House secretive on budget process
Little-known law keeping data private
By Sean P. Murphy, Globe Staff, 12/4/2001
 he state House of Representatives is invoking an obscure provision of the public records law to keep private hundreds of pages of official documents related to the state's $22.8 billion budget, including the key written arguments by department heads used to justify spending increases.
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The documents were submitted to the House budget-writing committee by the heads of various agencies as requests for state funding. Combined, these documents constitute a rationale for state spending by the program providers themselves.
The House and its powerful speaker, Thomas M. Finneran, have been under increasing criticism from some legislators and advocacy groups for making decisions on spending cuts behind closed doors, and then giving rank-and-file members less than a day to vote on the package without changes.
But Representative John Rogers, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said through a spokesman that no records would be released - even though other state offices routinely are obliged to provide such information.
The committee cited an 1897 provision of an open-records law that exempts ''legislative documents'' from public view.
''It's the policy of the committee not to redistribute documents that come to the committee,'' said William Rennie, a spokesman for Rogers.
Rennie declined to discuss why the committee wanted to keep the data private, and Rogers chose not to speak about the issue.
Marc Perlin, Suffolk Law School associate dean and professor, said the exemption to legislative documents was founded on the premise that debate among legislators and state officials would be more candid and robust if done privately.
''But it's awfully difficult to find any justification for a process that isn't wide open and subject to public scrutiny all the way, especially when we're talking about public funding,'' he said.
''It creates suspicion and the belief there have been deals worked out and that certainly does diminish the public confidence in the process,'' he said.
David E. Namet, deputy House counsel, confirmed the legal right of the committee to withhold official documents from the public.
When the Legislature passed the public records law prior to the start of the 20th century, it required, among other things, that the records ''be of linen rags and new cotton clippings.''
The law goes on for five pages, making clear that all documents maintained by state, county, and local governments must be open to the public.
But the law ends with these words: ''The provisions of this act shall not be construed as applying to the records of'' the state Legislature.
In other words, legislators made the law apply to everyone in government, except themselves.
Representative Nancy Flavin, Democrat of Easthampton, was unsure of the exemption when interviewed last week. She was asked about the budget of Suffolk County Sheriff Richard Rouse, a former legislator and longtime friend of Finneran's, who in recent years has spent much more freely on overtime for guards than other sheriffs.
Whether legislators considered cutting his budget more than those of other sheriffs at a time of declining tax revenues was the basis of a request for records by The Globe to the Ways and Means Committee.
Flavin at first said she would look up documents concerning the sheriff and make them available. ''Every sheriff gives a justification for the budget to the committee,'' said Flavin, who is assistant vice chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.
But later she cited the exemption in declining to provide the documents. Committee staff members also declined to say exactly what records they have, even without releasing them.
The House Ways and Means Committee conducts several public hearings every year, then does the rest of its business in private, without keeping a record of its meetings, Rennie said.
Likewise, the final negotiations by a conference committee of six select legislators are conducted in secret, and without meeting minutes, he said.
Ken White, executive director of Common Cause Massachusetts, said last week that the entire budget process is characterized by secrecy. He said the final budget represents the work of only the six lawmakers selected by Finneran and Senate President Thomas Birmingham to privately negotiate the budget, not the work of the full 200 members of the Legislature.
''Common Cause has called for years for the budget process to be opened up and done in public,'' he said. ''Many other states do it that way.''
Still, the Legislature is not the only branch of government reluctant to share information.
Last week, budgetary documents were also requested from the Suffolk County Sheriff's Department, the Executive Office of Administration and Finance, and the Department of Revenue.
All of them declined to furnish specifically requested documents. They cited their right, under the public records law, to delay release by at least 10 days.
Sean P. Murphy can be reached at smurphy@globe.com.
This story ran on page B1 of the Boston Globe on 12/4/2001.
© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.
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