BOSTON — A popular election law that allows the state auditor to investigate the Legislature still hasn’t taken effect, and the latest response from representatives has set off another political fracas over transparency on Beacon Hill.

The House voted Thursday to change the process by which it requests an independent financial audit of its practices, reassigning responsibility for choosing an audit firm to the state auditor, the very person currently trying to conduct a legislative audit.

Listener Diana DiZoglio responded by describing the maneuver as “a slap in the face to voters” and arguing that it would effectively circumvent the more incisive work she hopes to accomplish.

So far, the action is limited to just one chamber: Although Senate Democrats have also clearly opposed DiZoglio’s successful campaign, they have no plans to take a similar vote before the end of the 2024-2025 mandate, December 31.

The rule changes do not affect the auditor’s powers under election law, but they represent an early signal of how legislative leaders will try to counter the power voters gave DiZoglio.

Current House Section 85A directs the Director of House Affairs, with the approval of the House Counsel, to select an independent external auditor to review the financial accounts each year.

Under this change, the business owner would instead have to adopt the auditor’s recommendation for a private, independent company “pursuant to a statewide procurement contract established by the Division of Operational Services.” .

Rep. Danielle Gregoire, the first division chair of House Speaker Ron Mariano’s leadership team, said the change would ensure that “any audit following the passage of Question 1 will be a professional audit, not a political one.” “, an apparent reference to DiZoglio’s well. -known clashes with legislative leaders during and after his tenure in the House and Senate.

Grégoire was the only representative to speak about the measure in the House.

The House approved the rule change (H 5105) 135-10. Among House Republicans, 11 voted for the change, three did not vote and 10 voted against — Reps. Donald Berthiaume of Spencer, Nicolas Boldyga of Southwick, David DeCoste of Norwell, John Marsi of Dudley, Joseph McKenna of Sutton, Kelly Pease. of Westfield, Michael Soter of Bellingham, Alyson Sullivan-Almeida of Abington, Marcus Vaughn of Wrentham and Steven Xiarhos of Barnstable.

Speaking to reporters before the vote, Mariano presented it as “an opportunity to recognize the electorate’s vote of 70 to 30.”

“Obviously they weren’t happy with the way we were doing things, and we took a look at the way we were doing things,” he said. “We found that we could make some changes that we believed would maintain a strong financial audit while continuing to support our separation of powers argument.”

Asked if he would consider repealing the voting law, Mariano said, “It has nothing to do with repealing anything. This is a rule change.

Mariano and Senate President Karen Spilka said earlier this week that they were studying possible changes to the law.

“This is the first presentation we are making to members. We want to see how it is received. We want to see what the listener’s reaction is to this,” Mariano said Thursday. “We are ready to work with the auditor. She wanted to get his opinion on the audit; she has it now. She can choose the company that will do it.

“We haven’t touched the law. Let’s be clear: we haven’t touched the law. I have no intention of doing anything at the moment except maybe taking a few days off,” he added.

Mariano announced his intention to adopt the rule change around 12:30 p.m. Thursday, as House Democrats were meeting behind closed doors to discuss upcoming votes. DiZoglio took to social media within minutes to express her incandescent discontent — and to ask other constitutional officials to get involved.

“To the members of the House who are currently in caucus. If you remove our office’s ability to perform the audit, you give yourself the ability to control the scope of the audit, by an external company, since you will still control how much you pay for the audit, what you will authorize them to do. scope, and what you will allow them to review or not review — you will give yourself control over all aspects of the process which will be overseen by you, not our office, exempting you from any oversight — again — slap the voters,” she posted.

She argued that under this change, lawmakers would still “possess the exclusive power to block taxpayers’ access to what ANY audit reveals and show us ONLY what they want to show us.” DiZoglio suggested the move would block any insight into state spending on nondisclosure agreements — a top issue for her for a long time — and whether lawmakers are “breaking the law and awarding state contracts to their friends.”

A spokesperson for Mariano said Thursday that Chamber “has not signed an NDA with any employee or former employee, nor has it paid any money to resolve workplace complaints since President Mariano became Speaker of the House” at the end of 2020.

DiZoglio appealed directly to Gov. Maura Healey, who refused to take a position on the legislature’s auditing measure. “.@MassGovernor, it’s time. We, the people, need you to defend us. Veto this,” she posted.

The governor does not have veto power over legislative rules.

DiZoglio then expanded his appeal to Healey and Attorney General Andrea Campbell.

“I’m asking for help from @MassAGO and @MassGovernor because we legitimately cannot stop lawmakers from messing with Question 1, without their FULL support,” she wrote. “@MassAGO please represent people in court to uphold the law, old and new. @MassGovernor please take a public stand and call on them to follow the law they plan to outright ignore.

The rule change will be limited to the House, at least for the next six weeks or so.

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

The spokesperson added that Senate rules already require independent audits and annual financial statements to be available online. DiZoglio’s office previously said the Senate only posted its fiscal 2021 audit online after his team reported its absence.

DiZoglio, herself a former representative and senator, has aggressively pushed to audit the Legislature over the objections of leading Democrats, who argue it would represent constitutional overreach.

His taxpayer-funded office released the results of its first attempt to audit the Legislature with a report released 15 days before Election Day that said House and Senate Democrats refused to participate and criticized the missing information.

The Methuen Democrat wrote to Mariano and Spilka last week to renew her request for information and describe her intention to conduct a “performance audit,” which could be broader than the “financial audit” envisioned by the change in rules of the House.

She said at the time the analysis would begin with “a review of high-risk areas” like state procurement and contracting procedures, taxpayer-funded NDAs and the ” balance item to be carried forward” to the Legislative Assembly.

Mariano said he wants any audit to remain financially focused “because we think there’s a real separation between what you can do and what you can’t do.”

“I’m not going to allow her to come here and declare that she can do this,” he said. “We believe that the separations (of powers) provided for in Article 30 of the Constitution are real.”

Campbell’s office certified that the ballot question was constitutionally viable to put to voters, but the AG herself did not side with DiZoglio. Last year, she ruled that the auditor did not have the legal authority to audit the Legislature under the laws of the time, and she warned of “constitutional limits” affecting a law electoral.

On Thursday, Campbell declined to shed more light on what those factors might be and said she first wanted to better understand “what the auditor is actually looking to audit.”

Government watchdog groups across the political spectrum have supported the campaign on election issues.

House Minority Leader Brad Jones of North Reading voted in favor of the rule change Thursday and said he considered it “a modest first step.”

“Instead of Democratic leaders choosing the auditor to audit us ourselves, I view and would support as a first step saying (to the auditor), ‘Okay, you’re going to choose who does it.'” , he told the News. Service before the vote. “I think it’s fine if she wants to say, ‘That’s great, but it doesn’t satisfy everything she’s looking for.’ I think it’s just a good measure, even apart from the question.

He did, however, express some concerns about a broader performance audit, saying it “seems more personal than anything else.”

Sam Drysdale contributed reporting.