CLT
UPDATE
Thursday, June 19, 2003
Budget slated to be finalized today /
Seat belt law horror story
Money is power. Politics is payback.
That's all you really need to know about the sorry state affairs that is the campaign of House Speaker Tom Finneran and Senate President Bob Travaglini to hike the pay of their top lieutenants.
The Legislature's top brass wants the power to create two new committees, one on Medicaid and another for Homeland Security, and to create cash stipends for the hand-picked leaders of those committees. But they also want the power to hike the pay of other committee leaders, now and in the future....
Although the Democrats can override the hamstrung governor's veto, that vote is far from certain. Many rank-and-file Dems are worried about the perception of passing a pay raise during the state's worst fiscal mess in a decade. After all, these chums still have to get re-elected every two years. It's the same reason the House used political shenanigans (that's the most polite word I could think of for treachery) to avoid a roll-call vote that would have put each member on the record on the Bulger issue; and the same reason the Senate did likewise when it voted to kill the voter-approved Clean Elections law.
The Salem News
Tuesday, June 17, 2003
Tom, Trav know how to pull the strings
Massachusetts House and Senate leaders should be able to reorganize their respective legislative branches to meet new government challenges and demands, but it should come at the people's benefit not at the people's expense.
Nor should "reorganization" be used as camouflage for giving new job titles and pay raises to political cronies....
Critics say Finneran's plan is designed to reward even more loyalists and give the Speaker near total control of determining the House's legislative agenda....
Gov. Romney has no choice but to kill this latest legislative power grab.
A Lowell Sun editorial
Wednesday, June 18, 2003
Bogus reorganization
The Legislature appears ready to expand the role of the Boston Municipal Court, despite Governor Mitt Romney's call for its elimination and what critics say is its long history of patronage.
According to internal budget documents obtained by The Globe, Senate negotiators have agreed to a House proposal to hand administrators at the Boston court control over seven other district courthouses, creating a "Boston Municipal Division." That move would retain BMC's status as a separate entity in the court system and expand its reach.
Romney and other judicial reform advocates have criticized the BMC as the least cost-efficient court in the state, and say it is politically protected on Beacon Hill. They say it receives an overly generous budget from legislators and, in exchange, BMC administrators are receptive to requests for patronage jobs there.
The Boston Globe
Wednesday, June 18, 2003
Plan for Boston courts defies Romney's vision
Today, Massachusetts House Speaker Tom Finneran returns from Italy's emerald city on the Grand Canal, where last week he was invited to lecture U.S. and European lawmakers on the finer points of the legislative process....
Hopefully, Finneran gave listeners some Bay State insights on how to run a democratic Legislature. For example ...
Promise reform, then change everything so that it stays the same.
A Lowell Sun editorial
Tuesday, June 17, 2003
Signore Finneran
Venice, anyone?
Legislative leaders last night were finishing work on a $23 billion state budget, hoping to quickly end negotiations so they can complete the spending plan in time for the July 1 start of fiscal 2004....
Legislators want to get the budget to Romney by tomorrow to give him time to make the vetoes and themselves time to override them before July 1.
If they make the deadline, it will be just the fourth time in 21 years that the Legislature has had a budget completed by the start of the budget year. Legislative leaders have felt pressure to finish quickly after embarrassing budget negotiations in 1999 and 2001 that stretched into November.
The Boston Globe
Thursday, June 19, 2003
Budget deliberations in final stages
Leaders hope to meet July 1 fiscal deadline
Even before sunset, sheriff's deputies had already arrested seven motorists Thursday in a crackdown on failures to buckle up children riding in vehicles, officials said....
Sheriff's spokesman Rick Glancey said all children involved in the traffic stops Thursday were placed by deputies with adult relatives. But he warns that as the initiative continues, if deputies cannot find someone to care for the child passengers, the children may be turned over to Child Protective Services and temporarily placed in foster care....
Concerns have been raised about whether the state will ensure the safety of the children placed in foster care....
Bill Cox, first assistant public defender, said that even though state law allows the arrests for the seat-belt misdemeanor, he frets about the program's impact on children.
"I'm very concerned about the effects on a child seeing a parent being arrested in front of them and the child being placed into CPS if there are no other options," Cox said.
