CLT
UPDATE
Saturday, May 17, 2003
"Where would you cut?"
Start with these Eagle-Tribune solutions
North of Boston residents voted convincingly for Republican Mitt Romney over Democrat Shannon O'Brien in last November's gubernatorial election (141,932 to 100,798 in Essex County).
Furthermore, 44 percent of those casting ballots embraced Question 1, which called for elimination of the state income tax.
The message: Citizens of this region are sick and tired of business as usual on Beacon Hill. They want fundamental reform, and they want it now.
Waste, duplication, patronage and the Statehouse's byzantine array of special privileges may not account for all of the estimated $3 billion the state has to save in order to balance its budget in the fiscal year beginning July 1. But any waste and redundancy are too much as far as most taxpayers are concerned....
During the rest of this week, we will spell out on these pages where savings can be found in such areas as public safety, transportation, health policy and the operation of the courts. What's needed is a willingness by the Legislature to reshape the standard operating procedures that have been in place for generations....
No one is talking higher taxes yet, but the underlying strategy on the House side appears to be, as one social services advocate put it to us recently, to "let people bleed" until the anti-tax sentiment abates or the economy improves.
Clearly, this is the tactic of the unconvinced. They are certain the people of Massachusetts don't want reduced government.
You, the voters, should let your state representatives and senators know you will not tolerate inefficiency and squandering. Government profligacy should not be any more acceptable in good times than it is when revenues are down.
The Lawrence Eagle-Tribune
Monday, May 12, 2003
#1 in its editorial series
Reshape the government
The wheels of justice may turn slowly but in Massachusetts, they certainly don't turn cheaply.
Crime and punishment is a costly business. That's not surprising. Public safety is one of the major roles of state and local government.
But anywhere there is a lot of money in a system, there is a great potential for abuse. And the Massachusetts political machine is perfectly designed to take advantage of that system.
The Lawrence Eagle-Tribune
Tuesday, May 13, 2003
#2 in its editorial series
Justice comes at a high price
For decades now, resources within the state's network of universities, four-year colleges and community colleges have been allocated based as much on political influence as genuine need....
Again, the focus must be on ridding the system of political patronage and doing what makes the most sense for the commonwealth's citizens. In this case, consolidating resources so that students have easy access to an affordable two- or four-year degree programs, regardless of where they live, must take priority over salvaging jobs for Bulger and his retinue....
Only in Massachusetts, it seems, can politics permeate even the routine task of maintaining bridges and highways....
But unless there's a dramatic shift in thinking within the House and Senate, part of that property tax increase you'll be paying next year will be due to the fact that lawmakers couldn't bring themselves to part with the Turnpike Authority.
The Lawrence Eagle-Tribune
Wednesday, May 14, 2003
#3 in its editorial series
Two big bureaucracies bust budget
It's a stunning number. The Massachusetts Medicaid system, known as
MassHealth, provides health care for about 1 million people -- in a state with a population around 6 million. Medicaid is supposed to be a safety net, a way to help the poorest of the poor get the health care they need. Instead, it has become what state Rep. Harriett L. Stanley once called the "BMW" of health plans....
With the state facing a $3 billion budget deficit, we can no longer afford a BMW; we need a Ford. But don't count on any significant changes to Medicaid soon. Advocates for the poor stage massive rallies at the Statehouse whenever changes to MassHealth are proposed.
But does MassHealth really serve only "the poor?" Are one in six Bay Staters indigent and unable to secure any health insurance on their own?
...
In Massachusetts government, when good ideas face off against partisan politics, politics wins every time....
The Lawrence Eagle-Tribune
Thursday, May 15, 2003
#4 in its editorial series
Good ideas lose out to politics
Throughout the week, this space has offered thoughts on what's wrong with state government and how Gov. Mitt Romney and the Legislature might restore voter confidence in the way things work on Beacon Hill.
Some reforms, like merging the Turnpike Authority with the state Highway Department, are relatively easy; others, like fixing the Medicaid system, more difficult.
It comes down to this: It's time to put the interests of the public first.
For too long, serving in an elected or appointed capacity in government has been an invitation to help oneself -- or one's friends and relatives or one's political supporters. While the best interests of the majority of citizens should be paramount, they usually take a back seat to the desire to satisfy the various public interest groups -- Medicaid recipients, the public employee unions, or that good-guy former state representative who needs a couple of years at a higher salary in order to boost his pension....
For too long, government in the Bay State has existed primarily for the benefit of those who work within it. And next in the pecking order come those who don't pay anything to support it. As for the majority of people who simply pay their taxes and expect only the basics -- decent schools, safe streets, etc. -- they hardly figure into the equation.
