Much has happened on Beacon Hill this week so it's
going to take some effort today to catch up. The House had its debates
and votes on borrowing to "bridge the budget gap" and hiking
taxes on Wednesday. I'm thrilled to report that both
"solutions" went down in flames.
On Thursday the House reconvened, continued its
debate on further proposed tax hikes, and again an overwhelming majority
held the line and defeated the tax-and-spenders' assault on our wallets.
Still, the alleged "fiscally conservative"
so-called Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation is calling for tax hikes
and borrowing the state out of the "fiscal crisis." Again, MTF
is shamelessly running cover for the tax-and-spenders and bigger
government.
Next week, the House will continue its debate on next
fiscal year's budget, but the threat of tax hikes should be
behind us now, barring unforeseen circumstances: we likely have dodged
the tax hike bullet for now. There remains hope among some of the
tax-and-spenders that, once the "devastating cuts" are felt, the Legislature will revisit "new revenue streams" in the
fall.
When the House adopts its budget it will then go to
the more liberal Senate, which will have its own budget and its own
ideas. Theoretically, the Senate cannot initiate new taxes
(constitutionally, taxes must be first proposed in the House). But if
any "tax" or "revenue increase" appears somewhere in
the House budget, that opens the door for shenanigans in the Senate.
We'll be watching.
Overall at this point, it looks like beleaguered
taxpayers have for the most part won. It would be a complete rout, but
for the $700 million in proposed fee increases.
The Boston Herald
Thursday, May 1, 2003
Reps nix tax
by Elisabeth J. Beardsley
House lawmakers yesterday overwhelmingly rejected proposals that the state borrow its way out of a massive deficit and renege on the voter-approved income tax rollback.
The borrowing plan consumed most of the four-hour debate on the first day of annual budget deliberations, but was finally shot down on a lopsided vote of 31-126.
Pushed by a small band of moderate lawmakers, the plan would have involved borrowing $300 million to reverse steep cuts in education, local aid, health-care programs and senior services.
Opponents - led by House Speaker Thomas M. Finneran's lieutenants - likened the plan to flashing the plastic to pay for groceries.
"It is fiscal heroin," said Rep. James H. Fagan (D-Taunton). "We will become addicted."
The House budget offered by leadership slashes roughly $2 billion from state programs, seeking to close a $3 billion deficit.
Backers of the borrowing plan pitched it as the only way to raise money in a political climate that's strongly averse to new taxes.
"This will be our only opportunity to try to lessen the impact," argued Rep. Charles A. Murphy (D-Burlington).
Opponents harkened back to the recession a decade ago, when the state borrowed $1.4 billion to cover operating costs - causing the state's credit rating to plummet to near-junk bond status.
Supporters insisted they aren't trying to mortgage the state's future, but merely want to create a five-year "bridge loan."
But even the most unabashed liberals in the House turned up their noses at the borrowing plan, which would have piled an extra $47 million in interest costs onto the state's red-ink-soaked ledgers.
Lawmakers segued into a tax-hike debate, easily dispatching on a 37-118 vote a move to hike the income tax back to 5.95 percent - its level before voters in 2000 ordered a rollback to 5 percent.
The tax currently stands at 5.3 percent, after lawmakers last year froze the rate as part of a $1.2 billion tax-hike package.
Hiking the income tax would raise $1 billion, which sponsor Rep. James Marzilli said is necessary to avoid teacher and firefighter layoffs, and decimation of services for the elderly and poor.
"We can't afford to cut through the most important programs the commonwealth offers," Marzilli (D-Arlington) said.
But in keeping with Finneran's strict no-new-taxes mantra, House Taxation Chairman Paul C. Casey argued that the public's not interested in tax hikes, which could hurt the faltering economy.
"To do it now is probably a little too burdensome," Casey (D-Winchester) said.
The House is expected today to debate a slew of other tax-hiking budget riders, including proposals to ratchet up the sales tax, repeal corporate tax breaks and allow local-option tax hikes.
Today's debate could include a nasty twist - as officials plan to release April tax collection data, with many expecting a capital gains revenue implosion that could deepen the deficit.
As the tax debate unfolded, about 2,000 activists descended on Beacon Hill to urge lawmakers to "stop the cuts" by raising revenues.
"These decisions have very human faces and very human consequences," said Rev. Jill Wiley, policy director for the Massachusetts Council of Churches.
Also yesterday, Finneran said the House would offer a municipal relief package at the end of May, following Gov. Mitt Romney's lead.
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The Boston Globe
Thursday, May 1, 2003
House rejects borrowing, tax plans
By Rick Klein and Cynthia Roy
Globe Staff and Globe Correspondent
The Massachusetts House yesterday roundly rejected a bid to borrow $300 million to help the state with its budgetary woes, and then defeated by a similar margin a measure that sought to raise the income tax.