Glancey said motorists, particularly parents, who don't want to risk putting their children through that experience should follow the law and buckle them up.
The El Paso [Texas] Times
Friday, June 13, 2003
7 arrested in seat-belt bust
Chip Ford's CLT
Commentary
A few members recently questioned why CLT -- and more
specifically me -- was involved with opposing the expansion of the mandatory seat
belt law to primary enforcement; they couldn't see how it was
a taxpayer issue that should interest us. I explained that I've
been leading the opposition to the law since 1986 and the perennial push
for expansion was just another example of government incrementalism,
that more is never enough until they have it all, whether it's our money
or our freedom.
If any still doubt that, I refer you to the
outrageous expansion of mandatory seat belt law enforcement in El Paso,
Texas, where police are now removing children from parents who
fail to buckle-up and are stopped and charged with the misdemeanor.
Yes, they are taking children away from parents
and turning them over the Texas version of DSS, putting them in
foster homes. "Motorists, particularly parents, who don't want to risk putting their children through that experience should follow the law and buckle them
up" is the official rationale.
We keep hearing that mandatory seat belt laws are the
surrender of "just a little bit of freedom." I hope we
can all agree that when the state comes and takes your kids away, that's
losing a whole lot more than "just a little bit" of your
freedom.
The majority of us understand the nature of
government to expand step by step, further intrude day by day, so we
fight its intrusions every step of the way. Even those members who
questioned my opposition will be looking to us to help get their kids
back if Massachusetts ever crosses this obscene line ... and is that too
farfetched to imagine when it's happening already in Texas?
*
*
*
The House/Senate budget conference committee is about
to release its state budget today and begin voting by the full House and
Senate as soon as tomorrow. The Legislature is pushing hard to complete
it by the beginning of the next fiscal year on July 1 -- when it is
constitutionally required to be completed and take effect, not that the
constitution has ever inconvenienced the Legislature's
business-as-usual.
The bigger legislative concern is to get the final
budget to Gov. Romney so he can veto what he will while leaving enough
time for the Legislature to attempt its overrides of his vetoes.
There's a lot we expect will be included in the
Legislature's budget that we hope and anticipate the governor will veto:
Finneran's power grab, Prop 2½ Overlay account exclusion, attacks on
voter referendums for Clean Elections and Bilingual Education, local
option taxes, etc. [See CLT's
memo to the Governor.]
The question then will be, are there enough votes to
override or will Gov. Romney's vetoes be sustained? Much will be
determined by whether or not Finneran's pay raise power-grab succeeds.
If it does, this and future governors' vetoes will likely become a
useless and archaic tool.
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Chip
Ford |
PS. I've added the last two day's installments from the
excellent exposé series of teacher sick-day abuse by the Lawrence Eagle
Tribune, "When
teacher's out." This explosive series has for the past three days
caused a stir across the state in other newspapers and on talk-radio, and has
the Massachusetts Teachers Association in full defensive mode scrambling for
excuses and justification.
The Salem News
Tuesday, June 17, 2003
Tom, Trav know how to pull the strings
By Shawn Regan, Staff writer
Money is power. Politics is payback.
That's all you really need to know about the sorry state affairs that is the campaign of House Speaker Tom Finneran and Senate President Bob Travaglini to hike the pay of their top lieutenants.
The Legislature's top brass wants the power to create two new committees, one on Medicaid and another for Homeland Security, and to create cash stipends for the hand-picked leaders of those committees. But they also want the power to hike the pay of other committee leaders, now and in the future.
Still licking his wounds after the defeat of his proposal to reorganize higher education and get rid of UMass President Billy
Bulger, Gov. Mitt Romney let it be known he would veto the Legislature's pay raise bill if it reached his desk.
Although the Democrats can override the hamstrung governor's veto, that vote is far from certain. Many rank-and-file Dems are worried about the perception of passing a pay raise during the state's worst fiscal mess in a decade. After all, these chums still have to get re-elected every two years. It's the same reason the House used political shenanigans (that's the most polite word I could think of for treachery) to avoid a roll-call vote that would have put each member on the record on the Bulger issue; and the same reason the Senate did likewise when it voted to kill the voter-approved Clean Elections law.
