CLT
UPDATE
Friday, July 2, 2004
Revenue pours in; while AG, state
get clobbered
Massachusetts finished the fiscal year with at least $700 million more than it expected, a windfall that is whetting Beacon Hill's appetite for more spending and fueling Governor Mitt Romney's drive to cut income taxes after three years of budget-cutting.
Romney spokeswoman Shawn Feddeman said yesterday that the latest revenue total "absolutely" bolsters the Republican governor's argument that the Legislature should cut the state's income tax rate....
Representative John H. Rogers, the Norwood Democrat who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee, cautioned that the state still has a "structural deficit" of roughly $800 million, a gap between steady revenue and recurring expenses. The fiscal 2005 budget will total about $24.5 billion....
"Obviously, we should restore some of the horrendous cuts that we've already undergone," said Judith
Kurland, vice president of the Massachusetts Public Health Association....
Geoff Beckwith of the Massachusetts Municipal Association says the state should send more money to cities and towns, many of which have been forced to lay off teachers and police officers and raise property taxes....
The governor also wants to reduce the state income tax rate from 5.3 percent to 5 percent, a decrease of about $100 for the average taxpayer.
In 2000, voters approved a gradual lowering of the income tax rate, which was 5.85 percent at the time, to 5 percent. But in the depths of the state's fiscal crisis in 2002, the Legislature froze the rate at the current 5.3 percent.
Lowering the tax rate to 5 percent would cost the state between $200 million and $225 million in fiscal 2005. But it would reduce revenue by twice that amount in fiscal 2006, when it would be in effect for the entire year.
Michael J. Widmer of the Taxpayers Foundation said the revenue number is "clearly good news after years of bad news."
Widmer said there is enough new money to replenish reserves and reduce the state's reliance on one-time revenue, but not enough to substantially restore past budget cuts or cut taxes.
The Boston Globe
Friday, July 2, 2004
State revenues soar
Budget surplus put at $700m
The state-run prescription drug insurance program for elders and people with
disabilities will have an open enrollment in September, the first in more than a
year....
The program is expected to cost taxpayers $110 million in the fiscal year starting next
month....
Senior activists will be working in the next few weeks to attempt to reverse Gov. Mitt
Romney's veto of $5 million slated to remove co-payments for some of the low-income
enrollees of Prescription Advantage.
"It's unfortunate that he chose to do that," Banda said. "That $5 million would have
helped some of the most vulnerable people in the program."
The Boston Herald
Tuesday, June 29, 2004
Prescription Advantage will add to ranks
Massachusetts correction officers - among the highest paid in the nation - are using so much paid sick time they are depleting resources that could hire some 230 more guards, a reform panel has found....
Paid sick time accounts for $21 million of the Department of Correction budget - enough to hire an additional 230 guards for staffing-stretched prisons.
Federal prison guards average just 5.25 sick days annually, while guards in the California system average 12.75 days, Romney said.
Officers in Massachusetts average some 52 paid days off annually.
The Boston Herald
Thursday, July 1, 2004
Panel: DOC flush with sick time
If there was a prize for legislative excess, it would go to the authors of the Senate transportation bond bill.
Page after mind-numbing page of the draft spending plan is bursting with pork projects, more politely known as "earmarks".
A Boston Herald editorial
Thursday, July 1, 2004
Transportation bill loaded with pork
The state paid $12.7 million last year for unused sick time to nearly 4,900 retiring employees, a practice taxpayer groups have criticized in Boston and other municipalities because of the burden the payments place on local budgets....
The practice, buybacks of unused sick time that are banked over decades, is rare in the private sector, which commonly has a use-it-or-lose-it provision for sick days each year.
The practice of paying buybacks has been criticized in some communities by fiscal watchdogs and defended by unions. Critics complain that the buybacks are an outdated practice for rewarding employees who simply show up for work and does little to discourage absenteeism.
The Boston Globe
Friday, July 2, 2004
State paid $12.7m in unused sick time
Accusing the Romney administration of treating the trial courts as a "revenue center" for the government, two groups of lawyers are suing the state to repeal a controversial law that requires civil plaintiffs to pay anniversary fees of $90 to $120 to keep their cases alive.
The state approved the fees in the fiscal 2004 budget after Governor Mitt Romney said it would help unclog the judicial system and generate millions of dollars a year for the courts....
"Assessing these so-called anniversary fees upon litigants obligates them to purchase justice and to pay ever higher prices as justice is longer delayed," said the lawsuit. The practice, it adds, "treats the judiciary as a revenue center," violating principles of unfettered access to the courts.