The votes virtually ensure that spending cuts - not broad-based tax increases or deficit financing - will be the primary means by which the state addresses an expected $3 billion budget gap in the fiscal year that begins July 1. Several more tax hike measures are expected to be defeated in lopsided fashion today.
Advocates of borrowing portrayed their proposal as a middle road - a way to prevent some of the most devastating budget cuts without turning to new taxes. As House members debated the measure through the afternoon, about 1,000 protesters worked the State House hallways and attended a rally on Boston Common, pleading with lawmakers to raise revenues.
"Short-term borrowing, to be paid back before the next fiscal downturn, can provide a bridge to sustain critical functions of government," said state Representative Michael E.
Festa, a Melrose Democrat who cosponsored the budget amendment to borrow $300 million. "This is fiscally prudent. It is desirable for those of us who feel there's just not enough [money] in this budget to deal with those in need."
But with House Speaker Thomas M. Finneran opposing the move as fiscally unwise, backers of short-term borrowing faced an insurmountable hurdle of skepticism in the House. The measure failed 126-31, and another amendment that would have had the state borrow up to $400 million was rejected on a voice vote.
"It starts out as something that's very, very attractive, and there's a siren song that plays very well," said state Representative James H. Fagan, a Taunton Democrat. "But we don't have a comprehensive plan ... This is ill-thought out."
Voting 118-37, lawmakers also rejected a proposal to raise the state income tax from 5.3 percent to 5.95 percent, the level it stood at as recently as 1999, to generate about $735 million for the state. Backers called it the fairest way to find money for crucial health care and education programs, which are slated for deep cuts in the budget proposal released by the House Ways and Means Committee last week.
"While some folks say we can't afford to restore the tax to the simple rate which it was during the boom years of the 1990s, I say nonsense," said state Representative J. James Marzilli Jr., an Arlington Democrat who filed the budget amendment. "We can't afford to cut through the most important programs the Commonwealth offers."
But Republican members mocked liberal Democrats for saying the public is crying out for higher taxes.
"I have yet to receive a call that says, 'Please raise my taxes, let me give more money to the government,'" said Representative Scott P. Brown, a Wrentham Republican.
The proposals for taxes and borrowing failed despite the cries of protesters, who descended on Beacon Hill yesterday with fluorescent-orange stickers and placards bearing pro-tax messages. Many protesters blew white plastic whistles - "blowing the whistle" on Governor Mitt Romney's lack of leadership, they said - and senior citizens held a "Boston pill party" where they threw prescription drug bottles off the stage to show that they can no longer afford medication.
Joellen Stone, who said she has mental illnesses that force her to live at Worcester State Hospital, said she fears becoming homeless if the hospital must close, as Romney has suggested.
"You take somebody [who is mentally ill] and you tell them there is no place for them to live," Stone said. "You might as well take us out and shoot us, because that is more humane than putting us out on the streets."
But the rally drew a far smaller crowd than expected. Several weeks ago, organizers said as many as 30,000 people would attend, and while the expected number was scaled down to 2,000 by Monday, even that number seemed far too high.
Today, House members will debate raising the sales tax from 5 percent to 6 percent, to raise $750 million, and subjecting alcoholic beverages to the sales tax at the 5 percent rate, to generate about $60 million. The House also will take up a range of measures designed to help cities and towns cope with budget cuts, including a 3 percent optional meals tax, in late May, Finneran said.
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The MetroWest Daily News
Thursday, May 1, 2003
House nixes tax increase
By Michael Kunzelman
A year after the Legislature approved a record-setting tax increase, House lawmakers yesterday overwhelmingly rejected plans to raise the income tax or borrow money to soften the blow of $2 billion in budget cuts.
A budget amendment, sponsored by a group of moderate House Democrats, called for the state to borrow $300 million and use the money to preserve funding for local aid, public schools and other programs.
But the House rejected the plan by a vote of 126 to 31.
By a vote of 118 to 37, the House also shot down an amendment that called for increasing the income-tax rate from 5.3 to 5.95 percent.
In the absence of tax increases, state Rep. David Linsky, D-Natick, argued that short-term borrowing is the only "fiscally prudent response" to the deep cuts proposed in the House budget plan.
"They have cut down to the bone," he said. "There is simply nowhere else to cut."
The plan's critics, however, warned that borrowing would jeopardize the state's bond rating.
"We can't solve our problem by (creating) another problem," said state Rep. Marie
Parente, D-Milford. "Borrowing is not the way out.... I just think it's a bad idea."
Members of the newly formed House Democratic Council, co-founded by several MetroWest lawmakers, had crafted the plan to borrow $300 million.
