CLT UPDATE
Monday, March 5, 2007
New gov's "no gimmicks" budget
excite$ Menino
The $950 million in "savings and efficiencies" that
Governor Deval Patrick touted in his budget address this week is
actually a compilation of corporate tax increases, hoped-for
improvements in tax collection and fraud detection, lower spending
increases than originally anticipated to keep up with inflation, and
smaller surgical budget cuts in dozens of state programs and subsidies.
To balance his budget, the new governor also tapped $225 million in
one-time revenue by eliminating the state's annual $100 million payment
to its rainy-day fund, drawing $75 million in interest from that fund,
and taking $50 million from the state's tobacco fund.
"These are not gimmicks, but they're dubious policy initiatives," said
Michael Widmer, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, who
served on Patrick's transition team. "Using nonrecurring revenues or
savings to close the gap, it means you're starting [the next year] with
a spending base that is higher than your revenues. It delays the day of
reckoning." ...
The state's share of the Medicaid program, which covers healthcare for
the poor and disabled, is the source of some of the biggest savings --
$179 million -- but some reductions in promised funding to hospitals and
nursing homes could run into opposition in the Legislature....
Patrick said his budget contained no gimmicks, but some observers and
political foes said they at least found some creative budgeting.
"The difference between his claims and the actual content of the budget
is extreme," alleged Brian Dodge, executive director of the
Massachusetts Republican Party.
Dodge pointed to state aid for local schools, an account Patrick
increased by $200 million over this year.
Under a formula contained in the current year's budget, however, local
education aid was supposed to increase next year by $255 million. Not
only did Patrick not meet the funding target, he counted the $55 million
as part of his savings, Dodge contended.
"If we were talking about a Governor Romney budget," he said, "the
Legislature would be screaming about a $55 million cut."
Widmer also questioned whether the administration will be able to
squeeze $179 million in savings out of Medicaid. "That is very
aggressive. Finding an additional $179 million will be very difficult. "
Aides to Patrick said the savings would come from cutting rate increases
for nursing homes by about $24 million and delaying about $34 million in
increased payments to hospitals promised under the universal healthcare
law....
"This clearly is not a transparent budget," said Senate minority leader
Richard R. Tisei of Wakefield. "What he did was just roll a whole bunch
of line items into each other....
"It is a much less detailed budget than I've ever seen in the 22 years
I've been in the building. Rather than providing more information, it
provides less. That runs contrary to what the governor has pledged about
opening up the process and letting people see what's inside."
The Boston Globe
Thursday, March 1, 2007
Budget relies on one-time fixes
Patrick looks to tap tobacco, rainy-day funds
Patrick yesterday ducked the question of whether it is
balanced by jacking up taxes on businesses. He is, he says, closing corporate
"loopholes." He told me he wasn't inclined to debate what constitutes a tax
hike.
"Anyone whose tax bill goes up feels like it's an increase," Patrick said
yesterday, a few hours after the speech.
The Boston Globe
Thursday, March 1, 2007
A numbers roadshow
By Adrian Walker
At least twice yesterday as he unveiled his unorthodox $26.7
billion budget, Governor Patrick made an appeal to reason. "I think we have got
to stop worrying about the emotional arguments and concentrate on the facts," he
said....
Patrick has said repeatedly that he doesn't want his budget to be dead on
arrival. His landslide victory was a mandate for reform. Perhaps the voters who
elected him ought to plan a little pushback of their own.
A Boston Globe editorial
Thursday, March 1, 2007
Patrick picks his fights
The politics of hope helped Governor Deval Patrick win
election, but hope alone won't win support for his first budget....
The new governor is still trying to charm and cajole his audience, whether he is
addressing average voters or the Boston power elite....
It makes you wonder. Does Patrick understand the entrenched power of the
political and corporate establishment and what it takes to shake it?
The land of the status quo is cold, stubborn, and treacherous. It is inhabited
by business executives who don't want to give up tax breaks and legislators who
don't want to give up anything. They understand political hardball, not the
politics of hope.
