Boston Globe Hits Roy on Lobbyist Ties

State Representative Jeff Roy got attention in Friday’s Boston Globe not only for helping push through passage of a major climate bill on Beacon Hill but also for his relationship with a lobbyist and her lobbying firm closely associated with the legislation. Reporter Samantha J. Gross focused her attention on the hiding-in-plain-sight dating relationship, beun in to 2023, between Roy and Jennifer Crawford, whom she described as “a partner in the state’s highest grossing influence firm.”

Because of Roy’s filing of ethics statements, some apparently never read prior to the Globe obtaining access to them, Gross concluded that his actions and close connection to the lobbyist, were likely not illegal but she went on to cite multiple experts who questioned the ethics of the arrangement given that so many matters of interest to the clients of Smith, Costello & Crawford were enmeshed in legislation handled by Roy and within the purview of the Telecommunications and Utilities Committee which he chairs.

Crawford, like Roy a graduate of Bates College, was Legal Counsel to the Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy from 2007-2009, before Roy was elected to the legislature.

The article was one of a series on the state legislature assembled by the Globe over the past year to showcase how the legislature has become “a feast for special interests and a mystery to the general public.”