The Boston Globe
Wednesday, June 30, 2004
Lawyers sue to repeal law on anniversary fees
A federal appeals court handed a major victory to Microsoft Corp. yesterday and a big defeat to Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly by unanimously upholding the landmark settlement of the U.S. government's antitrust case against the software giant.
Calling for tougher restrictions on Microsoft, Reilly was the lone holdout after the Justice Department and other states agreed to settle 1998 charges that the software maker used monopolistic practices....
Reilly was noncommittal on whether he'll appeal further....
As of the end of 2002, Reilly's office had spent more than $2 million on the litigation, passing up millions in potential settlement money. Most recently, West Virginia agreed to drop its case for about $20 million in vouchers for hardware and software.
The Boston Herald
Thursday, July 1, 2004
Judges slap AG over case on Microsoft
Citizens for Limited Taxation urges Attorney General Thomas Reilly to drop his taxpayer-funded litigation against Microsoft. Former-Attorney General Scott Harshbarger originally joined the antitrust suit against Microsoft and Reilly has perpetuated Massachusetts' participation.
According to a document filed with the federal court last summer, our state attorney general seeks reimbursement from Microsoft for taxpayers' money spent by his office; almost $900,000. How can his office justify pouring "3,666 hours" into this case?
"'Taxation through litigation' as a revenue substitute must end," said Chip
Ford, director of operations for Citizens for Limited Taxation. "Whether it's 'Big Tobacco,' firearms manufacturers, a deep-pockets software corporation, or high-cholesterol foods (no doubt the next target), this recent backdoor revenue scam must stop. Ultimately, as witnessed with the tobacco settlement, it is taxpayers who fund these attacks, win or lose, consumers who pay any settlement, and only government and trial lawyers that profit." ...
We hope Massachusetts will not be one of them. It's time for our attorney general to accept the new political reality, cut our losses, and stop throwing good taxpayer money after bad. It's time to end taxation through litigation.
CLT NEWS RELEASE
Monday, March 12, 2001
CLT calls on Attorney General Tom Reilly to end
"Taxation through Litigation" in Microsoft case
Chip Ford's CLT
Commentary
Today we learned that the revenue surplus continues
to climb, the pool of excess cash grows larger and larger -- from $500
million last month to $700 million this month. But the usual cast of
tax-and-spend characters still opposes respecting the voters' mandate to
roll back the income tax to its historic 5 percent rate -- and always
will.
Meanwhile, the cost of waste, pork and patronage
increases even quicker than the revenue rolls in, and entitlement
programs continue to be invented, e.g., taxpayer-subsidized college
education for illegal aliens, free prescription drugs, etc. We've
been here before so many times you'd think the pols would have learned
by now where they're driving us all over again. Come the next spending
crisis cliff -- after they've expanded today's proposed $24.8 billion budget
into $30 or $35 billion annually -- they'll be dragging out the
"Fiscal crisis! The sky is falling!" chant all over again,
hiking taxes and fees just to sustain the growing spending appetite.
Remember, if we're forced to comply with the
Legislature's convoluted formula for restoring the tax rate to 5
percent, we won't see it until 2014 at the earliest. By then inevitably
there will be another cyclical economic slowdown ... and we won't see
the rollback then either! If the rate moves, it'll only be up.
The Boston Globe reported on June 4 ("Romney proposes leap in local aid; Expects windfall of about $500m"),
when the governor first proposed "unfreezing" the income tax
rollback:
Representative John H. Rogers, a key Finneran lieutenant and the chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, said it's not yet clear how much extra money, if any, the state will have at the end of the fiscal year....
"The governor is creating a number artificially to serve a political need: to spend more and to cut taxes," said Rogers, a Norwood Democrat.
We've waited patiently and the pile of money has only growing
larger, while plans are concocted to spend it.
*
*
*
So a federal appeals court finally handed Attorney
General Tom Reilly his head and tossed out his stubborn suit against
Microsoft, after he's spent "more than $2 million" of our
money stalking Bill Gates like a lone wolf.
The federal justice department and most of the other
state attorneys general agreed to a court settlement years ago, the
remaining few more recently, but not our Tom Reilly. But then, he didn't
have to pay the legal bill: we did.
As the odd-AG-out, not only did he cost us taxpayers
millions, but he gambled and lost rights to any part of the settlement
that the other states now share. ("Most recently, West Virginia agreed to drop its case for about $20 million in vouchers for hardware and
software.")