The Boston Globe
Thursday, March 1, 2007
Hope isn't a strategy
By Joan Vennochi
The good news is for the first time in a very long time, the
state’s major business groups are working together to protect the interests of
employers -- and yes, their employees -- from the job-killing corporate tax
initiatives being pressed by Gov. Deval Patrick. But working together apparently
does not translate to speaking with one voice. It must if this nascent coalition
will be effective in convincing Patrick he’s dead wrong on taxes....
Employers are fighting for their future. They better start acting -- and talking
-- like it.
A Boston Herald editorial
Friday, March 2, 2007
One voice needed to fight tax hike
It is one of the items Governor Deval Patrick has trumpeted
repeatedly while unveiling his budget for next year: 250 new police officers to
walk the beat in Massachusetts cities and towns.
But a closer examination of Patrick's plan reveals that the governor would pay
for the initiative, in large part, by stripping money from a popular police
grant program that sends money to local departments.
According to the administration, the money to hire the additional officers would
come from a new $30 million account for local police. However, $20 million of
that money would be taken from the police grant program, which is traditionally
distributed to local police by the Legislature. And some of it is already used
for hiring police officers, raising questions about whether the Patrick plan
would actually add the number of officers that he asserts....
The community policing plan is a key initiative for Patrick, who pledged during
the campaign to put 1,000 new officers on the street....
"I didn't even anticipate the reaction this would get," said DeLeo , a Winthrop
Democrat. "It's the biggest concern I've heard. Maybe the plan will work better,
but on its face I see the problem. We're taking one program off the books and
putting in another one. I have to be concerned whether the new one is better for
the cities and towns than the old one."
The Boston Globe
Friday, March 2, 2007
Patrick's police funding plan hit
Questions raised on officer hiring goal
Putting pressure on the Legislature to act, Mayor Thomas M.
Menino today will introduce a proposal to reduce Boston's property taxes $200 a
year for the average homeowner if the Legislature gives the city the ability to
impose a 1 percent meals tax and a tax on telecommunications companies....
If Boston can apply the new revenue to property taxes, it would be the first
time since Proposition 2½, which limits the increase in a community's property
tax revenue to 2.5 percent a year plus revenue from new construction, was
approved in 1980 that the city would not raise property taxes the annual
maximum, the city official said.
The Boston Globe
Friday, March 2, 2007
Mayor to offer tax tradeoff
Would cut property bills
if city can impose meal and telecom levies
By Steve Bailey
Without supporting local option meals taxes or a
telecommunications tax, we’d point out that there is one technically legitimate
way that Boston property taxes could be cut by the amount of the new proposed
taxing powers. The money would have to be permanently removed from the
Proposition 2½ allowed revenues....
So we need to know if this is a one-time or temporary tax cut that homeowners
will have to make up later, after the local option taxes are securely in place,
or if it is a permanent decrease in the amount to be levied by the city.
CLT News Release
Friday, March 2, 2007
Menino
Local Option/Tax Cut:
Permanent, or temporary?
So Mayor Tom Menino has a deal to offer to Beacon Hill
lawmakers and city taxpayers.
“If we are given the power to close the telecom loophole and to introduce a 1
percent meals tax, then I will reduce residential property taxes next year,”
Menino said yesterday in a speech to the 75th annual meeting of the Boston
Municipal Research Bureau.
Notice he said next year and he didn’t say by how much (even if an
administration leak to the Boston Globe put the figure at $200 for the average
taxpayer). So that would be one year -- count ’em one -- in exchange for a
lifetime of telecom taxes and what Menino called the Hamburger Tax. (Sorry,
Mayor, we dubbed it the Cheeseburger Tax and we’re sticking to it.)
What kind of deal is that!
A Boston Herald editorial
Saturday, March 3, 2007
Let’s just say no to Menino’s ‘deal’
Mumbles Menino is so desperate to grab some of that new meals
tax money, he’s starting to sound like Popeye’s old friend Wimpy....
In short, Mumbles will gladly give you a tax cut Tuesday for an 18-cent
hamburger tax today.
It’s a scam of course. Gov. Coupe Deval’s budget is so bogus he’s lucky nobody
called the bunco squad. On Thursday, the legislative leadership unleashed its
own moonbats to put a rocket in his pocket. Rep. Alice Wolf of the People’s
Republic of Cambridge blistered Deval’s budget chief for the governor’s proposal
to hose, among so many others, the MWRA ratepayers. Ratepayers? Alice Wolf? Who
knew she cared?
