CLT
UPDATE
Tuesday, December 16, 2003
MTF
now defends costly union monopoly
Organized labor's political power is a "hidden tax" that drives up the wages and benefits of public workers and the cost of building in Massachusetts, Governor Mitt Romney's budget chief said yesterday in the administration's latest broadside against labor's influence on Beacon Hill.
Eric Kriss, whose blunt remarks about "givers and takers" of social services ignited a controversy two months ago, urged a gathering of Boston-area mayors to "stand up and be counted alongside this administration" in support of curbing labor's power....
Kriss said "public employee unions enjoy a labor monopoly over Massachusetts state and municipal employment," creating a drag on state and city budgets. "Like any industrial monopoly, a labor monopoly creates a political imbalance. Massachusetts unions tilt civic life and the penalty is heavy, like a hidden tax." ...
Michael J. Widmer, who heads the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, a business-funded nonprofit group that studies taxes and government spending, said Kriss is right to point out labor's political power but that he may be overstating the unions' clout in shaping the state's construction rules. "It is a fact that unions play a stronger role in Massachusetts than in most other states," he said in an interview after Kriss's speech. "But I think the issues he's raising go well beyond the power of unions."
The Boston Globe
Tuesday, December 16, 2003
Romney aide says unions too powerful
Cities and towns will probably avoid the budget-cutting knife next year, as an improving economy eases the magnitude of the state's projected deficit, Gov. Mitt Romney's budget chief said yesterday.
Administration and Finance Secretary Eric Kriss told a gathering of mayors he's pegging next year's deficit at $1 billion - far less than legislative leaders' projections of at least $2 billion....
In an interview last week, Finneran pegged next year's deficit at $2 billion and said the "modest" projected increase in tax receipts won't be enough to save the day.
"I don't know that there is any economic surge that anybody could reasonably and responsibly anticipate that would close the gap that we face," Finneran said.
The Boston Herald
Tuesday, December 16, 2003
Local aid may be spared in rosy Romney budget prediction
State highway officials came clean last week that the cleanup bill for the early December storm and other various and sundry icy days has reached $21.1 million, leaving a negative balance in the snow and ice removal account for the rest of the season.
Lest any more charitable soul out there chalk the fund squeeze up to unusually heavy snowfall this early in the season, keep in mind that the yawning gulf between how much money is needed for snow removal and what is actually budgeted is an annual occurrence....
The total bill last year, though, was $75 million. More than $57 million had to be tacked on in a supplemental budget to pay contractors what they were owed after the season was over.
A Boston Herald editorial
Tuesday, December 16, 2003
Snow budget tricks redux
Gov. Mitt Romney is about to learn that governing in better fiscal times is a whole lot harder than governing when the only answer he can give to most new spending requests is no....
Romney also now has the formidable challenge of convincing legislators, who are reluctant reformers even in the worst of times, to support his agenda. At the same time, he'll have to hold the line on spending and play the bad cop to the Legislature's good as they eye opportunities to expand programs and pile on the pork.
It's enough to make you nostalgic for another good old-fashioned fiscal crisis, isn't it, Governor?
A Boston Herald editorial
Monday, December 15, 2003
A down side to good news
It has been said that anyone who can control the points of discussion in a debate has gained a major advantage in winning it.
But when it comes to modern political debate, especially over spending, it is more likely that whoever controls the meaning of words has the major advantage.
And nowhere is that more true than in the arena of spending on public education....
In light of that, take a look at the accompanying Eagle-Tribune graphics that portray state spending on education since 1985.
One shows an increase from about $1.3 billion per year in 1993 to $3.2 billion in 2002 - close to 150 percent. It shows yearly increases ranging from a high of nearly 17 percent in 1993, hovering around 12 percent for the next seven years, then 6.7 percent in 2001. And then, it shows an increase for 2003 of only 1.4 percent.
Still, the line on the graph keeps going up. The dollars are still flowing like the falls of Niagara. The spigot is opening wider - just not as quickly as in the past. But it is not enough even to call this a "cut," in the mind of a local official. To him, it equals no money. Spigot off.
