HOUSE SPEAKER Ron Mariano conceded in a TV interview that aired Sunday that ratepayers would not save all that much if the energy bill the House passed two weeks ago were to become law.
In the same interview, the Quincy Democrat also detailed reasons for his resistance to an advancing ballot question that would apply the public records law to the Legislature and shared his belief that voters in 2024 backed purely a “financial audit” of the House and Senate.
During an appearance on WCVB’s “On The Record,” Mariano described the House energy bill as an attempt to strip away some of the public policy charges that have accumulated on electric and gas bills over the last two decades as Massachusetts sought to incentivize a transition away from fossil fuels. House leaders said their bill, which passed 128-27 after a day of debate that showed the Republican caucus and some progressive representatives dislike the bill for different reasons, aims to save ratepayers $9 billion over the next 10 years.
But Mariano had a blunt response to co-host Sharman Sacchetti’s question about how the bill would help residents next winter.
“It’s a great question. The completely honest answer is it’s not going to help much at all,” Mariano said.
Public policy charges — the fees that utility customers pay towards things like solar and electric vehicle incentives or energy efficiency programs — now total roughly 20 percent of a customer’s bill and have grown faster than other bill components, National Grid said last month in a filing related to the Department of Public Utilities’ parallel effort to wrestle down energy costs. The state’s largest utilities have urged policymakers to conduct a full accounting of public policy charges and their benefits, and for lawmakers to focus on peeling away unnecessary charges that are outside of DPU’s jurisdiction.
“We were putting a lot of money into this, and now we have to redefine what we’re doing on a monthly bill, because we just can’t keep piling things into the bills,” Mariano said.
Mariano and Senate President Karen Spilka have resisted Auditor Diana DiZoglio’s attempts to audit the Legislature in keeping with a 2024 ballot law supported by more than 70 percent of voters, an issue that is now before the Supreme Judicial Court. The House and Senate have backed Attorney General Andrea Campbell’s bid to squash DiZoglio’s lawsuit against the Legislature and Mariano explained to Sacchetti why he doesn’t want the high court to resolve the audit law’s constitutionality once and for all.
“Well, there’s a number of reasons why we don’t do that. We’re not opposed to the audit, first of all. We get a financial audit every year. We finished the 2024 audit. It’s on the website. You can go look at it,” Mariano claimed.
As of Monday morning, the most recent House audit available on the Legislature’s website covered fiscal year 2023, which ended nearly three years ago. The speaker’s office said Mariano misspoke on “On The Record” and meant to say that the fiscal year 2023 audit was complete.
Mariano noted that the House sent DiZoglio a letter in early March asking her, within 30 days, to “recommend to the Committee a private, independent auditing firm from the list of private, independent auditing firms on the appropriate statewide procurement contract established by the operational services division to conduct the House’s Fiscal Year 2025 Audit.” The speaker’s office said the House business manager will retain a firm to conduct the fiscal 2025 audit once the fiscal 2024 look, which is said to be in its final stages, is complete.
Mariano said the House wants DiZoglio to pick “a professional auditor, not a political auditor.” The speaker conceded that the House’s approach would allow it to control the scope of the audit, while “if we let her do it, she can control the scope of the audit.”
Sacchetti asked Mariano if that was not what about 72 percent of voters supported when they backed the ballot question specifically giving DiZoglio’s office the authority to audit the Legislature.
“No. No, they, if you ask people, most people view this as a financial audit, where they check where we spend our money and how we spend our money. And we do that, we do that every year. So we’re not afraid of that,” he said. “But we want to make sure there are no political implications around it, that it stands free and separate and apart, as the founding fathers said the three branches of government will do.”
The voter law says the state auditor “shall audit the accounts, programs, activities and functions directly related to the aforementioned accounts of all departments, offices, commissions, institutions and activities of the commonwealth, including those of districts and authorities created by the general court and the general court itself…”
Last week, DiZoglio filed her formal opposition to Campbell’s motion to strike the audit lawsuit.
“The people of the Commonwealth have been waiting for the enforcement of their democratic referendum since November 2024, and they are entitled to an answer from the Judiciary on whether the audit may proceed,” DiZoglio’s office wrote in a filing signed by Shannon Liss-Riordan, a former Democratic candidate for state attorney general. “The Attorney General’s effort to unilaterally block the Auditor’s access to the Judiciary—while representing the Auditor’s adversaries in this case—is not a legitimate exercise of discretion…”
DiZoglio is now backing a ballot initiative that would subject most records held by the Legislature or governor’s office to the state public records law (H 5004). Mariano did not give a straight answer when asked if he would support making the House subject to the public records law, but he made clear that he is not a fan of the idea.
“Let me caution you that most public records laws have exemptions in it that cover all personal communications, all negotiations, all private health care information — all of these things come through every rep’s desk. And we don’t necessarily want to be in charge of disseminating personal information,” the speaker said. “And many people feel that it will have a cooling effect on negotiations as you try to to get to yes on some bills.”
The notion of redacting personal information before releasing an otherwise public document, as is the norm for agencies and departments that are subject to the law already, did not sit well with Mariano.
“If you’re developing issues and you’re sitting around with a bunch of people talking about what ifs, you’re going to go through it all and redact it all?” the speaker said.