NOTHING GETS ELECTED OFFICIALS to set aside their differences quite like a common enemy.

House Speaker Ron Mariano and Senate President Karen Spilka, who regularly go through peaks and valleys of cooperation and conflict, came together to lament the growing trend of voters and organizers taking the act of legislating into their own hands.

With the Legislature gearing up to launch its review of 11 questions that could appear on the ballot this fall, Mariano and Spilka on Wednesday aired skepticism about several of the individual measures, but reserved their sharpest words for the ballot question process itself. They contended that well-funded interest groups have essentially taken over the constitutionally defined mechanism by which Bay Staters can directly propose and approve laws.

“The whole system is fraught with peril,” Mariano said. “We’re going to look like California with 24, 25 questions on every ballot.”

Appearing alongside Spilka at an event hosted by MASSterList and State House News Service, Mariano lamented the now-routine process of ballot question campaigns using paid firms to gather the tens of thousands of voter signatures necessary to qualify.

“It’s a situation that smacks me as being a little bit too easy for these folks to cherry-pick the issues that are important to them,” Mariano said.

He complained that two statewide officeholders, Secretary of State William Galvin and Auditor Diana DiZoglio, are getting in on the act, using the initiative petition process to push favored causes — Election Day voter registration and public records reform, respectively — onto the ballot. Mariano also referenced allegations that organizers behind a recreational marijuana repeal question misled voters, claims that a state commission ultimately dismissed.

Including a proposed repeal of the state’s 2024 gun law, which is already a lock for the ballot, voters could decide up to a dozen questions this fall, which would set a new record.

Most campaigns are helmed by advocacy groups who are fed up with years of trying and failing to gain traction for an issue among lawmakers. Ballot question campaigns are expensive, but they provide a route to circumvent a hesitant Legislature, and they can give supporters new leverage as they push Beacon Hill to act.

Explaining his decision to pursue a voter registration reform at the ballot box, Galvin in November said he is “convinced the resistance in the Legislature is too great.”

The process is lucrative for political strategists, consultants, and signature-gatherers. In 2022, campaigns collectively spent more than $65 million, the record for the most in a single ballot question cycle.

While gobs of money are changing hands, the public gets little insight into who is funding ballot question campaigns. State law does not require any financial reporting from ballot question supporters or opponents between January and September, keeping most of that information hidden until the final weeks of the race.

The Senate in January approved a bill that would require ballot question campaigns to file disclosures at least every month. While the House has not yet taken up the topic, Mariano went out of his way Wednesday to mention the Senate vote with a note of praise. (A Mariano spokesperson later said of the Senate bill, “The Speaker agrees that this is a significant issue.”)

Both legislative leaders argued that the process is inherently flawed because it presents voters with a stark up-or-down decision on a proposed law crafted by its supporters. That’s a contrast, they said, from more deliberative lawmaking in the Legislature, which Spilka said is a “slow process” by design.

“Part of the problem with doing law by ballot initiatives is they’re all sponsored by special interest groups, so the ballot initiative is written and it’s tailored to help that special interest group, sometimes not looking at other aspects of what’s going on,” Spilka said.

As part of his critique, Mariano seemed to fudge a few key details.

He argued that, in cases where a successful ballot question launches a new industry, administration of the new sector has been “flawed.” Mariano cited the legalization of recreational marijuana and casinos as examples. But the cannabis measure, which was approved through a 2016 ballot question, was then rewritten by the Legislature, which made changes to tax rates and rules over local control of marijuana shops. Meanwhile, casinos were ushered in by the House, Senate, and Gov. Deval Patrick in 2011 through normal legislative channels.

“The legislative process is designed to go through many, many iterations, so all sides of the issues are discussed,” Mariano said.

With ballot questions, he added, “you’re getting laws that only one selection of people have vetted, and I think inherently that’s causing a lot of problems.”

Lawmakers have the ability to get involved before a question reaches the ballot. During a months-long review process before the final campaign stretch, the Legislature can formally propose a substitute for any initiative petition. Elected officials can also broker deals to enact compromise legislation and prevent questions from going before voters, as they did with the so-called grand bargain in 2018, which covered changes to minimum wage, overtime pay, and family leave.

A special committee led by Rep. Alice Peisch of Wellsley and Sen. Cindy Friedman of Arlington plans to hold hearings on all 11 new questions over the next two-plus months.

The panel will start that work next week with a pair of hearings about the two questions most directly related to the Legislature itself: the DiZoglio-backed measure that would subject lawmakers and the governor’s office to the state public records law, and another question that would overhaul the legislative stipend system that skeptics contend is used to reward loyalty and stifle dissent.

Massachusetts and Michigan are the only two states where both the governor’s office and Legislature deem themselves exempt from the public records law. Gov. Maura Healey has said she would vote in favor of the reform. It’s less clear where lawmakers stand.

Asked for her position Wednesday, Spilka suggested that the ballot question, as drafted, could create privacy risks.

“It’s my understanding that the way that this ballot initiative may be written is that confidential information about our constituents collected through our offices may not, in every circumstance, be able to be excluded,” she said, citing constituent service work related to immigration, domestic abuse, and special education issues for children. “I believe we need to keep all of that confidential.”

Though Spilka flagged confidentiality concerns in the wording of the ballot question, moderator Jon Keller pointed out that other state agencies with whom constituents interact are already subject to the public records law.

Neither chamber’s leader has indicated support for any of the questions coursing toward the ballot.

Mariano on Wednesday said he does not like the proposal to revive rent control with a strict, statewide policy, warning that it would stifle housing production. Spilka, meanwhile, voiced her opposition to a pair of tax-related questions being pushed by influential groups including the Massachusetts High Technology Council.

One measure would slash the state’s income tax rate — a proposal Spilka described as “sponsored by millionaires” — and the other would tighten the cap on how much tax revenue state government can collect. Taken together, those measures could bleed billions of dollars per year from the state’s coffers, she said.

“We would have to cut every single aspect of our life here in Massachusetts,” Spilka said. “That coupled with the Trump cuts on education, on transportation, on help to our disabled, all of our vulnerable populations — that would cause a lot of pain.”

Despite their mutual irritation, neither Mariano nor Spilka suggested they’re interested in overhauling the state Constitution to eliminate the ballot question process entirely.

“Repeal is a long and involved process,” Mariano said when asked directly whether he favors such a move, a political non-starter that would guarantee a massive backlash.

There is at least one thing legislative leaders could do to ameliorate some of their irritation: force ballot question organizers to play by the same financial disclosure rules as lawmakers, an idea targeted by the Senate legislation Mariano praised Wednesday.

“Certainly, checks and balances on who’s spending the money, how they’re spending and framing the questions are important issues that need to be addressed,” he said.