The Eagle-Tribune
Sunday, December 7, 2003
Education funding spigot is still gushing plenty of money
By Taylor Armerding
Iraq's coalition government claims that it has uncovered documentary proof that Mohammed
Atta, the al-Qaeda mastermind of the September 11 attacks against the US, was trained in Baghdad by Abu
Nidal, the notorious Palestinian terrorist.
Details of Atta's visit to the Iraqi capital in the summer of 2001, just weeks before he launched the most devastating terrorist attack in US history, are contained in a top secret memo written to Saddam Hussein, the then Iraqi president, by Tahir Jalil Habbush
al-Tikriti, the former head of the Iraqi Intelligence Service....
The London Sunday Telegraph
Sunday, December 14, 2003
Terrorist behind September 11 strike was trained by Saddam
Chip Ford's CLT
Commentary
Can't the so-called Massachusetts Taxpayers
Foundation ever get on the right side of even a single
reform issue? Now the "business-backed" shill for higher taxes
on average taxpayers is defending the state's union monopoly!
"Kriss said 'public employee unions enjoy a labor monopoly over Massachusetts state and municipal
employment,' creating a drag on state and city budgets. 'Like any industrial monopoly, a labor monopoly creates a political imbalance. Massachusetts unions tilt civic life and the penalty is heavy, like a hidden
tax.'"
"It is a fact that unions play a stronger role in Massachusetts than in most other states,"
MTF president Michael Widmer said, adding, "but ..."
I wonder if MTF's fat-cat elite membership is
just as coyly progressive when defending private-sector labor
unions within its own vast corporate empires?
*
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*
Gov. Romney announced that local aid may not need to
take a major budget cut in the upcoming FY'05 budget, based on the
economy's recent upturn. Speaker Finneran responded, sticking with
the doom-and-gloom shortfall scenario of $2 billion despite
recent predictions and evidence to the contrary.
How else can he convince his sheep in the House that
more revenue is necessary if they're to bring home the bacon to their
respective districts, and save their own bacon come next November?
Finneran's strategy, though, could be aimed at
heading off irrationally exuberant spending demands among his flock.
Time will tell.
*
*
*
Another annual shortfall in the state's snowplowing
budget in only December is hardly news, but it's actually getting to be
funny -- unless you're a snowplow contractor that's got to wait until
mid-summer to get paid. Every year The Best Legislature Money Can Buy
plays the same old budgetary gimmick, with the same result: they Bacon
Hill pols shortchange the fund that pays to clear our roads in order to
balance the budget then, in the spring, come in and add the cost to a
supplementary budget, thereby disguising the true cost of an unbalanced
budget.
Hey, Best Legislature Money Can Buy: This is
New England and it is winter. It happens every year about this time.
Catch on at last, can you? How many more winters must we go through
before you finally realize that it snows every time, and that plowing
roads is a core function of the government we pay so dearly for?
*
*
*
Taylor Armerding of Lawrence's Eagle-Tribune wrote
one of the best pieces on the educational-industrial complex we've read
yet, "Education funding spigot is still gushing plenty of money."
If you ever need reinforcement that "More Is Never Enough"
(MINE) and never will be, just re-read his column.
*
*
*
We usually don't do international news analysis in
this space, but today I'm making an exception, because the news -- and
especially its lack of coverage here in the United States -- is
simply astounding. A member wrote me yesterday about a report posted on
NewsMax.Com, "9/11 Bombshell: Mohamed Atta Trained in Baghdad,"
but said that he couldn't find the London (Great Britain) Telegraph's
alleged report to confirm it.
"A bombshell memo written to Saddam Hussein in 2001 and recently uncovered by Iraq's new coalition government shows that lead 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta was trained in Baghdad to attack the
U.S. ..."
I chased down the original source, as I couldn't
believe the NewsMax
report could possibly be accurate if we'd never heard anything about
it here in the US of A.
I found it in the London Telegraph's website archive
of recent news reports. As Americans, we should know about this -- for
whatever it's worth -- and now you and I do.