Then Rep. David Linsky of Natick, who pays his own income taxes only when he
feels like it, asked how the Mumbles’ meals (and hotel) tax would help his town
of Sherborn, considering that Sherborn has exactly one restaurant (a coffee
shop), and no hotels....
As for Deval’s alleged property-tax relief, Linsky said it wouldn’t mean much in
a town like Sherborn, where the average property-tax bill is $12,000. The
“circuit-breaker,” in other words, is a typical liberal shell game, tax relief
for people who don’t pay taxes, a sop to “working families” who don’t work.
But don’t tell Mumbles. Dammit, he needs that hamburger tax. Since revaluation,
he’s squeezing an extra $69 million out of the city’s homeowners. And it’s just
not enough, not when you have to keep paying off all the greedy municipal unions
that keep rolling Mumbles, one after another.
The Boston Herald
Sunday, March 4, 2007
Burgermeister of Bosh-thin
By Howie Carr
To get past this appropriate cynicism, Governor Patrick and
other proponents should place their new local option taxes in a constitutional
amendment that would limit total taxes, create a taxpayers' bill of rights as
Colorado has, and protect Proposition 2½.
Before they take this amendment to the voters, politicians should show respect
for them by restoring the income tax rate to 5 percent as promised and showing a
genuine proposal for lowering our property taxes.
The Boston Globe
Sunday, March 4, 2007
Letter to the editor: The power to tax
By Barbara Anderson
Citizens for Limited Taxation
Chip Ford's CLT Commentary
"Anyone whose tax bill goes up feels like it's
an increase."
-- Gov. Deval Patrick
February 28, 2007
That observation by the governor is an egregious case
of stating the obvious. But this is Deval Patrick, who as a
candidate promised "property tax relief," and as governor has instead
proposed new local taxes with no connection to any relief. This is
a governor who has declared his to be a "budget without gimmicks" that's
chock full of gimmicks, that's balanced only with more taxes and a raid
on the state's "rainy day" fund and tobacco settlement money.
His "budget without gimmicks" includes an alleged
$200 million increase in aid for local schools, which was supposed to be
increased next year anyway, by $255 million. At the same time, he
calls the $55 million difference a savings.
His "budget without gimmicks" includes money to hire
250 new police officers, down from his campaign promise to add another
thousand. While declaring this another campaign promise fulfilled
(like his "property tax relief"), he's just shuffling money and police
around -- shifting $20 million from an existing $30 million police grant
program for local departments to hiring the 250 new officers, for which
some of those grants were already being used.
Boston Mayor Tom Menino is salivating over Patrick's
proposed new local taxes. He's promising property tax reduction in
exchange for his long-sought power to impose a city meals tax, and to
tax telecommunications assets. Never mind that a meals tax -- the
"Cheeseburger Tax" -- will cost anyone eating in Boston more, and that a
new tax on telecommunications will only be passed on to subscribing
customers: His property tax reduction is vague and open-ended.
It sounds like a Deval Patrick campaign promise: vacuous and open
for later interpretation, after it's too late.
CLT immediately issued a news advisory on Friday
morning -- "Menino
Local Option/Tax Cut: Permanent, or temporary?" -- challenging the
mayor's intent and meaning, challenging the media to uncover and report
the specifics this time. As with most if not all of candidate
Deval Patrick's slick campaign promises, "The Devil is in the details."
 |
|
Chip Ford |
The Boston Globe
Thursday, March 1, 2007
Budget relies on one-time fixes
Patrick looks to tap tobacco, rainy-day funds
By Lisa Wangsness and Alice Dembner
The $950 million in "savings and efficiencies" that Governor Deval
Patrick touted in his budget address this week is actually a compilation
of corporate tax increases, hoped-for improvements in tax collection and
fraud detection, lower spending increases than originally anticipated to
keep up with inflation, and smaller surgical budget cuts in dozens of
state programs and subsidies.
To balance his budget, the new governor also tapped $225 million in
one-time revenue by eliminating the state's annual $100 million payment
to its rainy-day fund, drawing $75 million in interest from that fund,
and taking $50 million from the state's tobacco fund.
