On March 18, the League of Women Voters of Massachusetts and the advocacy organization Who Governs the Governor’s Council? (WGGC) held a State House briefing for lawmakers and community members to inform voters on how the Governor’s Council impacts the legal system.
As BINJ detailed in a three-part series about this obscure body in 2024, while it often operates in the shadows, the council wields enormous constitutional power to counsel the governor with “advice and consent.”
Not only do the eight elected members approve gubernatorial appointments of hundreds of judicial candidates and seven Parole Board members, but per its charge, after the Parole Board sends recommendations to the governor, the Governor’s Council has the last word on pardons and commutations. A pardon removes the underlying conviction, while a commutation is a reduction in a court-ordered sentence.
The council also votes up or down on clerk-magistrates, public administrators, tax and accident board members, notaries, and justices of the peace.
WGGC recently launched a website to bring more attention to the Governor’s Council, said David Harris, co-founder of WGGC and emeritus managing director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard Law School.
But as Harris and other observers point out, the still-consequential vestige of the colonial era remains unknown to most people in Massachusetts.
Transparency needed on the ballot
At the briefing, state Sen. Michael Barrett testified about a measure he is sponsoring which would bring more attention to the Governor’s Council. He explained why the bill, An Act clarifying the role of governor’s councillor on the ballot, is necessary. Currently, a sample Massachusetts ballot from 2024 compounds the obscurity of the body. Eight councilors are elected throughout the state, one from each of eight large districts.
(Ed. note: As an example of how much confusion circles the institution, there’s no agreed upon spelling of the title. BINJ style is to spell it “councilor,” with one “l.” If it’s spelled “councillor” herein, then we’re quoting someone or something that uses that more antiquated arrangement.)
The statewide ballot shows who is running—frequently one from each party for each district, although Democratic candidates sometimes run unopposed. But the office is referred to as “Councillor” rather than as “Governor’s Councillor.”
Barrett said, “Neither the word ‘councillor’ or ‘executive councillor’—the word noted and originally spelled as such in the Massachusetts Constitution—tells the voter much.” Voters might have vague ideas about the council’s work, but the wording on the ballot only serves to blur the picture.
In an interview for this article, Sen. Barrett said that in order to make such a change, a law has to be passed. He continued, “If we can make this change, the work about this important group becomes illuminated.”
The senator added that Councilor Mara Dolan brought this issue to his attention in 2024, and his office “tried to offer it as an outside section of the state budget.” “But it was late—and that seldom works.”
This time around, Sen. Barrett submitted the clarifying act in January 2025, at the beginning of the current session. The proposal is now in its third reading, which he said can be a “bottleneck for bills.”
“It often takes two or three years to get a law passed,” the sponsor said, saying that it “takes a long time for legislators to turn their attention to any particular idea.” “But if we can get truth in labeling, we can get full disclosure. … It’s an important first step.
“With it, we hope to reverse a century of oversight.”
Behind the curve with technology
Barrett also spelled out that “deliberations of the Governor’s Council are not yet transcribed and available.”
Since the pandemic, when it was necessary to hold meetings virtually, council hearings have been accessible aslivestreams via YouTube. People can watch deliberations after the fact as well as in person. The public can also watch the council record its votes at weekly noon assemblies chaired by the lieutenant governor. But as we reported two years ago, none of the meetings are transcribed, nor have records of the votes been digitized.
The last time BINJ requested public records of the votes, we were told the council was too short-staffed to accommodate those requests, and that we had to sort through and hand-record hundreds of files at the State House—which we did over a course of several months.
At the March briefing, when asked why the one-on-one conversations that councilors have with candidates are not transcribed, Councilor Tamisha Civil, the only member of the body who attended the briefing, said those are “private” conversations. In response, an audience member asked Civil if these talks should be recorded and made available to the public. The councilor did not answer specifically, but rather said that her constituents can learn about applicants from her newsletter, and that she welcomes the public to send questions for her to ask nominees.
David Harris, co-founder of WGGC, noted that such conversations should be part of the public record: “What we want is for constituents to ask their councilors who they voted for and why. That accountability is necessary.” He added, “What if a councilor says they will vote one way and then changes that vote after a private conversation with the candidate?”