The Boston Herald reported, "Reilly called the decision
'terrible news for consumers and terrible news for competition.'"
We call it "terrible news" for
Massachusetts taxpayers, who got nothing but the legal bill for his
bullheaded jihad.
CLT called
on him to cut our losses and drop his vendetta over three years ago,
after he'd already run up a bill of $900,000. As usual, we were ignored.
And inevitably we were proven right ... once again.
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Chip
Ford |
The Boston Globe
Friday, July 2, 2004
State revenues soar
Budget surplus put at $700m
By Scott S. Greenberger, Globe Staff
Massachusetts finished the fiscal year with at least $700 million more than it expected, a windfall that is whetting Beacon Hill's appetite for more spending and fueling Governor Mitt Romney's drive to cut income taxes after three years of budget-cutting.
Romney spokeswoman Shawn Feddeman said yesterday that the latest revenue total "absolutely" bolsters the Republican governor's argument that the Legislature should cut the state's income tax rate. The hefty surplus proves there is enough money to pay for the $457 million supplemental budget the governor unveiled last month, she said.
But Democratic leaders, who have adopted a more conservative attitude toward the state's improving economic fortunes, said it would be more prudent to replenish dwindling reserves and reduce reliance on one-time revenue, money the state can't count on every year, in the 2005 budget plan.
Representative John H. Rogers, the Norwood Democrat who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee, cautioned that the state still has a "structural deficit" of roughly $800 million, a gap between steady revenue and recurring expenses. The fiscal 2005 budget will total about $24.5 billion.
"We still have structural deficits, and that's what we must continue to focus on in order to achieve long-term fiscal stability," Rogers said. "We're not out of the woods yet. Everyone's talking about the good news. It seems as if there are many who conveniently forget the bad news, and the bad news is the $800 million."
The $700 million surplus isn't official, because the Department of Revenue hasn't finished counting all the money it collected in fiscal 2004, which ended June 30. But Rogers said the department has told him that the final tally from income taxes, sales taxes, capital gains taxes, and other sources will top $15.9 billion, about $1 billion more than fiscal 2003 and $700 million more than what had been predicted in January. At the end of May, the state was only $495 million ahead of its projections.
A department spokeswoman declined to comment, saying that the official revenue figure for fiscal 2004 will be released in two weeks.
The state is getting more money than expected because revenue forecasters for the Legislature and the Romney administration underestimated how much tax money would come in when they made the estimate last year. When the economy began to improve at the beginning of this year, the forecasters revised their revenue projections upward, but the totals are even higher. But lawmakers and Romney based the budget for fiscal 2005, which began yesterday, on weaker revenues.
As a result, the new estimates look like found money and are sure to prompt a barrage of spending requests from human services advocates, educators, and local officials, all of whom have been hit hard by roughly $3 billion in cuts of the past three years.
"Obviously, we should restore some of the horrendous cuts that we've already undergone," said Judith
Kurland, vice president of the Massachusetts Public Health Association. "We've gotten nowhere near restoring the cuts from 2001 to 2004. The cuts to public health have endangered our capacity to protect public health and prevent disease and keep society safe."
Kurland said that the state may have gleaned short-term savings by cutting spending on substance abuse treatment, tobacco control, and breast cancer screening, but that in the long term the cuts will inflate health care costs.
Spending on public health declined from $535 million in fiscal 2001 to $368 million in fiscal 2004, said the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, a business-funded nonprofit that monitors taxes and government spending.
Geoff Beckwith of the Massachusetts Municipal Association says the state should send more money to cities and towns, many of which have been forced to lay off teachers and police officers and raise property taxes. Specifically, Beckwith wants the state to stop taking a share of lottery proceeds, which it began doing 18 months ago to close its budget gap, and once again distribute all of that money to cities and towns.
"Certainly, as the state's year-end numbers continue to look rosier and rosier, it's important to recognize that the state right now is using approximately $170 million in local lottery revenues in order to pay for fiscal 2004 expenses," he said. "The state's revenue strength is a very good argument that that practice should be ended."
Last month, when the state was about a half-billion dollars ahead of its projections, Romney proposed spending the extra money immediately on aid to cities and towns, roads, parks, health care, and education. His proposal was aimed at fiscal year 2004, but Democrats didn't take it up and that year is now over. Later this year, lawmakers are expected to pass a supplemental budget that could increase spending.