"These are not gimmicks, but they're dubious policy initiatives," said
Michael Widmer, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, who
served on Patrick's transition team. "Using nonrecurring revenues or
savings to close the gap, it means you're starting [the next year] with
a spending base that is higher than your revenues. It delays the day of
reckoning."
Patrick also proposed the elimination of $86 million in "earmarks" --
money set aside by the Legislature for a specific purpose -- including
about $26 million in payments to hospitals and $22 million in small
tourism programs scattered across the state.
The state's share of the Medicaid program, which covers healthcare for
the poor and disabled, is the source of some of the biggest savings --
$179 million -- but some reductions in promised funding to hospitals and
nursing homes could run into opposition in the Legislature. The budget,
however, does not include any cuts in benefits for Medicaid's
approximately 1 million members.
Patrick turned to one-time infusions and other revenue increases to mend
a $1.2 billion gap between the revenue the state expects to pull in next
year and what it would cost to provide the same services, assuming low
inflation. The governor also had to find room to pay for some of the
initiatives he proposed during the campaign, including more full-day
kindergartens, an expansion of the extended school day program,
increased public health spending, and strengthened community policing.
"This is a framework, we believe, and creates a foundation for lasting
and meaningful reform and ways to strengthen our economy, our
communities, and our government," the governor told reporters at a
midday briefing yesterday.
Patrick said his budget contained no gimmicks, but some observers and
political foes said they at least found some creative budgeting.
"The difference between his claims and the actual content of the budget
is extreme," alleged Brian Dodge, executive director of the
Massachusetts Republican Party.
Dodge pointed to state aid for local schools, an account Patrick
increased by $200 million over this year.
Under a formula contained in the current year's budget, however, local
education aid was supposed to increase next year by $255 million. Not
only did Patrick not meet the funding target, he counted the $55 million
as part of his savings, Dodge contended.
"If we were talking about a Governor Romney budget," he said, "the
Legislature would be screaming about a $55 million cut."
Widmer also questioned whether the administration will be able to
squeeze $179 million in savings out of Medicaid. "That is very
aggressive. Finding an additional $179 million will be very difficult. "
Aides to Patrick said the savings would come from cutting rate increases
for nursing homes by about $24 million and delaying about $34 million in
increased payments to hospitals promised under the universal healthcare
law.
Typically, each dollar in state spending is matched by the federal
government to make up the program's $8.1 billion budget.
Dr. JudyAnn Bigby, secretary of health and human services, said the
administration sought to keep Medicaid spending tight to allow full
funding of the state's landmark universal health insurance program.
The budget for healthcare includes $472 million in subsidies to help
low-income residents get health insurance, as well as $354 million for
free care provided by hospitals and community health centers to the
uninsured. And it would allow the administration to shift money between
the two accounts if enrollment in new subsidized plans is slower or more
rapid than expected.
Another $41 million in anticipated savings would come from reducing
fraud and $35 million from cutting the number of days that new or
renewing Medicaid members have to prove their eligibility. In addition,
the budget includes $9 million in anticipated nursing home savings by
more quickly discharging patients who are ready to go home.
Patrick had pledged to make the budget simple to understand, but several
observers found the document more difficult to navigate than previous
ones. The budget was available online, and in some spending categories,
year-to-year comparisons were easy to see. But other spending categories
were blended together, making comparisons difficult.
"This clearly is not a transparent budget," said Senate minority leader
Richard R. Tisei of Wakefield. "What he did was just roll a whole bunch
of line items into each other. There's no way to find out what happened
to a particular program. If you're concerned about human services
programs, for example, I guess you're supposed to take his word for it
that within a big lump of money the funds will be directed to the
populations that need it.
"It is a much less detailed budget than I've ever seen in the 22 years
I've been in the building. Rather than providing more information, it
provides less. That runs contrary to what the governor has pledged about
opening up the process and letting people see what's inside."
Patrick began the day yesterday by pitching his budget to the Greater
Boston Chamber of Commerce, which has sharply criticized the governor's
plan to raise an additional $295 million by changing corporate tax law.
Though the more than 500 people in the audience greeted Patrick with a
long standing ovation, his pitch for closing the so-called corporate tax
loopholes appeared to meet with a chilly reception.