The loan would have preserved $250 million for a range of programs and services, including $63 million in Chapter 70 state aid to public schools, $67 million in transportation funding for schools and $22 million in first-year payments to school districts under the School Building Assistance program.
"Because borrowing at this point is so inexpensive, it gives us an opportunity to bridge our way through this recession to economic recovery," said state Rep. Cory Atkins, a Concord Democrat who founded the council along with Linsky and state Rep. Alice
Peisch, D-Wellesley.
Apart from Linsky, Atkins and Peisch, state Reps. Deborah Blumer, D-Framingham, Ruth
Balser, D-Newton, and Kay Khan, D-Newton, were the only MetroWest legislators who voted in favor of the borrowing plan.
House Republicans joined the chamber's leaders, including House Speaker Thomas Finneran, in opposing the plan.
Last year, the Legislature passed a record $1.2 billion tax package that froze the income tax at 5.3 percent and hiked the cigarette tax by 75 cents. In the fall, voters weighed in on the issue and [sic-almost] approved a ballot question that called for eliminating completely the state income tax.
For months, House leaders have repeatedly warned that few members have an appetite for tax increases this year. Yesterday, they had the votes to prove it.
The vast majority of House members opposed an amendment, sponsored by state Rep. James
Marzilli, D-Arlington, to raise the income tax rate from 5.3 to 5.95 percent.
A small group of liberal legislators, including Balser, argued in vain that tax hikes are necessary to prevent crippling budget cuts.
"We get what we pay for. If we want world-class schools in the commonwealth, we're going to have to pay for them," Balser said. "If we don't chip in a little bit more, all of us, then all of us are going to suffer."
Balser, Khan, Blumer and state Rep. Jay Kaufman, D-Lexington, were the only House members from MetroWest who supported the proposed tax hike.
Outside the State House yesterday, hundreds of activists and advocates rallied in support of raising taxes to stave off deeper budget cuts.
Lesley Stillwell, a Natick resident, said she has a homeless friend who will be devastated by the proposed House cuts.
"Raising taxes isn't the issue," she said. "This is about finding an equitable solution to taxes, by closing corporate tax loopholes and making sure people pay what they should be."
Jill Stein, a Lexington resident and Green Party candidate for governor last year, said low- and middle-income residents bear the brunt of taxes. Stein said lawmakers should consider spreading out the tax burden.
"Public opinion (on taxes) has changed," she said. "If they're not getting the message, it's because they're not listening to the broad public."
Gov. Mitt Romney, who has vowed to veto any proposal to raise taxes, praised the House for unveiling a tax-free budget.
"I want to make sure there's another voice out there saying, `No, no, no. Don't forget what the citizens believe," Romney said yesterday during an appearance on a radio talk show.
"There's another group out there that's going to fight along with me to keep the kind of no-new-tax budget in place that the House brought out."
The House debate on proposed tax increases is scheduled to resume today. Debate on other budget amendments is expected to begin next week.
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The Boston Globe
Friday, May 2, 2003
House rules out new taxes as budget fix
But votes deepen lawmakers' gloom on fiscal quandary
By Rick Klein, Globe Staff
The Massachusetts House yesterday turned back a final series of tax-raising measures, essentially closing the door on tax hikes as a means of balancing the state budget in the fiscal year that begins July 1.
Most of the tax amendments were dispatched without debate. In one of the day's few substantive actions, House members voted to impose $5 monthly fees on all probationers and parolees, and to charge $100 fines for sexual offenses. The moves would generate $3.7 million to go toward rape crisis and domestic violence centers that saw their funding slashed in the budget proposed last week by House leaders.
"We felt that those cuts could not stand," said Representative David P.
Linsky, a Natick Democrat.
House members voted 130-to-24, against subjecting alcoholic beverages to the sales tax at the regular rate of 5 percent. Liberal lawmakers had pushed the measure as a way to generate between $60 million and $80 million to preserve health care and education spending in the bleakest budget since the recession of the early 1990s.
"Today, with the problems we are facing with our budget deficit, we need to be thinking about ways that we could in fact generate revenue," said Representative Kay S. Khan, a Newton Democrat who sponsored the budget amendment to tax alcohol sales. "It would in fact be very helpful for programs that would be near and dear to our hearts."
Critics noted that importers and manufacturers of alcoholic beverages are already taxed, and those levies are typically passed on to consumers. An additional 5 percent sales tax on beer, wine, and liquor would drive customers into neighboring states, Representative Robert S. Hargraves said.
"It's going to force people to go over the border," said Hargraves, a Groton Republican. "It's a regressive tax, and it's only going to hurt the small-business owners."