Romney's $457 million supplemental budget includes $254 million for construction projects across the state, $100 million for cities and towns, and $83 million for a half-dozen health care and education programs, including $19 million for adult basic education, $11.8 million for substance-abuse treatment and $10 million for MCAS tutoring.
"As we expected, it looks like June will be a strong month from a revenue perspective," Feddeman said. "One thing is certain: There is a large enough surplus to support the governor's supplemental spending proposal, which would return more money to our cities and towns and pay for fixing up our parks, beaches, and other public spaces."
The governor also wants to reduce the state income tax rate from 5.3 percent to 5 percent, a decrease of about $100 for the average taxpayer.
In 2000, voters approved a gradual lowering of the income tax rate, which was 5.85 percent at the time, to 5 percent. But in the depths of the state's fiscal crisis in 2002, the Legislature froze the rate at the current 5.3 percent.
Lowering the tax rate to 5 percent would cost the state between $200 million and $225 million in fiscal 2005. But it would reduce revenue by twice that amount in fiscal 2006, when it would be in effect for the entire year.
Michael J. Widmer of the Taxpayers Foundation said the revenue number is "clearly good news after years of bad news."
Widmer said there is enough new money to replenish reserves and reduce the state's reliance on one-time revenue, but not enough to substantially restore past budget cuts or cut taxes.
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The Boston Herald
Tuesday, June 29, 2004
Prescription Advantage will add to ranks
By Jennifer Heldt Powell
The state-run prescription drug insurance program for elders and people with disabilities will have an open enrollment in September, the first in more than a year.
Prescription Advantage will be open to all residents over age 65 and certain low-income disabled residents.
"It's a great opportunity for a lot of people to get into this program that has proved to be a lifeline for thousands of seniors," said Deborah Banda, state director of AARP Massachusetts.
The program hasn't been open for general enrollment since August.
Currently, about 88,000 people are signed up for the subsidized insurance plan. In past years, growth has been limited by the state's budget for the program. This year about 10,000 people are expected to sign up. The program is expected to cost taxpayers $110 million in the fiscal year starting next month.
The key to a successful open enrollment will be making sure that those eligible know about it, Banda said.
The Office of Elder Affairs will be sending out word about the enrollment to the elder network by July 1, a spokeswoman said.
Senior activists will be working in the next few weeks to attempt to reverse Gov. Mitt Romney's veto of $5 million slated to remove co-payments for some of the low-income enrollees of Prescription Advantage.
"It's unfortunate that he chose to do that," Banda said. "That $5 million would have helped some of the most vulnerable people in the program."
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The Boston Herald
Thursday, July 1, 2004
Panel: DOC flush with sick time
By Steve Marantz
Massachusetts correction officers - among the highest paid in the nation - are using so much paid sick time they are depleting resources that could hire some 230 more guards, a reform panel has found.
State prisons are poorly managed - failing to rehabilitate inmates and rein in sick time abuse by guards - according to the panel investigating the 2003 murder of pedophile ex-priest John
Geoghan.
"This is not about criticizing the unions," said the panel's chairman, former Attorney General Scott
Harshbarger. "Labor kept their eye on the ball, and management didn't assert the balance."
But Gov. Mitt Romney focused on the sick time flap in responding to the report yesterday, highlighting figures showing correction officers use an average of 17.5 days of paid sick leave yearly, including five days without a doctor's note.
Paid sick time accounts for $21 million of the Department of Correction budget - enough to hire an additional 230 guards for staffing-stretched prisons.
Federal prison guards average just 5.25 sick days annually, while guards in the California system average 12.75 days, Romney said.
Officers in Massachusetts average some 52 paid days off annually.
But the president of the 5,000-member guards union said the existing contract gives the Department of Correction ample power to control sick time, and questioned the panel's focus.
"I'm deeply distressed the commission brought our contract into this," Steve Kenneway said. "Did our contract kill John Geoghan or did another inmate kill him?"
Kenneway said the contract provides for 15 sick days, requires medical documentation and gives DOC the right to fire a guard if abuse can be proved.
Romney, who commissioned the Harshbarger panel, called for improvements in rehabilitation, fiscal management and accountability.
"A tragic crisis shone a spotlight on the operations and culture of the Department of Correction.... It is time to correct our system of correction," said Romney, speaking at
Souza-Baranowski prison, where Geoghan, an inmate, was murdered, allegedly by another inmate.
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The Boston Herald
Thursday, July 1, 2004
A Boston Herald editorial
Transportation bill loaded with pork
If there was a prize for legislative excess, it would go to the authors of the Senate transportation bond bill.
