While clearing Cusack of violating House rules, Speaker Robert DeLeo some participants in a post-budget gathering in April were drinking beer during Statehouse.
Mark CusackBOSTON – A male freshman lawmaker who was spotted in the state House chamber with a female legislative staff member following a late-night budget session did not engage in any inappropriate behavior, House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo said Tuesday.
While clearing Rep. Mark J. Cusack of violating any House rules, DeLeo said in a statement that an investigation of the encounter also revealed that a “post-budget gathering” was held in the speaker’s office after passage of the state spending plan on April 28 and that some participants were drinking beer during the gathering.
“While I do not condone the inappropriate use of alcohol in the State House, I expect all members and staff of the House to exercise common sense and act responsibly at all times,” DeLeo said in a statement, adding that it did not appear that anyone under 21, the legal drinking age, was at the gathering.
Cusack, D-Braintree, issued a separate statement thanking DeLeo for his finding and apologizing for “any appearance of impropriety.”
DeLeo, a Democrat, ordered a review last Friday after media reports that Cusack and a staff member who worked for another legislator were spotted, both fully clothed, by a court officer in the House chamber after the late-night session had concluded.
“During interviews with counsel, both Rep. Cusack and the staffer acknowledged being in the Chamber and that they were present for no more than three to four minutes,” DeLeo said. “These accounts are supported by the statement of a third party who observed the representative and the staffer in the Chamber.”
While no rules or laws were broken, “(Cusack) and I both agree that as a matter of policy, the Chamber should be reserved for official business and ceremony only,” he said.
The investigation revealed that Cusack and the staffer, whose identity wasn’t disclosed, left the gathering and accessed the chamber through a private door that leads from the speaker’s office to the chamber, DeLeo said. In the future, the speaker said, he will instruct his staff to secure the door and bar access to the House from it during non-business hours.
DeLeo said he left the Statehouse shortly after the budget vote and did not attend the gathering in his office.
Cusack, who’s 26 and unmarried, said he was thankful that the speaker’s office swiftly confirmed that “no inappropriate behavior occurred.”
“I apologize to my family, friends, colleagues and constituents for any appearance of impropriety,” he said in his statement.
Cusack was elected to the House in November 2010, defeating independent candidate Dan Clifford. He graduated in 2003 from Braintree High School and in 2007 from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, where he was a political science major, according to his Facebook profile.
Reports of late-night hijinks involving lawmakers on Beacon Hill are nothing new.
In 2000, reports surfaced that some state representatives drank alcohol, slept and cast votes for each other during a final budget push.
Video of the session captured rowdy behavior on the House floor. Then-Assistant Majority Whip Salvatore DiMasi called for “order in the Animal House” after some members chanted, “Toga! Toga! Toga!” a line from the 1978 John Belushi comedy “National Lampoon’s Animal House.”
The incident led to a series of changes in House rules, including one that requires the unanimous consent of members to continue debate past midnight, which effectively put an end to all-night sessions.
DeLeo said Tuesday the House chamber belongs to the people of Massachusetts.
“It is a place where we make laws and conduct the people’s business,” he said. “It is a place where important occasions and addresses are marked by ceremony, and its traditions span much of the Bay State’s history.”