CLT
UPDATE
Tuesday, October 14, 2003
Tax hike hearing, while pols cadge
Sox tickets
For longtime allies hoping to hike taxes in Massachusetts, it's never too early to start planning for 2005.
Armed with a fresh report from the state Senate that asserts the budget gap for fiscal 2005 will reach $2 billion, union officials and social services advocates told lawmakers on Tuesday that raising the income tax rate from 5.3 percent to 5.6 percent would cut the state's projected deficit by one-tenth and stave off painful cuts in education, public safety and health care....
"It is absolutely essential that we raise revenue rather than continue to cut and deprive people of the services they need," Rep. Ruth Balser (D-Newton) told the committee. Even though tax hikes face a promised gubernatorial veto and have so far been rejected by the House and Senate, Balser said it is crucial to start a debate in the Legislature.
"I want to get this on the table," she said.
Stephen Collins, executive director of the Massachusetts Human Services Coalition, said that raising the income tax to 5.6 percent would generate $225 million for fiscal 2005 - and cost the average taxpayer an extra $3 for each $100 owed in taxes....
Tax hike foes reminded lawmakers that voters - about 1.5 million in number - chose to lower the income tax rate to 5 percent in a 2000 ballot question.
Even though that measure was frozen by a vote of the Legislature, at the current rate of 5.3 percent,
Chip Faulkner, associate director of Citizens for Limited
Taxation, said the lawmakers should respect the vote, reject tax hikes, and look instead to purge outstanding waste, abuse, and inefficiency in government spending.
"We're rolling in money; it's just not being spent well," Faulkner told the committee.
His testimony drew the ire of lawmakers, and some guffaws from the assembled advocates. Sen. Stanley Rosenberg (D-Amherst) said the state's fiscal problems, driven by economy and increasing health care costs, cannot be overcome just by purging waste and fraud.
After pressing Faulkner to say how much could be saved by cutting waste, and scolding him for voting "out of spite" to abolish the income tax in a 2002 ballot question, Rosenberg told the anti-tax advocate, "None of what you said this morning makes any sense."
No matter the debate in the Legislature, Shawn Feddeman, Romney's spokeswoman, made clear the governor does not plan to soften his opposition to tax increases.
State House News Service
Tuesday, October 14, 2003
Education, social service advocates say
taxes should be on agenda
To the "Cut No More" coalition we say: If you think the voters have changed their minds about their November 2000 vote, remember that last year they almost abolished the income tax altogether.
If the coalition wants to "cut no more" in its special interests, we recommend that it help legislators find waste and inefficiency in a state budget that is still growing every year.
CLT Memo to the Taxation Committee
Tuesday, October 14, 2003
H 3604 – Income tax rate hike from 5.3% to 5.6%
The Taxation Committee will be holding a public hearing on Tuesday at 10:00 a.m. in Room B-1 of the State House. Amongst the bills scheduled to be heard is House Bill No. 3604, presented by Representative Ruth B. Balser and also sponsored by Representatives Frank
Smizik, Jim Marzilli, and Liz Malia relative to the income tax rate. The bill seeks to increase the state income tax rate from the current rate of 5.3% back to the rate of two years ago, 5.6%. (While the Stop the Cuts Campaign and others are supporting a return to the 5.95% rate - and the Cut No More Campaign continues to support that position - I believe we need to be "on board" for each and every "revenue train" as it leaves the station!
...
The Number One way to help would be to testify in support of the bill at the hearing on Tuesday. Just showing up at the hearing and wearing a "Cut No More" sticker will also help show support for the bill....
At the Mass Human Services Coalition, we have a long tradition of telling what we call "real people ... real stories." We need your help in finding examples of what we know is out there - the real stories of real people who have been adversely affected by budget cuts. Ideally, we would like to speak directly with the person "on the record" but we will also speak "off the record" if someone wishes their identity to be confidential....
Mass. Human Service Coalition's "Cut No More" Alert List
By Steve Collins at the MHSC office
Cut No More Update #43 - Income Tax Rate hearing and other news
Class warfare is alive and well in Massachusetts. And taxpayers and the economy will be the worse off for it.
Battles over instituting a graduated income tax have come and gone over the years. Voters always saw through the rhetoric and understood the basic unfairness of such an approach....
