Nearly every branch of Massachusetts government supported taking on the industry, which had drawn scrutiny for what critics deemed predatory behavior toward mostly older adults and those in low-income and minority communities.

Advocates and lawmakers were confounded.

Whatfew knew at the time, was that a key lawmaker involved in the climate bill negotiations — stateRepresentativeJeff Roy, the Housechairperson of the Legislature’s joint energy committee — was engaged in a romantic relationship with one of Beacon Hill’s most high-powered lobbyists, Jennifer Crawford.

And Crawford, a partner with Smith, Costello, & Crawford, represents one of the biggest third-party energy suppliers — a client with a vested interest in ensuring their business in Massachusetts wouldn’t be gutted by the new law.

Roy and Crawford’s relationship was not publicly known until a Globe investigation uncovered it, along with a letter Roy quietly filed with the House clerk in July 2023 disclosing he was in a relationship with a lobbyist.

Legally, Roy did nothing wrong. While state ethics law bars elected officials from acting in a way that would lead a reasonable person to believe an outside party could improperly influence them, there is no violation as long as the public employee files a disclosure. Roy and Crawford insist they’ve refrained from talking business with one another. And Roy insisted, through a spokesperson, that he assigned a House colleague to negotiate the third-party supplier issue.

This entanglement involving a powerful chairperson, his lobbyist girlfriend, and the legislative process nonetheless exposes how Beacon Hill’s lax ethical norms and secretive culture can sap public confidence in the Legislature’s work.

“I understand he apparently didn’t violate any rules, but that’s not the entire point at all,” said Larry Chretien, executive director of the Boston-based advocacy group Green Energy Consumers Alliance, of Roy’s relationship with Crawford. “Essentially, this was something we were up against, and we didn’t know. This clearly is an appearance of a conflict of interest.”

Moving forward, he said, “the House itself has to rectify this.”

Chretien said the best way forward is for the Legislature to replace Roy as chairperson.

Roy, through a spokesperson, defended his conduct.

The spokesperson, Joe Baerlein, said in an emailed statement that Roy acted appropriately by disclosing his relationship to the House clerk, and that his “good name and reputation for integrity has been maliciously and unfairly attacked by his opponents.”

In a follow-up statement shared with the Globe, Roy said: “An independent finder of the facts would conclude that I have voluntarily done everything possible to be transparent . . . and maintain my reputation for integrity to both the Legislature and my constituents.”

Roy declined to speak directly to the Globe for this story.

The fight over reforming third-party suppliers and their role in Massachusetts has been ongoing for years. Companies and industry groups have spent millions with Boston’s biggest lobbying shops to influence lawmakers as they scrutinized how the suppliers do business.

As attorney general, Maura Healey’s office probed the predatory nature of the industry and called for changes. Those calls were echoed by the state’s Republican governor at the time, Charlie Baker. In 2019, Healey filed legislation to ban these companies from selling their products to customers, but it did not pass.

Her office found that consumers who signed up with these third-party energy suppliers were often spending far more compared with those getting energy directly from mainstream utilities such as Eversource and National Grid.

In late 2023 and into 2024, momentum for banning suppliers’ ability to sell directly to residents hit an all-time high. Joining now-Governor Healey were Attorney General Andrea Campbell, Mayor Michelle Wu of Boston, and 100 advocacy organizations.

What’s more, the Legislature had shown it could pass big, sweeping, ambitious climate bills, the kind of bills that solidified Massachusetts as a leader on climate and clean energy nationally.

It seemed likely that, in the context of another big climate bill, the ban on retail sales would pass.

Roy, who was first appointed to chair the energy committee in 2021 and then again in February 2023, took the lead as lawmakers began crafting the most recent iteration of the climate legislation.

As the debate unfolded, the Senate made clear it wanted to ban third-party energy suppliers from selling to residential customers. The House, meanwhile, instead wanted to create more reporting requirements and build guardrails.

Crawford was also hard at work on the climate bill.

Between 2018 and 2023, members of the Retail Energy Advancement League, known as REAL, and another industry group, the Retail Energy Supply Association, spent more than $3 million on several major lobbying shops to influence state lawmakers, according to data from the secretary of state’s office.

Among the firms hired was Crawford’s firm, which earned more than $600,000 from Texas-based Vistra Energy between 2018 and 2024 for lobbying to protect third-party energy suppliers, among other energy-related policy proposals.

Vistra’s president sits on the board of REAL,the chief trade group fighting against the ban and the group responsible for crafting the House measure that would have regulated the industry instead of banning it.