Patrick told the business leaders that distributing the tax burden more
evenly was a matter of "basic fairness." He added that he, too, used
accountants and lawyers to exploit loopholes in the tax code when he was
a corporate executive. And he said other states competing successfully
with Massachusetts had already closed the same loopholes.
"Indeed, our total tax burden for businesses is among the lowest in the
nation today," Patrick said.
Andrea Estes of the Globe staff contributed to this report.
The Boston Globe
Thursday, March 1, 2007
A numbers roadshow
By Adrian Walker, Globe Columnist
The Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce breakfast yesterday figured to be
a skeptical audience for Governor Deval Patrick's first budget, and it
was. He got a standing ovation when he took the stage and far more
restrained applause when he left it.
The breakfast was one of the first stops in the selling of the budget.
After a month in his office working on -- candidly, learning -- the
state budget, he looked like a kid sprung from detention. He stood his
ground easily under questioning after his speech.
"I know there are a lot of people in that room who support what I want
but don't dare say so," Patrick said by phone a few hours later. We'll
see whether that's an optimistic assessment.
His speech yesterday was a rehash of the one he gave on statewide
television the night before. In essence, hundreds of programs get
trimmed a little, or grow by less than in the past, to address a handful
of needs.
Modest would be a fair way to describe it. There is more money for local
aid, much of it earmarked for education. It would put a few more police
officers on the street and create more slots for kindergarten students,
a frequent pledge. If it fully funds healthcare reform, as claimed, that
will be its greatest achievement.
Mitt Romney wouldn't have proposed this budget, but -- with the notable
exception of the tax hikes -- he could probably live with it.
This has been sold as a "budget balanced without gimmicks," a statement
whose truth probably depends on how one defines a gimmick. At first
glance, there seems to be less chicanery than usual. But it is also
relies on one-time revenues, leaving the question of how one balances
the next year's budget. Some of its claims, such as taking a step toward
"ending homelessness," are just too vague to even judge.
Patrick yesterday ducked the question of whether it is balanced by
jacking up taxes on businesses. He is, he says, closing corporate
"loopholes." He told me he wasn't inclined to debate what constitutes a
tax hike.
"Anyone whose tax bill goes up feels like it's an increase," Patrick
said yesterday, a few hours after the speech. "But that's what
homeowners have been feeling for years." The budget also resolves the
whopping $1.3 billion deficit left by the Romney administration.
In that context, it was no surprise that there isn't a lot new and
exciting in it. New and exciting is costly. Some of the surprises come
from what's missing: Substance abuse treatment takes a hit, despite
candidate Patrick's calls for treatment on demand, and the state
university system is basically level-funded, despite a lot of talk about
building a world-class educational system.
If past practice holds, now that the budget has been submitted, it
figures to be ripped apart.
Historically, the Legislature and the governor are adversaries in the
budget process, and this will be no exception, never mind that the state
has a Democratic governor and a Democrat-controlled Legislature.
"We are asking the Legislature to do things differently, and they won't
just because a Democrat asks them to," Patrick said. "I don't think we
get a pass just because I'm a Democrat."
That he can count on, and rightly so. Passing the budget is the most
important thing the Legislature does, and never in memory have the
legislators been inclined to defer to the governor. The governor's
budget proposal is a starting point, period.
As one State House veteran put it yesterday, "I would expect it will go
through the same scrutiny and review and pushing and pulling as any
Republican governor's budget."
Most of the numbers in the budget will change between now and July.
Patrick's mission, really, is to frame the debate, to preserve the ideas
in it, if not the details. That isn't easy to do. This is where the
rhetoric of the campaign runs headlong into reality, and everyone in the
room yesterday seemed to know it.
The Boston Globe
Thursday, March 1, 2007
A Boston Globe editorial
Patrick picks his fights
At least twice yesterday as he unveiled his unorthodox $26.7 billion
budget, Governor Patrick made an appeal to reason. "I think we have got
to stop worrying about the emotional arguments and concentrate on the
facts," he said.
Perhaps. But the facts are sobering, and emotions cannot be denied in
the very human business of politics.
The facts: Patrick is facing a $1.3 billion deficit, a flat economy,
stagnant population, and a wary business community. His address before
an overflow crowd at the Chamber of Commerce breakfast yesterday morning
was received politely, rarely interrupted by applause.
