STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE

SENATORS SAID WEDNESDAY they did not discuss the contents or timing of the release of a looming Ethics Committee report on the conduct of Sen. Stanley Rosenberg during a more than two-hour caucus on Wednesday, leaving lingering questions over when the potentially disruptive report will be released.

“You know that I’m on Ethics and I can’t comment but I can tell you we didn’t do anything here,” Majority Leader and Ethics Committee member Sen. Cynthia Creem told reporters as she left the caucus in the Senate president’s office Wednesday afternoon.

Creem said senators discussed four bills slated for debate and votes on Thursday, but nothing related to the investigation into whether Rosenberg broke Senate rules in connection with allegations of his husband meddling in Senate business and sexually assaulting four men with business on Beacon Hill.

Other members of the Ethics Committee were similarly tight-lipped about where the committee stands in its process.

The Senate last week paid the independent law firm hired to conduct the probe nearly $230,000, leading to speculation that Hogan Lovells had concluded its work.

A senior Senate official told the News Service that the investigation was in its “end phase,” and other public reports have claimed the Ethics Committee is in the process of reviewing the Hogan Lovells report.

“We have agreed as a committee that we will not discuss anything right now outside of that committee that doesn’t come from our chairman and I’m going to stand by that, but thanks for asking,” Ethics Committee member Sen. Cindy Friedman said.

None of the members of the committee would say whether they had plans to meet Wednesday to go over the Hogan Lovells report, or if previous committee meetings had already taken place.

“I don’t know. I don’t know the rest of my schedule,” Creem said.

Friedman said nothing has changed with respect to the committee’s commitment to release the full report with only redactions to protect the identity of witnesses who wish to remain anonymous.

Ethics Committee Chairman Sen. Michael Rodrigues was followed down the hall and peppered with questions from reporters, but had only one thing to say: “No comment.”