A “broken culture on Beacon Hill” or “one of the most audacious experiments of our time”? Depending on which Boston Globe columnist you read this morning, you would have a very different idea about what’s going on in the Massachusetts House of Representatives.

Houseofreps1 The headline over Adrian Walker’s column (“Lily-livered leadership”) telegraphs one take: Walker seems to regard the no-new-taxes budget put out on Wednesday by the House Ways and Means Committee — which slashes local aid and eliminates altogether programs serving low-income youth — as an act of political cowardice, a move that shows the lack of any backbone in new House Speaker Robert DeLeo to address the tough choices facing the state.  

Scot Lehigh has a less-is-more view of the same scene. He suggests that DeLeo and Ways and Means chairman Charley Murphy are actually engaged in a daring move that lays the groundwork for something that has nearly vanished from the House in recent years: democracy.  The “audacious” experiment, Lehigh says, will be to be have lawmakers actually debate and make up their own minds on whether new taxes are warranted to fund services that will otherwise be cut.

The withered state of democracy in the Legislature has been a long-running lament. CommonWealth took a hard look at it back in 2002.  Now, just in time for the budget debate, our Spring issue, due out next week, updates the tale by zeroing in on the current state of things in the House:

…on nearly everything that transpires in the House, legislators seem to endorse the leadership position with little dissent or debate… Though they are elected to speak out and exercise their best judgment on matters facing the Commonwealth, state representatives all too often operate like loyal foot soldiers in an army where the speaker serves as the top general.

Click here for an early look at the whole story, which ends by asking whether the DeLeo Era will bring more of the same or a break with days of the speaker as king, something we’ll get a much better handle on in the coming weeks.

CommonWealth magazine illustration by Travis Foster.

Michael Jonas works with Laura in overseeing CommonWealth Beacon coverage and editing the work of reporters. His own reporting has a particular focus on politics, education, and criminal justice reform.