CLT
UPDATE
Saturday, April 19, 2003
Deceptive tax hike strategy further
exposed
Some Democratic leaders and a host of rank-and-file members are abandoning much of the deference they initially showed toward Romney, especially on the issue of taxes. Emboldened by recent poll figures showing the public shifting away from its once strong antitax stance in the face of drastic service cuts, more legislators are increasingly talking about a confrontation with Romney.
Part of that strategy, of which Romney and his aides are aware, will rely on proposing such Draconian budget cuts for the fiscal year year that begins July 1 that the public will rise up to preserve programs, even if it means raising taxes. Senate President Robert E. Travaglini publicly predicts such an outcome....
Having passed a $1.2 billion tax package last year to deal with a shortfall, Finneran and Rogers and other legislative leaders insist publicly that they are not contemplating another tax increase, which they said the public would not tolerate.
But several Democratic legislators are reviewing a University of Massachusetts poll that shows that voters now favor tax hikes over service cuts to cope with the state's budget deficit. In samplings of 400 voters on Dec. 2, Feb. 3, and April 3, those who preferred cuts over tax increases dropped from 59 percent four months ago to 31 percent earlier this month. Those who preferred increasing taxes rose from 26 percent in December to 46 percent.
The Boston Globe
Saturday, April 19, 2003
Romney to target Democrats
For the suspicious-minded, there's something unsettlingly familiar about promises by House Democratic leaders to slash and burn their way to a balanced state budget plan without the help of new taxes.
That's exactly what the House did last year just before approving a $1 billion tax package.
This year is different, House leaders promise, and they may be right....
Ways and Means Chairman John Rogers, responsible for drafting the House version of the budget, has repeatedly said the spending plan won't include any tax hikes.
"Taxes are off the table in this budget," said Rogers, D-Norwood.
That wasn't the case last year.
Associated Press
Saturday, April 19, 2003
Escalating Beacon Hill budget debate rings a familiar note
Before you know it, state government may start to operate more like the private sector. And who said a fiscal crisis was a bad thing?
A Boston Herald editorial
Saturday, April 19, 2003
Sacred cow moos no more
Romney has suggested restructuring and reorganizing agencies and departments within state government, believing he can save the taxpayers as much as $950 million in the process. Finneran's mouthpiece, Ways and Means Committee Chairman John Rogers, has shot down every one of Romney's proposals -- which promises a long and contentious budget battle.
Rather than encouraging honest discussion among legislators about Romney's well-thought-out budget proposals, Finneran and his cohorts have dismissed them out of hand. They instead warn local cities and towns to prepare for a 20 percent decrease in local aid unless taxes are raised.
The MetroWest Daily News
Saturday, April 19, 2003
Money and arrogance
By Deborah E. Gauthier
Chip Ford's CLT
Commentary
"This year is different, House leaders promise, and they may be
right" State House reporter Steve LeBlanc wrote in today's
Associated Press report. "'Taxes are off the table in this budget,' said Rogers, D-Norwood."
But veteran Boston Globe State House bureau chief
Frank Phillips has broken through the barrier of deceptive rhetoric and
has contributed to the growing exposure of the Legislature's tax-hike
strategy.
It was only yesterday that AP reported a more
complete and telling response from the House Ways and Means committee
chairman, Rep. Rogers: "House members have 'a very strong
anti-tax philosophy at this point.'"
That was the first time Finneran's scheming architect
of the impending tax-hike qualified his "taxes are off the
table" mantra, smoothly slipping in the now-operative phrase
"at this point," moving the inevitable one step closer ...
just as we've predicted would eventually happen since January.
"Emboldened by recent poll figures showing the public shifting away from its once strong antitax stance in the face of drastic service
cuts," Phillips reported today. "Democratic legislators are reviewing a University of Massachusetts poll that shows that voters now favor tax hikes over service cuts to cope with the state's budget
deficit."
In November of 2000, 59 percent of voters rolled back
the state income tax by voting "yes" on Question 4. In
November of 2002, 46 percent of voters voted "yes" on Question
1 to outright abolish the state income tax. Less than two weeks
ago, a
WBZ/Boston Globe poll indicated: "While 19 percent support raising the income tax, 55 percent oppose it....