Oh yes, politics is also compromise.
At 9 p.m. last Thursday, after a long day spent debating its municipal relief package, the Senate passed a new version of the pay-raise hike, attaching a provision that would extend the new law only through the end of the current legislative session -- a so-called "sunset" clause. That means Finneran and Trav (as he's called by his Beacon Hill buddies) can take care of their peeps, but future leaders would have to win re-approval of the law to see it continue.
Not all were happy about the timing of the revised bill.
"This is no time to do a pay raise," said Trav's Republican foil, Senate Minority Leader Brian Lee of East Longmeadow. "I hope the public is outraged."
Romney's spokeswoman, Shawn Feddeman, insists the governor has not made any deals on the pay-raise issue, and reiterated the governor "will not sign away the right of future governors and the public to have a say in matters concerning legislative compensation."
The pay hike now moves back to the House for approval of the new amended bill. It is expected to be debated in the middle of the day and possibly defeated after a roll-call vote. Yeah, right.
As an aside to the pay-raise issue, state Rep. Harriett Stanley, D-West Newbury, would make an excellent co-chairwoman of the new Medicaid Committee. After all, she's perhaps the leading expert on Medicaid in the Legislature and has even won an award for her ideas on reforming the system. Surely she could use a few extra bucks as much as the next
pol.
Don't count on it though. Stanley was recently stripped of her chairmanship of the Health and Human Services Committee for not demonstrating proper allegiance to Finneran -- which is the way things usually work up here.
Shawn Regan is a member of the Eagle-Tribune's Statehouse bureau.
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The Lowell Sun
Wednesday, June 18, 2003
Editorial
Bogus reorganization
Massachusetts House and Senate leaders should be able to reorganize their respective legislative branches to meet new government challenges and demands, but it should come at the people's benefit not at the people's expense.
Nor should "reorganization" be used as camouflage for giving new job titles and pay raises to political cronies.
But that appears to be the motive for Speaker Tom Finneran's bill to realign House committees and elevate up to eight legislators to chairmen and vice-chairmen posts, at a cost of $50,000. The legislation would also pertain to the Senate. It would give legislative leaders more flexibility to grant pay raises to loyal lieutenants without Executive Office review.
If Finneran wants to restructure, fine. But he should do so within the constraints of the House's existing budget. Restructuring shouldn't be used to enlarge the bureaucracy or make it more costly.
Nearly half the House's 160 members serve as chairmen or vice chairmen, receiving bonus pay of between $7,500 and $15,000.
Critics say Finneran's plan is designed to reward even more loyalists and give the Speaker near total control of determining the House's legislative agenda.
While that may or may not be true, the larger issue is why Gov. Mitt Romney would consider signing off on a bill that relinquishes executive authority for all future governors. We know there's give-and-take in the legislative process, but this reorganization plan isn't a priority not when there's a $3 billion budget gap and the state's unemploment rate is 5.4 percent.
Ideally, all legislators should be considered for promotion to leadership positions based on experience, ability and merit, so that the state's 6.3 million citizens get the benefit of their talents.
Finneran and Senate President Robert Travaglini should feel secure enough in their leadership posts to engage all legislators in legislative discussions, without having to reward political cronies to get like-minded views.
Gov. Romney has no choice but to kill this latest legislative power grab.
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The Boston Globe
Wednesday, June 18, 2003
Plan for Boston courts defies Romney's vision
By Rick Klein, Globe Staff
The Legislature appears ready to expand the role of the Boston Municipal Court, despite Governor Mitt Romney's call for its elimination and what critics say is its long history of patronage.
According to internal budget documents obtained by The Globe, Senate negotiators have agreed to a House proposal to hand administrators at the Boston court control over seven other district courthouses, creating a "Boston Municipal Division." That move would retain BMC's status as a separate entity in the court system and expand its reach.
Romney and other judicial reform advocates have criticized the BMC as the least cost-efficient court in the state, and say it is politically protected on Beacon Hill. They say it receives an overly generous budget from legislators and, in exchange, BMC administrators are receptive to requests for patronage jobs there.
Neither House nor Senate budget-writers would confirm the decision to expand the court's authority.