These "soak the rich" approaches, of course, have a major flaw. The value of one's home can have little bearing on ability to pay more taxes. Low-income elderly homeowners might not have a mortgage, for instance, while the owners of a higher priced home might be mortgaged to the hilt and be paying college tuition, argues
Barbara Anderson, executive director of Citizens for Limited
Taxation....
These plans "pit property owners against each other," CLT's Anderson said in an interview.
A Boston Herald editorial
Friday, October 10, 2003
Soak the rich plan still a losing tactic
City Councilor Michael Ross got tickets from the pool, as did Councilor John M. Tobin Jr. Senate President Robert E. Travaglini took advantage of the offer, as did House Speaker Thomas M. Finneran.
Even though they paid the price stamped on the tickets, some fellow politicians and watchdog groups say they still bought the tickets at a fraction of the cost -- and a fraction of the hassle -- that ordinary people would have had to pay, constituting an improper perk.
"They're getting a benefit that regular citizens don't get," said Samuel R. Tyler, executive director of the Boston Municipal Research Bureau, a business-funded city government watchdog....
"I don't feel I should have something that your average person doesn't have access to unless they take extraordinary measures like sleeping in line overnight in a sleeping bag," said Councilor at Large Maura A.
Hennigan....
Playoff tickets sold out almost immediately after the Red Sox advanced to the postseason, and online services began offering seats for astronomical prices. Yesterday, Ace Ticket listed box seats, which have a face value of $110, for as much as $2,350. Bleacher seats, with a face value of $50, were listed at $595....
Spokesmen for Finneran and Travaglini declined to discuss details. Legislative sources, however, confirmed that the House speaker and Senate president had acquired playoff tickets.
The Boston Globe
Friday, October 10, 2003
In playoffs, politicians get VIP treatment
Chip Ford's CLT
Commentary
"For longtime allies hoping to hike taxes in Massachusetts, it's never too early to start planning for 2005."
Today CLT's Chip Faulkner, testified before hostile
members of the Legislature's Joint Committee on Taxation against
increasing the state income tax to 5.6 percent. He also delivered our
memo to the committee and we issued it as a statewide news release as
well.
The parasitic Mass. Human Services Coalition hoped to
stage a massive presence of the Gimme Lobby to support not only a tax
hike to 5.6 percent but to pressure for their ultimate goal of an
increase back up to 5.95.
"We need your help in finding examples of what we know is out there - the real stories of real people who have been adversely affected by budget
cuts," it's insatiable executive director, Stephen Collins pleaded
in an e-mail message to his "No More Cuts" members list.
"Ideally, we would like to speak directly with the person 'on the
record' but we will also speak "off the record" if someone wishes their identity to be
confidential ..."
Translation: If you can't find a downtrodden member
of "the most vulnerable among us" who's willing to talk, make
one up; get creative with death and destruction horror stories and hurry
it up!
I had one call from a critic of our testimony this
morning, usually a CLT supporter but someone who often thinks he's got a
better perspective, a better plan. He wanted to know why we're bothering
to even respond, lending the Gimme Lobby credibility.
I replied that the tax hike has legislative sponsors.
"You'd let them go unchallenged, let it later be said 'there is no
opposition to a tax hike'?" I asked. "You'd let the Gimme
Lobby and its tax-and-spend sponsors grab a little purchase, a toe hold
-- grant them unopposed traction toward a tax hike?" In the end he
agreed; taxpayers should respond, had to have a voice.
We did, as usual.
*
*
*
How about those ruling elite cadging Red Sox playoff
tickets the rest of us can only dream about? Oh right, they got them for
"face value" so no foul -- like the rest of us serfs can get
tickets to any venue ever at "face value"!
There's almost no such thing as "face value" tickets to anything
any more ... unless you have power. With that power, you're entitled to
"face value" tickets the rest of us would have to pay hundreds
if not thousands to procure.
"President Robert E. Travaglini took advantage of the offer, as did House Speaker Thomas M. Finneran."I'd
be shocked it the ultimate leaders hadn't.
"Yesterday, Ace Ticket listed box seats, which have a face value of $110, for as much as $2,350. Bleacher seats, with a face value of $50, were listed at $595."
Even if they don't like baseball or have no intention
of attending, our commonwealth royalty can always turn a healthy if not
respectable profit.
|
|
|
Chip
Ford |
State House News Service
Tuesday, October 14, 2003
Education, social service advocates say taxes should be on agenda
By Michael C. Levenson
For longtime allies hoping to hike taxes in Massachusetts, it's never too early to start planning for 2005.
