Secrecy around casino bill subverts democratic process

OPINION: Secrecy around casino bill subverts democratic process
GateHouse News Service


After years of debate, legislation legalizing casino gambling in Massachusetts is on the threshold of becoming law. The House and Senate have passed separate bills, by large margins. A conference committee is now charged with resolving the differences between the bills and sending a final version to both houses, and on to Gov. Deval Patrick, who is expected to sign it.

The conference committee’s work is essential. While both bills agree on key points, authorizing three casinos and one slots parlor, all competitively bid, they differ in significant ways. The Senate bill, for instance, prohibits sitting legislators from going to work for casino operators until they’ve been out of office a full year. There are also details to be worked out, some of them so narrow or technical they’d never make headlines, but that could create large problems if the final bill is poorly written. Since a conference report cannot be amended on the floor, this is the Legislature’s last chance to get it right.

So what was the first decision the conference committee made? It voted unanimously to hold all its discussions behind closed doors.

This is not unusual. The gambling bill was negotiated and debated in private at every step in the process. Conference committees almost always meet in closed sessions. That doesn’t make it smart and it doesn’t make it right.

Working in secret isn’t smart because it leaves too much expertise locked out of the room. Often the governor and other officials who’ll be responsible for making the new law work don’t have a representatives in the committee meetings. An open process would give people besides the six elected legislators the chance to help catch problems in wording that can cause headaches later.

Besides, this is a matter of public interest, and there’s simply no good reason to hide it from the public. There are no national security considerations here.

Conference committee members shouldn’t be making any deals in private they’d be ashamed to have made public.

Nor are we convinced that public sessions would distort or impede the committee’s decision-making. Legislative word-crafting isn’t exactly riveting, so open conference committee meetings wouldn’t draw huge, raucous crowds.

Why do legislators have so little confidence in themselves that they don’t want their colleagues and constituents to be able to watch them at work?

As long as expanded gambling has been discussed on Beacon Hill, there’s been suspicion that the game was fixed, that politicians were making secret deals with companies that hope to profit from new casinos and slots parlors. By putting so much of the legislative process behind closed doors, lawmakers only feed those suspicions.