CLT
UPDATE
Wednesday, April 30, 2003
Legendary talk-show host Jerry
Williams passes away
|
JERRY WILLIAMS
1923-2003
Jerry Williams,
"The Dean of Talk Radio" and a long-time friend and
supporter of CLT, passed away yesterday at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston at age
79.
Visiting hours are tomorrow, from 2 to 4 p.m. and from 6 to 9 p.m., at Carroll-Thomas Funeral Home, 22 Oak St., Hyde Park. Funeral services will be
private. |
| For
directions, click here |
Jerry Williams invented talk radio in Boston, although he'd have probably told you he just invented it, period.
Not a bad guy, Jerry Williams, but they'll never have a dinner for him now. After the show
he's getting on a big old bus ...
Good night, good luck and good night to you, Jerry.
The Boston Herald
Wednesday, April 30, 2003
Jerry Williams: Not a bad guy, as legends go
by Howie Carr
Jerry Williams, widely considered a pioneer of talk radio, died yesterday at Massachusetts
General Hospital in Boston at age 79, three weeks after suffering a stroke.
Mr. Williams, who could be simultaneously hard-edged and softhearted, was arguably one of
the state's most powerful political forces in the 1980s. Armed with 50,000 watts and an
unlimited supply of public outrage over a deep recession, he skewered Governor Michael
Dukakis, led a charge to repeal the state's seat-belt law, and whipped up an
antitax,
antiestablishment fervor that resulted in the election of an unprecedented number of
Republicans to the Democrat-dominated Legislature....
"He was basically responsible for the talk radio that we have today," said
Barbara Anderson, the Citizens for Limited Taxation director who was a weekly guest host on
Mr. Williams's show in the late 1980s. "He had a real gift for recognizing the theater in talk
radio, as well as a real passion for the issues. Jerry wasn't playing. He was genuinely angry
about things like the Big Dig and seat belts."
The Boston Globe
Wednesday, April 30, 2003
JERRY WILLIAMS 1923-2003
Talk radio innovator pushed hard on issues
House debates, votes on tax hikes
today
Today, the House is to debate a range of budget amendments that would increase taxes or raise revenue in various ways, such as borrowing....
The higher-profile measures to be taken up today will be those concerning taxes, and while both sides concede that the votes are all but foregone conclusions, that didn't stop them from ratcheting up the pressure yesterday. Several thousand public college employees and students came to the State House to call for new taxes as a way to avert double-digit budget cuts. An even larger pro-tax rally involving a wider range of groups is scheduled for today.
And with protesters decrying his leadership nearby, Romney held a news conference at the Omni Parker House to unveil a radio campaign designed to push House members away from raising taxes. In the 60-second ad, Romney describes his government restructuring plans as the only alternative to "deficits and higher taxes every year," and says that "the special interests ... want to raise taxes again."
"The special interests have gone to work very hard to make their message heard, and I want to make sure we have a response up on the airways," Romney said at the news conference. "We're going to campaign to make sure the men and women of Massachusetts don't have a bigger tax burden."
The Boston Globe
Wednesday, April 30, 2003
House set to begin budget debate
As demonstrators chant and pound drums outside the State House, inside, Representative Mary E. Grant's computer chimes every few minutes, alerting her to the latest of about 100 new e-mails from citizens that clog her in-box daily.
Most decry House budget proposals calling for deep cuts in local aid, which could leave her district of Beverly with school funding slashed by 20 percent, and police and fire department's budgets by 6 percent....
"It's horrible, really," said Grant ... "You go into government looking for what you can add to peoples' lives, but at this point, it's all about what I can save."
Yesterday, Grant joined a group of other Democrats to unveil a compromise plan that, if passed, would moderate the immediate fiscal problems the budget would cause in cities such as Beverly.
The measure, would allow the state to borrow $300 million, so Beverly and other hard-hit communities would have their education funding slashed by 10 percent instead of 20 percent. While the measure would help to avoid a tax increase or dramatic cuts in local aid, it would cost about $32 million in interest over its term, a hefty sum in this tough economy....
"If we need significant other dollars not to crash and burn, an income tax hike could be in order," Grant said, moments before joining a news conference yesterday to unveil the short-term borrowing plan.
The Boston Globe
Wednesday, April 30, 2003
Few easy choices in fiscal battle
Borrowing $300 million would allow the Legislature to preserve funding for local aid, public schools, school construction and other "basic and essential" programs and services, a group of moderate lawmakers said yesterday on the eve of the House budget debate.
The borrowing plan is the brainchild of the newly formed House Democratic Council, which was co-founded by several MetroWest legislators....