House members rejected a bid that would have required corporations to publicly disclose their state taxes paid and total profits, items that are currently covered by privacy protections. The House voted 101-to-53 to maintain a $2.5 million tax break for the state's greyhound tracks, which was established in 2001 as a way to preserve jobs at the tracks.
The votes came as the state Department of Revenue announced that April tax revenues fell $22 million below expectations. While fiscal year-to-date collections are up 0.6 percent over last year, the disappointing April figures stoked concern among lawmakers that next year's budget may be even bleaker than predicted.
"The indicators are very weak, so that doesn't tell me much good news for the budget," said Senate Ways and Means chairwoman Therese Murray, a Plymouth Democrat. "Economic recovery is not happening yet."
While Senate leaders have been more open to taxes than those in the House, the state Constitution requires tax measures to originate in the House. The House on Wednesday defeated measures that would have had the state borrow hundreds of millions of dollars to help maintain state services, and Murray said yesterday that Senate leaders would probably eschew borrowing as well.
Also yesterday, the House voted, 144-10, to extend for five years a 3 percent investment tax credit available to Massachusetts businesses, an incentive that is due to drop to 1 percent at the end of this year. Business groups have lobbied for the tax credit as a crucial means of spurring infrastructure expansions and equipment purchases.
"To encourage companies to invest and expand in Massachusetts, it's important to provide some incentive," said Richard Lord, president of Associated Industries of Massachusetts.
The bill must also be adopted by the Senate, where support is less clear. While Governor Mitt Romney did not include the investment tax credit extension in his budget proposal, he has come out in support of the measure.
The tax credit drains about $20 million a year from state coffers, and some House members said during yesterday's debate that the state can't afford such generosity given the tight fiscal climate. The credit encourages business to invest in machinery at the expense of workers' salaries, said Representative J. James Marzilli Jr., an Arlington Democrat.
House Speaker Thomas M. Finneran has so far delayed consideration of the most controversial piece of his economic development package: a bid to pump $100 million into a fund to support high-tech and biotechnology companies with grants and low-interest loans. Romney opposes that proposal, arguing that the state should not play the role of venture capitalists in deciding which businesses to support.
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The Boston Herald
Friday, May 2, 2003
Speaker takes floor to save biz tax credit
by Elisabeth J. Beardsley
House Speaker Thomas M. Finneran preserved a major tax break for businesses last night - overriding liberal lawmakers' objections the money should be used to restore deep cuts in services to thousands of the poor, sick and elderly.
The five-year extension of the investment tax credit, which was set to expire Dec. 31, is worth $32 million a year to companies that buy equipment and deduct a portion of the costs from their tax bills.
The 10-year-old policy is designed to spur business investment and job creation, but liberal lawmakers protested corporations shouldn't be given special breaks while House leaders refuse to allow tax hikes to save social services.
"We're giving businesses a tax break for something they would have done anyway, even while we're gutting one of the commonwealth's most important programs for children," said Rep. James Marzilli (D-Arlington), who filed unsuccessful riders to plow the tax break money into programs designed to reduce the number of children in public school classrooms.
The opposition was futile - crushed on a vote of 144-10 - after Finneran took to the floor for a rare speech to the full House.
Finneran argued the multiple rounds of harrowing budget cuts are precisely why an aggressive economic stimulus is needed.
Pointing to Gov. Mitt Romney's election and the near-abolition of the income tax, Finneran said the public is overcome with "exhaustion and resistance" to tax hikes and program cuts.
The only option left, Finneran said, is for lawmakers to try to give the economy a shot in the arm by making Massachusetts ready to become the "next Silicon Valley."
"The time for passivity has indeed passed," Finneran said. "What we have to do is try to become a little more active."
The investment tax credit allows any company that buys new equipment to deduct 3 percent of the purchase value from their tax bills, which means that a $1 million outlay would translate into a $30,000 tax reduction.
House leaders say the $32 million cost of the tax break - which would have to be approved by the Senate and Romney - would be offset by an estimated $35.6 million growth in corporate excise, income, sales and property taxes.
Last year, the tax break sparked the creation of 4,220 manufacturing jobs that pay an average of $59,000, officials said.
The second day of budget deliberations had been billed as a tax debate - but the House last night adopted a "consolidated" amendment that quietly disposed of dozens of tax hikes.
Among those nixed: sales taxes on beer and wine.
The consolidated amendment includes scores of fee hikes - on top of the $700 million in fees tucked into the House budget - including a $5 monthly fee assessed to convicted criminals on probation, which would raise $3.7 million a year to undo cuts that would have shuttered 21 rape crisis centers.
While most eyes were on the House, the Senate, as expected, quietly approved a controversial bill allowing leadership pay hikes without Romney's OK.