Patrick's budget relies on $295 million in revenues -- $500 million
annualized -- from closing business loopholes, a proposal that has met
with predictable claims that it will harm the business climate. But the
fact is that Massachusetts ranks near the bottom among the states in its
overall corporate tax burden. If low taxes were the only or even the
primary determinant of business success, Massachusetts ought to be
booming.
The bigger question for business leaders is how they propose to pay for
the worthy government initiatives they desire: investments in a highly
educated and trained workforce; lowered housing and healthcare costs;
property tax relief; a speedier regulatory process; and a gridlock-free
commute. These benefits cost money. As Patrick has said, every line item
in the budget has a real person behind it, and that goes for business
executives as much as for parents of disabled children.
Now for the emotions. Patrick's budget squeezes out almost a billion
dollars in savings. This includes "efficiencies" but also real cuts in
programs, overtime, and administration. He shortchanges higher education
(including financial aid), substance abuse programs, certain school
districts, and nursing homes. The corporations aren't the only ones
being asked to help close the gap.
The document also collapses hundreds of individual line items in
education, the courts, and human services into larger single accounts
that his agency commissioners will be expected to manage. "I think this
is a worthy reform," Patrick said: "Get an executive that is interested
in governing and give them the latitude to do that." The elimination of
special-interest line items is long overdue, especially in the courts,
where practically every clerk and doorman has his own earmark. But it
strikes directly at the heart of legislative prerogative -- a tradition
House and Senate members are likely to feel strongly about
relinquishing. The governor agreed he expects some "pushback" on that
one.
Patrick has said repeatedly that he doesn't want his budget to be dead
on arrival. His landslide victory was a mandate for reform. Perhaps the
voters who elected him ought to plan a little pushback of their own.
The Boston Globe
Thursday, March 1, 2007
Hope isn't a strategy
By Joan Vennochi
The politics of hope helped Governor Deval Patrick win election, but
hope alone won't win support for his first budget.
The governor needs a sharp, tough political strategy to sell his $26.7
billion spending plan to Beacon Hill. So far, he doesn't have one.
How is the Patrick team going to convince Senate President Robert
Travaglini and House Speaker Salvatore DiMasi to embrace key parts of
the new administration's budget proposal? "I don't know," replied Joe
Landolfi, spokesman for the executive office of Administration and
Finance, which put the plan together.
On Tuesday night, Patrick delivered a televised budget speech that was
warmly received by a live audience of average citizens in Melrose. Yet
Patrick, the master of grassroots campaigning, did not seize the moment
to rally the same grassroots forces behind his budget proposal.
Finally, a woman in the audience posed this question during the town
hall segment of the program: "How do we develop the support and pressure
on the outside to help you on the inside?" To that, the governor
responded, "Tell somebody this matters.... Talk to legislators. They
need our encouragement... I need your encouragement."
Patrick delivered virtually the same budget speech yesterday morning to
the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce. By the end, it was clear this
crowd is not on board his budget train. Some 800 movers and shakers
welcomed Patrick with a standing ovation. But once he uttered the words
"closing tax loopholes," the packed ballroom at the Park Plaza Hotel got
quiet and stayed that way. The first question from chamber president
Paul Guzzi asked Patrick to reconcile a commitment to job creation with
the "additional cost of doing business" that results from closing said
loopholes.
Companies don't invest in communities solely because of tax codes,
Patrick replied; they are looking for environments that offer affordable
housing, quality education, and assorted factors that make a destination
"interesting and exciting."
Asked afterward for reaction to Patrick's plan, chamber chairman Ralph
C. Martin said, "I've adopted a wait-and-see attitude. As a former
prosecutor, I don't have enough forensic proof to make up my mind one
way or the other." Others in his organization already have. Guzzi put
out a statement when Patrick's loophole-closing proposal was first
aired, which bluntly said, "Imposing business tax increases is wrong for
the people of Massachusetts."
Patrick's staff distributed a handout to the media illustrating the
governor's argument that other states with which Massachusetts competes
have adopted the corporate tax reforms he is proposing. But the business
community has already framed this fight as "tax increases" not "tax
reform" -- and the business community knows how to get what it wants
from Beacon Hill.