Want to know how bad it is? A friend of ours recently sent an e-mail to his state representative, a veteran North Shore lawmaker, on the subject of taxes. It was returned with the following notation: "Your message ... was deleted without being read."
At least they're honest about it.
The Lawrence Eagle-Tribune
Friday, May 16, 2003
#5 in its editorial series
Public good should be priority
Chip Ford's CLT
Commentary
"Where would you cut?" is the obfuscating
dodge often tossed at those of us who demand state government live
within its bountiful means. The intent of the questioner is always
to redirect the debate from the onerous burden Massachusetts taxpayers
already bear to quibbling over individual programs for "the most
vulnerable among us" so they can assert how draconian life will be
without another tax increase.
One can answer the "where would you cut"
question until they're blue in the face and nothing will be
accomplished, nothing will be cut, nothing will change except perhaps
tax rates.
After years of being distracted with that
diversionary tactic, CLT constructed a standard reply. We throw back
one or two examples of outrageously wasteful spending and add,
"When those are eliminated or reduced, come back and we'll give you
more."
Of course, nobody has ever come back for more
suggestions.
But they keep asking the stupid question, as if it
has any legitimacy.
Throughout this week, the Lawrence
Eagle-Tribune has provided a significant public service. It has
produced a comprehensive indictment of a patronage-ridden,
politics-as-usual entrenched government of, by and for the politicians.
The Eagle-Tribune has gifted taxpayers with an easy and unarguable
response to the "where would you cut" dodge.
Save this series, print it out, keep it handy. The
next time some never-satisfied tax-and-spend zealot attacks with the
"where would you cut" foolishness, just hand him a copy and
tell him to start there. If he's got any more questions, tell him to
come back when he gets that wasteful spending under control and you'll
give him some more to work on.
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Chip
Ford |
The Lawrence Eagle-Tribune
Monday, May 12, 2003
Editorial
Reshape the government
North of Boston residents voted convincingly for Republican Mitt Romney over Democrat Shannon O'Brien in last November's gubernatorial election (141,932 to 100,798 in Essex County).
Furthermore, 44 percent of those casting ballots embraced Question 1, which called for elimination of the state income tax.
The message: Citizens of this region are sick and tired of business as usual on Beacon Hill. They want fundamental reform, and they want it now.
Waste, duplication, patronage and the Statehouse's byzantine array of special privileges may not account for all of the estimated $3 billion the state has to save in order to balance its budget in the fiscal year beginning July 1. But any waste and redundancy are too much as far as most taxpayers are concerned.
In its budget released two weeks ago, the Democratic House leadership failed to heed Governor Romney's -- and the voters' -- call for major restructuring of state government. To date, much of the effort in the Legislature has focused on saving the jobs of the favored few -- from UMass President William Bulger to the legion of clerks staffing the Boston Municipal Court.
Senate leaders promise the budget they release will include major reorganization proposals. They appear to have heard the message voters sought to convey last fall, even if their House counterparts did not.
The proof will be in the details. And in the action the Senate takes. It too is dominated by Democrats and that has come to mean change disguised as more spending rather than transformation to a simpler, less-expensive state government.
During the rest of this week, we will spell out on these pages where savings can be found in such areas as public safety, transportation, health policy and the operation of the courts. What's needed is a willingness by the Legislature to reshape the standard operating procedures that have been in place for generations.
It will require a new blueprint. "All politics is local," said Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill Jr., former Speaker of the U.S. House and a product of the Massachusetts political system. For too long that credo has been interpreted to mean that success in politics entitles one to take care of his own with cushy jobs, generous salaries, special privileges. The result is bloated government, unnecessary spending.
And it's this perception of a government that operates for the benefit of a favored few that has spawned the voter anger of today.
No one is talking higher taxes yet, but the underlying strategy on the House side appears to be, as one social services advocate put it to us recently, to "let people bleed" until the anti-tax sentiment abates or the economy improves.
Clearly, this is the tactic of the unconvinced. They are certain the people of Massachusetts don't want reduced government.
You, the voters, should let your state representatives and senators know you will not tolerate inefficiency and squandering. Government profligacy should not be any more acceptable in good times than it is when revenues are down.
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top
The Lawrence Eagle-Tribune
Tuesday, May 13, 2003
Editorial
Justice comes at a high price
The wheels of justice may turn slowly but in Massachusetts, they certainly don't turn cheaply.
Crime and punishment is a costly business. That's not surprising. Public safety is one of the major roles of state and local government.
But anywhere there is a lot of money in a system, there is a great potential for abuse. And the Massachusetts political machine is perfectly designed to take advantage of that system.
Patronage in courts
Our Legislature is run by one party, the Democrats, and that makes patronage and backroom deals easy. It isn't the party; it's the fact that there's only one. A Legislature run solely by Republicans would be just as bad. And the palace of patronage is the state court system.