Page after mind-numbing page of the draft spending plan is bursting with pork projects, more politely known as "earmarks".
And to make matters worse, Sen. Mark Montigny (D-New Bedford) attached major changes in state policy on seat belt and cellphone use to a proposal that's supposed to be concerned with funding the state's transportation priorities.
First on earmarks, are we to understand that adding "Winthrop" to Route 145 signs (which now only note access to Chelsea and Bennington Street) is a big priority? Or that the Winthrop Commuter Ferry Project ought to receive $2.7 million?
It's no coincidence that Senate President Robert Travaglini represents Winthrop, but he's far from the only one with his hand in this cookie jar.
Some $500,000 is earmarked for traffic signals at an intersection in Framingham, $350,000 for a pedestrian and traffic signal in Cambridge and $50,000 to clean catch basins in Mendon. The list of projects goes on and on, contributing to a whopping price tag of $2.5 billion, over three years, more than double the spending proposed by Gov. Mitt Romney.
But remember this is Beacon Hill, where nothing is as it seems. To lawmakers, this is not "real" money, it's only the authorization to spend real money - a difference not emphasized in the press releases they send to local papers touting their "bring home the bacon" prowess.
The state abides by a borrowing cap of $1.25 billion a year. That there are some $9 billion in authorized projects already approved by the Legislature proves that the bond bill is not a serious attempt at apportioning the transportation funding pie.
It gets worse. Montigny added funding for the Fall River/New Bedford commuter rail line, a favorite boondoggle. And he threw in some social engineering for good measure.
Primary seat belt law enforcement - a policy decided twice by voters at the ballot box - should not be part of a spending bill. And the hand-held cellphone usage ban is just plain silly. As Transportation Secretary Dan Grabauskas says, "A cup of hot coffee is more dangerous" as a potential distraction.
We're told a transportation reform bill is moving on a separate track. Let's hope so because other than directing Grabauskas to tell the Turnpike Authority to take billboards down in East Boston, there's not a hint of transportation reform in the bond bill, either. The Turnpike doesn't have to listen to the Romney administration, or anyone else, until the Legislature acts on languishing reorganization plans excised from the budget. Ah, but what's one wasteful line of rhetoric in a bond bill filled with waste.
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The Boston Globe
Friday, July 2, 2004
State paid $12.7m in unused sick time
By Matt Carroll, Globe Staff
The state paid $12.7 million last year for unused sick time to nearly 4,900 retiring employees, a practice taxpayer groups have criticized in Boston and other municipalities because of the burden the payments place on local budgets.
The payout was more than double the amount from 2002 because of early retirement incentives that quadrupled the number of departures.
The amount paid by the state to each retiree averaged $2,600. But the checks mailed last year tell only part of the story. State employees who took early retirement will be paid for unused sick time over three years, so only one-third of their payment showed up on the state's books last year.
Employees who took regular retirement were paid all their unused sick time in one payment. The state was unable to say how many workers took early retirement last year or how much individuals were paid.
The practice, buybacks of unused sick time that are banked over decades, is rare in the private sector, which commonly has a use-it-or-lose-it provision for sick days each year.
The amount paid by the state for sick time buybacks last year is similar to the amount the city of Boston paid out for them last year -- $12.6 million. But only 904 retirees shared the city buyout -- less than one-fifth the state retiree total. In Boston, 59 retirees collected more than $50,000 each, including two six-figure recipients.
State employees can collect only 20 percent of the value of their unused sick time, compared with Boston retirees, who are paid for all their unused sick days. The pay is calculated at the salary they were paid when they retired. In Boston, the issue is not on the table with unions with either tentative contracts or contracts that are still being negotiated, spokesmen have said recently.
The practice of paying sick-time buybacks is widespread throughout the state. A Globe analysis in April found that 159 cities and towns in Greater Boston paid out at least $29.4 million in buybacks.
In 2002, the state paid $6.1 million to 1,255 retirees. The number of retirees nearly quadrupled last year because of incentives offered in an early retirement plan. Nicole St. Peter, a spokeswoman for Governor Mitt Romney, said the policy is under review by the Executive Office for Administration and Finance.
The practice of paying buybacks has been criticized in some communities by fiscal watchdogs and defended by unions. Critics complain that the buybacks are an outdated practice for rewarding employees who simply show up for work and does little to discourage absenteeism.
"This is a practice that has outlived its purpose, if it ever had one," said Michael J.