The council's proposal was endorsed by Geoffrey Beckwith, executive director of the Massachusetts Municipal Association, who said the plan would protect jobs for teachers, firefighters and police officers across the state.
"That's where this money will go. It will protect our communities," Beckwith said.
The Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation has advised the Legislature to consider "limited borrowing" as one of the options for closing the state's budget deficit.
"There's a balance here," said the foundation president, Michael Widmer. "We've been saying for months that the notion of borrowing deserves consideration as one piece of addressing the fiscal crisis, but it needs to be done in a limited fashion." ...
Lawmakers were roundly criticized for relying too heavily on borrowing during the state's last fiscal crisis, in the late 1980s and early '90s.
Back then, the state borrowed $1.4 billion to close a hole in a $12 billion budget....
Like Finneran, Gov. Mitt Romney has said he is opposed to borrowing as a way to pay for any of the state's operating costs.
"He believes it's an irresponsible path to go down," said Romney spokeswoman Shawn Feddeman, adding that Massachusetts already has more debt per capita than any state in the nation.
The MetroWest Daily News
Wednesday, April 30, 2003
Could loan fix budget for state?
About 3,000 public higher education students, workers and leaders loudly rallied on Boston Common and Beacon Street Tuesday afternoon, protesting budget cuts, marching past the UMass president's office, and targeting Gov. Mitt Romney with the bulk of their criticism.
The protests will continue on Wednesday, when more than 2,000 people are expected to turn out to object to cuts in local aid, public health and human services programs and call on the Legislature to raise taxes....
As the students rallied outside the State House, Romney held a press conference at a hotel a few blocks away to announce his voice will be all over the airwaves beginning Wednesday with a 60-second spot urging residents to lobby lawmakers against raising taxes and encouraging them to "clean up the mess" on Beacon Hill.
"Higher taxes will allow the Legislature to consider increasing programs and spending more money rather than cutting as necessary and reforming as necessary to run government smarter and more efficiently," said Romney, who reissued his calls for merging and consolidating offices in the transportation, judiciary and higher education.
Today's higher education rally had a distinctive anti-Romney feel to it....
Maria Knight of Lowell and Kris Kinnear of Albany, N.Y., both students at the University of Massachusetts' Dartmouth campus, said Romney is the target because he promised to improve public higher education while running for governor. Knight, 19, and
Kinnear, 24, said his proposed budget cuts don't square with that pledge.
If public higher education becomes too expensive, said Knight, many more students will drop out and without degrees, many will wind up on welfare, she said. Without an education, Knight said, "you're nothing." She said her $11,000 tuition at Dartmouth is about a third of the cost of tuition at Boston University, where she was also accepted....
At the rally, [former Speaker of the House, now president of Holyoke Community College, David Bartley] said "the great friends of higher education have always been in the Legislature." Later, after testifying before the Legislature's Education Committee, Peter
Nessen, Romney's top education advisor, said the House's $150 million across-the-board cut in higher education funding is "arbitrary."
"I'm not sure that I would agree that they're the best friends that you could have," Nessen said of the Legislature.
State House News Service
Tuesday, April 29, 2003
[Excerpt] Higher education rally is part of
one-two protest punch outside State House
By Michael P. Norton
The group with the most vested interest in the outcome of today's House debate on whether to raise taxes to deal with the state's budget crisis will not be among those converging on Beacon Hill to press their case with lawmakers. No, most taxpayers will be hard at work just to earn enough money to pay their annual tax bill.
That bill won't be paid in full until May 2 this year, which is Tax Freedom Day in Massachusetts. Think about that. From New Year's Day until May 2, every penny people earn is going to meet the needs of federal, state and local governments instead of their own families' needs. And Massachusetts has the second latest tax freedom day in the nation, a consequence of bearing the second heaviest tax burden according to the Washington, D.C.-based Tax Foundation.
A Boston Herald editorial
Wednesday, April 30, 2003
More taxes no solution
Wages are dropping in Massachusetts at a rate greater than anywhere else in the country, according to a Northeastern University study, and the situation is not expected to improve in the near future.
"This is a reversal of what things were like during the (1995-2000) boom," said Andrew Sum, the study's lead author. "Here's a state that went from ranking second or third in real wage growth, and now we're last."
Associated Press
Wednesday, April 30, 2003
Pay drop in Massachusetts worst in nation
Chip Ford's CLT
Commentary
By now you've probably heard that we've lost a very
good friend from over the decades, Jerry Williams.
Jerry guest-hosted a Saturday afternoon program on
his old WRKO last month, and held a reunion of The Governors with
Barbara and Bob Katzen of Beacon Hill Roll Call (who took over after
Howie left). It was a fine going-away present for his many fans and a
good send-off for Jerry. He' probably now up there before the Pearly
Gates arguing with St. Peter, "I've never had a dinner ... I'm
getting out of the business!"
