CLT
UPDATE
Tuesday, April 8,
2003
MTF's Widmer provides "personal opinion" to task force:
Hike the sales tax by 20%!
While people like Citizens for Limited Taxation’s Barbara Anderson contend that the Amherst Democrat wants to destroy the initiative petition process, Rosenberg insists that he simply wants to return to the standard intended by those who established the process by which the people get to make their own laws via the ballot. His proposed constitutional amendment changing the rules of the ballot question game gets a hearing Thursday before the Election Laws Committee....
Anderson, who over the years has led the fight for and against several high-profile ballot propositions, says the change would mean that the current 66,609 signature requirement (based on the 2002 vote for governor) would become 99,316.
"Sen. Rosenberg intends to kill the initiative petition process," Anderson said Monday. "We and our allies intend to kill this amendment."
State House News Service
Monday, April 7, 2003
Battle looms over adding hurdles to initiative petition process
Anti-tax activists say mayors are just trying to protect their own bureaucracies. Property taxes, water and sewer rates, and oil, gas, electric and gas bills are going up, and new taxes will only burden the residents mayors are trying to help, tax foes say.
"More is never enough," said Chip Ford of Citizens of Limited
Taxation. "During the good times, mayors built up their bureaucracies and now that the inevitable slowdown happens, they're fat and unhappy. They built up these bureaucracies and now they can't afford them."
State House News Service
Monday, April 7, 2003
Mayors say they should be able to raise taxes on their own
As expected, a bill that would give House Speaker Thomas M. Finneran more power to hand out committee chairmanships, and therefore bonuses, is back before the Legislature, admitted by the Senate late last week....
Like the proliferation of "leadership" posts in the Legislature, per diems and office expenses are little more than backdoor raises to lawmakers' $51,000 base salary.
With the state in a serious fiscal crisis, and with a contentious budget debate looming, Massachusetts badly needs leaders with character, courage and, most important, credibility.
A Telegram & Gazette editorial
Monday, April 7, 2003
Bill to strengthen Finneran's power revived
Barbara Anderson's CLT Commentary
Yesterday I attended a meeting of the Legislative Reform Coalition to organize its opposition to S.362, Senator Rosenberg's constitutional amendment to kill the initiative petition process. We will be testifying as a group and as individual organizations against the amendment at the Thursday hearing. Coalition members CLT, Common Cause,
MassPirg, and CPPAX were joined at the meeting and in opposition to S.362 by Mass Voters for Clean Elections and Grey
2KUSA. We are reaching out to other petition groups as well.
Meanwhile, Chip Faulkner attended the "Local, State and Federal Revenues Task Force Hearing" at the State House. The first five hours were for invited guests to testify: the Romney Administration; Mayor Menino and the Massachusetts Municipal Association with its panel of selectmen and mayors; Secretary of State Bill Galvin; and most important for this report, Michael Widmer of the Massachusetts Taxpayers (so-called) Foundation, Andre Mayer of Associated Industries of Massachusetts (AIM), and Michael Mazerov of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, [formerly known as TEAM -- Tax Everything And More). We did not stay for the Federal Revenue Panel; "Close Tax Loopholes" activists were lined up for the public comment period. We noted that real taxpayers had not been invited to be on any panel; we simply distributed a memo which you saw yesterday to members of the Task Force.
Mazerov [TEAM] was totally focused on making business pay more and "closing those tax loopholes"; he didn't mention people taxes. AIM opposed business taxes and kept talking about looking for revenues "where the money is." One panel member, Rep. Paul Demakis, heard it as I did: go for the personal income tax increase. He told AIM that business will be paying more, and time will tell if the income tax is on the table.
MTF's Widmer, when asked about new revenues, said "we're talking about that internally and might put a set of recommendations together." I'll bet there is a real battle going on inside
MTF, whose membership includes a few tax limitation supporters.
Nevertheless, Widmer then gave his personal opinion: "Where the money is in most states is in the income and sales taxes. Massachusetts is on the high side of income taxes; low in sales tax. One penny on the sales tax would bring in $750 million." He's talking about a 6% sales tax, folks; and then reiterated that he was not speaking on behalf of the Foundation.