19 percent are for increasing the sales tax, but 53 percent are against such a move."
A mere 800 or so taxpayers chose the voluntary tax check-off by this
week's tax filing deadline, of the over-a-million who voted against our
rollback less than three years ago.
What's wrong with this new polling picture? Does
anyone really believe that public opinion has switched as abruptly as
some UMass poll has reportedly indicated?
This is the same UMass that polled on Question 1,
abolition of the income tax, last year and indicated then that it would
go down to defeat with only about 25 percent of the vote ... though it
actually received 46 percent in November. According to today's report,
"Those who preferred increasing taxes rose from 26 percent in December to 46 percent."
Looks like about the same UMass twenty-point
"margin of error" to me.
Determined tax-and-spend legislators are seeking
cover anywhere they can find it, whether its from tax-hike shill Michael
Widmer and his so-called Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, or from a
very suspect Billy Bulger UMass poll we've never heard of until now.
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Chip
Ford |
The Boston Globe
Saturday, April 19, 2003
Romney to target Democrats
By Frank Phillips, Globe Staff
Increasingly frustrated with the Legislature, Governor Mitt Romney has launched a fund-raising blitz to target potentially vulnerable Democrats in the 2004 election.
The target list, compiled by the state Republican Party, which Romney controls, may include high-profile Democrats such as Therese Murray of Plymouth, chairwoman of the Senate Ways and Means Committee.
That strategy has been leaked to House and Senate Democrats, adding to what have become increasingly strained relations with Romney over fiscal issues. The tension is creating the most partisan atmosphere on Beacon Hill in years and setting the stage for a high-stakes struggle this spring over taxes and the budget that could shape Romney's tenure.
Some Democratic leaders and a host of rank-and-file members are abandoning much of the deference they initially showed toward Romney, especially on the issue of taxes. Emboldened by recent poll figures showing the public shifting away from its once strong antitax stance in the face of drastic service cuts, more legislators are increasingly talking about a confrontation with Romney.
Part of that strategy, of which Romney and his aides are aware, will rely on proposing such Draconian budget cuts for the fiscal year year that begins July 1 that the public will rise up to preserve programs, even if it means raising taxes. Senate President Robert E. Travaglini publicly predicts such an outcome.
Representative J. James Marzilli Jr., an Arlington Democrat who favors tax increases to deal with the $3 billion budget shortfall, said, "There is no doubt in my mind there will be a clamor to restore cuts in public safety, education, and health care. But if that clamor is not joined by an equal clamor for taxes to restore those services, those cuts will prevail."
With the House ready to unveil its budget plan on Wednesday, the tensions are stirring up partisan rancor that had been noticeably absent in Romney's first three months in office.
Some of Romney's Republican allies say he is privately expressing strong frustration at the Democratic leaders. "The governor is really steaming," one GOP lawmaker said earlier this week.
Publicly, the governor ratcheted up the tough rhetoric. On Monday he indicated that he may veto a bill that would give the Legislature the sole power, bypassing the current gubernatorial input, to create extra-paying leadership positions. Romney had initially signaled that he would not object to the move, which some saw as a power grab by House Speaker Thomas M. Finneran.
But Democrats, too, are voicing increasing frustration with the governor. They say Romney is using campaign rhetoric to demonize the Legislature, painting the lawmakers as advocates of the status quo who are standing in the way of his reforms.
"He is campaigning as opposed to governing," said Representative Michael
Festa, a Democrat from Melrose. He said Democratic lawmakers are convinced that Romney is setting them up for the 2004 legislative elections. "It is very obvious the seeds are being sown now, with the rhetoric that is coming out of the governor and the administration."
Into the mix is the move by Romney and the state GOP apparatus to break fund-raising records for the state party, all part of a strategy to field candidates against Democratic incumbents in 2004. The party, with Romney's help, raised over $300,000 in the first three months of this year -- a 50 percent increase over 1999, the next best performance for an off-election year. The GOP's theme in its fund-raising appeal is: "The state Legislature lacks genuine leadership, accountability, and balance, and for Governor Romney's and for Massachusetts' sake, we must change that."