Jerry inspired me to take my first step in political
activism back in 1985, when he called for a rally at the Gardner
Auditorium in the State House one snowy November night, where I picked
up my very first petition -- calling for the repeal of the first
mandatory seat belt law. By August of the following year, he'd talked me
into filing the Committee to Repeal the Mandatory Seat Belt Law ...
pledging to me that I'd never have to do any public speaking.
Only a week or two later I found myself having to speak publicly, and
gradually got over my fear. "I knew you could do it!" he later
laughed.
I've still got the framed photo hanging in my office
of him and me looking like two cats that just ate the canaries. It was
taken at a 'RKO studio new conference the day after the seat belt law
went down in flames. He inscribed it: "To Chip, a real freedom
fighter! The best, Jerry Williams." He and I teamed up on many
projects and issues in the following years; I became a frequent guest on
"The Jerry Williams Show." Soon, political activism became my
life, and eventually I landed here with CLT.
So many of us have similar stories about how Jerry
motivated us to get involved, to participate, to fight back.
Thanks, Jerry, we'll all miss you.
*
* *
Another First for Massachusetts: Wages are dropping
faster here than in any other state! Add that to having the BMW of
Medicaid programs, the Cadillac of welfare "reform," and being
the second-highest taxed state in the nation. A nice place to visit, but
do we really want to live here?
Certainly not, if the tax-and-spenders have their way
in the House today and somehow get taxes increased again. If yet another
tax hike is imposed this year instead of state government being
restructured, there's no turning back. It will be inevitable tax
increases year after year just for the state to tread water.
This year ... today ... is the fork in the
road. Which direction will the Legislature take? Finally biting the
bullet and long-overdue restructuring, or infinite annual tax increases?
If they take the usual easy way out and keep the
spending train chugging along, this might not be even a nice place to visit
any more.
|
|
|
Chip
Ford |
The Boston Herald
Wednesday, April 30, 2003
Jerry Williams: Not a bad guy, as legends go
by Howie Carr
Jerry Williams invented talk radio in Boston, although he'd have probably told you he just invented it, period.
Not a bad guy, Jerry Williams, but they'll never have a dinner for him now. After the show he's getting on a big old bus ...
One fact I certainly can't argue with: Jerry Williams invented me, at least my talk-radio persona. When Jerry started reading my columns on the air, I lived in Somerville, and now I live in Wellesley. What can I say now to Jerry except, thanks pal.
It's hard now to explain just how big Jerry Williams was, and for how long. It's like trying to explain the late George Frazier to someone who never read his column in the papers. You had to be there.
So let me put it this way. You can figure the approximate age of a New Englander over 40 by when he or she first started listening to Jerry. The former Gerald Jacoby's first station was WMEX - James Michael Curley used to call in to his nightly show after Arnie Woo Woo Ginsburg.
I first remember him from 'BZ, after he came back from Chicago in 1969. Those were his national days, when he gave George McGovern the tape of the calls from the Vietnam vet. After he was forced out of
'BZ in 1976, he returned to Boston and WRKO in 1981.
Every afternoon, at 3:07, he'd say, "Hello New England," and you knew it was time to fasten your seat belt, or not, if you so chose.
It's easy to pigeon-hole Jerry by bringing up a few issues and topics - that seat-belt referendum, the aborted prison at New Braintree, the annual end-of-spring-ratings-book sex survey. (On the Internet message boards yesterday, everyone claimed to have been listening the afternoon the woman called in to tell Jerry how much she enjoyed doing it on top of the washing machine.)
Jerry Williams had amazing clout. He put me and Barbara Anderson on with him as "the governors" in the spring of 1989, and by November our two-hour Tuesday afternoon slot had driven the Globe completely around the bend. They ran not a story, but a series about us, and the title summed it up: "Poisoned Politics."
The next year, 1990, the Republicans swept to two statewide elections for the first time in 16 years, in addition to knocking off eight incumbent Democratic state senators. If anybody ever owed Jerry Williams that dinner he never got, it was Bill Weld, Paul Cellucci and Joe Malone.
Jerry Williams was at the absolute top of his game. And he was 67 years old.
Jerry went to the mat for this newspaper in 1988, when Ted Kennedy was trying to force the man he kept calling "Rudolph Murdoch" to sell the Herald and the New York Post. From a car, Kennedy called into the show and immediately went after Jerry's drivel, or, as he put it, "dribble."
"I've been listening to that dribble of yours this afternoon."