The Massachusetts Judiciary has 362 judicial positions and employs 8,000 people. The Legislature micromanages the state courts, using them to curry favor with friends and supporters by supplying make-work jobs. According to a study by the Pioneer Institute, a Boston-based think tank that focuses on efficient government, the Legislature created between 1998 and 2001 416 positions that cost a cumulative $50.1 million. None of these positions was requested by the Judiciary itself.
The Judiciary's budget increased 82 percent from 1994 to its high in 2001, from $261.6 million to $475.5 million, again according to Pioneer. In 2002, fiscal pressure forced a cut in the budget to $452 million. But those cuts are dictated by the Legislature and designed to protect patronage. Judiciary administrators cannot set their own budgets. That's a peculiarity that should change.
Meanwhile, the caseload has been dropping since 1997 from 1.16 million cases to 1.10 million. More people handle less work -- a decrease in efficiency. In 1996, justice cost Massachusetts taxpayers $278 per case. By 2000 that figure had risen to $405.
Quinn Bill
But the courts aren't the only place Massachusetts justice wastes money. Thanks to a little-known piece of legislation called the Quinn Bill, police officers in the commonwealth get mandatory raises based on their level of education. That's a provision unheard of in private industry.
In 1970, the Legislature passed the Police Career Incentive Pay Program, the Quinn Bill. Police officers who earn an associate's degree in criminal justice get an automatic 10-percent pay hike. A bachelor's degree earns a 20-percent increase and a graduate degree, 25 percent.
The result was a proliferation of schools offering programs of questionable value. Even "lifetime experience" was credited toward meeting the requirements. A reform proposal in 2001 recommended stricter standards for qualifying programs. The House scuttled the measure.
Still, the Quinn Bill -- paid half by the local community, half by the state -- costs taxpayers an estimated $100 million per year.
Gov. Mitt Romney's budget fully funds the Quinn Bill for 2004, despite other drastic measures taken to meet a $3 billion deficit.
Tomorrow: A look at two big bureaucracies.
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The Lawrence Eagle-Tribune
Wednesday, May 14, 2003
Editorial
Two big bureaucracies bust budget
"We regret to inform you that due to catastrophic cuts in the commonwealth education budget, there will be no Summer Theatre at Salem State College."
The message arrived this week via a postcard from SSC's Center for Creative & Performing Arts, underscoring the reach of the state's expected $3 billion deficit for the fiscal year starting July 1. Given a choice between higher taxes and the loss of summer theater, it's a safe bet taxpayers would choose the latter. They know every level of government must do without in order to force the state bureaucracy to make do with less. Toward that end, the higher education and highway systems are two major cogs in the state spending machine that need to shrink. They are too costly and inefficient for the times.
Restructuring higher education
Gov. Mitt Romney has wisely, and properly, made UMass President William Bulger the focus of his effort to reform the state's higher education labyrinth.
For decades now, resources within the state's network of universities, four-year colleges and community colleges have been allocated based as much on political influence as genuine need. It's the reason Salem State College, in the hometown of former Senate president Kevin Harrington, got a hockey rink years before UMass Amherst did; it's why so many influential legislators, like
Bulger, have been able to cap their careers with a plum posting in the higher education hierarchy.
Bulger's UMass job exists even though the state also has chancellors at each of its five university campuses. That's the kind of administrative redundancy that costs millions -- $14 million in this case.
Romney's proposal would create seven service regions within the state whose universities, four-year colleges and community colleges would work closely with each other and the local business community to fashion programs that would produce graduates whose skills and knowledge base are appropriate to the career opportunities available.
The transition should be fairly simple for those schools in the North of Boston region -- Salem State, North Shore Community College and Northern Essex Community College -- which have a long history of cooperation and whose curricula, like the nursing program at Salem, are already geared towards the needs of local employers.
Again, the focus must be on ridding the system of political patronage and doing what makes the most sense for the commonwealth's citizens. In this case, consolidating resources so that students have easy access to an affordable two- or four-year degree programs, regardless of where they live, must take priority over salvaging jobs for Bulger and his retinue.
Two agencies, one job
Only in Massachusetts, it seems, can politics permeate even the routine task of maintaining bridges and highways.
Gov. Romney has sensibly suggested that the functions of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority and the state Highway Department be combined into one. His lieutenant, Kerry Healey, said in a recent interview that total savings could amount to $217 million a year, nearly equal to the anticipated cut in local aid.
The Turnpike Authority's primary task -- construction of a highway running from one end of the state to the other -- was completed decades ago. Yet there's a real reluctance on the part of legislators to do away with this semi-autonomous agency that has been the source of so many well-paying, no-heavy-lifting, toll-taking jobs over the years.
