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Why is government transparency so important?
Can’t we just trust our representatives to do the right thing?
Unfortunately, no—-we can’t just trust that our representatives will do the right thing. Here in Massachusetts, our legislators have progressive reputations and say all the right things, yet we still have major problems with corruption and lack of transparency in our state legislature.
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Three of the last four speakers of the MA House of Representatives were indicted for corruption, and the fourth was an un-indicted co-conspirator.
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Basic policies that would help our communities mysteriously fail, even when a majority of politicians say they support them.
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When legislation fails to pass, we don’t get to see which politicians took votes that were the opposite of their public promises
The MA State House is in particularly bad shape. Policies on immigration justice and workers rights can pass overwhelmingly and even unanimously in the State Senate, but fail to even get out of committee in the State House. Politicians have set up the system to try to prevent us from holding them accountable. Our current state representative supports this system and opposes efforts for us to be able to see how she and her colleagues vote.
There are some efforts to promote accountability of elected officials and bring more power and resources to everyday people in MA. From time to time, progressives are able to organize to get “roll call votes” of elected officials which forces them to go on the record. However, we still need much greater legislative reforms to get rid of the insider-only culture that dominates our State House and makes it nearly impossible to pass progressive policies.
You can read more about some of the problems on Beacon Hill here.
Opposition to corruption and state house dysfunction crosses ideological boundaries - learn more about the bipartisan Coalition to Reform Our Legislature here, as well as the “Democracy In Decline” report from Progressive Democrats of Massachusetts here.