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The Worcester Telegram & Gazette
Friday, May 2, 2003
Editorial
Budget choices
House moves taxes to the back burner
While special interests made a big media splash this week with demonstrations and ad campaigns promoting tax increases, two developments offered hope that this will not be another business-as-usual year on Beacon Hill.
On Wednesday, Gov. Mitt Romney backed off on his plan to submit an all-or-nothing budget proposal, a move marked on the political scorecards of some pundits as a victory for House Speaker Thomas M. Finneran (not to mention William M. Bulger and his $14 million education fiefdom in the shadow of the Statehouse).
Perhaps so, but it was a strategic retreat. After calculating that an all-or-nothing victory was out of reach, Mr. Romney would have been foolish to stand on principle and suffer a total defeat that would have left him on the sidelines during the subsequent budget debate.
Meanwhile, tax-shy House leaders shrewdly scheduled consideration of "revenue enhancements" at the beginning of the budget debate, establishing from the outset that members had little appetite for items on the tax-borrow-spend menu. An amendment to borrow $300 million failed 126-31 and one to roll up the 5.3 percent income tax rate to 5.95 percent failed 118-37.
The House votes do not take taxes off the table. They do improve the chances of meaningful reforms. Had the House opted to close fiscal 2004 budget gap with taxes and borrowing, members would have had little incentive to give full attention to the politically sensitive budget reforms that have been floated in the last few months.
What sort of spending plan ultimately will emerge from the Senate-House budget conference is anybody's guess. But the taxes-first debate schedule at least improved the chance of a fair hearing for the efficiency measures, consolidations and restructuring ideas put forward by the governor, House leaders and rank-and-file.
Seldom recognized in past budget debates is the fact that tax increases are not a cure for structural deficits, but only a Band-Aid. Absent structural reforms, more tax hikes - even coupled with local aid cuts, reductions in services and cost-shifting to municipalities - will be needed in the next year and every subsequent year.
In other words, levying billions of dollars in new taxes this year would no more achieve fiscal stability than did the $1.2 billion tax hike imposed last year.
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The MetroWest Daily News
Friday, May 2, 2003
'Perfect storm unleashed': Tax increase may be only way to go
By Peter Reuell
"Rainy day" funds, fee hikes and one-time infusions of cash will only take the state so far in its quest to close a nearly $3 billion budget deficit, Glen Tepke said yesterday.
After that, the state's books will have to be balanced on the backs of deep service and aid cuts which almost certainly will be felt by cities and towns.
In a presentation to a handful of local officials yesterday morning,
Tepke, a senior policy associate at the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, painted a grim picture of the state's financial situation. Improvement any time soon is unlikely, he said.
"Even if the economy starts to recover and is going strong by the end of 2004, we would still have a problem with the budget," he said during the presentation at the Verizon Customer Service Center on Rte. 30 in Framingham.
In the last two years, Tepke said, growing budget problems forced the state to dip into reserve funds, rely on one-time revenue, while skyrocketing health care costs have absorbed an ever-larger portion of the budget.
"No economic recovery that's remotely feasible would be enough to cover those costs," he said.
Despite a distaste at the state and local level for tax increases, Tepke yesterday said they may be the only way to ferry local governments through rough financial waters without deep service cuts.
"Given the size of the problem, given we have pretty much wiped out our reserves, given we have already made about $2 billion in cuts, so further cuts will really be felt, we suggested the state might consider taxes or deficit borrowing."
The Legislature, however, doesn't seem to be listening.
In budget debates Wednesday, House lawmakers overwhelmingly rejected plans to increase the state's income tax, and nixed plans to borrow some $300 million to prop up funding for local aid and public schools.
The foundation first saw the storm clouds gathering two years ago, calling rising health care costs, a brewing recession and income tax cuts a "perfect storm," Tepke said.
Today, he said, "this is the perfect storm unleashed. Our predictions and concerns have come true with a vengeance."
Through much of 1990s, state revenues grew by 10 percent or more annually. By 2002, though, growth swung in the opposite direction, with revenues falling by 10 percent.
Forecasts for the 2004 budget show little, if any, growth from this year's figures, he added.
"Essentially the state went right off a cliff," Tepke said. "That's about as catastrophic as it gets."
Though the state leaned heavily on fee increases, one-time revenues and reserve funds to limp through 2002 and 2003, those sources have all but dried up for next year's budget.
"That was a responsible solution to that deficit, but it did ... set us up for difficulty going into 2004," Tepke said.
In one-time revenue alone, the state already is looking at a nearly $1 billion challenge.
For the 2003 budget, Tepke explained, the state built in a $900 million, one-time revenue-raising measure. Next year, though, those revenues disappear.
