Nine is the number Massachusetts has not seen on a statewide ballot in more than three decades. On Nov. 3, voters will decide nine statewide ballot questions, tying the state record for the busiest slate, the Boston Globe reported in its voter guide. In-person early voting runs from Oct. 17 through Oct. 30.
What Question 1 would change
The first question on the ballot is about the plumbing of government itself. The state’s public records law presumes that government records are public unless they fall under a specifically stated exemption. Two branches of Massachusetts government currently sit outside that law: the governor’s office and the state Legislature, both of which claim blanket exemptions from complying with it. Governor Maura Healey and her predecessors have pointed to a decades-old Supreme Judicial Court ruling when denying requests for records.
A yes vote on Question 1 would extend the public records law to most records held by the Legislature and the governor’s office. A no vote leaves the law unchanged. The question carries its own list of exemptions, including one for public policy development and another covering communications between constituents and their elected lawmakers.
Running in parallel is a legislative maneuver with an unclear endpoint. State lawmakers have separately pushed a bill that would open a narrower, specifically enumerated set of documents and information to public access, rather than applying the records law broadly. That bill is still pending in closed-door negotiations, and it is unclear how it would interact with the ballot question. The scenario in which both pass — a voter-approved expansion and a narrower legislative statute covering the same records — has no settled answer yet.
Who backs it, who resists it
The measure’s most prominent supporter is State Auditor Diana DiZoglio, who with other advocates argues that Massachusetts is one of the least transparent states in the nation and that expanding the records law would promote open government. Healey has said she also supports extending the law to cover both her office and the Legislature — with, in her words, “appropriate exemptions.”
There is no formal opposition campaign. The resistance comes from the Democrats who lead the Legislature, on two grounds. First, they say the measure does not provide enough protection for communications between elected officials and their constituents. Second, they raise a separation-of-powers argument: because the secretary of state’s office enforces the records law against state agencies and other public entities, extending it to the Legislature would put one branch in the position of policing another, which they say could infringe on constitutionally protected separation of powers. The enforcement question is a real design issue, not just rhetoric — any records law has to name its referee, and the dispute here is over who that referee may constitutionally be.
Question 1 is one item in a long slate. CommonWealth Beacon’s rundown of the nine questions includes a Question 6 that would direct existing sales tax revenue to a state fund for conservation and a Question 7 that would reduce minimum lot-size requirements in many communities. Ballotpedia’s certified list also includes an initiative to decrease the state income tax rate and one declaring zoning and land use primarily, though not exclusively, matters of local control. The Globe maintains a donor database tracking the money behind the various proposals.
The number to watch after Nov. 3 is not just the yes-or-no tally on Question 1 but the arithmetic of overlap: whether the Legislature’s narrower bill passes alongside it, and which statute governs a request for the governor’s calendar once both are on the books.