The Patriot Post® · Beacon Hill Can't Stand It When Voters Change the Law

The Massachusetts Constitution was amended in 1919 to give citizens the right to change their laws through the initiative and referendum process. It is a right they have availed themselves of sparingly:

In the 106 years since the change took effect, according to the secretary of state’s official tally, voters have adopted just 44 laws through ballot initiatives — an average of less than one successful measure per two-year election cycle. By contrast, the Legislature enacted 496 laws in its most recent two-year session alone.

Yet for as long as I can remember, Beacon Hill’s chieftains have seethed that ballot questions are spiraling out of control.

At a recent forum in Boston hosted by the State House News Service and moderated by veteran journalist Jon Keller, the two most powerful figures in the Legislature — House Speaker Ron Mariano and Senate President Karen Spilka — took turns recycling their longstanding complaints about citizen lawmaking.

When Keller asked Mariano whether he “liked referendum questions in general,” the speaker answered with an exaggerated “No-o-o-o.” Then — perhaps sensing that such open contempt for a constitutional right was inappropriate — Mariano embellished his answer.

Initiative petitions make it “too easy for these folks to cherry-pick the issues that are important to them,” he lamented. The “whole system is fraught with peril” and Massachusetts will soon “look like California, with 24, 25 questions on every ballot.” Ballot measures are typically “developed by one side, the advocates,” Mariano griped, which means that voters are asked to pass judgment on laws that “only one selection of people have vetted.”

The speaker’s low opinion of voters was echoed by the Senate president. The problem with “doing laws by ballot initiative,” she said, is that such measures are “all sponsored by special interest groups.” They only care about what’s important to them and can’t be trusted to look “at other aspects of what’s going on.”

Especially galling to legislative leaders are several initiatives likely to be on the ballot this fall. One would give voters the chance to reduce the state income tax rate; a second would overhaul the outrageously lavish stipends paid to many lawmakers; and another would, at long last, apply the state’s public-records law to the Legislature itself. If approved, those measures would leave Beacon Hill with less power, less money, and less secrecy. No wonder Mariano and Spilka are so ticked off.

For decades, critics of the initiative and referendum process have repeated the same objections. They disdain ballot questions as too simplistic. They warn that special interests with deep pockets can hijack the process for their own purposes. They claim that advocacy groups draft legislation without concern for its unintended consequences. Worst of all, they empower voters to adopt laws that haven’t been thoroughly vetted, openly debated, and wisely crafted by impartial stewards of the public welfare.

Ah, yes. If only ballot activists and ordinary voters could live up to the worthy and noble standards of politicians like Mariano and Spilka.

On Beacon Hill, bills are routinely written or shaped by powerful organized interests. Tens of millions of dollars are paid annually to lobbyists whose function is to influence legislative leaders. Omnibus measures hundreds of pages long are rushed through at the end of a session. Amendments are added to bills in secret — no debate, no public vetting. Legislators routinely vote on measures they have not bothered to read, blindly falling in line behind their party leader. In Massachusetts, the fate of most legislation is determined behind closed doors. Bills languish in committee without votes; proposals that leaders dislike simply never reach the floor. Major legislation is enacted in “informal” sessions with hardly any members in attendance.

The Legislature over which Spilka and Mariano preside is, arguably, the least transparent, least efficient, and most dysfunctional in the nation. Not surprisingly, it is also the most distrusted, as evidenced by the public’s landslide vote to authorize the state auditor, Diana DiZoglio, to undertake a thorough audit of the Massachusetts House and Senate.

None of this is to suggest that ballot initiatives are perfect vehicles for changing the law. Questions placed before voters can be flawed, oversimplified, poorly drafted, or driven by advocacy groups with foolish agendas. Of the five ballot initiatives that appeared on the state ballot in 2024, I supported only Question 1, DiZoglio’s measure to let sunshine into the Legislature’s gloomy recesses. The other four I opposed.

But at least I had a say in all five, as did every other Massachusetts voter. By contrast, we get no say at all in the five hundred or so bills passed by the Legislature in each legislative session, or in the countless others that are introduced but end up on the cutting-room floor. Political overlords like the House speaker and Senate president know they can spike or pass virtually any bill they choose. The system they have perfected all but guarantees them a free hand — they are shielded from public scrutiny, unworried about an internal challenge, certain of reelection for as long as they like, and lavishly rewarded for their public “service.”

On top of which, they have convinced themselves that lawmaking is a full-time job, requiring the Legislature to remain in session virtually year-round — a delusion to which only nine other states have succumbed. (Everywhere else, legislatures convene for only a month or two, and their members then return to real life.)

Yet far from improving the quality of the Bay State’s legislative processes, all of this has made legislators arrogant, remote, and bad at doing their jobs. And like most monopolists, they bitterly resent even the least competition. That is why they cannot bear it when voters resort to ballot questions to pass or repeal a law.

Whatever might be said against initiative petitions, they are usually the only outlet available to bypass lawmakers who turn a deaf ear — or a sneering gaze — toward the public. Mariano’s ludicrous accusation notwithstanding, it isn’t “too easy” to get a law enacted by popular vote. Those that ultimately succeed have almost invariably been subjected to more thorough debate and more transparent coverage than virtually any bill approved in the Legislature. Beacon Hill’s leaders don’t dislike ballot initiatives because they are sloppy or interest-driven. They dislike them because the initiative process allows citizens to legislate without their permission — and sometimes to legislate about them.

For politicians accustomed to treating lawmaking as their exclusive domain, that loss of control is intolerable. For the rest of us, it is precisely the point.