Widmer, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, a nonprofit funded by the business community. He said sick time should be used for people who are sick, not as a paid benefit. The practice undercuts the public's faith in public employees, he said.
But union members, and some managers, said the buybacks help curb absenteeism. They also say it is unfair to single out one benefit in the complicated packages that govern how employees are paid, especially when it is not known what employees might have given up to win that benefit.
The Boston Globe
Wednesday, June 30, 2004
Lawyers sue to repeal law on anniversary fees
By Jonathan Saltzman, Globe Staff
Accusing the Romney administration of treating the trial courts as a "revenue center" for the government, two groups of lawyers are suing the state to repeal a controversial law that requires civil plaintiffs to pay anniversary fees of $90 to $120 to keep their cases alive.
The state approved the fees in the fiscal 2004 budget after Governor Mitt Romney said it would help unclog the judicial system and generate millions of dollars a year for the courts.
But the lawsuit filed Monday by the Massachusetts Bar Association and the Massachusetts Academy of Trial Attorneys contends that the law violates the state constitution and the Magna
Carta, the 1215 charter considered the foundation of English constitutional liberty.
"Assessing these so-called anniversary fees upon litigants obligates them to purchase justice and to pay ever higher prices as justice is longer delayed," said the lawsuit. The practice, it adds, "treats the judiciary as a revenue center," violating principles of unfettered access to the courts.
The 18,000-member bar association voted in January to file a suit challenging the law but waited to see if the Legislature would repeal it.
A bill that would have abolished the fees sailed through the House and Senate recently, but Romney reinstated the fees in an amendment he sent back to the Legislature last Friday.
In a message to lawmakers, Romney said the fees that went into effect Oct. 1 had increased court revenue and, among other things, created a "disincentive for plaintiffs' counsel to allow their cases to languish without seeking trial or disposition."
So far, the fees have generated about $6 million for the trial courts, according to Romney spokeswoman Nicole St. Peter.
The president of the bar association, Richard C. Van Nostrand of Worcester, said yesterday that Romney's comment was "built on the false premise that there are all these civil cases sitting around, with the attorneys for plaintiffs twiddling their thumbs, waiting intentionally, and not doing anything."
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The Boston Herald
Thursday, July 1, 2004
Judges slap AG over case on Microsoft
By Greg Gatlin
A federal appeals court handed a major victory to Microsoft Corp. yesterday and a big defeat to Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly by unanimously upholding the landmark settlement of the U.S. government's antitrust case against the software giant.
Calling for tougher restrictions on Microsoft, Reilly was the lone holdout after the Justice Department and other states agreed to settle 1998 charges that the software maker used monopolistic practices.
But yesterday, in a 6-0 ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia rejected Massachusetts' call for stronger sanctions, backing a lower court's approval of the settlement agreement with unusually exuberant language.
"We say, Well done!" Chief Judge Douglas Ginsberg wrote, in a lengthy decision.
Ginsberg said the settlement was in the public interest, and that the district court addressed the heart of the anticompetitive problem Microsoft had created, "without intruding itself into the design and engineering of the Windows operating system."
Reilly called the decision "terrible news for consumers and terrible news for competition."
"I'm disappointed," Reilly said. "Now Microsoft has been designated a protected monopolist. The truth is coming out that our antitrust laws are not effective in protecting consumers."
Reilly was noncommittal on whether he'll appeal further.
"We'll review it and decide what to do," he said. "I read enough to see I didn't like it, but I'll study it over the weekend, and we'll review what options we have."
As of the end of 2002, Reilly's office had spent more than $2 million on the litigation, passing up millions in potential settlement money. Most recently, West Virginia agreed to drop its case for about $20 million in vouchers for hardware and software.
Experts say the case appears over for practical purposes.
"Momentum is not with the commonwealth of Massachusetts," said Thane Scott, head of antitrust practices at Palmer & Dodge
LLP.
He said the Supreme Court would likely give even more deference to the district court's ruling, now that the appeals court has sided with it.
The settlement permits computer makers to hide Microsoft's built-in Web browser software so that consumers can more seamlessly use software from the Redmond, Wash., company's rivals.
Reilly had called for Microsoft to remove parts of its software from the Windows operating system. But the appeals court said that could hurt consumers by leading to a confusing world with different versions of Windows.
The court also rebuffed a plan by Massachusetts to require Microsoft to reveal the blueprints for its Web browser, saying such a move might help the company's rivals but not help competition flourish.
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