Massachusetts auditor heads to court after finding $12M in fraud

Massachusetts State Auditor Diana DiZoglio has escalated a long-running transparency fight to the state’s highest court, asking the Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) to force the Legislature to comply with a voter-approved law that explicitly authorizes her office to audit the General Court.

What voters passed—and what it changed

In 2024, Massachusetts voters approved “Question 1,” a ballot measure that amended state law to specify the auditor’s authority to audit the Legislature and to access records needed to conduct that audit. The Secretary of the Commonwealth’s voter guide frames the measure plainly: a “Yes” vote “would specify” that the auditor has authority to audit the Legislature; a “No” vote would make no change.

Ballotpedia’s summary of the initiative adds important detail: the new language authorizes audits of legislative “accounts, programs, activities, and functions,” and contemplates access to “accounts, books, documents… and other records” relevant to the audit’s scope.

That’s the legal foundation DiZoglio says lawmakers are now defying.

Why the audit is stalled

According to WBUR and Axios’ local Boston coverage, House and Senate leaders have refused to hand over documents, arguing the auditor’s probe into the Legislature’s internal operations raises separation-of-powers problems under the Massachusetts Constitution.

The dispute has also pulled in other power centers on Beacon Hill. Axios reports DiZoglio has publicly accused Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell’s office of obstructing enforcement of the voter-approved law, while Campbell has rejected that characterization and argued DiZoglio hasn’t adequately defined the audit’s scope.

DiZoglio’s SJC filing is designed to break that logjam by asking the court to compel compliance—essentially forcing a definitive ruling on whether the auditor’s voter-granted mandate can be limited (or delayed) by legislative leadership or executive-branch legal interpretations.

The “why now” factor: fraud oversight and public trust

In media appearances and coverage of the lawsuit, DiZoglio has tied her push for access to a broader oversight argument: when government controls large flows of public money, independent auditing is one of the few tools that can restore public confidence after waste or fraud is uncovered. Fox News and Boston 25 both highlighted her public emphasis on transparency and on alleged fraud findings her office has cited in other contexts.

Whether or not the Legislature itself is tied to any specific misuse of funds, the political reality is that “guardrails” have become a more salient issue nationally—especially after headline-grabbing pandemic-era fraud cases showed how quickly systems can be exploited when oversight is weak.

Minnesota’s pandemic fraud case—and what it actually shows

The Massachusetts dispute is unfolding in the shadow of one of the largest pandemic-era fraud prosecutions in the country: the “Feeding Our Future” case in Minnesota, involving a scheme prosecutors say siphoned roughly $250 million from a federally funded child nutrition program. Aimee Bock, the founder of Feeding Our Future, and a co-defendant were convicted by a federal jury in 2025, according to the U.S. Department of Justice and the Associated Press.

It’s also a sprawling prosecution. DOJ updates describe a large and continuing set of charged defendants connected to the case.

That said, it’s important to be precise about what Minnesota’s case does—and does not—prove. The scandal has been widely discussed in connection with Minnesota’s large East African diaspora, and some defendants and operators tied to meal sites were Somali-American; but fraud cases are driven by specific actors and incentives, not by an ethnicity. The larger takeaway for other states is structural: large, rapidly expanded public programs + rushed approvals + limited verification can create enormous opportunity for organized fraud if controls don’t keep pace.

What the SJC case could decide

At its core, DiZoglio’s case tees up several high-impact questions for Massachusetts:

1. Can the Legislature refuse an audit voters explicitly authorized?
   If the SJC treats the ballot measure as a clear directive, lawmakers may be compelled to produce documents—at least for financial and administrative areas within the auditor’s scope.

2. Where is the line between financial oversight and legislative independence?
   Even if the auditor wins access, the court could narrow how audits are conducted—e.g., limiting inquiries into certain internal deliberations while allowing review of spending, contracts, payroll, and related controls.

3. Does the auditor need to define the audit scope more precisely before enforcement?
   Axios reports the AG’s office has suggested a lack of audit detail is part of the problem; the SJC could require more specificity as a prerequisite for compelled production.

The bigger picture: a referendum on transparency itself

Whatever the legal outcome, the clash is a stress test of a simple democratic idea: when voters expand an oversight office’s authority, can entrenched institutions slow-walk compliance by invoking constitutional boundaries—especially when those boundaries haven’t been freshly adjudicated against the new law?

That question resonates beyond Massachusetts because the incentives are universal. Legislatures write budgets and set program rules; auditors show where the rules break down in practice. The Minnesota case is an extreme example of what can happen when controls fail at scale. Massachusetts’ fight is a subtler version of the same public concern: whether government entities can be meaningfully audited at all when the auditors show up at the door.