"My dribble," Jerry said, dead-pan, "or someone else's?"
"Your dribble," Ted Kennedy said.
Thirteen minutes later, Ted Kennedy hung up on him. And Jerry felt he had to assure the audience: "This is not a comedian doing this."
If you're above a certain age, you can probably remember at least one time sitting in your car in the driveway, not wanting to turn off the ignition and make a run for the house because you might miss another "Rudolph Murdoch" moment before you got inside. That Ted Kennedy interview was my in-the-car moment.
Then Jerry got old, and he was finally getting out of the business, for real, and I was the guy who took his place. What is there to say now except that if it hadn't been me, someone else would have given him the nudge, which is what I'd call it, or the shove, if that's the word you prefer.
Jerry would always grimace when someone called him an "entertainer," because he thought he was being
dissed, although I never understood why. If you can't get people to listen to you, or read your stuff, it doesn't really matter what you're saying, does it? And Jerry could always draw a crowd - what better epitaph is that for a radio guy?
Good night, good luck and good night to you, Jerry.
Howie Carr's radio show can be heard every weekday afternoon on WRKO AM 680, WHYN AM 560, WGAN AM 560, WEIM AM 1280, and WXTK 95.1 FM.
Return to
top
The Boston Globe
Wednesday, April 30, 2003
JERRY WILLIAMS 1923-2003
Talk radio innovator pushed hard on issues
By Mark Pothier and Ralph Ranalli, Globe Staff
Jerry Williams, widely considered a pioneer of talk radio, died yesterday at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston at age 79, three weeks after suffering a stroke.
Mr. Williams, who could be simultaneously hard-edged and softhearted, was arguably one of the state's most powerful political forces in the 1980s. Armed with 50,000 watts and an unlimited supply of public outrage over a deep recession, he skewered Governor Michael Dukakis, led a charge to repeal the state's seat-belt law, and whipped up an
antitax, antiestablishment fervor that resulted in the election of an unprecedented number of Republicans to the Democrat-dominated Legislature.
Mr. Williams sometimes called himself a "classical liberal" or a "populist" but gleefully defied conventional political labels. In his later years Mr. Williams championed fiscally conservative causes, but he built his reputation by being a liberal lightning rod for controversy in the 1960s. He welcomed Malcolm X as a frequent guest and passionately opposed the Vietnam War and President Richard Nixon at a time when both were buoyed by positive poll numbers.
"He was the best, there's just no question about it," said Howie Carr, a
WRKO-AM (680) radio host and Boston Herald columnist. "In many ways, he invented talk radio." Mr. Williams's appeal and clout waned along with voter vitriol during the prosperous 1990s, and though time has overtaken many of his political victories (Republicans' power in the Legislature has faded, and the state eventually reinstated the seat-belt law), friends and former colleagues say his legacy will be the dominance of talk over other programming on the AM dial.
"He was basically responsible for the talk radio that we have today," said
Barbara Anderson, the Citizens for Limited Taxation director who was a weekly guest host on Mr. Williams's show in the late 1980s. "He had a real gift for recognizing the theater in talk radio, as well as a real passion for the issues. Jerry wasn't playing. He was genuinely angry about things like the Big Dig and seat belts."
Mr. Williams's voice surfed radio airwaves for more than 50 years, a remarkable accomplishment in a business known as much for its fast exits as its fast talkers. "There aren't going to be any more 50-year careers in radio," Carr said. "People would stay in their cars to listen to him eviscerate someone."
Most recently, he hosted a one-hour show on WROL-AM (950) while fighting a series of ailments including kidney disease and the onset of Parkinson's disease. He also made an abortive comeback attempt in 2000 at the now-defunct
WMEX-AM, but Williams's greatest ratings successes came at WRKO, where for more than a decade he was loved and loathed by listeners, and feared by most politicians.
Gene Burns, now a talk show host at KGO in San Francisco, was at WRKO in the late 1980s, when Mr. Williams's influence helped repeal the state's seat-belt law and scuttle Democratic governor Dukakis's plans for a big prison in the tiny town of New Braintree.
"God, he was like a bulldog," Burns said in an interview with the Globe last year. "He would take an issue and just rip it to shreds until he got what he needed to get done."
Mr. Williams, whose Marshfield home was filled with antiques and radio memorabilia, was born in Brooklyn, N.Y. He got his first radio job in 1946 at New York's WMCA and by 1957 was hosting a 10 p.m. talk show on WMEX in Boston, where he stayed eight years. He returned to the Boston airwaves in 1968, this time on powerful
WBZ, whose clear signal boomed into 38 states. Mr. Williams once taped a poignant call from a self-described Vietnam veteran from East Boston. It became an antiwar rallying cry nationwide, and Democratic senator George McGovern sometimes played the tape at his presidential campaign rallies.
