A range of legal and government experts told Massachusetts senators that State Auditor Diana DiZoglio’s attempt to investigate the Legislature is unconstitutional, violates separation of power principles, and could be weaponized against lawmakers who run afoul of an elected official.

Four state legislators leading a committee tasked with responding to DiZoglio’s audit attempt heard from law professors and auditing professionals they hand-selected to testify Wednesday morning. And the group of senators continued to express long-held skepticism towards DiZoglio’s effort to audit the Legislature in the wake of a successful ballot question last year.

New England Law Boston Professor Lawrence Friedman, an expert in the Massachusetts constitution, said the popularity of the ballot question that granted DiZoglio’s office the authority to audit the Legislature “has no bearing on its constitutionality.”

“Chapter 250 of the Acts of 2024 violates the Massachusetts Constitution. It runs afoul of the constitutional provisions authorizing each house of the General Court to set its own rules and undermines basic separation of powers principles,” Friedman said, referring to the portion of state law that contains the language of the ballot question.

Lawrence Friedman, who is of no relation to Sen. Cindy Friedman, was not alone in his belief that the legislative audit law, which passed with nearly 72% of the vote during the November 2024 election, violated the state constitution.

University of Massachusetts Amherst Political Science Professor Ray La Raja, who also co-directs the institution’s polling arm, said the power granted to DiZoglio by the ballot question “threatens a core principle of constitutional democracy.”

“Massachusetts voters have been asked to decide whether the state auditor, a member of the executive branch, should be authorized to audit the Legislature without its consent,” he said. “Now, on the surface, this might sound like a simple move towards transparency, but beneath the surface, question one threatens one of the foundational principles of American constitutional government — separation of powers.”

The hearing, led by Sen. Cindy Friedman, an Arlington Democrat and top lieutenant to Senate President Karen Spilka, was the latest chapter in the contentious battle between the Legislature and DiZoglio, a former state lawmaker who regularly battled with leaders in both chambers.

The meeting came months after DiZoglio began her second attempt to audit the two chambers, as she is still trying to persuade Attorney General Andrea Campbell to greenlight legal action, and after the Herald published a series of forms in which DiZoglio admitted she had conflicts of interest with the Legislature.

DiZoglio declined an invitation to attend the hearing.

In a statement to the Herald, she said she was set to be “maligned — yet again — by senators who are blocking our access to basic financial and contracting records.”

“We will in no way participate in the Senate’s unconstitutional show trial, purported to be a hearing. Senators are not judges, and their actions in deciding whether or not they have to follow the law — by holding a kangaroo court on this matter — blatantly violates the Constitution, which states that the power to interpret the law rests with the Judiciary — not with the Legislature,” the Methuen Democrat said.

Sen. Cindy Friedman said lawmakers who held the hearing “are not a court.”

“We are doing what the Legislature does every single day. We have questions. We’ve been charged to do something — come up with a finding or a report. We are holding a hearing. We have asked the auditor to provide people who could support her position or have a different point of view. She chose not to do that and not to engage,” Sen. Cindy Friedman said.

DiZoglio has said she wants to review all the topics that her office was unable to “fully review” during her first attempt at investigating the inner workings of the House and Senate.

The work, DiZoglio said in a Feb. 28 letter, would start with “a review of high-risk areas, such as state contracting and procurement procedures, the use of taxpayer-funded nondisclosure agreements, and a review of your balance forward line item — including a review of all relevant financial receipts and information.”

“Neither these audit areas nor the associated requests give rise to separation of powers concerns or any other concerns regarding the Massachusetts Constitution,” DiZoglio wrote in the letter.

La Raja, the UMass professor, said a legislative audit led by the executive branch could “chill internal debate” among lawmakers and “prompt self-censorship and discourage dissent against the executive.”

“Legislators may feel that internal communications, draft proposals or strategy discussions can be exposed under the guise of an audit, even if the auditor claims to be reviewing only finances or processes,” La Raja said. “… It could be used in a political sense. It could be politically weaponized.”

Jeanne Kempthorne, a retired attorney and mediator who also serves on the Coalition to Reform Our Legislature, said “it is difficult to see” how a report with recommendations from the Office of the State Auditor “would limit the power of either the voters or the Legislature.”

Kempthorne said a legislative audit would hand the public “more information about how and why the Legislature performs … so dismally on so many measures” and pushed back on concerns around separation of powers.

“The Supreme Judicial Court has stated repeatedly that separation of powers does not require three watertight compartments within the government. Absolute division among the three governmental departments is neither possible nor always desirable,” she said. “I want to be as concrete as possible. I think you let the ship sail, and then you figure out whether you need to change direction.”

Senators also honed in on whether conflicts of interest could arise for DiZoglio in a legislative audit.

DiZoglio admitted in forms signed in 2023, 2024, and 2025 that there are “threats” to her ability to impartially audit the Legislature because of her past work as a Massachusetts lawmaker. The forms also included a series of safeguards that her office implemented to counteract any issues.

But Harriet Richardson — who worked as a performance auditor at the federal, state, and local levels for over three decades — said the steps DiZoglio has taken to mitigate conflicts, like limiting her participation in a legislative audit, would not “sufficiently” eliminate conflicts.

“While the voters have provided the state auditor with the statutory authority to conduct audits of the General Court, she also has a requirement to conduct such audits in compliance with the government auditing standards, and she has several impairments to her independence that limit her ability to meet that statutory requirement,” Richardson said.