her vow to audit the Legislature, beginning with the 160-member House and ending with the 40-member Senate.
Both branches are controlled by Democrats. DiZoglio also is a Democrat who served in both the House and Senate before being elected auditor in the last election.
She promised to audit the Legislature during her campaign and is now planning to do so.
Mariano and Senate President Karen Spilka maintain that DiZoglio, under the three equal but separate branches of state government — the Legislature, the Judiciary and the Executive — does not have the authority to conduct such audits.
DiZoglio believes she does.
“Maybe she thinks she’s uber-powerful,” Mariano said. The Legislature, he and Spilka maintain, is an independent body, that makes its own rules and conducts its own audits and investigations. He accused DiZoglio of having “a political agenda.”
DiZoglio says she is going ahead no matter what Mariano thinks.
And while Mariano and Spilka believe that DiZoglio has no legal authority to audit the Legislature and that there is no precedent for such an audit, DiZoglio has dug up a handful of dusty old audits of the Legislature that presumably gives her that power.
She also believes that the General Laws of the Commonwealth give her that authority.
The law 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 those audits, done at the request of the attorney general, was a 1992 audit over $124,550 payments to a former House court officer who was not entitled to receive the money.
Another was a 1991 audit to determine the evaluate the accounting practices of the Legislative Research Bureau.
A third was an extensive 2005 audit of the Legislature’s Information Technology and Legislative Information Services’ virus protection program.
Were he one to seek reprisals — which he is not — Mariano could launch his own investigation of the auditor’s office if he felt it was necessary, just as the Legislature does with other state departments or agencies, like the MBTA or the Holyoke Soldier’s Home.
The Legislature has the power to investigate anything it wants, including the governor’s office and the Supreme Judicial Court
And he could do it through the House or Joint Post Audit and Oversight Committee.
If Mariano were interested in 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 power, is authorized to investigate any state “authority, board, branch, bureau, commission, constitutional office, county government, department, division, institution, office, officers, or public corporation.” The only exception is the Legislature.
“If they want to come in and audit or investigate the auditor’s office, I welcome it,” DiZoglio said. “I have nothing to hide. This is about accountability. The taxpayers need to know where their tax dollars are spent.”
One of the Ironies in 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 came across dealing 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 status, later reorganized into House and Senate committees.
If DiZoglio can audit the Legislature, or its committees, as she believes she can, the Legislature and its committees have the power to audit the auditor.
So, the word of the day is, if you don’t audit us, we won’t audit you.
But if you do, may the best audit win.
Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.