What leverage does Patrick have to convince Travaglini and DiMasi to go
along with his definition? From a Beacon Hill perspective, he is an
interloper, not much different from his predecessor, except for party
affiliation. Patrick also lost some precious political capital during
the recent brouhaha over his leased Cadillac and pricey office
redecorating.
The new governor is still trying to charm and cajole his audience,
whether he is addressing average voters or the Boston power elite. In
Melrose, he could have framed his proposal crisply as us-vs.-them,
reformer-vs.-status-quo, and challenged the audience to let Beacon Hill
power brokers know where the people stand -- behind Deval Patrick. He
could have gone to the chamber with a fresh speech, making the
controversial tax policy the one and only issue of the morning, and
challenging the business community to put aside its selfish interests
for the good of the Commonwealth. Instead, he stuck with a warm and
fuzzy campaign approach.
It makes you wonder. Does Patrick understand the entrenched power of the
political and corporate establishment and what it takes to shake it?
The land of the status quo is cold, stubborn, and treacherous. It is
inhabited by business executives who don't want to give up tax breaks
and legislators who don't want to give up anything. They understand
political hardball, not the politics of hope.
The Boston Herald
Friday, March 2, 2007
A Boston Herald editorial
One voice needed to fight tax hike
The good news is for the first time in a very long time, the state’s
major business groups are working together to protect the interests of
employers -- and yes, their employees -- from the job-killing corporate
tax initiatives being pressed by Gov. Deval Patrick. But working
together apparently does not translate to speaking with one voice. It
must if this nascent coalition will be effective in convincing Patrick
he’s dead wrong on taxes.
One recent example of Boston’s all-too insular political relationships
was the verbal bear hug Chamber President Paul Guzzi gave to his
“friend” Robert Haynes at Wednesday’s breakfast meeting. The AFL-CIO
president will spend the next four years fighting tooth and nail against
initiatives like realigning unemployment benefits. A friendly but firm
Guzzi declaration that Massachusetts needs labor to work *with* its
employers, not against them would be far more effective.
But worse than Guzzi’s lovefest with Big Labor was this reaction from
Chamber Chairman Ralph Martin to Patrick’s corporate tax folly, as
reported by Globe columnist Joan Venocchi: “I’ve adopted a wait and see
attitude. As a former prosecutor, I don’t have enough forensic proof to
make up my mind one way or another.”
Martin’s a lawyer not an entrepreneur, but as the public voice of the
Chamber, he needs to put the interests of its entrepreneurial members
first, not his interest in cozying up to the Patrick administration.
Employers are fighting for their future. They better start acting -- and
talking -- like it.
The Boston Globe
Friday, March 2, 2007
Patrick's police funding plan hit
Questions raised on officer hiring goal
By Andrea Estes and Lisa Wangsness
It is one of the items Governor Deval Patrick has trumpeted repeatedly
while unveiling his budget for next year: 250 new police officers to
walk the beat in Massachusetts cities and towns.
But a closer examination of Patrick's plan reveals that the governor
would pay for the initiative, in large part, by stripping money from a
popular police grant program that sends money to local departments.
According to the administration, the money to hire the additional
officers would come from a new $30 million account for local police.
However, $20 million of that money would be taken from the police grant
program, which is traditionally distributed to local police by the
Legislature. And some of it is already used for hiring police officers,
raising questions about whether the Patrick plan would actually add the
number of officers that he asserts.
Yesterday, key members of the Legislature immediately rebelled, arguing
that this much-publicized portion of Patrick's $26.7 billion budget
would not survive the legislative process. The community policing plan
is a key initiative for Patrick, who pledged during the campaign to put
1,000 new officers on the street.
"The goal is a noble one," said Representative Michael Costello ,
Democrat of Newburyport, cochairman of the Public Safety and Homeland
Security Committee. "But my personal belief is it's dead on arrival if
you strip away the existing earmarks.... It's somewhat of a shell game.
He's trying to get to the 250 mark by reshuffling the deck."
Public Safety Secretary Kevin Burke could not say for sure that
Patrick's initiative would result in a net gain of 250 officers, as
promised. But Burke and other Patrick aides pointed out that the overall
increase of $10 million in next year's budget for local police and that
the money would now be distributed according to need rather than
legislative whim.