Legislators jumped right on and made note of his "recommendation for more taxes" though. They will use it for cover, come the revenue debate.
When asked by a panel member where support for their organizations come from, Widmer said "employers across the commonwealth." AIM said manufacturers. The TEAM entity did not reply.
Barbara Anderson -
State House News Service
Monday, April 7, 2003
Battle looms over adding hurdles to initiative petition process
If Sen. Stanley Rosenberg has his way, the voters in 2006 will be asked to make it more difficult to place questions on the statewide ballot.
While people like Citizens for Limited Taxation’s Barbara Anderson contend that the Amherst Democrat wants to destroy the initiative petition process, Rosenberg insists that he simply wants to return to the standard intended by those who established the process by which the people get to make their own laws via the ballot. His proposed constitutional amendment changing the rules of the ballot question game gets a hearing Thursday before the Election Laws Committee.
The State Constitution now requires that sponsors of any proposed ballot question must collect certified voter signatures equal to at least 3 percent of the total vote cast during the previous election for the office of governor. Fifty years ago, Rosenberg points out, that meant backers had to have 70,000 certified signatures to keep their initiatives alive while the number needed for the 2002 ballot was just 57,100. The population, and the number of certified voters, has increased by 35 percent but the number of people who actually vote has declined. Rosenberg’s bill would require that 3 percent of registered, rather than actual, voters be used to calculate the signature requirement.
Anderson, who over the years has led the fight for and against several high-profile ballot propositions, says the change would mean that the current 66,609 signature requirement (based on the 2002 vote for governor) would become 99,316.
"Sen. Rosenberg intends to kill the initiative petition process," Anderson said Monday. "We and our allies intend to kill this amendment."
Rosenberg's proposal also seeks to bring the system into an age where paid signature-gathering companies are hired by ballot question campaigns fueled often by out-of-state interests and subject to lax financial reporting requirements. The system, he said, "has become more and more the captive of special and wealthy interest groups and less a tool of the people."
Anderson, whose experience is with grass roots, shoestring efforts, will surely argue otherwise Thursday. To make it onto the ballot, the proposal would have to be approved by legislators elected to serve in 2003/2004 and also by those seated for the 2005/2006 session.
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State House News Service
Monday, April 7, 2003
Mayors say they should be able to raise taxes on their own
By Michael C. Levenson
Grappling with fiscal problems, mayors are hoping to turn movie tickets, college basketball games, and restaurant meals into more health care, education, and public safety for their constituents.
By taxing these items within their borders, mayors hope to sidestep Gov. Mitt Romney's firm anti-tax stance and raise millions to offset expected reductions in state aid. The revenue could help stave off deep cuts in services and massive teacher, police and firefighter layoffs, municipal CEOs say.
The issue is also about letting local leaders - most of whom are Democrats who oppose Romney's Republican agenda- chart their own course to fiscal health. Local leaders say that while they may be forced to accept Romney's statewide anti-tax stance, they should be allowed to hike their city and town taxes as they see fit.
"You're seeing a movement across the Commonwealth, with cities and towns saying, give us the power to control our own destiny," said Northampton Mayor Mary Clare Higgins, a Democrat. Her city is a popular restaurant destination, and meals taxes could help the city raise the money it needs to protect services, she said. "We can't do this on the cheap," she said.
Romney, although he opposes statewide tax increases, says he will consider new local taxes, if they're approved by the voters first. Mayors and local leaders say that as elected officials they should be allowed to hike taxes without voter approval.
Mayors frame the issue as a question of sound management. Where Romney, in one of his first acts as governor, sought and won the power to unilaterally slash the state budget without lawmakers' approval, local leaders say they need the power to hike taxes to shore up services.
"We cannot just stand by with our hands tied," Boston Mayor Thomas Menino told House lawmakers Monday. "[Romney] asked for the power to make cuts, I am asking for the power to save services."
The mayors say they will take the heat for any tax hikes they pass onto their constituents. If voters dislike the local taxes, they can make their opinions known on Election Day, they say.