I wonder why it hasn't been widely, if at all,
reported here in the States?
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Chip
Ford |
The Boston Globe
Tuesday, December 16, 2003
Romney aide says unions too powerful
By Scott S. Greenberger, Globe Staff
Organized labor's political power is a "hidden tax" that drives up the wages and benefits of public workers and the cost of building in Massachusetts, Governor Mitt Romney's budget chief said yesterday in the administration's latest broadside against labor's influence on Beacon Hill.
Eric Kriss, whose blunt remarks about "givers and takers" of social services ignited a controversy two months ago, urged a gathering of Boston-area mayors to "stand up and be counted alongside this administration" in support of curbing labor's power. Kriss's speech, delivered a month before Romney is scheduled to unveil his budget blueprint for the next fiscal year, suggests the governor will try again to save money at labor's expense.
Kriss said "public employee unions enjoy a labor monopoly over Massachusetts state and municipal employment," creating a drag on state and city budgets. "Like any industrial monopoly, a labor monopoly creates a political imbalance. Massachusetts unions tilt civic life and the penalty is heavy, like a hidden tax."
Kriss said the state could save about $200 million a year -- out of more than $1 billion spent annually on construction projects -- if it changed contracting rules that he argues overly favor unions.
For example, Kriss criticized filed subcontractor bidding, which forces cities and states to deal individually with each of the 17 building trades, increasing bureaucracy and making the tradesmen less accountable to the general contractor. He also wants the state to eliminate project labor agreements, which require the use of union labor at prevailing wage in return for a prohibition on strikes, slowdowns, and lockouts. And he wants designers and contractors to work more closely together in so-called design-build project agreements.
Kriss said he was not being antiworker, and that unions are "not inherently bad." But he argued that organized labor is so influential in Massachusetts that it has created a dangerous "political power imbalance." Citing statistics from the conservative Pioneer Institute, Kriss said that the cost per square foot of public construction in Massachusetts is twice what it is in Florida, even after adjusting for climate and wage rates.
Told of Kriss's remarks, labor leaders lashed out at the man critics are calling the Romney's administration's agent provocateur.
"They're into the blame game now. It's everybody's fault but theirs that they can't manage the government," said David
Holway, president of the National Association of Government Employees, which represents 14,000 state workers. Holway noted that unions helped the state's finances by lobbying in Washington for more Medicaid money, and that his group isn't resisting the administration's effort to save $300 million next year by pushing back the deadline for closing the hole in the state's pension fund.
"We're part of the solution, we're not part of the problem. The problem is they don't want to talk to anyone except for each other."
Joe Dart, president of the Massachusetts Building Trades Council, chuckled at Kriss's description of labor's sway on Beacon Hill. "I wish we were as powerful as sometimes we get credit for," Dart said. "It's no surprise that someone from this administration doesn't like the fact that an organization that represents workers has a good relationship with a Legislature that has those same goals in mind."
Campaign contributions highlight the close ties between labor and the Democrat-dominated Legislature, as well as the icy relationship between unions and the state's Republicans: Since 1998, the top labor contributors in the state have given $254,833 to the Democratic Party and only $21,500 to the Republicans, according to a report by The Institute on Money in State Politics, a nonpartisan organization based in Montana that studies campaign money at the state level.
Michael J. Widmer, who heads the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, a business-funded nonprofit group that studies taxes and government spending, said Kriss is right to point out labor's political power but that he may be overstating the unions' clout in shaping the state's construction rules. "It is a fact that unions play a stronger role in Massachusetts than in most other states," he said in an interview after Kriss's speech. "But I think the issues he's raising go well beyond the power of unions."
Romney has had several run-ins with organized labor since he took office less than a year ago. In March, he tried to strip union membership from thousands of public workers by expanding the state's definition of a "manager." In July, he quietly approved a pay increase for 2,700 managers in the midst of the state's fiscal crisis, a move unions feared would hasten layoffs. He fought, unsuccessfully, for a more business-friendly resolution to the state's unemployment insurance crisis. Romney also took on state employees' unions ability to deduct contributions from paychecks for campaign contributions.
