Massachusetts is the state where the public records law does not reach the people who write the laws. Question 1 asks voters to change that. It is the least covered question on the ballot and, for anyone who has ever tried to get a document out of Beacon Hill, the one with the most practical consequence.
What the ballot says
From the Secretary of the Commonwealth’s official text, Question 1 “would make most records held by the Legislature and the Office of the Governor public records under the Massachusetts Public Records Law.” It “would exempt documents related to the development of public policy and communications between legislators and their constituents, if those communications are reasonably related to a constituent’s request for assistance in obtaining government-provided benefits or services or interacting with a government agency.”
A YES VOTE makes most of those records public. A NO VOTE makes no change.
Why they are not covered now
The exemption is not written anywhere as an exemption. It comes out of a definition.
G.L. c. 4, § 7, clause Twenty-sixth defines “public records” as documentary materials “made or received by any officer or employee of any agency, executive office, department, board, commission, bureau, division or authority of the commonwealth, or of any political subdivision thereof, or of any authority established by the general court to serve a public purpose,” subject to a list of exemptions.
Read that list of covered entities. It describes the machinery of the executive branch and of local government. The Legislature has long taken the position that it is not an agency, department, board, commission, bureau, division or authority, and so is simply outside the definition. The Governor’s office has asserted a similar exemption, notwithstanding that “executive office” appears in the list, resting on separation of powers and on how Massachusetts courts have read the definition over the decades.
The 2016 rewrite of the public records law, which added records access officers, fee limits and attorney fee shifting, did not change any of that. It made the law work better against the agencies it already covered and left the two largest holes where they were.
What would actually change on a yes vote
If Question 1 passes, the existing machinery applies to the Legislature and the Governor’s office rather than a new one being built. That machinery is worth knowing:
- A written request goes to a records access officer, who must respond within ten business days.
- Fees are capped, and the first several hours of search time are free for most requests.
- A denial can be appealed to the Supervisor of Public Records in the Secretary of the Commonwealth’s office.
- After that, the remedy is a suit in Superior Court, where a requester who substantially prevails is presumptively entitled to attorney fees and costs.
Every exemption in clause Twenty-sixth would continue to apply: personnel and medical files, materials exempted by other statutes, investigatory materials, and the rest of the lettered list. This is not a measure that opens everything. It moves two institutions inside a framework that already has roughly twenty exemptions in it.
The carve-out to read twice
The measure exempts “documents related to the development of public policy.”
That phrase is doing an enormous amount of work, and how a court reads it determines whether this measure is a significant change or a modest one. Read narrowly, it protects draft language and internal deliberation, which is the ordinary deliberative-process idea. Read broadly, almost any document in a legislative office relates to the development of public policy, including lobbyist correspondence, calendars, and communications about a bill’s fate.
Supporters would say the narrow reading is obviously intended. Opponents of the measure, and anyone who has litigated an exemption, would say the text is what gets construed, not the intent. If this passes, that clause is where the first several years of litigation will happen.
The constituent-services carve-out is narrower and harder to argue with. It covers communications reasonably related to a constituent’s request for help getting benefits or services or dealing with an agency. People write to their representatives about evictions, benefits denials and immigration problems. Those letters should not become public records.
The enforcement problem nobody mentions
A law enacted by initiative petition is an ordinary statute. It has no constitutional status, and the Legislature may amend or repeal it like any other statute.
That is not a hypothetical concern with this particular measure, because the institution being regulated is the institution with the power to amend it. Article 48 of the Amendments protects an initiative law from being repealed for a period of years in some circumstances, but the practical history of initiative laws in Massachusetts is that the Legislature revisits them.
The other structural point: Question 1 reached the ballot because no vote was taken by the Senate or the House before May 6, 2026. Under Article 48, that is the trigger for an initiative petition to proceed to the voters. The Legislature had the opportunity to act on it and did not.
The case against, stated fairly
The argument for the status quo is not simply institutional self-protection, though it includes that.
Legislators argue that candid internal deliberation requires confidentiality, that a public record of every draft and every private conversation produces worse legislation and more posturing, and that the volume of requests a records regime would generate falls on offices with two or three staff. They point out that votes, bills, hearings and the final product are already public, and that the demand is for the process rather than the result.
Those are real arguments. They are also the arguments every covered agency made before the law applied to them.
What to watch
If it passes, the first fights will be over the policy-development exemption, over what counts as a record in an individual legislator’s office, and over whether the Supervisor of Public Records has any practical authority over a coequal branch. If it fails, the exemption stays exactly where it has been.
What does a yes vote on Question 1 do?
It makes most records held by the Legislature and the Office of the Governor subject to the Massachusetts Public Records Law, with exemptions for documents related to the development of public policy and for constituent-services communications.
Why are the Legislature and Governor exempt now?
Because of how “public records” is defined in G.L. c. 4, § 7, clause Twenty-sixth. The definition lists agencies, departments, boards, commissions, bureaus, divisions and authorities. The Legislature has long maintained it falls outside that list, and the Governor’s office has asserted a similar exemption.
Did the 2016 public records reform fix this?
No. It strengthened the law as to entities already covered, adding records access officers, fee limits and attorney fee shifting, and left the legislative and gubernatorial exemptions intact.
Would everything become public?
No. Every existing exemption in clause Twenty-sixth would still apply, including personnel and medical files and materials exempted by other statutes, plus the two new carve-outs written into the measure.
Could the Legislature undo it?
A law passed by initiative is an ordinary statute and can be amended or repealed by the Legislature, which is the institution this measure regulates.
How did it get on the ballot?
As an initiative petition on which no vote was taken by the Senate or House before May 6, 2026, which under Article 48 sends the measure to the voters.
Ballot text from the Secretary of the Commonwealth’s 2026 State Election Ballot Questions page. Definition of “public records” read at malegislature.gov, G.L. c. 4, § 7, clause Twenty-sixth. Article 48 of the Articles of Amendment read at malegislature.gov. The description of the 2016 reform reflects the statutory framework as it now stands. This piece describes the legal framework rather than endorsing either side. General information about Massachusetts law, not legal advice.