State Auditor Diana DIZoglio, left, and Attorney General Andrea Campbell. (Photos by Chris Lisinski/SHNS)

MASSACHUSETTS STATE AUDITOR Diana DiZoglio recently called in to Boston Public Radio and accused Attorney General Andrea Campbell of “working with the legislative leaders to block the audit that the Commonwealth voted for to the tune of 72 percent.” She further claimed that the 12 percent increase to Campbell’s fiscal year 2026 budget is a bid by the Legislature to reward her for declining to represent the auditor in litigation to compel legislative cooperation with her efforts to audit the House and Senate pursuant to last fall’s ballot question. 

For her part, Attorney General Campbell maintains that the budget increase reflects the anticipated costs of litigation over the reach of Trump administration policies, a view supported by both House Speaker Ron Mariano, who said the additional funding will allow Campbell “to push back against any unilateral, unconstitutional actions from the Trump administration,” and Senate President Karen Spilka, who in May argued that the AG should be armed “with every dollar she needs to fight the lawlessness of the Trump administration.”  

Given the patent threats to the Commonwealth posed by any number of the Trump administration’s policies, the need to supply the Office of the Attorney General with additional resources to address these threats seems almost too obvious to doubt.  

In fact, there is no evidence that the AG is colluding with legislative leaders to prevent implementation of the will of the voters who approved Question 1, the ballot question that DiZoglio championed. Campbell has consistently stated that her office continues to wait on more detailed information from the auditor regarding the specific extent of the audit she has in mind. Campbell’s position is no makeweight: The scope and reach of the audit that DiZoglio has publicly claimed the power to pursue raises serious constitutional issues.  

Indeed, the auditor responded to the attorney general’s deliberative approach to the exercise of her own powers by suggesting that Campbell sue her office “if she needs to get access to documents.”  

Perhaps needless to say, that is not how the relationship between the attorney general’s office and the other executive branch entities works: It is the attorney general who possesses the statutory discretion to determine when a lawsuit on behalf of another part of the executive branch is appropriate, and the responsibility of the part seeking representation to supply the factual details necessary to inform the attorney general’s decision.   

By simply reporting publicly that her decision cannot be made until she receives more information from the auditor, the AG is appropriately exercising her discretion, unbowed by the unsubstantiated aspersions the auditor has cast on her, her office, and anyone who has requested that she be clear about how she views the limits of her new statutory authority.  

The auditor’s accusations ignore the fact that the attorney general is not just an independent constitutional officer, but the only officer empowered to bring suit on behalf of the Commonwealth and its departments. In other words, the AG operates under a distinct constitutional mandate: The obligation to put before a court only those assertions of state authority that she plausibly can defend.  

A request of a department that seeks representation for the information necessary to make this determination is the least we should expect before an attorney general initiates litigation—particularly when that litigation implicates critical questions about the structure of government in the Commonwealth. 

Unlike Auditor DiZoglio, the AG is not at liberty to ignore the considerable evidence provided by multiple experts in two separate legislative hearings on Beacon Hill, that the legislative audit authority granted by Question 1 is unconstitutional.  

At the first hearing, conducted by the Special Joint Committee on Initiative Petitions on March 26, 2024, every expert witness testified against the constitutionality of granting the auditor’s office legislative audit authority.  

DiZoglio dismissed the views of these experts, claiming that they had been “cherry picked” by legislative leaders, and that, as the auditor, she was the most credible source of the relevant expertise. At the same time, she did not cite or produce any experts who agreed with her, and she apparently was not aware that her immediate predecessor, Suzanne Bump, opposed giving legislative audit authority to the state auditor’s office. 

DiZoglio declined even to appear at the second hearing, held on April 2, 2025, before a Senate subcommittee tasked with exploring the constitutional implications of a legislative audit. Among the issues covered was, for example, the extent to which an audit could interfere with the separation of powers and the constitutional authority of each chamber of the Legislature to set its own rules.  

Expert witnesses pointed out that the constitution expressly grants each chamber the power to make rules and control its own proceedings, and that the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has held that this authority “is a continuous power absolute and beyond the challenge of any other tribunal.” The testimony made clear that an audit into any aspect of the ways in which either chamber of the Legislature chooses to conduct itself could in multiple ways intrude upon the settled constitutional authority of each to manage its own affairs.  

At the end of the day, Campbell’s reluctance to run to court in support of the auditor makes sense: As she herself noted, based upon the limited details DiZoglio has shared about the audit she has planned, a judge likely “would laugh [her] out of court.”  

The auditor is trapped in a legal box of her own making. This is, at least in part, because her goals and claims have from the start been more politically compelling than legally persuasive. She has consistently downplayed the legal and constitutional implication of the authority she sought.

Now, by insisting that the real barrier to implementing the people’s will is political deal-making and collusion among the AG, legislative leaders, and the latter’s “cherry picked” experts, DiZoglio can soldier on with her crusade against Beacon Hill’s power brokers in the court of public opinion without having to confront the looming reality of judicial review and what will likely be a disappointing end to the fight in which she has invested so much. 

Jerold Duquette is a professor of political science at Central Connecticut State University, a senior contributor at MassPoliticsProfs.org, and co-editor of The Politics of Massachusetts Exceptionalism: Reputation Meets Reality.  Lawrence Friedman teaches constitutional law at New England Law | Boston and is the co-author of The Massachusetts State Constitution, published by Oxford University Press.  

Lawrence Friedman teaches constitutional law at New England Law | Boston and is the co-author of "The Oxford Commentary on the Massachusetts State Constitution. "