The goal is twofold for a party which has shrunk to record lows in the Legislature: Regain some seats, particularly in the 40-member Senate; and hold Democratic legislators' feet to the fire on tax and fiscal issues by giving them strong Republican opposition. Party officials are particularly focusing on Democrat-held areas where Romney did well in the 2002 gubernatorial race and where the income tax repeal question on the ballot received strong support.
A brief thaw appeared late in the week when Finneran's top fiscal lieutenant, Ways and Means chairman John H. Rogers, endorsed the governor's plan to disband the MDC and merge its functions with state environmental agencies. The Democrats also seem ready to embrace Romney's plans to make major changes in the health and human services bureaucracy and to reform Medicaid.
Romney reacted with the first conciliatory words he had uttered in days.
Senate Minority Leader Brian P. Lees also tried to downplay the tension but acknowledged that the partisanship is there. "Some Democratic legislators are getting testy because of his popularity, and his message of reform is resonating with the public," said Lees, an East Longmeadow Republican.
Still, the issue of taxes vs. cuts shows no sign of abating. On Wednesday, a task force appointed by Finneran issued a 62-page report detailing a range of potential tax and fee increases, offering a smorgasbord of revenues to help deal with the impending budget gap.
Having passed a $1.2 billion tax package last year to deal with a shortfall, Finneran and Rogers and other legislative leaders insist publicly that they are not contemplating another tax increase, which they said the public would not tolerate.
But several Democratic legislators are reviewing a University of Massachusetts poll that shows that voters now favor tax hikes over service cuts to cope with the state's budget deficit. In samplings of 400 voters on Dec. 2, Feb. 3, and April 3, those who preferred cuts over tax increases dropped from 59 percent four months ago to 31 percent earlier this month. Those who preferred increasing taxes rose from 26 percent in December to 46 percent.
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Associated Press
Saturday, April 19, 2003
Escalating Beacon Hill budget debate rings a familiar note
By Steve Leblanc
For the suspicious-minded, there's something unsettlingly familiar about promises by House Democratic leaders to slash and burn their way to a balanced state budget plan without the help of new taxes.
That's exactly what the House did last year just before approving a $1 billion tax package.
This year is different, House leaders promise, and they may be right. As the Romney administration and Democratic lawmakers duel over how best to close a looming $3 billion spending gap, neither side wants to blink first.
Ways and Means Chairman John Rogers, responsible for drafting the House version of the budget, has repeatedly said the spending plan won't include any tax hikes.
"Taxes are off the table in this budget," said Rogers, D-Norwood.
That wasn't the case last year.
As early as February 2002, well before the budget debate, House leaders were warning that tax hikes might be needed to avoid some of the most painful budget cuts.
To drive home the point, Rogers released an austere budget plan, and then immediately pushed for the billion-dollar tax package. House lawmakers approved the tax package and then used the money to restore some of the cuts in Rogers' original budget proposal.
Rogers is again on the verge of unveiling an even more austere budget this Wednesday, warning of up to a 20 percent cut in local aid to cities and towns.
Unlike last year, Rogers and House Speaker Thomas Finneran aren't even hinting at new taxes. On Thursday, Rogers again said that most House members have "a very strong anti-tax philosophy at this point."
Most, but not all.
Liberal members of the House have called for a rollback of corporate tax breaks and are pushing for the state to impose the sales tax on purchases of beer and alcohol.
A panel appointed by Finneran this week unveiled a report outlining how much the state could raise by hiking a series of taxes (each additional penny in the gas tax is worth $33 million a year). The panel took pains not to recommend any of the hikes.
Even if the House or Senate could get a majority of members to endorse a tax hike, getting the two-thirds needed to override a promised veto by Gov. Mitt Romney could be tougher.
Romney's anti-tax rhetoric, combined with the narrower-than-expected rejection of a ballot question that would have abolished the state income tax, could be some of the reasons why House leaders are showing reluctance to walk back out on the tax plank this year.
