CLT
UPDATE
Sunday, July 20, 2003
"Life, liberty and property" are
safe ... for a while!
The non-override of the veto of Finneran's power grab came about in part because of an interesting left-center-right coalition:
CPPAX, a liberal lobby that grew out of Vietnam War protests in the 1960s; Common Cause, a good government lobby founded by the late Secretary of Commerce John Gardner; and
Citizens for Limited Taxation, a small-government lobby. These folks - a sort of reform coalition of the willing - issued a joint press release on July 8 opposing any more power for the House speaker and Senate president. Flummoxed legislators had to decide whose power they feared more: the power of Finneran and
Travaligni, or the power of the electorate.
The tug-of-war between the status quo and reform is only beginning.
The Patriot Ledger
Saturday, July 19, 2003
Romney and reform lose in Legislature
By David A. Mittell Jr.
The fee increases in the state budget, coupled with a wide menu of local-option fees and fines in the Legislature's "municipal relief" bill, are believed to be the largest in the state's history.
"It's clear they increased just about every fee they could identify in order to raise revenues without raising taxes," said Michael
Widmer, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation. "I'm sure this is far and away the largest collection of fee increases the state has ever seen." ...
Barbara Anderson, executive director of Citizens for Limited
Taxation, said fee increases are a fairer way of raising revenue for the state.
"Fees are always better than taxes if they're real fees and not taxes disguised as fees," she said. "You can avoid paying many fees. A tax is something you have to pay."
However, Anderson said the $500 million in fee hikes "add insult to injury" given that the Legislature approved a record-setting $1.1 billion tax package last year.
"Massachusetts already has the fifth largest per capita tax burden in the country," she added.
The MetroWest Daily News
Sunday, July 20, 2003
Call them fees and not taxes
Chip Ford's CLT
Commentary
Was it Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) or Will Rogers who said
"No man's life, liberty or property is safe while the legislature is in
session"? Whoever it was, for the next couple of months we can all
exhale a deep
breath, reasonably secure that they are for the moment safe and, like
legislators, we can enjoy the summer season.
That's not to say we won't be watching, as our
Legislature is one of the few that never really go away and leave us
alone.
"Noncontroversial" issues can still arise
during the Legislature's "informal sessions" -- but can be
stopped by a single objection of one legislator. (If you recall, the
"emergency preamble" to Finneran's Pay-Raise Power-Grab was
one such "noncontroversial" issue that was so stopped by a
single objection.) The Legislature is expected to return to formal
sessions in September.
At the end of this week I'll be taking my two weeks
away from the daily grind and heading out on "Chip
Ahoy" (Barbara named it!), the 1974 Catalina 22 sailboat I
bought very-used last winter and have spent the spring (Spring? What
spring?) restoring and finally launched a couple weeks ago. (You'll
probably recall Barbara's
column about my travails trying to register it with the state.) My
first "big trip" -- the shakedown cruise -- next weekend will
be to Scituate to visit CLT's Plymouth County coordinator and good
friend Norm Paley and his wife Joan. A few days after my return from
there, former-CLT administrative assistant Paula Collins, her husband
Jack, and their son Vince (long ago one of my computer gurus when I
first learned where the "on" button was) are coming out from
Chicago for Jack's, Vince's and my planned cruise down to Martha's
Vineyard.
Ah, it's nice to have "life beyond
politics" back again, even if just for a while.
I just wish I had until September off with pay --
like legislators do -- so I could get even more use out of my boat!
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Chip
Ford |
The Patriot Ledger
Saturday, July 19, 2003
Romney and reform lose in Legislature
By David A. Mittell Jr.
The Sagamore Rotary can back up eight miles on Route 3 into Plymouth on Saturday mornings and the same distance on Route 6 into Sandwich and Barnstable on Sunday afternoons. In mid-July, rush hour traffic throughout Greater Boston palpably lightens. School is out, and people are on vacation. Actually, it's not a bad time to be working.
The other good reason to keep working is that the Legislature remains in session, and the denizens need to be watched! In fact - dating to the infamous Christmas feeding frenzy of 1982 and the Fourth of July, legislative pay raise of 1987 - normal people's holidays are traditionally a time when political people especially need to be watched.
What seems to be happening on Beacon Hill is a tug-of-war between the forces of the status quo and the impulse for reform. The new governor, Mitt Romney, and to lesser, but a real extent, the new Senate president, Robert
Travaligni, do things very differently than their immediate predecessors. The Beacon Hill establishment is reacting with a mixture of resistance and acquiescence.
Overall, it's been more resistance than acquiescence. The Legislature has overridden several of the governor's budget vetoes, restoring an undetermined amount of the $201 million in vetoed spending; expanding the Boston Municipal Court; and modifying the English immersion program voters approved by a 68 percent majority last year. On the other hand, the Legislature took no vote (therefore it acquiesced) in the governor's veto of Speaker Thomas Finneran's plan to expand his own power to use lucrative committee chairmanships to punish and reward his members. After a week of cajoling, he couldn't round up enough votes to override; it was a significant rebuff.
Taking the above items one by one, the governor had acted responsibly in his $201 million in vetoes, because due to automatically increasing costs, another large deficit looms in fiscal 2005. Restoring funds for local aid and other matters now was tempting, but may mean more painful cuts next year. One must hope an improving economy will make things go easier.
