Will Brownsberger -- State Representative, Democrat, 24th Middlesex District

This from a lifelong Democrat and continuing true believer in government spending: The heart of our problem is a sense of entitlement to spend the taxpayers’ money.

There is a deep and passionate conversation going among legislators right now around the issue of transparency. There is a growing group of legislators who feel that the legislature needs to change the way it manages its own business.

This post relates to a fairly technical question that has been the subject of some confusion on the House floor: Exactly what information is available to the public about spending on legislative operations?

I found myself voting in the minority — with the Republicans and a small group of Democrats — on three financial integrity issues this week.

The Ethics reform bill that we passed earlier this year imposes a number of new disclosure and procedural requirements.

Members of the house grew uneasy last week as they voted a routine final “deficiency” budget — a set of appropriations to cover a short list of cost overruns from the last fiscal year.

Gambling, health care cost control, further pension reform – these are the major issues that the legislature is likely to address this fall after we resolve the Kennedy succession. The theme? Continued financial pressure.

Speaker Deleo published today this summary of the legislature’s work this season.   The focus for the whole spring and early summer was on reform — ethics, pension and transportation — and the budget.  See also, my series of posts on the reform and budget issues.

One of the sleeper stories in this year’s season of reform is the consolidation of the remaining seven independent Sheriff’s into the state budget. The main cost benefit of this change is that the employees of the sheriffs will purchase their health insurance through the Group Insurance Commission now as state employees.

There is a lot more to reform, but by any fair reckoning, the last four months of legislative activity have been extraordinarily productive. It didn’t have to turn out that way.

The House voted unanimously in support of far-reaching ethics reform today. The bill included not only core ethics reforms (enhanced penalties for all forms of inappropriate gifts and self-dealing), but also enhanced regulation of lobbying and campaign political finance.

House and Senate conferees released the text of the final ethics bill that they have agreed on. The initial read from informed observers is that it is a very strong bill that more or less takes the strongest ideas from the House bill, the Senate bill and the recommendations of the Governor’s task force.

In Belmont Town Hall, on Wednesday night, June 24, from 7PM to 9PM, two speakers who have been centrally involved in crafting the ethics reform legislation will lead a public discussion about the reforms.

I voted this afternoon for the FY2010 budget which passed with 110 votes in the House and 31 in the Senate, in both branches more than the 2/3 needed to override a possible veto.

Final passage of a landmark transportation reform bill, with a bipartisan vote of 130 to 25 in the  House today, signals an end to decades of costly balkanization of our transportation infrastructure.  I voted in favor –  nothing so controversial and complex can be perfect, but it is a very good bill. 

The legislature today will enact a strong pension reform that will eliminate rules that give some employees, mostly elected officials, special advantages.

Former House Speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi was indicted last week on federal corruption charges. House Democrats, including me, voted overwhelmingly to re-elect DiMasi as speaker in January and he served briefly before resigning later that month. What were we thinking?

Perhaps the main things to underline at this stage are: (a) nothing at all is settled yet about the budget, reform or revenue; (b) all the major players endorse the principle of reform before revenue and are trying to do the right thing.

Pension reform is probably the most fundamental and controversial among the reforms on the agenda this year.  Now seated on the Public Service Committee, I expect to give this area quite a bit of my own attention.

Our mantra in the legislature this spring is “Reform before Revenue.”