A new Boston Globe investigation published Friday puts State Sen. Mark Montigny of New Bedford in its crosshairs.
The investigation found Montigny earns $61,000 in extra pay for leading two legislative committees that have not held any public hearings or considered any bills this session. Those stipends have bumped up Montigny’s annual pay to $162,000. The Globe reported that critics told them numerous committees like this exist to line the pockets of lawmakers with “bogus bureaucracy.”
Montigny did not agree to an interview with The Public’s Radio. In an emailed statement, his legislative director Audra Riding responded to the Globe’s story, saying the senator “has consistently served as one of the most active policy makers on Beacon Hill,” and that “it is the President and clerk who determine whether bills are sent to committees.”
The lead reporter behind the Globe’s investigation, Emma Platoff, sat down with South Coast Bureau reporter Ben Berke to talk more about how lucrative committee assignments feed into the power dynamics of the Massachusetts State House.
Transcript:
Berke: Emma, can you explain what a legislative committee is and what they’re supposed to do?
Platoff: Absolutely. So if you think about watching Schoolhouse Rock in our school days, as many of us did, committees are a really important part of the legislative process, right? This is where a bill gets refined, the details are debated, lawmakers collect public testimony, they refine the details, and ultimately they decide is this a good idea that we should send to the full house or the full Senate or the full legislature, or is this something that needs a little bit more work? That’s sort of the traditional and potential role of a legislative committee. And what we found is that in the Massachusetts legislature, there is a fairly big chunk of these committees – actually more than 20% of them – that are not doing any legislating at all.
Berke: What are the two legislative committees that New Bedford Senator Mark Montigny leads, and what do they actually do? What have you learned about their function?
Platoff: Mark Montigny chairs two Senate-specific committees called the Senate Committee on Intergovernmental Affairs and the Senate Committee on Steering and Policy. So we sent many requests to his office. We called, we emailed, tried to reach him as many ways as we could. What we heard was not a lot of specifics about what those committees have achieved. We asked whether those committees have even met this session. He didn’t answer that question. According to the legislature’s committee book, which lays out the missions for each of these panels, the Committee on Intergovernmental Affairs is charged with identifying federal funding opportunities. So we asked him, can you point us to any examples of federal grants that you have identified, sought, or won for the Commonwealth? He did not provide any examples of that. And the Senate Committee on Steering and Policy has a little bit of a broader role. It’s kind of about advising Senate leadership on what are the major issues to take on, and we didn’t hear a lot from him on that front either, about his work leading that panel, though we know that he is, of course, a veteran lawmaker and certainly an advocate for many issues in the legislature.
Berke: The headline for your story puts Senator Montigny in the hot seat, but is he the only lawmaker benefiting from these kinds of committees?
Platoff: He’s not. So we identified 12 committees that, during this current two-year session that we’re nearing the end of, have held no public hearings and considered no bills. And the reason we started the story with Senator Montigny is that he actually chairs two of those committees, earning a combined $61,000 in extra pay each year for those two roles. And there were no other lawmakers that chaired two of those committees, but certainly there are a number of lawmakers leading these legislative panels that could identify few accomplishments in the multiple rounds of interviews and requests we sent over to their offices.
Berke: How does a lawmaker end up with a lucrative seat on a committee that doesn’t do any public-facing work?
Playoff: When we asked these leaders “Why do you think you were selected for this role?” they pointed to their expertise. For example, there’s a House committee on Operations, Facilities, and Security and the leader of that said he has expertise in the field of construction. But we also know just from looking at the broader trends that the people who lead these committees are all Democrats, as the legislative leaders are, and they tend to be more experienced lawmakers who’ve served for a longer time and often have better relationships with legislative leaders. It’s often not the people bucking House or Senate leadership who end up with these lucrative titles.
Berke: The Senate president and the House speaker defended these kinds of advisory committees in your story. They said that their leaders in these committees are doing behind the scenes work that you can’t measure by counting bills or counting public hearings. What did the former legislators that you talked to have to say about the explanation given by the House speaker and Senate president for these committees?
Platoff: Well, we certainly talked to some former legislators who were unconvinced by those explanations. Some of them had pretty cynical takes, saying, if you can’t point to what your committee has accomplished, then what have you done other than create a stipend for one of your colleagues? I think history is also an important guide here. So one of the committees we took a look at is the House Committee on Post Audit and Oversight. Historically, this has been a really powerful committee. They held hearings into the Big Dig. They examined the role of the child welfare system after a child in that system tragically died many years ago. But during this current session, that committee has not held any public hearings at all.
Berke: Emma, thanks for talking with me.
Platoff: Thanks for having me.