In 1976, Mr. Williams was fired by WBZ, an action he always maintained was taken because he was too controversial. For the next five years, he talked at stations up and down the East Coast. In 1978, Larry King called him for advice -- Mutual Radio had offered King a syndicated show, but the hours were unusual. Mr. Williams told him that he would take the job if King turned it down.
"Everybody who has ever done talk radio owes Jerry Williams a debt," King said in an e-mail message to the Globe last year. "He was the first of the great muckrakers."
Mr. Williams stormed back to Boston in the early 1980s, capturing ratings with a combination of politics and occasionally off-color entertainment. His annual sex survey shows -- open to women callers only, because "men lie" -- included frank talk about masturbation, bondage, sadomasochism, and preferred positions. The show, PG-13 material by today's measure, horrified some listeners but was a ratings blockbuster.
"I would call him and tell him don't get sick," Anderson said, "because we're not filling in for you that week."
In 1986, Mr. Williams led a successful drive to repeal the state's seat-belt law (he said it infringed on personal freedom), but the zenith of his populist power came a short time later, when he, Anderson, and Carr started regular Tuesday sessions on
WRKO. They called the raucous roundtable segments "The Governors" after a newspaper columnist wrote that they acted as though they were running the state. The trio took on bureaucracy, no-show jobs, welfare spending, and elected officials who found cushy niches on the public payroll for friends and relatives.
But when the tax rollback ballot initiative The Governors championed was defeated, observers considered it a sign that the wave of discontent Mr. Williams had ridden so long had crested. In 1994, Mr. Williams was shuffled to mornings, his on-air time cut in half. Eventually he was exiled to weekends. About five years ago, he was fired.
After frustrating exchanges with callers who did not share his opinion on an issue, Mr. Williams would sometimes launch one of his trademark lines: "I'm getting out of the business." But the sentence was saturated with sarcasm, and regular listeners knew he could not be serious -- to many of them, he was the business. Mr. Williams, whose ego was as sturdy as his voice, would not have argued the point.
He leaves three daughters, Eve Meredith Williams, Susan Camille Hobson, and Andrea Beth Williams, and four grandchildren.
Visiting hours are tomorrow, from 2 to 4 p.m. and from 6 to 9 p.m., at Carroll Thomas Funeral Home, 22 Oak St., Hyde Park. Funeral services will be private.
Return to
top
The Boston Globe
Wednesday, April 30, 2003
House set to begin budget debate
Borrowing eyed, but little chance seen for tax hikes
By Rick Klein, Globe Staff
With the Massachusetts House set to take up the bleakest state budget in more than a decade, legislators are poised to reject tax increases, though they are seriously considering taking out a loan to cushion the blow of budget cuts.
Today, the House is to debate a range of budget amendments that would increase taxes or raise revenue in various ways, such as borrowing.
Yesterday, 12 mostly moderate lawmakers in the newly formed House Democratic Council outlined a proposal to borrow $300 million, to be paid back over five years. Another proposal, filed by two conservative-leaning Democrats, would have the state borrow as much as $400 million to cope with an expected $3 billion budget shortfall in fiscal 2004, which begins July 1.
"In the short term, we feel that a bridge loan is necessary," said state Representative David P.
Linsky, a Natick Democrat who cosponsored the measure to borrow $300 million. "We don't take this step lightly. We believe this is a fiscally prudent choice."
The cash generated by the Democratic Council proposal would allow state aid to school districts to be cut by no more than 10 percent, in contrast with the House Ways and Means budget proposal, which cuts some districts by as much as 20 percent. It would also provide money for rape crisis centers, battered women's shelters, and cancer prevention, among other programs.
The $400 million borrowing proposal, filed by state representatives Harriett L. Stanley of West Newbury and Charles A. Murphy of Burlington, would preserve even more education and local aid funding, and would prop up Prescription Advantage, a drug subsidy program for senior citizens and the disabled that Romney and House leaders have slated for elimination.
With opposition to deficit borrowing coming from Governor Mitt Romney, House Speaker Thomas M. Finneran, and state Treasurer Timothy P. Cahill, proponents of the loans acknowledge they're facing long odds.
But since taxes are basically off the table and the House has defeated an effort to raise revenue by expanding gambling in the state, the idea of borrowing is becoming more attractive to many members.
"We need to have the discussion, and it's certainly preferable to taxes," said Stanley, a former investment banker who worked in the field of public financing on Wall Street.