The administration also floated a municipal relief package last spring that included some of the construction changes and a measure allowing cities to require workers to cover more of their health insurance costs. The package went nowhere, however.
Kriss and Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey, who led the push for last year's package, said yesterday they hope to attract more vigorous support from cities by emphasizing that any state savings from the construction changes would be pumped into new schools and courthouses. "It's always been the subtext, but it's important to make it explicit," Healey said.
Geoff Beckwith of the Massachusetts Municipal Association said his group backed the municipal relief package last year and would do so again. But Beckwith said the administration is unlikely to be successful without the support of labor groups, which won't sign on without a sense that overall construction spending will increase. That is impossible, Beckwith noted, as long as the administration sticks to its pledge not to raise the so-called bond cap that limits the state's borrowing for capital projects.
Some mayors, meanwhile, may not be willing to play the administration's brand of hardball in their own relations with labor unions. At yesterday's event, Mayor William Phelan of Quincy told Kriss that some of the janitorial workers in his city can't even afford housing. Kriss acknowledged that some public workers are underpaid, but insisted that others earn too much.
"We have to remember that we're dealing with people who are real.... They are themselves trying to make ends meet and keep food on the table and keep up with the ever-increasing cost of living here in Massachusetts," Phelan said later. "We have to remember that when we cut, there are real people and real impacts."
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The Boston Herald
Tuesday, December 16, 2003
Local aid may be spared in rosy Romney budget prediction
By Elisabeth J. Beardsley
Tuesday, December 16, 2003
Cities and towns will probably avoid the budget-cutting knife next year, as an improving economy eases the magnitude of the state's projected deficit, Gov. Mitt Romney's budget chief said yesterday.
Administration and Finance Secretary Eric Kriss told a gathering of mayors he's pegging next year's deficit at $1 billion - far less than legislative leaders' projections of at least $2 billion.
Romney will try to avoid any new local aid cuts by relying on projections that the recovering economy will produce 4 percent growth in state tax receipts, and by resubmitting "hundreds of millions of dollars" in reforms that lawmakers rejected this past year.
"The Draconian cuts hopefully are behind us," Kriss said. "In terms of local aid, we're hopeful that we're not going to see what occurred this last year in terms of reductions."
Beacon Hill leaders slashed $400 million this year from local aid, which pays for teachers, cops and firefighters - on the heels of Romney's emergency local aid cut of $145 million in February.
Local leaders are unimpressed with the economic turnaround, saying they've laid off workers, sidetracked projects and squeezed their budgets to the breaking point - and still come up short.
"We can't find that we've missed much," said Chelsea City Manager Jay Ash. "I'm having difficulty getting too excited about the recovery that we're supposedly in." That pessimism is evident in the House, where Speaker Thomas M. Finneran is painting a gloomier picture.
In an interview last week, Finneran pegged next year's deficit at $2 billion and said the "modest" projected increase in tax receipts won't be enough to save the day.
"I don't know that there is any economic surge that anybody could reasonably and responsibly anticipate that would close the gap that we face," Finneran said.
With tax hikes off the table and $3 billion in cuts over the past three years, Finneran said lawmakers would be forced to look to cut the biggest programs - Medicaid, local aid and education.
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The Boston Herald
Tuesday, December 16, 2003
A Boston Herald editorial
Snow budget tricks redux
Winter hasn't even started and the state is already $6.1 million in the hole in its snow and ice removal budget. Why are we not surprised?
State highway officials came clean last week that the cleanup bill for the early December storm and other various and sundry icy days has reached $21.1 million, leaving a negative balance in the snow and ice removal account for the rest of the season.
Lest any more charitable soul out there chalk the fund squeeze up to unusually heavy snowfall this early in the season, keep in mind that the yawning gulf between how much money is needed for snow removal and what is actually budgeted is an annual occurrence.
It's an equal opportunity budget trick, too, practiced for years by both the legislative and executive branches of government, Republican and Democrat alike.
