“This has nothing to do with repealing anything. This is a rule change,” Mariano told reporters after a House Democratic caucus on Thursday.

“I have no intention of doing anything at the moment,” he added when pressed. on potential plans to change the law. “Maybe take a few days off.”

House lawmakers then approved the order, 135-10, with a handful of Republicans voting against it. Before the vote, state Rep. Danielle Gregoire, a Marlborough Democrat on Mariano’s leadership team, launched a thinly veiled investigation into DiZoglio, who legislative leaders accused of seeking to boost his political profile by suing a legislative audit.

“With this proposed rule change, we seek to ensure that any audit pursuant to the adoption of the first question will be a professional audit and not a political one,” she said.

The Quincy Democrat said Tuesday’s results showed voters “weren’t happy with the way we were doing things” and suggested the new rule was a way for the House to acknowledge that dissatisfaction. Legislative leaders have long argued that DiZoglio’s attempts to audit the chambers would violate the constitutional separation of powers between the branches.

“We took a look. . . and we found that we could make some changes that we believed would maintain a strong financial audit – while still supporting our argument about the separation of powers,” he said.

In an earlier statement, Mariano said the new rule would give DiZoglio “the sole authority to select an independent auditing firm to conduct a financial audit,” which will be automatically posted on the Legislative Assembly website and be conducted each year. The proposed ordinance states that DiZoglio could select a firm “from the list of private and independent auditing firms on the appropriate statewide procurement contract.”

The order will takes effect immediately but will apply from next fiscal year which begins in July 2025.

Shortly after the House vote, a spokeswoman for State Senate President Karen E. Spilka said that while she understood the House’s intentions, the House would not adopt its own order for now.

“As the ballot measure has not yet gone into effect and the Court and the rules governing it are set to expire at the end of December, we will not be taking similar action at this time,” said Gray Milkowski, a Spilka spokesman. “The Senate has worked consistently to increase transparency in recent years and is exploring ways to continue to do so for the next session.”

Before the election, Democratic leaders in the Legislature, including Mariano, indicated they might make changes to Question 1, if it passed. Opponents of the measure have not officially campaigned against the ballot measure.

The voter-approved proposal specifies that DiZoglio’s office has the authority to audit the Legislature, which legislative leadersTHE state attorney generaland his immediate predecessor have all previously argued that he did not have the authority to do so unilaterally under State Law.

In a series of posts on On Thursday, DiZoglio criticized the decision, writing to House members: “If you remove our office’s ability to conduct the audit, you give yourself the ability to control the scope of the audit.” »

“You will always control how much you pay for the audit, what their scope will be, and what you will allow them to review or not review,” she wrote. “You will give yourself control over every aspect. . exempt you from scrutiny – again – and slap the voters in the face.

She said that despite their decision to give her the opportunity to choose A auditing firm, arguing that lawmakers hold the power to decide which parts of the audit should be made public.

“Your legislators are about to tell you to say goodbye to knowing how much they spend on (non-disclosure agreements) and say goodbye to whether they break the law and award state contracts to their friends,” she wrote.

A spokesperson for Mariano said Thursday that the Chamber has not signed an NDA with an employee or former employee, and has not paid money to resolve a workplace complaint, since Mariano became president at the end of 2020.

Just weeks before voters approved the ballot measure, DiZoglio released a 77-page report compiled by his taxpayer-funded office which criticized the House and Senate for breaking their own rules and providing little — and sometimes late — financial information.

DiZoglio’s office called the review a “performance audit,” but he devoted much of his report to highlighting information he did not have: Parliament did not respond to his requests for information. interview or data, leaving it to rely only on publicly available data. information. Ultimately, the report provides no conclusions on a range of issues, including whether Parliament adheres to a “fair way of making laws” or how it deals with so-called majority bills, those co-sponsored by a majority of legislators.

DiZoglio then said that if the ballot measure passed, she would “revisit” these and other areas under her new authority. She sent lawmakers a letter Friday reiterating her plans to audit several other areas and asking legislative leaders to respond “within 72 hours of the date of the request.”

Legislative leaders had not yet sent a formal response to DiZoglio as of Thursday afternoon.

Samantha J. Gross can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her @samanthajgross. Matt Stout can be contacted at [email protected]. Follow him @mattpstout.