The higher-profile measures to be taken up today will be those concerning taxes, and while both sides concede that the votes are all but foregone conclusions, that didn't stop them from ratcheting up the pressure yesterday. Several thousand public college employees and students came to the State House to call for new taxes as a way to avert double-digit budget cuts. An even larger pro-tax rally involving a wider range of groups is scheduled for today.
And with protesters decrying his leadership nearby, Romney held a news conference at the Omni Parker House to unveil a radio campaign designed to push House members away from raising taxes. In the 60-second ad, Romney describes his government restructuring plans as the only alternative to "deficits and higher taxes every year," and says that "the special interests ... want to raise taxes again."
"The special interests have gone to work very hard to make their message heard, and I want to make sure we have a response up on the airways," Romney said at the news conference. "We're going to campaign to make sure the men and women of Massachusetts don't have a bigger tax burden."
But House leaders said the governor is engaging in shadow boxing with his antitax rhetoric, since none of the six or so significant tax amendments filed by liberal Democrats has a realistic chance of passing today. Finneran has repeatedly said that there's no appetite in the Legislature to raise taxes -- though Romney appears to be trying to tar legislative leaders as tax-and-spend Democrats.
"The only guy seriously talking about taxes up here is Mitt Romney," said state Representative Peter J. Larkin, a Pittsfield Democrat who is assistant vice chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. "What he should be talking about is how to grow jobs. When's the campaign going to stop, and the governing going to begin?"
With his advertising campaign, the governor is trying to gain momentum for many of the restructuring proposals that have been rejected by House leaders. House Republican leaders will seek votes on several of those proposals next week, and Romney will file a government reorganization plan tomorrow.
The initial radio ads, backed by $20,000 from the state Republican Party, will begin airing today and will get their heaviest play through Friday, as the House discusses new potential revenue sources. Romney noted that groups such as the state's teachers unions and the Massachusetts Municipal Association are spending far more to push tax hikes. But even the most ardent advocates for tax increases acknowledge that there's little chance of getting a majority of House members to support broad-based tax hikes such as higher sales or income taxes. It's highly unlikely, tax supporters admit, that they can get the two-thirds vote needed to override a gubernatorial veto.
"I'm not optimistic," said state Representative Ruth B. Balser, a Newton Democrat. "But I think for those of us who really do feel that there are alternatives to really drastic cuts, we are going to go forward and debate this."
Return to
top
The Boston Globe
Wednesday, April 30, 2003
Few easy choices in fiscal battle
By Raphael Lewis, Globe Staff
As demonstrators chant and pound drums outside the State House, inside, Representative Mary E. Grant's computer chimes every few minutes, alerting her to the latest of about 100 new e-mails from citizens that clog her in-box daily.
Most decry House budget proposals calling for deep cuts in local aid, which could leave her district of Beverly with school funding slashed by 20 percent, and police and fire department's budgets by 6 percent.
Meanwhile, other constituents call her office, warning Grant not to tinker with their taxes, which they say are already too high. And every day, a parade of visitors from state colleges, public schools, and police and fire departments drop in to insist that their corner of the budget must remain unscathed.
"It's horrible, really," said Grant, ending a phone call with the frazzled mayor of Beverly, Thomas
Crean, who checked in on the latest budget developments yesterday afternoon. "You go into government looking for what you can add to peoples' lives, but at this point, it's all about what I can save."
Freshman lawmakers such as Grant and long-time incumbents confront a big battle beginning today, as state representatives debate what is shaping up to be the most painful budget in more than a decade.
With a $3 billion funding gap to close, various constituencies are converging on the State House in droves. The choices are stark: slash funding to cities and schools and prescription drug plans for seniors, hike personal income and liquor taxes, or engage in costly borrowing.
For Grant, a psychiatric nurse with a master's degree in community health, few options are appealing. Recent polls show a majority of voters want services left at present funding levels, but they are opposed to any tax increases.
In Grant's district, the antitax message is especially clear: 48 percent voted in the 2002 elections to do away with the state income tax altogether. That was 3 percentage points higher than the statewide results on Question 1.
"I knocked on 8,000 doors over the summer, and the message was clear: People don't want new taxes," said Grant, 50, who defeated a Republican opponent who branded her a tax-and-spend liberal.
Lawmakers, hoping to preserve funding for favored corners of the budget, have filed some 1,023 proposed budget amendments in recent days. Grant has been reading through them each night, deciding which to support, which to fight, and which to ignore. Grant said she might support a dozen amendments, all dealing with staving off cuts to mental health funds.
Yesterday, Grant joined a group of other Democrats to unveil a compromise plan that, if passed, would moderate the immediate fiscal problems the budget would cause in cities such as Beverly.