Romney's press secretary, Shawn Feddeman, said it was too early to predict whether the governor would veto the change. But she noted that the Legislature is apparently taking a route the governor strenuously opposes. Since taking office, he has talked up the need to reform the BMC in a number of speeches across the state.
"The governor believes that [the House proposal] goes in the wrong direction," Feddeman said. "It doesn't make sense to have one district court system for Boston and one for the rest of the state."
Senate Ways and Means Committee chairwoman Therese Murray and House Ways and Means chairman John H. Rogers declined to comment yesterday, citing the confidentiality of legislative conference committee negotiations. Their aides cautioned that any agreements must be viewed as tentative at this stage, because no decisions are final until the conference committee issues its full report, a document that could come as early as today.
The full House and Senate would then vote on the compromise budget. The governor has the power to veto individual line items in the budget before signing it, but the Legislature can override him with a two-thirds majority in both houses.
In outlining his proposal in April for changing the court system, Rogers said the BMC is "doing a tremendous job." He said placing it under the same management umbrella as the Boston-based district courts would make court management more efficient.
But if the Legislature joins the seven other courts to the BMC, it would demonstrate a lack of commitment to meaningful reform, said Stephen Adams, president and CEO of the Pioneer Institute, a think tank that has given Romney many of his ideas for reorganizing state government.
The BMC handled 5,000 fewer cases than the Springfield District Court in 2000, while employing 55 more workers and spending 2 1/2 times more money, according to a Pioneer Institute study.
"It's 180 degrees opposite of reform," Adams said. "They're going to take some of the best courts and put them under the management of one of the worst courts. It has nothing to do with good government or dealing with the budget crisis. It's all about patronage."
Legislative aides say top House and Senate lawmakers are nearing the end of their work on the state budget. Because Romney will have 10 days to consider vetoes, the Legislature must approve the conference committee report by the end of this week for the budget to be in place in time for the July 1 start of fiscal 2004.
The internal budget documents, which constitute a draft of the report that the committee will submit to the full Legislature alongside the final budget, show that some of the more controversial items in the House and Senate versions of the budget will probably remain unresolved in the final report. Those items include a Senate-approved statewide smoking ban in restaurants and bars, and a House-backed loosening of the state's antiprivatization law.
The documents also show that, as expected, the House is going along with the Senate's bid to repeal the Clean Elections Law, a voter-approved system that allows candidates for state office to run with public funds if they agree to spending and fund-raising limits. And the House is prepared to accept the Senate's proposal to limit police education benefits under the Quinn Bill to future officers, according to the documents.
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The Lowell Sun
Tuesday, June 17, 2003
Editorial
Signore Finneran
Venice, anyone?
Today, Massachusetts House Speaker Tom Finneran returns from Italy's emerald city on the Grand Canal, where last week he was invited to lecture U.S. and European lawmakers on the finer points of the legislative process.
Good for the Speaker. We're proud he's got a global audience. It's just too bad he had to cut short his stay and return to work on House-Senate conference sessions to hammer out a 2004 state budget for a July 1 deadline.
Hopefully, Finneran gave listeners some Bay State insights on how to run a democratic Legislature. For example:
Don't let the voters' ballot initiative process scare you into doing something you personally detest, like Clean Elections.
Don't take a controversial roll-call vote that can come back to haunt legislators like a criminal record.
Make sure you can reward loyal lieutenants with pay raises and new job titles any time you please, saying it's good for government.
Promise reform, then change everything so that it stays the same.
Don't speak when you can wink, don't wink when you can nod, and don't nod when you can stare.
Yes, the Speaker's back after a five-day sojourn in Venice. Salute!
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The Boston Globe
Thursday, June 19, 2003
Budget deliberations in final stages
Leaders hope to meet July 1 fiscal deadline
By Rick Klein, Globe Staff
Legislative leaders last night were finishing work on a $23 billion state budget, hoping to quickly end negotiations so they can complete the spending plan in time for the July 1 start of fiscal 2004.
While House Speaker Thomas M. Finneran said early yesterday that the House-Senate conference committee was close to wrapping up its work, last-minute snags involving technical language and revenue projections delayed a final agreement. Still, Finneran told reporters late yesterday afternoon that he was confident the budget would be delivered to Governor Mitt Romney's desk shortly.