"So right out of the gate, you're looking at a $1 billion problem," he said.
To help close the gap this year, Gov. Mitt Romney proposed a budget built largely on reforming and reorganizing the state's business practices.
Among the larger proposals in Romney's plan were a wholesale reorganization of the Department of Health and Human Services, changes in the state's higher education and court system and a handful of work force reforms.
Though he praised the reforms as long overdue, Tepke yesterday insisted reform, alone, will simply not save the state enough money to skirt its current fiscal crisis.
"These reforms the governor proposed are all good things to do, they're all good public policy ... but you're deluding yourself if you think we can save $3 billion by making reforms.
"They're an important part of the long-term picture, but they, by themselves, are not going to (solve the problem.)"
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Associated Press
Saturday, May 3, 2003
Tax-shy lawmakers falling in love with fees
By Steve Leblanc
Taxes may be the ultimate dirty word on Beacon Hill this year, with only the hardiest liberals floating higher taxes as a way to ease some of the toughest budget cuts.
Instead, lawmakers have found a four-letter word they can fall in love with: fees.
From restraining order violations to certificates of blindness, Beacon Hill lawmakers and Gov. Mitt Romney are looking for any means to ratchet up fees, or create new ones, rather than cast a vote for taxes.
The budget plans released by Romney and House leaders contain hundreds of millions of dollars in fee hikes, from charging blind people $10 to obtain an official certificate of blindness to imposing a $50 fee for tuberculosis tests and a $100 fee to determine is someone is mentally retarded.
Romney is quick to defend fee hikes as a way to cover the rising cost of a specific service.
"I'm not going to try and be the dictionary here, in terms of defining the difference between a fee and a tax. For me, generally, a fee is something which applies to a subset of the population," Romney said when he unveiled his package of fees. "A tax is something which is far more broadly applied."
But as lawmakers struggle to close an estimated $3 billion spending gap, they're finding that the definition of a fee and a tax is sometimes in the eye of the beholder.
When lawmakers approved a $1.30 surcharge on pharmacy prescriptions, they called it a "fee."
But when pharmacies opted to fight the fee in court, both the attorney general's office and a Suffolk Superior Court judge opted to call the "fee" a "tax."
That isn't stopping Beacon Hill budget-writers from forging down the path of higher fees.
One proposed change would triple the cost of a license for distributors of sacramental wines from $1,000 to $3,000. Another would require parents of children charged with a crime to pay $300 for a defense attorney unless a court finds they too poor to pay.
The surge of interest in fees and fines comes as the majority of lawmakers have sworn off tax hikes.
The reasons for the tax shyness aren't hard to find. It was just a year ago that the House and Senate pushed through a billion tax package. Then came stronger than expected voter support for a ballot question to abolish the state income tax entirely. The question failed.
On top of everything was the election of Romney on an anti-tax platform. Romney has vowed to veto any tax hikes, and even supporters of higher taxes concede they couldn't muster the two-thirds majority needed to override any veto.
Which make fees all the more attractive, including those designed to help specific programs.
Backers of a proposal to force drug manufacturers to pay the state $1 for every dollar spent in Massachusetts on television, radio, print and Internet advertising hope to use the extra money to rescue a senior prescription drug program.
And on Thursday, House members approved new fines to help restore money the House budget cut from the operating budgets of rape crisis centers and battered women's shelters.
The new fines include a one-time $100 fine for those convicted of sex crimes and a one-time $25 fine for those who violate their restraining orders. The budget amendment also imposes a monthly $5 "victim services surcharge" for those on parole or supervised probation and a monthly $1 surcharge for everyone on administrative supervision, a lesser form of probation.
Leaders in the Senate have said they would likely agree with many of the fees already included in Romney's and the House's versions of the budget.
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More tributes to Jerry Williams
The Boston Herald
Monday, April 30, 2003
APPRECIATION; Jerry Williams was pioneer in radio talk
By Dean Johnson
Boston radio lost one of its most important innovators yesterday with the death of veteran talk host Jerry Williams.
Williams, 79, died at Massachusetts General Hospital after a lengthy illness. Known in his day as a firebrand, Williams managed to cow the political establishment, connect with the common man and even led a successful effort to overturn a law he considered Draconian.
With his aggressive, no-nonsense style, he paved the way for tough talkers such as Howard Stern, Rush Limbaugh and Don
Imus. During the '80s, when Williams was a mainstay on WRKO-AM (680), he was arguably the top talk-radio host in the country.
"It is safe to say without hyperbole that the talk radio we know today exists to a large degree because of Jerry Williams," said Walter Sabo of the international consulting firm, Sabo Media.
While at WRKO, Williams successfully spearheaded a movement in the mid-'80s to revoke the Bay State's first mandatory seat belt law.