"They're asking for the ability to make tough choices, and then stand before the voters," said Geoffrey Beckwith, executive director of the Massachusetts Municipal Association, which represents local leaders. Or, as Mayor Higgins said, "We can defend a meals tax. It's much easier, in fact, than defending laying off police or teachers."
Menino is floating a plan that would allow the Boston City Council to impose a 1 percent tax on restaurant meals, a 50-cent tax on movie, music, theater, dance and college sports tickets, and new taxes on off-street parking garages, billboards, and property owned by telecommunications companies.
Menino, a Democrat, says he doesn't expect the Legislature and the Republican governor to grant him all these local-option taxes - which could collectively raise more than $80 million for Boston. He says he's hoping for just one or two.
But he says he has just made some of the "toughest decisions of my career," cutting the city budget by $53 million and reducing the payroll by 500 workers, and he needs the "flexibility" to hike taxes within his city's borders. Reductions in state aid outlined by House leaders could mean another $100 million cut for Boston, and force 1,400 school layoffs and five school closings, Menino said.
"We need a system that is fair," he said. "We need a system that empowers cities to raise new revenue and to collect the revenue that is rightfully theirs… It's a question of fairness, equality."
All local option taxes must pass the Legislature first. Romney says he will veto any tax plan - like the one Menino proposes - that doesn't give voters a say.
"The governor believes taxes are high enough," Romney spokeswoman Nicole St. Peter said. "He doesn't want cities and towns to raise taxes unless it's though the local referendum process. If people want to raise their own taxes, then that's up to them."
Anti-tax activists say mayors are just trying to protect their own bureaucracies. Property taxes, water and sewer rates, and oil, gas, electric and gas bills are going up, and new taxes will only burden the residents mayors are trying to help, tax foes say.
"More is never enough," said Chip Ford of Citizens of Limited
Taxation. "During the good times, mayors built up their bureaucracies and now that the inevitable slowdown happens, they're fat and unhappy. They built up these bureaucracies and now they can't afford them."
Brockton Mayor John Yunits rejects those assertions. He says his city has made strides on the MCAS test and improves services because of fattened budgets over the last decade, but has recently been forced to lay off 57 firefighters, 37 police officers, and 400 school employees.
"Now is not the time to stop the progress," he said.
The local option taxes have just been introduced on Beacon Hill, and are now before the Taxation Committee.
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The Worcester Telegram & Gazette
Monday, April 7, 2003
Editorial
April foolishness
Bill to strengthen Finneran's power revived
As expected, a bill that would give House Speaker Thomas M. Finneran more power to hand out committee chairmanships, and therefore bonuses, is back before the Legislature, admitted by the Senate late last week.
In February, Mr. Finneran withdrew the bill, which would allow him to distribute pay raises to top lieutenants without approval of the governor, under pressure from the public and his own Democratic caucus.
He is too canny to call for raises now, just weeks before he introduces the House budget proposal for fiscal 2004. But do not be surprised if committee chairmen and other loyalists get pre-holiday gifts in the fall, after the budget is passed and forgotten.
Mr. Finneran's maneuvers to tighten his grip on the House no longer come as a shock. The final depletion of the Clean Elections Law fund he presided over in February effectively was the end of a more than five-year battle to eviscerate the law, approved in a voter referendum in 1998. Not one legislator has proposed that lawmakers' office subsidies - doubled in 2000, purportedly to help them adjust to the new Clean Elections Law - be rolled back.
Moreover, unlike virtually all of the working people they represent, lawmakers also collect a distance-based stipend for commuting - at an average cost of $3,093 to taxpayers. We always have questioned the rationale for per-diem payments. While most workers are compensated for mileage driven as part of their jobs, lawmakers are among the privileged few to be reimbursed for their commute as well.
Like the proliferation of "leadership" posts in the Legislature, per diems and office expenses are little more than backdoor raises to lawmakers' $51,000 base salary.
With the state in a serious fiscal crisis, and with a contentious budget debate looming, Massachusetts badly needs leaders with character, courage and, most important, credibility.
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