Keller: Will Massachusetts lawmakers tinker with ballot measures approved by voters?
The opinions expressed below are Jon Keller's, not those of WBZ, CBS News or Paramount Global.
BOSTON - On Election Day, voters said yes to several ballot initiatives in Massachusetts. But that may not mean they have the last word.
Question 1, which gave the state auditor the ability to audit the legislature, passed overwhelmingly, with more than 71% of the vote. And nearly 60% of voters approved Question 2, which means public high school students no longer need to pass the MCAS exam in order to graduate.
But will state lawmakers tinker with these new laws -- or scrap them altogether?
Question 1
"Legislative leaders are still looking for a way out," said Auditor Diana DiZoglio, the force behind Question 1. And she's urging voters to back up their votes with even more pressure on state leaders. "We are reaching out to folks across the board in Massachusetts and asking you to please call your legislator and please call the governor," she said.
But keep in mind: "the prerogative of the legislature is to make and adjust laws," noted Evan Horowitz of the Tufts Center for State Policy Analysis. While the auditor can look at the way the legislature handles its own funds, he said, her authority to make good on her vow to probe internal procedures like committee assignments stands on shaky legal ground.
"The legislature, short of changing the law, can also just defund the auditor's office, or have a section that says we're funding the auditor's office but none of these dollars can be used to audit the legislature," said Horowitz. "It may be better to think of this as like the roadrunner and the coyote [from the old cartoons], with the auditor playing the role of coyote and the legislature playing the role of roadrunner. They have lots of ways to get away."
Question 2 eliminating MCAS
And despite teacher-union spin in their campaign ads about Question 2 replacing MCAS with local control over graduation standards, on Beacon Hill they're already discussing new statewide standards that might require completion of prescribed courses rather than passage of a single test.
"It felt like a referendum on MCAS but that's not what it was," said Horowitz. "It was a referendum on whether the state should play any role in deciding if there should be statewide standards and who should graduate from high school. And I think there's some wiggle room there."
Many voters seem to think ballot questions like this are a form of direct democracy where they can bypass the legislature, but that isn't quite true. Most state legislatures can and sometimes do tinker with ballot questions after they become law, and there are cases like the taxpayer-funding of elections law that passed in 1998 where they ultimately repealed it altogether.
Voters can take revenge on legislators who do that at the polls, but rarely do.