In fairness, the Romney administration came closer to reality with its original budget request of $44 million for snow removal. The Legislature only approved $15 million.
The total bill last year, though, was $75 million. More than $57 million had to be tacked on in a supplemental budget to pay contractors what they were owed after the season was over.
What's the big deal, if the state figures out the total and pays up later? It's unfair to contractors for starters. But it's also a bit like planning to spend far more on Christmas presents every year than you can afford and paying off your creditors well after vases of tulips have replaced the poinsettias.
Just because everybody does it, doesn't make it a sound fiscal practice.
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The Boston Herald
Monday, December 15, 2003
A Boston Herald editorial
A down side to good news
Gov. Mitt Romney is about to learn that governing in better fiscal times is a whole lot harder than governing when the only answer he can give to most new spending requests is no.
The administration is projecting 3.6 percent revenue growth - or $489 million more than the state was forecast to take in this year, a figure they may revise upward. Other growth estimates are even higher - $620 million forecast by the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation and $730 million predicted by the Beacon Hill Institute. Leaders of the House and Senate are trying to reach consensus with Romney aides on a joint estimate.
That these figures are just estimates is one reason to be cautious about restoring some of the budget cuts made over the last few years, as some special interests and legislators will surely advocate. There's little hard evidence in the state's monthly revenue take now of any significant bump. And the state's economy grew at just 0.7 percent last quarter compared to 8.2 percent for the rest of the nation.
Given these factors, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman John Rogers (D-Norwood) has indicated an even more conservative approach to revenue growth than the administration.
And there's that little matter of a remaining $1 billion or higher deficit to contend with. "That's not chump change," Michael
Widmer, Mass. Taxpayers Foundation president, said in an interview.
Widmer urges that any growth ought to be viewed as a cushion against further significant spending reductions. "In '05, we still have a gap. The issue is lessening the additional cuts."
Devoting excess revenue to bulk up reserve accounts is wise, too. There's nothing like experiencing a rainy day to reinforce the importance of preparing for the next deluge.
Romney also now has the formidable challenge of convincing legislators, who are reluctant reformers even in the worst of times, to support his agenda. At the same time, he'll have to hold the line on spending and play the bad cop to the Legislature's good as they eye opportunities to expand programs and pile on the pork.
It's enough to make you nostalgic for another good old-fashioned fiscal crisis, isn't it, Governor?
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The Eagle-Tribune
Sunday, December 7, 2003
Education funding spigot is still gushing plenty of money
By Taylor Armerding, Staff writer
It has been said that anyone who can control the points of discussion in a debate has gained a major advantage in winning it.
But when it comes to modern political debate, especially over spending, it is more likely that whoever controls the meaning of words has the major advantage.
And nowhere is that more true than in the arena of spending on public education.
There is nothing new, of course, about the redefinition of "cut." For some time now, that word has been used not to describe a real reduction in spending, but merely a reduction in the rate of increase. Hence, when a 3 percent increase follows several years of 10 percent increases, there is gnashing of teeth over a draconian "7 percent cut."
There is nothing new, as a campaign earlier this year by the state teachers' union demonstrated, about calling a tax cut a tax cut, but referring to a tax increase as "raising revenues." After all, nobody wants a tax increase, but we can all get behind raising revenues, because "revenue" just drops from the sky. Doesn't it?
And, of course, a tax cut "costs" government - the idea there being to make us think it was government's money in the first place.
However, perhaps because examples like this have been used for such a long time, even that kind of Orwellian Newspeak is apparently not quite doing it for the public education lobby.
Last week, an official for the city of Lynn declared that, while the vast spending increases of Education Reform had made a difference, "you can't turn off the spigot in the middle."
"Turn off the spigot." In the minds of most rational people, that means the water stops running. Or, applying this visual image to fiscal policy, it would mean the state had shut off funding for education. No more money.
In light of that, take a look at the accompanying Eagle-Tribune graphics that portray state spending on education since 1985.
