Raymond La Raja, Professor of Political Science at UMass Amherst, has written an opinion column warning of the consequences of recent actions by reform groups Act on Mass and the Mass Fiscal Alliance.  The reformers’ push to make the Massachusetts General Court more transparent may backfire, he says. “While it is not popular to say, unbridled transparency can damage our most representative institutions. Don’t just take it from me. There is a long record of concern, including by Ben Franklin and James Madison, backed up by abundant research to demonstrate the pitfalls of ‘sunshine’ in the legislative branch,” La Raja writes. (CommonWealth, 2/6/21; Politico, 2/8/21)