"I believe we'll have a budget that's on time, and will have a good deal of reforms and other items you'll be impressed with," Finneran said.
Among the major items to be decided in the budget is the fate of 36,000 people who lost Medicaid coverage in April, and the future of the Prescription Advantage program, the first-in-the-nation prescription drug benefit for senior citizens and the disabled. House and Senate leaders declined to comment on any of their decisions, since conference committee negotiations are considered confidential.
House and Senate budget-writers were hoping to file the final budget by midnight last night, so the full House and Senate could approve it today. But negotiators called off talks about 10 p.m., saying they would try and finish the work this morning.
Though Romney can veto individual line-items of spending, such moves can be overridden by two-thirds votes in both houses of the Legislature. That majority is typically easy for the Democrat-dominated House and Senate to achieve.
Legislators want to get the budget to Romney by tomorrow to give him time to make the vetoes and themselves time to override them before July 1.
If they make the deadline, it will be just the fourth time in 21 years that the Legislature has had a budget completed by the start of the budget year. Legislative leaders have felt pressure to finish quickly after embarrassing budget negotiations in 1999 and 2001 that stretched into November.
Late budgets have little practical impact, since money is normally allocated to keep state operations going, but consistently late budgets have contributed to a public image of a dysfunctional Legislature.
But some House members complained yesterday that the rush to finish the budget is leaving them in the dark about many of the details. House leaders held a closed-door caucus for rank-and-file members yesterday, but representatives emerged saying they learned nothing about agreements and discussions. The budget compromise must be approved on an up-or-down vote.
"We didn't learn anything about what will be in or out of the conference committee report," said Representative Ellen Story, an Amherst Democrat. "We're being asked to vote on it soon, and it sounds like things are still very much in flux."
The quick finish to budget talks means that some of the more controversial items included in the House or Senate versions of the budget are likely to remain unresolved. In the interest of finishing the budget on time, lawmakers chose to continue to work on those items while moving forward the full spending plan.
According to internal budget documents obtained by the Globe, the items that will remain unsettled include: A proposal to scale back the state's antiprivatization law, a statewide ban on smoking in bars and restaurants, and a proposed three-year moratorium on new charter schools.
Globe correspondent Brendan McCarthy contributed to this report.
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The El Paso [Texas] Times
Friday, June 13, 2003
7 arrested in seat-belt bust
by Tammy Fonce-Olivas
Even before sunset, sheriff's deputies had already arrested seven motorists Thursday in a crackdown on failures to buckle up children riding in vehicles, officials said.
The arrests of two women and five men, whose identities weren't released, are the first in a tough, new initiative by the El Paso County Sheriff's Department. The arrests, rather than merely ticketing drivers, are in response to recent traffic deaths of two children. Neither child was wearing a seat belt.
Sheriff's spokesman Rick Glancey said all children involved in the traffic stops Thursday were placed by deputies with adult relatives. But he warns that as the initiative continues, if deputies cannot find someone to care for the child passengers, the children may be turned over to Child Protective Services and temporarily placed in foster care.
"We mean it when we say CPS is our last, most extreme resort. We are trying to be as kid-friendly as we can be," Glancey said.
Central resident Chris Knight, who was ejected from a car as a preschooler because she was not buckled up, said parents should be held responsible for children not wearing seat belts.
"My parents were very irresponsible. I'm lucky that I survived," said Knight, who still has scars on her face from reconstructive surgeries after the accident about 30 years ago.
Concerns have been raised about whether the state will ensure the safety of the children placed in foster care.
Eddie Wilson, regional director for Child Protective Services, said the agency supports the initiative and will do everything in its power to place children with relatives before temporarily placing them in foster care.
Bill Cox, first assistant public defender, said that even though state law allows the arrests for the seat-belt misdemeanor, he frets about the program's impact on children.
"I'm very concerned about the effects on a child seeing a parent being arrested in front of them and the child being placed into CPS if there are no other options," Cox said.
Glancey said motorists, particularly parents, who don't want to risk putting their children through that experience should follow the law and buckle them up.
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