The measure, would allow the state to borrow $300 million, so Beverly and other hard-hit communities would have their education funding slashed by 10 percent instead of 20 percent. While the measure would help to avoid a tax increase or dramatic cuts in local aid, it would cost about $32 million in interest over its term, a hefty sum in this tough economy.
Grant's priorities are apparent in the measure: Funding for rape crisis centers, which the current House budget plan would eliminate, would be restored in part through borrowing. So too would funding for cancer screening.
But House Speaker Thomas M. Finneran, Governor Mitt Romney, and state Treasurer Timothy P. Cahill have gone on record opposing short-term borrowing. That means Grant's best idea for lessening the cuts may be a nonstarter.
Even so, Grant -- whose first actions in January were to forsake a pay raise and back Finneran's speakership -- said she's not ready to back an increase in taxes just yet. But she worries that the budget plans now under discussion also are burdensome. "I don't want to fee people to death," she said.
"If we need significant other dollars not to crash and burn, an income tax hike could be in order," Grant said, moments before joining a news conference yesterday to unveil the short-term borrowing plan. "But right now, for me, it's too early to say if we should raise income taxes. We have to move forward responsibly."
Return to
top
The MetroWest Daily News
Wednesday, April 30, 2003
Could loan fix budget for state?
By Michael Kunzelman
Borrowing $300 million would allow the Legislature to preserve funding for local aid, public schools, school construction and other "basic and essential" programs and services, a group of moderate lawmakers said yesterday on the eve of the House budget debate.
The borrowing plan is the brainchild of the newly formed House Democratic Council, which was co-founded by several MetroWest legislators.
The council's members, who unveiled the plan at the State House yesterday, said a $300 million "bridge loan" would allow the House to soften the blow of $2 billion in proposed budget cuts without jeopardizing the state's bond rating.
"We don't take this step lightly. We believe it is the fiscally prudent choice," said state Rep. David
Linsky, D-Natick, who joined state Reps. Alice Peisch, D-Wellesley, and Cory Atkins, D-Concord, in co-founding the council.
Borrowing is only one option lawmakers will weigh today as they begin debating a series of revenue-related amendments to the House budget plan.
House members also filed more than a dozen proposed tax hikes, including a plan to raise the state's income-tax rate from 5.3 to 5.75 percent and a proposal to increase the sales tax from 5 to 6 percent.
But House leaders, including House Speaker Thomas Finneran, have been loathe to consider either tax increases or borrowing as ways to help close the state's $3 billion budget deficit in fiscal year 2004, which begins July 1.
"The speaker has said he does not favor borrowing against our future to solve our present problems," said Finneran spokesman Charles Rasmussen.
The council's 11 members, however, said many rank-and-file state representatives are more likely to consider borrowing as an alternative to raising taxes.
"This is a way to preserve some of the core services that government provides without imposing an additional tax increase on my constituents, who clearly have communicated loudly that they are not interested in higher taxes," Peisch said.
Under the council's plan, the state would pay back the $300 million loan over five years. The first annual payment, of $65.5 million, would be due in fiscal year 2005.
The council outlined a list of $250 million in spending priorities the loan would pay for, including:
- $63 million in additional Chapter 70 state aid to public schools.
Under the House's budget plan, some communities would lose up to 20 percent of their Chapter 70 aid. Restoring $63 million would trim the maximum cut to 10 percent, according to the council.
- $67 million in transportation funding for public schools, a line item that would suffer deep cuts in the House budget.
- $22 million in first-year payments to school districts under the School Building Assistance program. Nearly two dozen communities, including Maynard, Shrewsbury, Dover, Acton, Newton and Plainville, would qualify for the extra SBA funding.
- $2.7 million for child medical services.
- $3 million for teen pregnancy prevention programs.
- $2.4 million for rape crisis centers.
Domestic violence prevention programs, services for the mentally retarded, nursing homes, brain-injury programs and cancer screening programs also would receive a boost in funding under the council's plan.
"These are not luxuries," Linsky said. "They are basic and essential services."
The council's proposal was endorsed by Geoffrey Beckwith, executive director of the Massachusetts Municipal Association, who said the plan would protect jobs for teachers, firefighters and police officers across the state.
"That's where this money will go. It will protect our communities," Beckwith said.
The Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation has advised the Legislature to consider "limited borrowing" as one of the options for closing the state's budget deficit.
"There's a balance here," said the foundation president, Michael Widmer. "We've been saying for months that the notion of borrowing deserves consideration as one piece of addressing the fiscal crisis, but it needs to be done in a limited fashion."
Lawmakers were roundly criticized for relying too heavily on borrowing during the state's last fiscal crisis, in the late 1980s and early '90s.