But unless there's a dramatic shift in thinking within the House and Senate, part of that property tax increase you'll be paying next year will be due to the fact that lawmakers couldn't bring themselves to part with the Turnpike Authority.
Tomorrow: Health-care costs push spending ever higher.
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top
The Lawrence Eagle-Tribune
Thursday, May 15, 2003
Editorial
Good ideas lose out to politics
It's a stunning number. The Massachusetts Medicaid system, known as
MassHealth, provides health care for about 1 million people -- in a state with a population around 6 million. Medicaid is supposed to be a safety net, a way to help the poorest of the poor get the health care they need. Instead, it has become what state Rep. Harriett L. Stanley once called the "BMW" of health plans.
For the cost of MassHealth, one could buy a fleet of BMWs. MassHealth costs $6 billion annually, more than one-quarter of the state budget or $1,000 in state and federal taxes for every Massachusetts resident. The federal government reimburses the state 50 percent of that figure. Because of the comparative wealth of Massachusetts, that is the lowest reimbursement rate possible.
With the state facing a $3 billion budget deficit, we can no longer afford a BMW; we need a Ford. But don't count on any significant changes to Medicaid soon. Advocates for the poor stage massive rallies at the Statehouse whenever changes to MassHealth are proposed.
But does MassHealth really serve only "the poor?" Are one in six Bay Staters indigent and unable to secure any health insurance on their own?
Stanley, a West Newbury Democrat, earned an award from the Boston-based Pioneer Institute for her study of Medicaid. In an opinion piece written for The Eagle-Tribune, she noted that MassHealth is sometimes the payer of first resort, that is, used even by people who have access to private health insurance. She notes that on Page 1 of the MassHealth application booklet, instructions say that "even if you or your family already have health insurance, you may be eligible" if you fall into the right category. And those accepted into MassHealth are not enrolled in a plan that merely protects them from catastrophic expenses; they get the most comprehensive coverage available.
Stanley recommends scaling back the extent of MassHealth coverage to make it more of a true safety net plan and requiring participants to share in the cost of coverage through small co-payments or premiums. Doing so would allow the state to cover all who truly need support. That's the kind of thinking we need on Beacon Hill.
What's happened to Stanley's award-winning ideas in the Statehouse? Stanley had been chairman of the House Committee on Health Care, charged with addressing the Medicaid question. But Stanley bucked House leadership on issues key to Speaker Thomas M. Finneran, namely his support of a $1.2 billion tax hike and opposition to Clean Elections funding. Finneran this year stripped Stanley of her chairmanship and shuffled her off to another committee far from the Medicaid debate.
In Massachusetts government, when good ideas face off against partisan politics, politics wins every time.
Tomorrow: Resistance to privatizing public services.
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The Lawrence Eagle-Tribune
Friday, May 16, 2003
Editorial
Public good should be priority
Throughout the week, this space has offered thoughts on what's wrong with state government and how Gov. Mitt Romney and the Legislature might restore voter confidence in the way things work on Beacon Hill.
Some reforms, like merging the Turnpike Authority with the state Highway Department, are relatively easy; others, like fixing the Medicaid system, more difficult.
It comes down to this: It's time to put the interests of the public first.
For too long, serving in an elected or appointed capacity in government has been an invitation to help oneself -- or one's friends and relatives or one's political supporters. While the best interests of the majority of citizens should be paramount, they usually take a back seat to the desire to satisfy the various public interest groups -- Medicaid recipients, the public employee unions, or that good-guy former state representative who needs a couple of years at a higher salary in order to boost his pension.
That's not the way most private companies, or even most state and municipal governments, conduct their business. But it's become a way of life in Massachusetts where an entrenched Democratic majority in the Legislature can thumb its nose at demands for change.
Take the case of the privatization initiative put forward by the Weld-Cellucci administration. That much-praised effort to save taxpayers money by transferring some governmental functions to the private sector was effectively gutted by something called the "Pacheco Bill," named after its sponsor, state Sen. Marc Pacheco, D-Taunton.
His bill, which Gov. Romney wants to change, gives every advantage to the public employee unions and in some cases outright prohibits work from being transferred to the private sector -- no matter how significant the potential savings.
For too long, government in the Bay State has existed primarily for the benefit of those who work within it. And next in the pecking order come those who don't pay anything to support it. As for the majority of people who simply pay their taxes and expect only the basics -- decent schools, safe streets, etc. -- they hardly figure into the equation.
Want to know how bad it is? A friend of ours recently sent an e-mail to his state representative, a veteran North Shore lawmaker, on the subject of taxes. It was returned with the following notation: "Your message ... was deleted without being read."
At least they're honest about it.
Return to
top
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