"The seat belt episode is a gigantic event in the history of talk radio," said Mike Harrison, publisher of the radio talk trade magazine, Talkers, "because it showed the power of this medium. It opened up eyes to what can be done through talk radio. What he did was tangible, qualitative proof."
Williams opposed the Vietnam War, conducted sex surveys, interviewed controversial figures such as the late Malcolm X and railed for about any topic that particularly offended him.
"He's the most important talk show host ever in New England," said WRKO afternoon host and Herald columnist Howie Carr, who was a regular on Williams' show for many years.
"Jerry fused politics and entertainment. He made politics entertaining. He made it accessible to regular people who worked for a living and didn't wear bow ties."
"Someone at the State House once told me that at 2 p.m. every day, every radio in the building tuned in Jerry's show to listen to who he was going after that day," said
WTKK-FM (96.9) program director Paula O'Connor, who worked with Williams at
WRKO.
Williams spent more than half a century behind the mike and was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 1996. He started his radio career in Bristol, Tenn., in 1946, moved to Boston's
WMEX-AM (1510) in 1957 and rose to prominence at WBZ-AM (1030) beginning in 1968.
Williams spent time in other markets, but the Brooklyn native will always be linked to
WRKO. He was forced out of WRKO in 1998 but returned for one last shift there March 1.
During Williams' prime, he often earned ratings shares in the 40s versus the single-digit numbers talkers get today.
"I use the example of Jerry Wiliams every single damn day," Sabo said, "because every day some lunatic says, 'How come there are no liberals on radio?' And I say that talk radio as we know it was built on the success of liberal talk-show hosts, and I always start with Jerry Williams in Boston."
Harrison added that Williams could sometimes be difficult.
"He was a rascal, he was idiosyncratic, he was not always the easiest guy to get along with, but that was all part of what made his chemistry on the air so special.'
WBZ-AM (1030) nighttime talk host David Brudnoy worked for several years with Williams at
WRKO.
"He never, ever became a pawn of surveys or polls or anything," Brudnoy said. "Sometimes, he was in the majority, sometimes he was in the minority, and he couldn't have cared less."
His longtime WRKO cohort, Gene Burns, now in San Francisco, said, "Jerry Williams was one of the pioneers and pillars of talk radio, of that there is no question."
Williams, who had been living in semi-retirement in Marshfield, is survived by three daughters: Eve Meredith Williams and Andrea Beth Williams, both of West Palm Beach, Fla., and Susan Camille Hobson of Wellington, Fla. He is also survived by four grandchildren - Jessica, William, Therese and Catherine Hobson - and a son-in- law, William Hobson.
The family is establishing the Jerry Williams Scholarship Fund for Communications, with details to follow. A wake for Jerry Williams, open to the general public, will be held at the Carroll- Thomas Funeral Home, 22 Oak St., Hyde Park, tomorrow from 2-4 p.m. and 6-9 p.m. For more information, call 617-361-0380.
The Boston Herald
Thursday, May 1, 2003
A Boston Herald editorial
Pioneering a better city
The airwaves vibrate with a little less intensity today with the death of radio talk show maverick Jerry Williams.
Williams, a talk show host on WBZ-AM in the 1960s and '70s and on WRKO-AM in the 1980s, was an unforgettable voice on stations here and around the country throughout a career that spanned half of the 20th century. He was the bane of Boston politicians and engaged an army of loyal listeners with his irreverent, hard-charging style. He felt free to unleash that army, too, in support of his pet causes like repeal of the mandatory seat belt and rollback of confiscatory state fees.
At a time when talk show hosts are as ubiquitous in the air as pollen, and can be just as much of an irritant, it is easy to forget that once Boston radio was the home of a talk show pioneer. And we were a better city for it.
The MetroWest Daily News
May 1, 2003
Jerry talked, and people listened
By Tom Moroney
On a chilly afternoon this past March, I walked into the Brighton studios of
WRKO-AM to give a legend his due.
Program director Mike Elder had seen fit to honor, with one last show, the man who had put the radio station on the map in the first place, Jerry Williams.
Stories circulating after Jerry's death this Tuesday at age 79 are all true. He changed talk radio by the force of his personality. He made more of us listen because he understood the medium like few of its practitioners.
He was forever serious, even when making comedy, which, as any comedian will tell you, is the only way to be truly funny.
He was cantankerous, suspicious, self-absorbed, abrasive, intolerant and, above all, beloved.
To his legions, he was simply "Jerry," as in "Hey, Jerrrry, first-time, long-time..."
In his heyday, he almost always had more listeners than anybody who went up against him. Put it this way, if it was afternoon drive-time and you weren't listening to Jerry, you probably weren't in your car.
