HOUSE SPEAKER ROBERT DELEO has a challenger—but it’s not a member of the chamber he oversees.
The insurgency is coming instead from a 27-year-old Franklin resident who says he’s grown weary of the consolidation of House power in the office of one man. “We don’t think the speaker should have the amount of power he has, and it should be a more democratic system in terms of what bills get to the floor,” says Maxwell Morrongiello.
Two years ago, DeLeo prevailed on House members to toss out term limits on his reign in power.
“There’s a lot of legislation out there that the majority supports that isn’t getting passed,” Morrongiello says of the top-down structure in which DeLeo decides what bills get taken up by the House.
Morrongiello is trying to organize a citizen effort, Massachusetts Voters for Legislative Reform, to do something about it. Exactly how they’ll push for change is unclear. Morrongiello says the group’s members might start by lobbying their reps. He says they’re also open to meeting directly with the speaker.
Morrongiello is active with the liberal group Progressive Massachusetts, but says the case for democratic reform of the House should appeal to residents across the political spectrum.
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Executive Editor, CommonWealth
About Michael Jonas
Michael Jonas has worked in journalism in Massachusetts since the early 1980s. Before joining the CommonWealth staff in early 2001, he was a contributing writer for the magazine for two years. His cover story in CommonWealth's Fall 1999 issue on Boston youth outreach workers was selected for a PASS (Prevention for a Safer Society) Award from the National Council on Crime and Delinquency.
Michael got his start in journalism at the Dorchester Community News, a community newspaper serving Boston's largest neighborhood, where he covered a range of urban issues. Since the late 1980s, he has been a regular contributor to the Boston Globe. For 15 years he wrote a weekly column on local politics for the Boston Sunday Globe's City Weekly section.
Michael has also worked in broadcast journalism. In 1989, he was a co-producer for "The AIDS Quarterly," a national PBS series produced by WGBH-TV in Boston, and in the early 1990s, he worked as a producer for "Our Times," a weekly magazine program on WHDH-TV (Ch. 7) in Boston.
Michael lives in Dorchester with his wife and their two daughters.
About Michael Jonas
Michael Jonas has worked in journalism in Massachusetts since the early 1980s. Before joining the CommonWealth staff in early 2001, he was a contributing writer for the magazine for two years. His cover story in CommonWealth's Fall 1999 issue on Boston youth outreach workers was selected for a PASS (Prevention for a Safer Society) Award from the National Council on Crime and Delinquency.
Michael got his start in journalism at the Dorchester Community News, a community newspaper serving Boston's largest neighborhood, where he covered a range of urban issues. Since the late 1980s, he has been a regular contributor to the Boston Globe. For 15 years he wrote a weekly column on local politics for the Boston Sunday Globe's City Weekly section.
Michael has also worked in broadcast journalism. In 1989, he was a co-producer for "The AIDS Quarterly," a national PBS series produced by WGBH-TV in Boston, and in the early 1990s, he worked as a producer for "Our Times," a weekly magazine program on WHDH-TV (Ch. 7) in Boston.
Michael lives in Dorchester with his wife and their two daughters.
This is not his first stab at fixing what he thinks is broken on Beacon Hill. Morrongiello tried to organize a similar push five years ago, but threw in the towel when it made little headway.
Could his latest effort meet the same fate? “There’s always a chance it might fizzle out,” he says. “There’s no guarantees.”
