Massachusetts State Auditor Diana DiZoglio says she has uncovered as much as $12 million in welfare fraud, just in 2025 alone. So she’s doing as her job title suggests and attempting to conduct an audit.
But there’s a problem: Her own state legislature – led by a decades-long unbroken chain of Democrat majorities in both chambers – is refusing to turn over the necessary documents. Even the state’s attorney general refused to intervene, so she’s taking the fight to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court to enforce the law and let her do her job.
Massachusetts, a Paragon of Hypocrisy
In 2024, 72% of voters supported a ballot measure that, DiZoglio says, authorizes her office to audit the legislature. “You had progressive Democrats joining together with conservative Republicans,” she told Kayleigh McEnany in an interview on Saturday in America, noting the obvious bipartisan nature of such a majority.
However, she also pointed out that Massachusetts is the only state in the Union where the legislature, the governor’s office, and the court system exempt themselves from the state’s public records law. This newly approved audit authority, she argues, could bring long-awaited transparency to taxpayer-funded records – if, of course, she’s allowed to actually conduct it.
Let’s take a look at the partisan layout. The Independent Voter Project’s analysis indicates the registered voters of Massachusetts are 25.74% Democrat, 8.37% Republican, 0.97% third party/other, and 64.92% unaffiliated. A look at the legislature and popular voting history, however, shows where that majority of unaffiliated voters tend to go.
Not since Ronald Reagan in 1984 have Massachusetts voters chosen a Republican president. In fact, a glance at the state’s electoral history from 270 to Win shows that in every election since, Democrats have won 2-1, or close to it, over Republicans.
In the state senate, Democrats currently lead 34-5 with one vacancy, an 87% majority. In every election since 1992 at least – as far back as Ballotpedia records go – Democrats have held between a 75% and 92.5% majority.
The Massachusetts House of Representatives currently sits at 132 Democrats to 25 Republicans, one “other,” and two vacancies. That’s an 83.5% majority. The unbroken chain of Democrat control extends back to at least 1992 here, as well, with the range being 77.5% to 89%.
The governorship hasn’t been so consistently blue, as five of the last seven governors going back to 1991 have been Republican.
Still, it’s clear where the average Massachusetts voter’s loyalty lies when it comes to actual party affiliation.
Interestingly enough, Auditor DiZoglio is also a Democrat and has served for that party in both chambers of the state’s legislature. That she – and 72% of the electorate – wants to open the state records to see if this apparent $12 million in public assistance fraud is real and dig out whatever else might be hiding there is both admirable and telling.
More telling, perhaps, is the legislature’s refusal to allow it – and the state’s attorney general backing that up.
Fraud, Corruption, and Coverup
"What are they hiding? If there’s nothing to hide, open up the doors, let the sun shine in. Let’s do this audit,” DiZoglio told the Fox host. “This is about transparency and accountability,” she added. “This is not about whether you support the right or the left. This is coming together and getting access to documents that should be a matter of public record.”
GBH News reported that the state’s attorney general, another Democrat by the name of Andrea Campbell, issued a statement claiming DiZoglio lacks the authority to conduct her audit.
“This is another ploy to sidestep the required approval of my office and will bring her no closer to auditing the Legislature,” Campbell reportedly said. “This filing is not about enforcing the law. In order to enforce the law, she would answer my office’s straightforward questions, including how privileges given to the Legislature in our state constitution nearly 250 years ago impact her authority to audit the Legislature.”
An interesting aside on the attorney general’s office: That’s another popularly elected position that has, with the exception of a single “independent” who was appointed due to a vacancy and served a single day, been entirely blue for decades. Every attorney general elected since 1969 has been a Democrat – including one Maura Healey, who created the brief vacancy for the aforementioned independent when she ran for governor and won in 2023.
DiZoglio hopes the state’s highest court will side with her and the vast majority of voters rather than the legislature and the AG. “The Constitution is there to protect the people, not the politicians,” she argued. Whether that still rings true in Massachusetts, it seems, is now up to the court.
