Massachusetts has long been a pioneer of political ideas and has served as a testing lab for many new policies.  However, our state has also been a leader in government corruption.  After all, gerrymandering was named after Massachusetts' first governor Elbridge Gerry because of his unusual redistricting practices. And within Massachusetts' history of corrupt politics, the office of Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives is, quite possibly, the position with the worst track record.

Our state's past three speakers have had to resign under scandal, and, in total, five have resigned because of ethical issues. Speaker Finneran, who served from 1996-2004, used redistricting to punish his critics, and committed obstruction of justice in the investigation of the redistricting.  Despite the fact that he pled guilty, he escaped jail time, and was merely barred from political office for five years, given a $25,000 fine, and put on 18 months of unsupervised probation.  Later, his pension was revoked by the state Supreme Judicial Court. Interestingly, after leaving the legislature, Finneran secured a position in a non-profit that also has a bad track record: as the president of the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council.  Here, he received a salary of $416,000 a year (privately paid), in addition to his state pension for most of his time as president.  He later resigned in the face of criminal charges of obstruction of justice in the investigation of his redistricting practices.

Recently, Salvatore DiMasi, Speaker of the House until February, had to step down after investigators found that lobbyists did favors for his personal accountant and helped pay some of his family members' legal debts. Ironically, this is entirely legal, since Massachusetts ethics laws, supposedly the strictest in the nation, only limit lobbyists from giving money directly to politicians. Understandably, this controversy caused a public stir; many critics called for him to resign, and newspapers were eager to publish every detail of the building case against him.

While it is easy to criticize the Speaker's behavior, he is not alone. Among Massachusetts politicians, cronyism and quid-pro-quo agreements are rampant. Although it seemed clear Speaker DiMasi was corrupt, Democratic representatives waited to criticize him.  He easily won reelection as Speaker in January, even though his accountant had already been indicted for violating lobbying and campaign finance regulations.  Eventually Sal DiMasi resigned, but still claims that he has done nothing wrong.  The reason no one opposed him is simple; the Speaker has power over committee appointments and when committees can debate.  If representatives do not support the Speaker, they will find it very hard to advance their agenda.  Caucuses, groups of representatives that vote in the same way on certain issues, are viewed as a threat to the Speaker's power, and are rarely formed, since representatives fear that their participation will hurt their possibility at getting committee assignments and other benefits. Through these avenues, the Speaker controls the majority party and the legislature. With the electoral dominance of Democrats in Massachusetts, control over the party generally gives the Speaker enough votes to override a gubernatorial veto, often rendering the governor‚Äôs veto power completely worthless. This greatly reduces the power of the governor over state affairs.

Ultimately, the power of the Speaker needs to be reduced. In order to fight corruption, I would suggest that we give some of the powers assigned to the Speaker, such as committee assignments or granting leadership roles, to the general legislature, or at least a small group of legislators.  Additionally, since the power he has leads towards corruption, as evinced by the previous examples, there should be limits on how long a Speaker can serve. This would reduce corruption, and bring the office closer to a "first among equals" status. It remains to be seen if our current Speaker, and legislature, will be able and willing to implement such difficult and necessary reforms.