Back then, the state borrowed $1.4 billion to close a hole in a $12 billion budget.
This year, on the other hand, a $300 million loan only would amount to about 1 percent of the state's overall budget.
Like Finneran, Gov. Mitt Romney has said he is opposed to borrowing as a way to pay for any of the state's operating costs.
"He believes it's an irresponsible path to go down," said Romney spokeswoman Shawn Feddeman, adding that Massachusetts already has more debt per capita than any state in the nation.
Romney also has vowed to veto any proposed tax increase, which means the House and Senate would have to muster at least a two-thirds majority to pass any tax hikes this year.
"Frankly, I'm not optimistic about the likelihood of passing either the tax amendments or the borrowing amendments. That's just my impression," said state Rep. Ruth
Balser, a Newton Democrat who co-sponsored several proposed tax hikes.
House lawmakers filed more than 1,000 budget amendments last week, including more than 100 revenue-related proposals.
The revenue discussion is expected to dominate the House's debate this week. Debate on the rest of the amendments isn't expected to begin until next week.
Return to
top
The Boston Herald
Wednesday, April 30, 2003
A Boston Herald editorial
More taxes no solution
The group with the most vested interest in the outcome of today's House debate on whether to raise taxes to deal with the state's budget crisis will not be among those converging on Beacon Hill to press their case with lawmakers. No, most taxpayers will be hard at work just to earn enough money to pay their annual tax bill.
That bill won't be paid in full until May 2 this year, which is Tax Freedom Day in Massachusetts. Think about that. From New Year's Day until May 2, every penny people earn is going to meet the needs of federal, state and local governments instead of their own families' needs. And Massachusetts has the second latest tax freedom day in the nation, a consequence of bearing the second heaviest tax burden according to the Washington, D.C.-based Tax Foundation.
But that rather depressing thought won't deter the army of special interests determined to save their pet programs and their head-in-the-sand supporters amongst the Legislature's rank and file.
Despite the rallies and escalating "people will die" rhetoric, the impetus of political self-preservation gives us at least some assurance that taxes will remain off the table as House Speaker Tom Finneran has pledged. After all, Gov. Mitt Romney was elected on an anti-tax platform and voters came close to repealing the income tax outright.
But there are always those few who must have missed the memo, or in this case, the election. Take Rep. James Eldridge (D-Acton) who has filed an amendment to raise the sales tax from 5 percent to 6 percent but doesn't support an income tax increase because three of six towns in his district voted to abolish it.
"I wanted to offer an alternative to that," Eldridge told the Metrowest Daily News.
Well, we can hope most of Eldridge's colleagues have enough of a grasp of economic principles to understand that raising any taxes now is exactly the wrong message to send to employers who are still hemorrhaging jobs.
The right message for them, and, not coincidentally, for the special interests, is that the best way to preserve needed state services is to balance the budget in a stable tax environment and lay the foundation for a vigorous economic recovery. That's not a bad message for the taxpayers working until this Friday just to pay the government's bills, either.
Return to
top
Associated Press
Wednesday, April 30, 2003
Pay drop in Massachusetts worst in nation
Wages are dropping in Massachusetts at a rate greater than anywhere else in the country, according to a Northeastern University study, and the situation is not expected to improve in the near future.
"This is a reversal of what things were like during the (1995-2000) boom," said Andrew Sum, the study's lead author. "Here's a state that went from ranking second or third in real wage growth, and now we're last."
According to the study by NU's Center for Labor Market Studies which was released Tuesday, the average Bay State worker made $47 a week less in the first three quarters of last year, compared with two years earlier, while workers nationwide averaged $8 less.
In the 1995-2000 period, the average weekly earnings of private-sector employees rose 21 percent. Because of that growth, wages in Massachusetts are still higher than in the rest of the country.
On average, a worker in the Bay State made $855 a week during the first three quarters of last year, compared with $690 nationwide.
Between 1991 and 2000, Massachusetts' annual average unemployment rate dropped to a record low 2.6 percent from 9.1 percent. Since January 2001, Sum said, the number of jobs has dropped steadily.
Although job losses in Massachusetts have been held to 5 percent, compared with 10 percent during the last downturn which ended in 1991, by last month, the number of jobs in the Bay State had dropped to 3.2 million from almost 3.4 million two years ago.
The caseload for Temporary Assistance to Needy Families jumped 12 percent to 48,550 in February, compared with six months earlier, Sum said.
"The problem is our job losses, rather than moderating, have continued to pile up," Sum told the Boston Herald. "It's hard to believe real wages won't go down further."
Return to
top
NOTE: In accordance with Title 17
U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit or
payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this
information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For
more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
|