Like so many others, I owe Jerry.
In the late '80s, he had a local television show, and one night, I was invited to appear as a guest.
I was joined by Paul Sullivan, a Lowell Sun columnist, who now has his own show on WBZ at 10 each weeknight, the same spot Jerry held down for eight years.
"Filling in for Jerry was like pinch-hitting for Carl Yastrzemski," Sullivan said the other day.
Also on hand that night was Gene Burns, another Boston radio icon and Williams colleague who now does a talk show at
KGO-AM in San Francisco.
I turned to Burns and Williams on the air and said it seemed ludicrous that anyone would be paid to go to work each day to simply talk.
Burns bristled. If I thought it was easy, he said, I could guest host for him during an upcoming week's vacation. I took the challenge.
And each and every day of that long week, as I finished up at 2 p.m., Jerry would amble into the studio to start his own show.
In those few minutes when we were both on, Jerry would lean into the mike and snarl:
"Moroney, I've been listening and my advice? Keep the day job."
I did not take the advice. Today, I am a weekend talk show host on the Bloomberg Radio Network.
At another point, I discovered that Jerry was not registered to vote, even as he implored his constituents to participate in the democratic process.
The column I wrote caught the attention of Time magazine, which was doing a cover story on the emergence of talk radio featuring -- who else -- the dean himself.
When they interviewed Jerry and asked for a comment about the column, he said to them,
"Moroney is evil incarnate."
The quote was so acerbic that Time used it, and I suddenly found myself in one of the most prestigious news magazines in the nation.
Jerry understood what he had done for me. When I saw my line in the article, I called to thank him.
Speaking from San Francisco this week, Burns told me, "We all owe Jerry. He was an American original."
Burns talked about Jerry's famous sex surveys. He recalled, as so many others do, Jerry's crusade against Framingham State Rep. Barbara Gray's mandatory seat-belt law. And the time Jerry interviewed Malcolm X.
These were just a few of the reasons I feel lucky to have been at WRKO that afternoon last month.
Elder, WRKO's program director, brought Jerry back as a tribute. Jerry was thin and rather sickly. But even on a slow Saturday afternoon the maestro managed to quickly fill the lines with fans eager to say hello.
Barbara Anderson, founder of Citizens For Limited Taxation, was there. Years ago, Jerry had invited her to join himself and Howie Carr for those Tuesday afternoon sessions that Middlesex (now
MetroWest) Daily News columnist Ron Doyle dubbed, "The Three Governors," and a star was born.
Also on hand that afternoon was Bob Katzen, a friend of Jerry and editor of Beacon Hill Roll Call.
We took calls, and the producers played some of Jerry's classic bits. We talked about the runaway cost of the Big Dig, too.
But it was only toward the end of my visit when I got my big chance.
I leaned into the mike and, in a low voice, said, "Jerry, keep the day job."
He smiled and I said goodbye.
The Winchester Star
Wednesday, April 30, 2003
Editorial (by Anthony Schinella)
The passing of an icon
Radio will never be the same after the death of The Dean of Talk Radio, Jerry Williams, on Tuesday.
For those of you who didn't know Williams, he ruled the Boston airwaves for the better part of four decades and was one of the founders of the talk radio format.
At the height of his career, Williams was holding down the afternoon shift at
WRKO, informing New England about the issues of the day. He pursued truth and justice for his listeners in a way that drove elected officials to their wits end.
Most people believed Williams was a conservative because of his relentless attacks on former-Gov. Mike Dukakis and Democratic hacks on Beacon Hill.
But in fact, Williams was a rare political breed - a unique combination of classic liberalism and populism seldom heard these days. He was one of the only talk radio hosts to stand against the Vietnam War or to interview black leaders like Malcolm X. President Richard Nixon had him on his enemies list and consumer advocate Ralph Nader was a regular guest over the years. So were strange callers like Grace, Queen of the
Cockamamies, a crazy old lady who would call up and blather about nothing. And who could forget his annual week of sex survey shows during the summer.
During the last recession, in 1991, Williams' show was a magnet of activity, as callers laid-off from their jobs freely talked about their frustrations.
But as radio stations consolidated, Williams was pushed out of his job. The consultants said it was his age - nearly 70 - when he was bumped from his full-time gig. However, conversational, issue-based talkers were driven out of the business all across the nation, replaced by more "lifestyle" programming; shows that acted more like a mind-numbing distraction then the empowering call to action Williams offered listeners.
His last fight was exposing cost overruns on The Big Dig. As it turned out, Williams was right - but very few people were listening.
In 1996, The Dean was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame, but he still joked that no one ever held a dinner for him.
Sorry Jerry, we never did have that dinner for you. But thank you for everything you did for us.
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