Auditor Diana DiZoglio is set to headline a rally at the State House to demand that lawmakers and AG Andrea Campbell allow her office to begin the legislative audit that voters overwhelmingly approved nearly a year ago.
The rally is slated for Wednesday at 12:30 p.m. on the State House’s front steps, and DiZoglio has said she expects there to be a bipartisan turnout in which voters will make it known they are tired of being “slapped in the face.”
The event comes just three weeks shy of when Massachusetts residents greenlighted DiZoglio’s effort to audit the Legislature, with 72% approval, last November.
Despite the ballot measure’s success, the state auditor continues to find herself in a stalemate with the Attorney General’s Office and top Beacon Hill lawmakers, Senate President Karen Spilka and House Speaker Ron Mariano.
“This is no longer about an audit,” DiZoglio said in a radio appearance on the Grace Curley Show last Friday. “This is about the top officials in our state looking back at the electorate and telling us that our vote doesn’t matter and that the results of the election don’t matter,” the auditor continued. “That is not democracy. That is dictatorship.”
DiZoglio added that Wednesday’s rally is expected to feature advocates, Republican State Committee members, Democrats, and “everybody in between.”
Speakers are expected to highlight other initiatives, such as a proposed ballot measure that would subject the Legislature and the governor’s office to the public records law, and another that would reform how legislative leaders award stipends to deputies and committee chairs.
“They are coming together,” DiZoglio said, “to hold Beacon Hill accountable to the everyday working families of this Commonwealth who just want a seat at the table, who want to know how their taxpayer dollars are being spent and want their elected leaders to follow the law.”
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