This article was originally published in the CommonWealth Beacon on June 10, 2025. View the original article HERE.

Ballot question committees, hoping to convince voters to vote “yes” or “no” on their respective proposals, ranging from the elimination of the MCAS test as a graduation requirement to an audit of the state Legislature, spent tens of millions of dollars last year.

It was hard to avoid the barrage of ads making the case for one side or the other of some ballot questions. But it was a very different story when it came to seeing who was funding the campaigns.

For an eight-month period during the heat of these campaigns – from January to September – ballot question committees were not required to report their fundraising and spending activity to the state campaign finance office, which makes public such filings on its website. The disclosure rules are far stricter for candidates for statewide office, legislative seats, and other posts, who must file monthly reports during the same period.

CommonWealth Beacon reported during last year’s campaign on the stark difference in finance disclosure requirements for candidates and ballot campaigns, which good-government advocates decried as loophole that should be closed. Now, two Boston-area lawmakers have filed legislation to do just that.

Sal DiDomenico, the state Senate’s assistant majority leader, and Boston state Rep. Dan Ryan have each filed a bill in their respective branch that would require ballot campaigns to file monthly reports.

The bills would “close a hole in our campaign finance law and ensure our residents have all the information they need to make an educated decision when voting on a ballot question,” DiDomenico, an Everett lawmaker, said in a statement.

“Massachusetts voters deserve to know, in real time, who is funding the ballot questions that will impact their lives,” said Geoff Foster, the executive director of Common Cause Massachusetts, a nonpartisan advocacy group that pushes for election reforms. “The Ballot Spending Transparency Act will empower voters with this valuable information, ensuring big-money special interests can’t go undetected when they try to buy their preferred policies.”

Under current law, ballot committees are required to file an initial report when they first organize, then another report in January of the election year. Then they don’t have to file again until two months before the election. The committees then switch to reporting every several weeks until the November election.

Common Cause Massachusetts tallied the last six election cycles, spanning a decade, and found ballot campaigns took in more than $340 million. Roughly 36 percent of the donations – $123 million – came in during the eight months when the campaigns didn’t have to file reports.

Ballot campaign spending in 2024 totaled $25.2 million on five questions, with another $19.2 million in what are known as in-kind contributions, which is categorized and valued as help, like staff time, that doesn’t come in the form of cash. For example, the Massachusetts Teachers Association had union staffers provide time and research in support of the ballot question ending the MCAS test as a high school graduation requirement.

The union’s filings revealed it spent $15.7 million on in-kind contributions and $6.3 million in other expenses. The question passed with 59 percent of the vote, and the union ended up spending $8.25 per vote.

In the September report covering the preceding eight months of spending, the MTA reported spending $2 million in “in-kind” donations, including $1.2 million in “staff time.”

The September report from the business-backed “no” side showed $870,000 in donations during the same period, with $100,000 coming from Robert Rivers, the Eastern Bank CEO, and $25,000 from the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, among others.

Chris Keohan, a veteran campaign consultant who has worked on multiple ballot campaigns, welcomed the proposed legislation. He worked on the successful 2024 campaigns to reject legalization of psychedelic substances and a question raising the minimum wage for tipped workers. The “no” campaigns were funded by groups that opposed drug legalization and by the restaurant industry.

“Transparency’s always better,” Keohan said. “If our legislators have to file monthly, why don’t our ballot questions?”

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