New Report Highlights the Causes of Dysfunction in the Massachusetts State Legislature
BOSTON — The Coalition to Reform Our Legislature (CROL) today released Democracy in Decline: Denial and Delay, an assessment of the state of the legislature four years after the publication of Democracy in Decline, the November 2021 critique of the Massachusetts State Legislature produced by the Progressive Democrats of Massachusetts.
“The Legislature remains numb to the will of the people,” said Jeanne Kempthorne of the CROL Steering Committee and lead author of the report. “The legislature’s culture, rules, and pay structure have stripped our representatives of independence from the entrenched leadership. We the people are ill-served by a system in which decisions are made by a very few powerful people. As a result, both the quantity and the quality of the work suffers, and the people are kept in the dark.”
The report identifies several areas in need of reform, including the Legislature’s lack of productivity despite the Commonwealth’s growing challenges; its refusal to undergo an audit demanded by voters; a stipend system that concentrates power in leadership; the negative consequences of underpaying and under-resourcing staff who lack full access to independent research; and minimal reporting requirements that fail to adequately expose conflicts of interest.
“We hope this report will serve as a guidebook for both the public and legislators,” said Jenn Nassour of the CROL Steering Committee. “Unless meaningful reform occurs within the General Court, Massachusetts will remain at risk in these challenging times. Stipend reform, the establishment of a legislative research and fiscal analysis bureau, and more accessible and comprehensive financial disclosures would be excellent places to start.”
CROL is a bipartisan group of individuals and organizations united in the belief that a broken Legislature undermines healthy government. The coalition is dedicated to restoring meaningful democracy in the Massachusetts Legislature by making it more effective, accountable, and transparent, and by empowering individual legislators to truly represent the will of the people.
The paper can be found on the Reports page.