Armed with a fresh report from the state Senate that asserts the budget gap for fiscal 2005 will reach $2 billion, union officials and social services advocates told lawmakers on Tuesday that raising the income tax rate from 5.3 percent to 5.6 percent would cut the state's projected deficit by one-tenth and stave off painful cuts in education, public safety and health care.
Their plea before the Legislature's Taxation Committee renewed a long-running debate over how to solve the state's fiscal problems: in particular, what mix, if any, of tax increases, spending cuts, reserves, fees, and purging of waste and abuse the state can tackle to close its budget shortfall.
This year, lawmakers and the Romney administration chose all those options, except for tax increases. As 2005's problems near, advocates and their allies in the Legislature hope to sway official opinion in a new direction.
"It is absolutely essential that we raise revenue rather than continue to cut and deprive people of the services they need," Rep. Ruth Balser (D-Newton) told the committee. Even though tax hikes face a promised gubernatorial veto and have so far been rejected by the House and Senate, Balser said it is crucial to start a debate in the Legislature.
"I want to get this on the table," she said.
Stephen Collins, executive director of the Massachusetts Human Services Coalition, said that raising the income tax to 5.6 percent would generate $225 million for fiscal 2005 - and cost the average taxpayer an extra $3 for each $100 owed in taxes.
While $225 million represents just a small fraction - about one-tenth - of the projected budget gap, he said it would be part of a "mature and fiscally sound approach" to closing the shortfall. Human service programs have already been cut by $1.4 billion since 2001, roughly the start of the fiscal crisis, Collins said.
Michael Canavan, a lobbyist for the Massachusetts Federation of Teachers, also voiced support, telling lawmakers of the impact budget cuts have had over the last fiscal year: increases in class sizes, an 80 percent cut in funds for MCAS tutoring, and reductions in school transportation, supplies, and building maintenance. Those cuts were made in an effort to close a $3 billion budget gap, and lists like it are sure to be repeated as evidence that "core services" will be threatened in 2005.
"We need to stop that," Canavan said of the cuts. "We need to restore revenues."
Tax hike foes reminded lawmakers that voters - about 1.5 million in number - chose to lower the income tax rate to 5 percent in a 2000 ballot question.
Even though that measure was frozen by a vote of the Legislature, at the current rate of 5.3 percent,
Chip Faulkner, associate director of Citizens for Limited Taxation, said the lawmakers should respect the vote, reject tax hikes, and look instead to purge outstanding waste, abuse, and inefficiency in government spending.
"We're rolling in money; it's just not being spent well," Faulkner told the committee.
His testimony drew the ire of lawmakers, and some guffaws from the assembled advocates. Sen. Stanley Rosenberg (D-Amherst) said the state's fiscal problems, driven by economy and increasing health care costs, cannot be overcome just by purging waste and fraud.
After pressing Faulkner to say how much could be saved by cutting waste, and scolding him for voting "out of spite" to abolish the income tax in a 2002 ballot question, Rosenberg told the anti-tax advocate, "None of what you said this morning makes any sense."
No matter the debate in the Legislature, Shawn Feddeman, Romney's spokeswoman, made clear the governor does not plan to soften his opposition to tax increases.
"The governor has made very clear that raising taxes will kill jobs and hurt working families," Feddeman said. "He will fight tooth and nail, like he did this year, to close the budget gap without raising taxes."
Return to
top
CLT NEWS RELEASE
Tuesday, October 14, 2003
To: Members of the Joint Committee on Taxation
October 14, 2003
Re: H 3604 – Income tax rate hike from 5.3% to 5.6%
Citizens for Limited Taxation is still waiting for the income tax rate to drop back to 5%, as the voters ordered in November 2000 with their support for our long overdue and reasonable income tax rollback.
To the "Cut No More" coalition we say: If you think the voters have changed their minds about their November 2000 vote, remember that last year they almost abolished the income tax altogether.
If the coalition wants to "cut no more" in its special interests, we recommend that it help legislators find waste and inefficiency in a state budget that is still growing every year.
The Massachusetts per capita tax burden is still the 5th highest in the nation, so there should be more than enough money for essential services if sensible priorities are set and reforms supported.
