CLT
UPDATE
Wednesday, July 27, 2005
It's time to relax: the Legislature
is gone!
Last week, as one of the great
rituals of democracy in America -- the filling of a Supreme Court
vacancy -- was getting underway, democracy in Massachusetts was
nearly getting mugged....
For years, some Massachusetts Democrats have wanted to raise the
ballot-access hurdles even higher -- so high that they would just
about end citizen initiatives once and for all. Last week they
almost pulled it off....
"Make no mistake about it," said Chip Ford, co-director of
Citizens for Limited Taxation, which has conducted several
initiative campaigns over the years. "This is war."
He wasn't the only one who thought so. Across the political
spectrum, the bill was seen as an underhanded attempt to permanently
cripple the public's right to self-government. In addition to CLT,
it was condemned by Common Cause, the Massachusetts Family
Institute, and the Massachusetts Public Interest Research Group, by
the state's Republican governor, Mitt Romney, and by its Democratic
secretary of state, William Galvin....
In Massachusetts last week, that safeguard almost came to an end.
Luckily, the plot was exposed. But it's only a matter of time before
the plotters try again.
The Boston Globe
Sunday, July 24, 2005
An antidemocratic plot
By Jeff Jacoby
Barbara Anderson's CLT Commentary
The Legislature has left for the summer. Whether you
consider this a good thing or a bad thing depends on whether you have
legislation pending, or wish they'd do something about repeat drunk
driving offenders whose licenses have been revoked. But since they won't
do much about that anyhow, it's probably just as well they are gone. CLT
issues are better addressed in the fall, when more people are paying
attention.
The corporate loophole bill that contains the retroactive capital gains
tax and the "someday" income tax rollback is in conference committee.
The bill can come out for a final vote even with the Legislature gone,
so may reach the Governor's desk this summer. If he changes the capital
gains language (and we hope he will, to make the rate increase apply to
2003 not 2002), they would have to return to override his veto, since it
requires a rollcall vote, or wait til fall. However, we see no harm in
passing the "slow boat to China" income tax rollback, since we will have
a chance at the September 27 hearing to urge faster action.
After the death of the "kill the petition process" bill, we have more
good news. On July 14th, the House adopted a resolution drafted by Rep.
Brad Jones "relative to protecting private property rights." Both a
statute and a constitutional amendment to give Massachusetts some
protection from the eminent domain decision have been filed. As of last
week they had 65 legislators signed on to the statute as co-sponsors.
This could be doable this fall.
In today's Boston Herald there is a slightly cut version of the letter I
sent in response to a column on long term care, in which Dan Thomasson
chided those who divest themselves of assets before they go into a
nursing home. Here is the version I sent in.
Letter to the Editor:
I used to agree with Dan Thomasson (Baby boom sure
to bomb long-term care, July 24), that people should not divest
themselves of their estate in order to get Medicaid to pay for their
nursing home care. My mother was a self-payer in Pennsylvania because
it seemed the honest way to use money from the sale of her house.
But if it were today, in Massachusetts, we would get the money stashed
away before she needed care. It's one thing to be independent, and
another to be taken advantage of and penalized for one's honesty.
Self-paying patients here, along with their bills, are charged a daily
"user fee" that Medicaid patients don't pay. Of course it's not a real
user fee because the self-payer doesn't get any benefit that the
Medicaid patients doesn't get - so it's really a tax on paying one's
own way. Until this tax is repealed, no one should blame families for
hiding assets.
With the Legislature gone, many reporters are
focusing on investigations of interesting issues. I'm getting media
calls about the upcoming anniversary of Proposition 2½, and the problems
cities and towns are having with health insurance and pension costs.
Sorry Chip Ford isn't here to share them with you, but watch your local
papers.
And if you must buy something this summer, don't forget there'll be a
sales tax holiday on August 13 and 14; might be worth waiting for. No
matter how small the purchase, it feels good to get out of paying a tax.