The Boston Municipal Court is a veritable patronage bloatocracy - spending as much on 69 judges as the district courts that cover the rest of the state do on 177 judges. The speaker's insistence on keeping the patronage party going belies his image of being fiscally responsible. It also gives the lie to his proposal to spend $110 million in tobacco settlement funds in "targeted financial assistance" to technological sectors - biomedical, informational, defense, environmental, etc.
In promoting this idea, the speaker denies wanting to have state government "picking winners" in the market place. He understands that's what democratic capitalism does best. With his record on the Boston Municipal Court, on the State Probation Office and other entities the Legislature has its political hands all over, undermines his and the Legislature's credibility. The sure-to-rise $110 million would tend to make high-tech entrepreneurs resemble developers and contractors who curry favor with politicians in order to get lucrative goodies in return. A high-tech public authority! It could be ruinous, and the risk isn't worth taking.
The Legislature's English-immersion overrides mean the continuation of "two-way" bilingual programs in which English speakers and Spanish speakers are jointly taught in both languages. These serve 2,000 students, or about 4 percent of those currently in bilingual education. The rest, presumably, will go into English immersion, as the people have demanded.
Time will tell if the two-way exemption has the effect of gutting English immersion. Since the governor controls the state board of education, there's a good chance it will not. On the other hand, if English immersion proves to be weakened, either by these overrides or by future legislative action, the governor promises to target offending Democrats for defeat.
The non-override of the veto of Finneran's power grab came about in part because of an interesting left-center-right coalition:
CPPAX, a liberal lobby that grew out of Vietnam War protests in the 1960s; Common Cause, a good government lobby founded by the late Secretary of Commerce John Gardner; and Citizens for Limited Taxation, a small-government lobby. These folks - a sort of reform coalition of the willing - issued a joint press release on July 8 opposing any more power for the House speaker and Senate president. Flummoxed legislators had to decide whose power they feared more: the power of Finneran and
Travaligni, or the power of the electorate.
The tug-of-war between the status quo and reform is only beginning.
David A. Mittell Jr.'s column appears regularly in Weekend editions of The Patriot Ledger.
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The MetroWest Daily News
Sunday, July 20, 2003
Call them fees and not taxes
By Michael Kunzelman
A round of golf at Leo J. Martin in Weston? $25. Parking at your favorite state park? $2. Mooring a boat in Cochituate State Park? $80.
A tax-free budget? Priceless, if you ask Gov. Mitt Romney and the leaders of the state Senate and House of Representatives.
Massachusetts residents and businesses will shell out an estimated $500 million in fee increases this year now that the Legislature and Romney have put the finishing touches on the state's fiscal year 2004 budget.
The fees increases allowed Romney and legislative leaders to keep their vows to close the state's $3 billion budget gap without raising taxes.
But their no-taxes pledge hardly spared residents from reaching deeper into their wallets this year.
The fee increases in the state budget, coupled with a wide menu of local-option fees and fines in the Legislature's "municipal relief" bill, are believed to be the largest in the state's history.
"It's clear they increased just about every fee they could identify in order to raise revenues without raising taxes," said Michael
Widmer, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation. "I'm sure this is far and away the largest collection of fee increases the state has ever seen."
The fee increases affect virtually every state agency and every segment of the population.
Even blind people will have to bear a greater share of the fee burden. The Legislature created a $10 fee for certificates of blindness and a $15 fee for issuing photo identification cards to the legally blind.
Dick Powers, a spokesman for the Executive Office of Health and Human Services, said the certificates entitle blind residents to collect a federal income-tax deduction, a property tax abatement or handicap license plates.
The fee is waived, however, for recipients of supplemental security income.
"This is one of many new fees that were instituted statewide this year in many agencies," Powers added.
Gun owners also took a hit with the new fee increases. The fee for gun licenses, including firearms identification cards and licenses to carry, jumped from $25 to $100. Cities and towns will keep $25 of the fees.
Richard Callaghan, owner of Callaghan Firearms Sales in Marlborough, viewed the increase as just another way for the state to discourage the sale and ownership of guns.
"That's a stiff increase," he said. "It is becoming cost-restrictive. It's going to cause a problem, primarily with the elderly who are on fixed incomes."
Although most of the fee hikes took effect July 1, a team of budget analysts from Romney's Executive Office for Administration and Finance is still poring through the budget in an effort to compile a comprehensive list of the increases.
Romney spokeswoman Nicole St. Peter said the list is due out early this week.
"It's still being worked on, so I wouldn't feel comfortable giving a rough estimate," she said.
Widmer and a staff member at the Senate Ways and Means Committee both said the total cost of the fee increases is around $500 million.
That figure doesn't include the dozens of local-option fee increases in the municipal relief package, which hikes fees for towing cars, fire inspections and raises fines for traffic and parking violations.
"We wanted more reform out of that package," St. Peter said. "The governor has said he believes it was too heavy on fees."
Barbara Anderson, executive director of Citizens for Limited
Taxation, said fee increases are a fairer way of raising revenue for the state.
"Fees are always better than taxes if they're real fees and not taxes disguised as fees," she said. "You can avoid paying many fees. A tax is something you have to pay."
However, Anderson said the $500 million in fee hikes "add insult to injury" given that the Legislature approved a record-setting $1.1 billion tax package last year.
"Massachusetts already has the fifth largest per capita tax burden in the country," she added.
Widmer said fee increases impose a greater financial burden on low- to middle-income residents, because everyone pays them at the same rate. But fee increases are less politically risky than tax hikes, he noted.
"People know when their taxes go up," he said. "They don't necessarily know when they're paying a higher fee."
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