E-MAIL ALERT FROM THE GIMME LOBBY
TO: The Massachusetts Human Service Coalition's "Cut No More" Alert List
FR: Steve Collins at the MHSC office
RE: Cut No More Update #43 - Income Tax Rate hearing and other news
Sorry for the short notice, but folks should know that next Tuesday, October 14, there will be an opportunity for everyone to express their support for putting new revenue (yes, tax increases!) "on the table " for helping to resolve the state's fiscal woes and to repair some of the damage done to health and human services. The Taxation Committee will be holding a public hearing on Tuesday at 10:00 a.m. in Room B-1 of the State House. Amongst the bills scheduled to be heard is House Bill No. 3604, presented by Representative Ruth B. Balser and also sponsored by Representatives Frank
Smizik, Jim Marzilli, and Liz Malia relative to the income tax rate. The bill seeks to increase the state income tax rate from the current rate of 5.3% back to the rate of two years ago, 5.6%. (While the Stop the Cuts Campaign and others are supporting a return to the 5.95% rate - and the Cut No More Campaign continues to support that position - I believe we need to be "on board" for each and every "revenue train" as it leaves the station! So, I hope folks will take some time to support H. 3604.
The Number One way to help would be to testify in support of the bill at the hearing on Tuesday. Just showing up at the hearing and wearing a "Cut No More" sticker will also help show support for the bill. If you can not be at the State House on Tuesday, there's still a number of ways you can help:
1. You can submit written testimony in support of the bill to the committee chair, Representative Paul Casey, care of the Taxation Committee, the State House, Boston, MA, 02133.
2. You can contact your own state rep and senator and ask them to contact Rep. Casey to urge him to release the bill from the Taxation Committee with a positive "ought to pass" recommendation.
3. You can contact Chairman Casey directly and urge him to release the bill with a positive recommendation. (Chairman Casey and all state reps can be reached at 617 722-2000.)]
So, please do everything you can on Tuesday, October 14, to support House Bill No.3604!
THE CUT NO MORE CAMPAIGN NEEDS YOUR HELP IN "PERSONALIZING" THE IMPACT OF BUDGET CUTS
One of the difficulties we are facing in promoting new revenues to be part of the solution to the state fiscal crisis is the claim by many of the folks inside the State House that they are not hearing any great public outcry about cuts to health and human services or seeing examples of how budget cuts are hurting families and individuals. So, it's time to "speak truth to power!" At the Mass Human Services Coalition, we have a long tradition of telling what we call "real people ... real stories." We need your help in finding examples of what we know is out there - the real stories of real people who have been adversely affected by budget cuts. Ideally, we would like to speak directly with the person "on the record" but we will also speak "off the record" if someone wishes their identity to be confidential. So, if you have a story to tell, or can simply refer us to real people with real stories, please get a message to
info@cutNoMore.org.
CUT NO MORE!
Steve Collins,
MHSC Executive Director
Return to
top
The Boston Herald
Friday, October 10, 2003
A Boston Herald editorial
Soak the rich plan still a losing tactic
Class warfare is alive and well in Massachusetts. And taxpayers and the economy will be the worse off for it.
Battles over instituting a graduated income tax have come and gone over the years. Voters always saw through the rhetoric and understood the basic unfairness of such an approach.
Now, community by community, some lawmakers are intent on imposing, or exacerbating, what amounts to a graduated property tax - with "rich" homeowners' property taxes going up, while others' go down.
The Legislature voted Wednesday to override Gov. Mitt Romney's veto of a Cambridge plan to transfer more of the property tax burden there to owners of higher valued property.
On Nantucket officials are eyeing a "McMansion" tax with funds raised to be used to support affordable housing.
These "soak the rich" approaches, of course, have a major flaw. The value of one's home can have little bearing on ability to pay more taxes. Low-income elderly homeowners might not have a mortgage, for instance, while the owners of a higher priced home might be mortgaged to the hilt and be paying college tuition, argues
Barbara Anderson, executive director of Citizens for Limited
Taxation.
The law of unintended consequences comes into play, too. Supporters of the Cambridge plan say it will help residents, who would otherwise be squeezed out of their own communities, afford to stay by easing the tax burden. But renters, low man on the totem pole of the affordable housing debate, will see rents increased by owner-landlords hit with a tax hike.
These plans "pit property owners against each other," CLT's Anderson said in an interview.