One way around tax hikes is to borrow money to pay the state's operating bills until the economy rebounds.
That's what the state did during the fiscal crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s and some lawmakers, including members two task forces appointed by Finneran, D-Boston, are raising the possibility again.
It's unclear if Finneran, who prides himself on being a fiscal conservative, and other House leaders would go along with the strategy, however.
Rogers criticized a more modest plan by Gov. Mitt Romney to take about $190 million from a Massachusetts Turnpike reserve fund to help the state close the budget gap.
"That's a fiscal no-no, we can't get into deficit borrowing," Rogers said of Romney's plan. "That's what happened in the 1990s. Wall Street severely disapproved of that gimmickry."
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The Boston Herald
Saturday, April 19, 2003
A Boston Herald editorial
Sacred cow moos no more
The state employee union protectorate that is the state Legislature continues to bow to the harsh fiscal reality of the times. And this time previously sacrosanct employee health benefits are the target.
House leaders will reportedly include a plan in their budget to increase state employee contributions to their health plans on a sliding scale based on the employees' income. So retirees and workers making under $25,000 will pay no more for their health care premium than the 15 percent they do now and the highest paid state workers making over $110,000 will pay 35 percent. Employees in between will contribute from 20 to 30 percent.
The House plan saves only about half as much money as Gov. Mitt Romney's flat 25 percent contribution. It also contains no incentives for employees to move into more cost-effective managed care plans.
But still the House plan is a major reform of yet another Beacon Hill sacred cow. Since the state employee unions are going to be in a really bad mood anyway, House leaders may as well tackle some other work-force reforms Romney wants like eliminating bumping rights and taking supervisors out of the union altogether.
Before you know it, state government may start to operate more like the private sector. And who said a fiscal crisis was a bad thing?
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The MetroWest Daily News
Saturday, April 19, 2003
Money and arrogance
By Deborah E. Gauthier
Money takes center stage in the debate over whether House Speaker Thomas Finneran should raise the salaries of his top deputies.
But money isn't the root of the problem in the state of Massachusetts. The $22,500 Finneran says he'll need is just a drop in the state budget bucket.
The problem is arrogance. That's the only thing that explains why Finneran would even consider raising salaries when the Legislature faces the fiscal reality of a $3 billion budget deficit, when the unemployment rate hovers at 5.3 percent, and when the state is refusing to honor raises promised state college employees through legal union contracts.
State legislators -- many of whom also have lucrative, full-time jobs outside government -- are already well paid. The base salary is $53,381 and 51 of the 160 members of the House of Representatives hold "leadership" positions for which they receive additional pay.
And let's not forget the "perks" of the job: Each legislator receives a stipend for every mile they travel, and are paid for every hamburger and beer they consume while on the job. In addition, their health and retirement benefits are among the best in the world.
Yet Finneran is comfortable raising the salaries of his legislative lieutenants. And 100 members of the House gave him the power to do just that this week, among them Rep. Paul
Kujawski, Rep. Steven LeDuc, Rep. Marie Parente, Rep. George Peterson, Rep. Paul
Loscocco, Rep. Susan Pope and Rep. Karen Spilka.
And that's just the tip of this arrogant iceberg.
Gov. Mitt Romney, elected last November on the strength of his promise to reform state government so that it's run more like a business, faces a group of elected men and women who refuse to budge an inch.
Romney has suggested restructuring and reorganizing agencies and departments within state government, believing he can save the taxpayers as much as $950 million in the process. Finneran's mouthpiece, Ways and Means Committee Chairman John Rogers, has shot down every one of Romney's proposals -- which promises a long and contentious budget battle.
Rather than encouraging honest discussion among legislators about Romney's well-thought-out budget proposals, Finneran and his cohorts have dismissed them out of hand. They instead warn local cities and towns to prepare for a 20 percent decrease in local aid unless taxes are raised.
Money is a problem in the state of Massachusetts, but Finneran's arrogance is the stranglehold that is bringing us down.
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