Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Foiled! Letters Blogatory Turned Away At The Statehouse [updated]

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Cross-posted from Letters Blogatory.

There was a hearing today before the Joint Committee on the Judiciary of the Massachusetts legislature regarding the Uniform Foreign Court Money Judgment Act, which Massachusetts may adopt. The bill was introduced at the start of the current legislative session. I couldn’t attend the hearing, so I called the Committee’s offices to ask whether I could have a copy of the testimony. Here’s a summary of my phone call with a staffer.

Question: Can I have a copy of the testimony?

Answer: There is no video, and the testimony is not transcribed.

Question: Did witnesses provide prepared remarks in advance of the hearing?

Answer: Yes.

Question: Can I get a copy of those?

Answer: No.

Question: Why not?

Answer: They are not within the scope of the Massachusetts Public Records Law (our equivalent of the Freedom of Information Act).

Question (to myself, not to the staffer): So what? Just because you don’t have to give me copies doesn’t mean you can’t.

Question (to the staffer): Can I get a list of the witnesses who testified?

Answer: No.

This is ridiculous. I hope those of you who live in Massachusetts will take a minute to call your representatives and senators and tell them that legislative committees should work transparently. It’s as though this hearing dropped down the memory hole.

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Comments

  1. David, in response to your question: I called the House office of the Joint Committee on the Judiciary and spoke with some staff person, whom I think of as Dr. No.

  2. Cynthia Stone Creem
    Gale D. Candaras
    Patricia D. Jehlen
    Thomas M. McGeeJohn F. Keenan
    Richard J. Ross
    Eugene L. O’Flaherty
    Christopher N. Speranzo
    Colleen M. Garry
    Kevin J. Murphy
    Sean Curran
    John V. Fernandes
    Angelo J. Puppolo, Jr.
    Carlos Henriquez
    Christopher M. Markey
    Daniel B. Winslow
    Shelia C. Harrington

    The Joint Committee on the Judiciary

    It shall be the duty of the committee on Judiciary to consider all matters concerning crimes, penalties and sentencing, criminal offender record information, judiciary, including the recall of judges, the salaries of judges, court clerks and court officers of the various courts, probation officers, juries and jury duty, parole, registers of deeds, correction issues previously sent to Public Safety (but excluding the retirement of judges and all other court personnel) and such other matters as may be referred. .

  3. Sometimes a free lance videographer shows up and uses a digicam – I wasn’t at this hearing so do not know. Generally, each member of a committee gets a copy of each submission but not always, so TedF may want to inquire of BMG’s own Dan Winslow.

    There is ZERO transparency required of our legislature; it is noblesse oblige and up to each legislator and/or committee chair whether to arrange to have digital recording or give out copies of testimony.

  4. Call your own representative and/or Senator, tell them what happened, and ask them to have the Joint Committee on the Judiciary send you the info. You may have to pay for any of the copies, and if you want them, you should say you’re willing to do that.

    If you’re calling the Joint Office, not your own Rep, whoever is picking up the phone isn’t incentivized to work with you in anywhere near the same way your own rep would be.

    This is a perfect example of why we need more and better transparency, including an open meetings law for the State House and ensuring that all public documents get put online (though part of me thinks getting all written testimony online would be a tall order — though that should absolutely be publicly available to anyone willing to get it/pay for it).

    • Ryan, the first thing I did was fire off a letter to my representatives. Senator Rush, Representative Scaccia, are you listening? Action, please!

  5. The Legislators are elected to do the work. Why do we need to know anything in between elections? Transparency just gets people agitated.

    • The funny thing about this is that there can’t be more than five people interested in this bill. So if they hold their cards this close to the vest on a bill that no one knows or cares about, what are they doing on bigger-ticket issues?

  6. …then there shouldn’t be any more harm in making what was said in public available to those who couldn’t make it. It might be reasonable to redact names from the written record if privacy is a concern.

    • When someone goes to trouble of going to a hearing and making a statement, they want to make sure it gets heard! They don’t want two members of the committee nodding their heads for a minute and then their testimony being immediately erased as if it was never given, they want the whole state to know what they said, on the record, forever. Of course that’s what we want that’s why we testified at a public hearing!!!

      Of course if someone is concerned about their privacy and wants to make a private appeal, they can do that in some other way, and make it clear that it is not intended to be public.

      It’s clear they are not only being lazy slobs, but they want to be unaccountable lazy slobs as well.

  7. I responded to Rep. O’Flaherty’s email this morning as follows, and I will update if/when he writes back.

    Dear Rep. O’Flaherty:

    Thank you very much for your response. I can certainly appreciate that
    your committee considers some very sensitive issues (though I do wonder
    whether the Uniform Foreign Court Money Judgment Act is among them).
    But surely even in those instances, the witnesses are aware that the
    hearing room may be filled with spectators, reporters, etc., and that
    their identities, along with anything they say, may well end up on the
    front page of the newspaper or leading the evening news. In fact, it
    seems to me that the more sensitive the issue, the more likely that the
    news media will be in attendance. It is precisely the high-profile
    issues like laws regarding sexual assault, and dramatic changes to
    intellectual property laws, that generate news stories. Just last
    month, for example, a hearing on the transgender rights bill was held in
    Gardner Auditorium because of the intense public interest in that bill,
    and generated numerous news stories. And according to a June 9 Globe
    story, one of the witnesses made precisely the point I am making: ”
    ‘Most of us work really hard to be invisible in society,’ said Gunner
    Scott, director of the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition,
    who now has a male identity. ‘Unfortunately, most of us have no choice
    but to come out of the closet.’ ” We can all certainly be grateful to
    such witnesses, who choose to testify despite the loss of privacy that
    doing so entails. But the simple fact is that they have already made
    the decision to “go public,” as it were, with their concerns about
    pending legislation.

    And so, it seems to me that witnesses who choose to testify have already
    themselves weighed the costs and benefits of doing so, and have decided
    that the opportunity to influence pending legislation is more important
    to them than keeping their identities hidden. To impose a blanket
    policy of refusing to give out information that was apparent to anyone
    in attendance seems to me to afford little additional protection to
    witnesses, while also unnecessarily penalizing persons with a genuine
    and legitimate interest in the subject matter, but who for reasons
    beyond their control are simply not able to attend on the day and time
    set by the committee. At the very least, I would think that the default
    position should be that the basic information we are discussing would be
    publicly available, and that the committee might in unusual cases choose
    to alter that position.

    I hope that you will reconsider.

    Best wishes,
    David

  9. Representative O’Flaherty and I have exchanged emails on this issue, which I’ve posted here. The bottom line is he thinks the current policy is just fine, thank you very much.

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