In outposts - geographically or ideologically - like Nantucket and Cambridge, such a tactic may go over just fine with voters. In most other communities, though, politicians waging class warfare will surely feel the backlash.
Return to
top
The Boston Globe
Friday, October 10, 2003
In playoffs, politicians get VIP treatment
By Andrea Estes, Globe Staff
When the Red Sox advanced to the playoffs, City Council President Michael F. Flaherty immediately knew he would have to look for tickets, or else "my kids would kill me." With Fenway Park sold out and precious seats selling online for upward of $2,000 apiece, Flaherty turned to the Red Sox.
From a pool of tickets set aside for dignitaries and other groups, the team sold him four seats for each home game, charging face value.
City Councilor Michael Ross got tickets from the pool, as did Councilor John M. Tobin Jr. Senate President Robert E. Travaglini took advantage of the offer, as did House Speaker Thomas M. Finneran.
Even though they paid the price stamped on the tickets, some fellow politicians and watchdog groups say they still bought the tickets at a fraction of the cost -- and a fraction of the hassle -- that ordinary people would have had to pay, constituting an improper perk.
"They're getting a benefit that regular citizens don't get," said Samuel R. Tyler, executive director of the Boston Municipal Research Bureau, a business-funded city government watchdog. "Someone in a city department who has an impact on the team was offered tickets and was excited to take advantage of the offer until a department head said
'absolutely not.' He wouldn't allow the employee to take advantage of the offer because it wasn't available to the general public. That ought to be the approach of any city or elected official."
According to some council colleagues, that approach should especially apply for members of the city's legislative body, which could be asked once again to take up the emotionally charged issue of Fenway Park's fate. As council president, Flaherty would play a key role in deliberations, as would Ross, who represents the Fenway neighborhood.
"I don't feel I should have something that your average person doesn't have access to unless they take extraordinary measures like sleeping in line overnight in a sleeping bag," said Councilor at Large Maura A.
Hennigan. "As much as I would like to be there when the Red Sox reverse the curse, if tickets were made available, I'd probably donate them to somebody who wouldn't have the opportunity to go otherwise."
Likewise, Councilor at Large Felix D. Arroyo said he would "feel uncomfortable using a special prize to go to a ballgame."
"I don't know if maybe other politicians will accept it. I'm not going to pass judgment," he said. "But I personally would feel awkward."
Playoff tickets sold out almost immediately after the Red Sox advanced to the postseason, and online services began offering seats for astronomical prices. Yesterday, Ace Ticket listed box seats, which have a face value of $110, for as much as $2,350. Bleacher seats, with a face value of $50, were listed at $595.
Tobin, a diehard fan who once worked as a vendor inside Fenway, said he didn't care what people might think. "This is such a small city, people could find a conflict in anything. . . . I would go to 10 to 15 games a year, whether I was an elected official or not."
Ross said only that he paid "face value for four tickets for the home game series," which he will use "for myself and my family."
Spokesmen for Finneran and Travaglini declined to discuss details. Legislative sources, however, confirmed that the House speaker and Senate president had acquired playoff tickets.
Red Sox spokesman Kevin Shea would not say how many VIPs received tickets, but said that it is not only politicians who are eligible. Members of the media, neighborhood groups, and police also can request tickets.
"The number we're talking about is very, very small," he said. "There aren't a lot of tickets available for these groups. Fans get the first priority. The vast majority are fans. There are no transgressions of ethics laws."
In fact, neighbors around the park, who have a long history of battling past and present team owners over everything from building a new ballpark to airing rock concerts, were conspiciously silent on the team's decision to make tickets available to local politicians. But they said they, too, had been offered tickets.
"It's something that has been going on forever," said Bill Richardson, president of the Fenway Civic Association, which got four tickets for each of nine potential home games. "The first games I went to when I was 7 came from my grandfather who was a state rep. The key is not to let the tickets sway any decision the politician might make on an issue that involves the Red Sox. For most, I'm sure that it wouldn't."
Said Sean McKinley, the association's assistant treasurer: "The fact that they have to pay for them really makes it on the up and up. It's no different than the Red Sox giving tickets to Fleet Bank and Dunkin' Donuts or any other corporations that advertise with them."
McKinley will be attending tomorrow's game.
Rick Klein and Sasha Talcott of the Globe staff contributed to this report.
Return to
top
NOTE: In accordance with Title 17
U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit or
payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this
information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For
more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
|