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Barbara Anderson |
The Boston Globe
Sunday, July 24, 2005
An antidemocratic plot
By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist
Last week, as one of the great rituals of democracy in America -- the
filling of a Supreme Court vacancy -- was getting underway, democracy in
Massachusetts was nearly getting mugged.
Massachusetts is one of 24 states in which voters can approve or reject
laws at the polls, a power they have had since the initiative and
referendum were added to the state Constitution in 1918. It is a power
they have tended to exercise sparingly -- from 1990 to 2004, for
example, only 14 ballot initiatives became law -- an average of less
than one a year.
Why so few? In part because ballot measures are generally a last resort,
something aggrieved citizens turn to only after lawmakers repeatedly
ignore their pleas or the governor brushes them off or the bureaucracy
refuses to budge or the hired lobbyists shoot down every attempt at
reform.
But in part as well because lawmakers make it so difficult for proposed
laws to reach the ballot. They require citizen petitions to be signed by
tens of thousands of registered voters, allow proponents only a narrow
window of time in which to collect those signatures, then make them get
each signature verified by the clerk of the city or town in which the
signer lives. They restrict the topics that a ballot question may
address. They impose such stringent standards that a single stray mark
on a petition -- a food stain, a highlighting -- can invalidate every
signature on the page.
"Many legislators see public policy as their province and theirs alone,"
says Pam Wilmot of Common Cause, which promotes honest and accountable
government. "They get offended when voters want to have a say. Inside
the State House there is fairly widespread resentment toward initiatives
-- if not outright hostility."
For years, some Massachusetts Democrats have wanted to raise the
ballot-access hurdles even higher -- so high that they would just about
end citizen initiatives once and for all. Last week they almost pulled
it off.
By a 12-1 vote, the Legislature's Election Laws Committee reported out a
bill that would have banned ballot campaigners from paying
petition-circulators by the signature and required circulators to swear
that each name was signed in their presence and by the voter named --
poison pills, given the number of signatures needed and the short time
in which to assemble them. Worse yet, the bill would have obligated the
secretary of state to post signers' names and addresses on the Internet
-- the better for opponents to browbeat or deceive them into recanting
their support.
"Make no mistake about it," said Chip Ford, co-director of
Citizens for Limited Taxation, which has conducted several
initiative campaigns over the years. "This is war."
He wasn't the only one who thought so. Across the political spectrum,
the bill was seen as an underhanded attempt to permanently cripple the
public's right to self-government. In addition to CLT, it was condemned
by Common Cause, the Massachusetts Family Institute, and the
Massachusetts Public Interest Research Group, by the state's Republican
governor, Mitt Romney, and by its Democratic secretary of state, William
Galvin.
Such ideological diversity reflects the fact that the power to adopt or
repeal laws by ballot is neither liberal nor conservative. It is
democratic. It can be used to lower taxes or raise them, to ban racial
preferences or impose them, to endorse the death penalty or oppose it.
Massachusetts voters understand that in a system rigged to make
legislators all but untouchable, the initiative and referendum are a
vital check and balance. Legislators understand it too. That is why they
want so badly to eviscerate them.
Sad to say, the initiative process in the Bay State may be nearly dead
anyway. It has become almost routine for the Massachusetts Legislature
to countermand voter-approved laws it dislikes, such as the tax
deduction for charitable donations, the "Clean Elections"
campaign-finance measure, or the rollback of the income tax rate to 5
percent. All three were enacted by decisive majorities, but lawmakers
treated them as suggestions they were free to disregard. In two other
cases, lawmakers derailed proposed amendments that were headed for the
ballot by refusing to follow the procedures spelled out in the state
Constitution.
"For 20 years I preached to the students of Princeton that the
referendum ... was bosh," said Woodrow Wilson, a one-time political
science professor. "I have since investigated and I want to apologize to
those students." Far from being "bosh," he had come to realize, the
right to let voters decide the fate of a law is the "safeguard of
politics." In Massachusetts last week, that safeguard almost came to an
end. Luckily, the plot was exposed. But it's only a matter of time
before the plotters try again.
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