DiZoglio's Audit Push and Healey Claims

Massachusetts State Auditor Diana DiZoglio has spent most of her first term trying to audit the state Legislature, a push voters endorsed in 2024. Along the way, the Methuen Democrat has also criticized fellow Democrat Gov. Maura Healey, saying the governor has not backed her up. This report lays out what DiZoglio is seeking, what she has said publicly about Healey, and how Healey’s office has responded. Statements about Healey below are DiZoglio’s own public accounts, attributed by date and source, and have not been independently confirmed unless noted.

Who Diana DiZoglio is

DiZoglio represented the 14th Essex District in the Massachusetts House from 2013 to 2019 and the 1st Essex District in the Senate from 2019 to 2023, according to Ballotpedia. She won the 2022 auditor’s race with 55.1% of the vote over Republican Anthony Amore and took office in January 2023. She is on the Nov. 3 ballot for a second term.

Transparency on Beacon Hill has been her signature issue since before she held office. In a 2018 House floor speech, she said she was fired as a legislative aide in 2011 and had to sign a nondisclosure agreement to receive six weeks of severance, WBUR reported. “I don’t break this NDA to attack or accuse anyone… I just want this awful practice to stop,” she said. Then-Speaker Robert DeLeo confirmed she was one of 33 former House employees who signed such agreements to get severance, but said none settled sexual harassment complaints.

What DiZoglio wants

A full audit of the Legislature. In November 2024, voters approved Question 1, which explicitly lists the Legislature among the bodies the auditor may audit, by about 71.5% to 28.5% in preliminary results, NBC Boston reported. “They were already subject… we added the language ‘including the general court’ specifically to that language of the law, so that it was crystal clear that they are to be audited like everybody else,” DiZoglio told WAMC in January 2025. That month she told lawmakers she intended to examine “high-risk areas,” including procurement and the use of nondisclosure agreements, the Boston Globe reported.

A court ruling. After legislative leaders refused, DiZoglio asked Attorney General Andrea Campbell for help suing them. “We have presented your office with a legal issue that is not only ripe for litigation, but for which litigation is the only means of resolution,” she wrote on Oct. 15, 2025, New Boston Post reported. Campbell’s office replied that “no legal dispute is ripe and no SAAG will be appointed” until the auditor supplied more detail. DiZoglio then took the matter to the Supreme Judicial Court and sought outside lawyers, at one point a team whose fees Republican gubernatorial candidate Mike Minogue offered to pay.

The narrowed case. In May 2026, after the SJC set Campbell a 30-day deadline, the AG allowed DiZoglio to hire attorney Shannon Liss-Riordan. The condition was that she refile the suit limited to four record types for fiscal years 2021 to 2024: each chamber’s budgets, official audits, “balance forward” transactions, and settlement agreements with current or former employees or members, Axios Boston reported. “This case doesn’t limit our audit but rather initiates it,” DiZoglio told Axios, adding that she may seek more in later reviews.

Public records. She is backing a 2026 ballot question that would put the Legislature and governor’s office under the public records law. If lawmakers pass a narrower substitute, “I will absolutely be considering bringing or taking legal action to stand up for the will of the voters,” she told State House News Service, as reported by WBUR on Oct. 7. Our guide to the 2026 Massachusetts ballot questions has more on that measure.

What DiZoglio says about Healey

No help on the ballot question (March 2025). “It would have been nice to have received any sort of semblance of support during the election cycle. We didn’t receive it from either actually,” she said on GBH, referring to Healey and Campbell, the Boston Globe reported. CommonWealth Beacon had reported that Healey was publicly silent on the question before the vote. Status: her characterization; the silence before the vote is reported.
Unreturned calls (February 2026). Healey “hasn’t returned my calls in over a year,” DiZoglio told MASSterList. Status: DiZoglio’s claim, unconfirmed. Healey’s office responded: “Governor Healey has been clear that she voted for the audit and believes it should happen. She is happy to talk to the Auditor at any time.”
Monthly meetings stopped (February 2026). DiZoglio told MASSterList that monthly meetings between the governor and the auditor had ended. Status: DiZoglio’s claim, unconfirmed. We found no specific response from Healey’s office on this point.
Standing with her (February 2026). DiZoglio said she had asked Healey to “stand with me to demand the Legislature comply and the AG enforce the law.” “I wish she would’ve helped us with this,” she told MASSterList.
“Tepid support” (October 2026). The Boston Globe’s Oct. 23 newsletter said DiZoglio has “needled” Healey over what she views as tepid support for her transparency reforms, and that DiZoglio did not commit to voting for Healey. DiZoglio had also called on Healey to pledge to veto any narrowing public records bill. Healey said in the interview that aired Oct. 20 that she would.

Healey has said she voted for the audit law. “I’ve done everything I can do to get this audit done,” she said in a Boston 25 interview that aired Oct. 20, State House News Service reported. She called the Legislature’s position “the wrong decision.”

The other players

Legislative leaders. House Speaker Ron Mariano and Senate President Karen Spilka argue that the audit violates the constitutional separation of powers. “Compliance is in the eye of the beholder,” Mariano said in January 2025, according to WAMC.

The Senate’s records. In late May 2026, the Senate voted 33-6 to give DiZoglio’s office the four record types while reserving its constitutional objections, MASSterList reported. On June 3, Spilka said that “should be the end of the court situation.” A June 1 letter from Senate counsel said the information was already public and that the Senate had no settlement agreements for those years, State House News Service reported.

House bill H 5469. Passed in early June without a public hearing, the bill would create a records process for the Legislature, put the governor’s office under the public records law, limit the auditor’s reach to four administrative areas, and bar courts from resolving auditor-Legislature disputes, State House News Service reported.

The attorney general. In 2024, Campbell said the auditor lacked the legal authority to audit the Legislature over its objection, WBUR reported. She later said she supported Question 1 “but that there were constitutional limitations,” and that with the court narrowing the scope, “we are no longer in the middle of that.” For more on how Massachusetts votes this fall, see our explainer on Question 3.

Sources

Featured image: Diana DiZoglio takes the oath of office as state auditor in January 2023. Photo: Office of Governor Maura Healey, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped).

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What Auditor Diana DiZoglio Wants, and What She Says About Healey