Some consumers are able to save money by shopping for lower-cost plans and say they value having more options to make energy decisions. Those in favor of allowing third-party suppliers to continue to operate in the state — including the suppliers themselves, some House lawmakers, and a handful of Senate Republicans — also argue that third-party suppliers help keep the energy market competitive.

But regulators say that on the whole, the industry has proved nearly impossible to regulate, requiring the four agencies that oversee competitive suppliers and the Attorney General’s office to spend thousands of hours annually looking into consumer complaints, pursuing legal action, and confirming the companies are complying with state laws.

As the joint energy committee started crafting this sweeping climate bill, Roy quietly formalized his relationship with Crawford, filing a letter with the House clerk on July 10, 2023.

The next day, Roy’s wife filed for divorce. In documents filed with the court, Maureen Roy alleged that her husband and Crawford had been romantically involved since 2019. Roy denied these claims through his divorce lawyer.

Work on the climate bill continued for months. The Senate, then the House passed their own versions of the bill, which proposed revamping the way energy infrastructure is permitted and sited, improving electric vehicle charging, and more. The House version did not include changes to the state’s approach to third-party suppliers, while the Senate version proposed banning sales directly to residents.

In mid-July, House and Senate leadership appointed a handful of lawmakers to what is known as a conference committee, a group that meets behind closed doors to hammer out differences and produce a final bill both chambers can support.

As the chairperson for the House’s side of the negotiations, Roy played a pivotal role in hashing out the details of the bill and relaying updates on the conversation to the press.

At the time, he told the Globe: “We’re not doing anything, and we do not believe that the market needs to be shut down.”

As July turned to August, the conference committee fell apart. Members of the committee concluded formal lawmaking without anything to show for their work, and without the Legislature sending a climate bill to the governor’s desk.

In the fall, a compromise bill finally emerged. Absent from the bill was any mention of third-party energy suppliers.

State Senator Michael Barrett, the lead Senate negotiator, said in a recent interview with the Globe that House lawmakers, led by Roy, fiercely opposed including a ban on third-party suppliers during negotiations. The House opposition has been, he said, “a roadblock the Senate has not been able to clear.”

“The House’s advocacy on behalf of competitive suppliers has been aggressive,” Barrett, co-chairperson of the Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities, and Energy, told the Globe. “Quite public, too . . . Frustrating, in light of the damning evidence on abuses over the years.”

Through a spokesperson, Roy minimized his involvement in those discussions.

Baerlein, Roy’s spokesperson, said his client had handed off negotiation of the third-party issue to a colleague, Representative Tackey Chan, a Democrat from Quincy, an unusual arrangement because Chan had not been appointed to the conference committee.

“Chan recommended to Chair Roy that the House not accept the Senate language as constituted,” Baerlein said in an emailed statement.

Chan confirmed that Roy deputized him to broker a deal on the third-party supply provision, a challenge that Chan said proved impossible with the Senate, who he said “had no interest in negotiating with me on the issue whatsoever.”

“I am the dude you’ve got to deal with,” Chan said in an interview. “Everybody who wanted to talk about it was sent to me.”

After the House filed its version of the climate bill in July, however, Roy himself gave interviews to the Globe and others detailing the objections he and other House members had with the changes being sought by their Senate counterparts.

While he said he wanted to get rid of “bad actors” in the industry, he said third-party energy suppliers could be more nimble and innovative, and could help the state transition more quickly to renewable-energy sources.

On Aug. 2, an exhausted Roy got on the phone with the Globe, two days after an all-night session had failed to finalize a climate bill.

He reiterated his support for third-party energy supply, saying, “I can’t tell you the number of phone calls and emails that I got from people who were saying, ‘Do not interfere with my choice.’ ”

Given the questions raised by Roy’s relationship with Crawford, Chretien, from Green Energy Consumers’ Alliance, said he’d like to see more transparency from lawmakers when this issue resurfaces next year.

“At this point, it would be healthy to put the bill on the House floor for a recorded vote after open debate.”

Roy’s spokesperson indicated the Franklin Democrat is ready to reengage on the third-party issue as well.

“Chair Roy remains optimistic that compromise legislation that is in the interests of Massachusetts energy consumers can be passed in the next legislative session,” he said.

Samantha J. Gross can be reached at samantha.gross@globe.com. Follow her @samanthajgross. Sabrina Shankman can be reached at sabrina.shankman@globe.com. Follow her @shankman.