One shows an increase from about $1.3 billion per year in 1993 to $3.2 billion in 2002 - close to 150 percent. It shows yearly increases ranging from a high of nearly 17 percent in 1993, hovering around 12 percent for the next seven years, then 6.7 percent in 2001. And then, it shows an increase for 2003 of only 1.4 percent.
Still, the line on the graph keeps going up. The dollars are still flowing like the falls of Niagara. The spigot is opening wider - just not as quickly as in the past. But it is not enough even to call this a "cut," in the mind of a local official. To him, it equals no money. Spigot off.
And that, of course, is what he wants the rest of us to think as well. He and plenty of others want the tax-paying public to feel guilty about "wanting good education without having to pay for it."
Lynn is not alone, naturally. That city is just one of 19 communities that are suing the state for its alleged failure to meet its constitutional responsibility to adequately fund education. Apparently, "adequate" means increases of at least 10 percent per year.
And that, guilt-tripped taxpayers, is the real problem. When you need 10 percent more per year just to "maintain services," during times when inflation hovers around 1-2 percent, you have what is called a structural deficit. And while there are certainly a number of causes for it, the real elephant in the room is what school officials call "contractual obligations."
Those obligations differ from district to district, of course. But they do not just materialize from nowhere. They are negotiated by your local school committee with your teachers' unions.
One of the more striking examples is in Andover, where teachers are in the third year of a contract that has provided pay raises (including step increases) of 6.7, 6.1 and 8 percent - three to four times the rate of inflation. This is also a district where, with the advent of so-called block scheduling, teachers spend less time teaching than they used to.
This, not surprisingly, is a district that does not provide enough hours of instruction to students, and where those pesky "contractual obligations" prevent the administration from requiring teachers to spend more time teaching. The only solution is, of course, more money.
But the only way to sustain spending increases like that is for the economy to grow forever the way it did in the mid-1990s. That has never happened. It never will. And if the education lobby thinks it can, there will come a time when it won't matter how wide the spigot is opened. There won't be any dollars left to flow through it.
Taylor Armerding is associate editorial page editor of The Eagle-Tribune.
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The London Sunday Telegraph
Sunday, December 14, 2003
Terrorist behind September 11 strike was trained by Saddam
By Con Coughlin
Iraq's coalition government claims that it has uncovered documentary proof that Mohammed
Atta, the al-Qaeda mastermind of the September 11 attacks against the US, was trained in Baghdad by Abu
Nidal, the notorious Palestinian terrorist.
Details of Atta's visit to the Iraqi capital in the summer of 2001, just weeks before he launched the most devastating terrorist attack in US history, are contained in a top secret memo written to Saddam Hussein, the then Iraqi president, by Tahir Jalil Habbush
al-Tikriti, the former head of the Iraqi Intelligence Service.
The handwritten memo, a copy of which has been obtained exclusively by the Telegraph, is dated July 1, 2001 and provides a short resume of a three-day "work
programme" Atta had undertaken at Abu Nidal's base in Baghdad.
In the memo, Habbush reports that Atta "displayed extraordinary effort" and demonstrated his ability to lead the team that would be "responsible for attacking the targets that we have agreed to destroy".
The second part of the memo, which is headed "Niger Shipment", contains a report about an unspecified shipment - believed to be uranium - that it says has been transported to Iraq via Libya and Syria.
Although Iraqi officials refused to disclose how and where they had obtained the document, Dr Ayad
Allawi, a member of Iraq's ruling seven-man Presidential Committee, said the document was genuine.
"We are uncovering evidence all the time of Saddam's involvement with
al-Qaeda," he said. "But this is the most compelling piece of evidence that we have found so far. It shows that not only did Saddam have contacts with
al-Qaeda, he had contact with those responsible for the September 11 attacks."
Although Atta is believed to have been resident in Florida in the summer of 2001, he is known to have used more than a dozen aliases, and intelligence experts believe he could easily have slipped out of the US to visit Iraq.
Abu Nidal, who was responsible for the failed assassination of the Israeli ambassador to London in 1982, was based in Baghdad for more than two decades.
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