(Ed. note: In the interest of disclosure, Jean Trounstine, the author of this article, is a co-founder of WGGC.)
What do councilors owe their constituents?
Mass Family Action Coalition is a nonprofit with a mission to improve the Mass family court system. Its co-Executive Director Margie Palladino told BINJ that along with about a dozen of her group’s members, she met with Councilor Dolan during the race in 2024.Part of MFAC’s mission is to speak out for “women and children so that [the court system] is an efficient, safe, and equitable system for all.”
As Palladino recently recounted, at that time, coalition members expressed their concern with “a lack of trauma-informed understanding among many judges and the ways in which the court system can be weaponized against survivors.” Palladino said that members felt Dolan empathized with the cause and were assured of her support. One recent vote in particular, however, had the advocate question that understanding.
After the nomination in March of attorney Mary Ferriter to serve as an associate justice in Probate and Family Court, Palladino said, “We opposed the nomination based on our members’ direct experience with her in a domestic violence forced parenting class where they as survivors had to have contact with their abusers.” Ferriter was executive director of the program at William James College which administered the program.
MFAC did not hear about the nomination, Palladino said, in time to testify against Ferriter. However, coalition members sent multiple emails to councilors with information about Ferriter before the vote.
On April 1, councilors Paul DePalo, Tara Jacobs, and Eunice Ziegler voted against the nominee. Dolan voted to seat the nominee, along with councilors Terrence Kennedy, Christopher Iannella, and Joseph Ferreira. Civil was not in attendance. The vote was 4 to 3.
We asked all the councilors who voted for Ferriter to comment on their vote. Mara Dolan responded by email: “As someone who is painfully familiar with coercive control and being afraid of one’s partner, I have the utmost concern for victims of domestic violence and ensuring that our courts uphold their rights. After an extensive vetting process based on the facts and the evidence, I have full confidence that Mary Ferriter will be an outstanding Probate and Family Court judge who will be sensitive to domestic violence victims and make sure their rights are upheld.”
The council does not permit absentee members to vote. BINJ contacted Civil by email to see how she would have voted, but she did not respond to a request for comment.
A process that isn’t publicized
In order to find out who has been nominated by the governor and when public hearings will be held, the public must check the Governor’s Council website. The governor also sends out press releases of her nominations and posts them on mass.gov, but there is no way to subscribe to those posts.
Less known is that one can subscribe to notices from the Judicial Nominating Committee (JNC), the committee picked by each governor to screen and recommend judicial nominees. These notices provide information on judge vacancies and updates regarding the judicial application process.
In its Guide to the Massachusetts Judicial Selection Process manual, the Massachusetts Bar Association explains that the 20-plus member JNC was designed to “identify and invite applications by persons qualified for judicial office,” and to “advise the governor” on appointments for clerk-magistrates and judges. The JNC is supposed to remove politics from the process, but there’s no way of knowing since their recommendations are not shared publicly before the nomination by the governor, and the executive office is immune from public information requests.
What is known, however, though by few observers and insiders only, is that JNC members often come from big law firms. At the briefing last month, Billy Corriher of the People’s Parity Project said the same can be said of their nominees for judgeships. The North Carolina-based advocacy group describes itself as lawyers “fighting for democracy,” and Corriher produced a document about Gov. Healey’s judicial picks showing that as of February 2026, 42% came from corporate law firms. Additional figures in their chart include: 38% prosecutors, 17% public defenders, 8% civil rights attorneys, and 4% from Legal Aid.
People’s Parity Project writes that research shows how “lawyers at firms that specialize in representing corporations… spend significant portions of their careers ensuring that corporations’ bottom lines prevail, often at the expense of workers or consumers.”
A member of the audience at the briefing asked if councilors could also suggest judicial candidates to the governor, allowing for a more diverse set of judges. At this point, that process, if it exists, is not publicized.
Another question to Civil was regarding how constituents can learn the rules about testifying before the council. That question was not answered.
The latest rules of the council, for 2025 to 2026, were not available on the body’s state website at the time of this writing. We received them in an email from Councilor DePalo. In them, there is no mention of how long members of the public have to testify at a hearing.