"There will be 250 new cops put on the streets of the cities and towns
that need them most," said press secretary Kyle Sullivan .
Currently, the state's community policing plan distributes the grants to
cities and towns, including $3.4 million to Boston, as delineated by the
Legislature each year in the budget. Patrick's plan would distribute the
money according to factors such as crime data, population, and the
number of police officers a community employs.
Costello and other lawmakers said suburbs could end up losing police to
cities with higher crime rates.
"There will be winners and losers," acknowledged Burke, who said the
distribution formula would be devised in consultation with the
Legislature.
Robert DeLeo , chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said the
governor's community policing plan has emerged as the most controversial
part of the budget.
"I didn't even anticipate the reaction this would get," said DeLeo , a
Winthrop Democrat. "It's the biggest concern I've heard. Maybe the plan
will work better, but on its face I see the problem. We're taking one
program off the books and putting in another one. I have to be concerned
whether the new one is better for the cities and towns than the old
one."
The plan was among many issues singled out at the budget's first airing
before a joint session of the House and Senate Ways and Means Committees
yesterday morning, where Administration and Finance Secretary Leslie
Kirwan answered questions from lawmakers for more than three hours.
Many legislators asked pointed questions about Patrick's decision to
consolidate line items throughout the budget and to eliminate $86
million in legislative earmarks.
Patrick has said the changes, which are sprinkled throughout the budget,
would give maximum flexibility to the executive branch to administer
programs in the most effective way possible. But for groups that depend
on government subsidies, the changes have created great financial
uncertainty, lawmakers said.
Senator Dianne Wilkerson, a Boston Democrat, said the governor's
decision to consolidate funding for homeless shelters had "set off a
whole flurry of nervousness and anxiety" among the shelters because they
could not anticipate how much money to expect next year or whether they
would get any at all.
Patrick aides have said the budget would increase funding for the
homeless by nearly 5 percent.
DeLeo said later that lawmakers would consider the governor's proposals,
but he said they may be too drastic to absorb in one year.
The governor's proposal to raise $295 million next year by closing
so-called corporate tax loopholes also seemed to worry a number of
lawmakers, including DeLeo.
"We've been trying to send a message to the business community that
Massachusetts is a good place to come to do business. What I'm concerned
about [is], are we sort of reversing that trend, not putting out the
welcome mat?" he asked Kirwan.
Kirwan said that the governor's proposal was not meant to be
antibusiness, but a move toward sharing responsibility for paying for
the amenities that businesses want as much as individuals: good schools,
safe streets, and solid infrastructure.
And she argued that the corporate tax burden in Massachusetts is among
the lowest in the country.
"We've solved 78 percent of our budget gap before turning to the
corporate loopholes," she added. "So by no means are we proposing a
massive shift onto the business community."
A number of lawmakers also complained that Patrick had only spent an
additional $200 million on local school aid next year, rather than the
$255 million that would have been added under the new school aid formula
the Legislature developed last year in an effort to make it fairer to
suburban districts.
"We want to try to honor the commitments that we all set after we came
through this momentous change in the budget last year," said
Representative Paul J. Loscocco, Republican of Holliston. "We went back
to the cities and towns and said, 'You can rely on us, we've worked out
the details, and this is what you reasonably can start to expect year to
year.'"
Kirwan pointed out that the $200 million increase was among the largest
increases in local school aid since education reform began, but some
lawmakers said it would not help suburban and rural districts enough.
Some lawmakers, however, also had words of praise for portions of the
governor's plan.
Representative Alice K. Wolf, a Democrat from Cambridge, commended the
governor for adding a large increase in public health spending,
including children's immunizations and disease prevention, which she
said would not only keep people healthier but save money on healthcare
costs.
"It is very easy when times are tough to be penny-wise and
pound-foolish," she said.
The Boston Globe
Friday, March 2, 2007
Mayor to offer tax tradeoff
Would cut property bills
if city can impose meal and telecom levies
By Steve Bailey
Putting pressure on the Legislature to act, Mayor Thomas M. Menino today
will introduce a proposal to reduce Boston's property taxes $200 a year
for the average homeowner if the Legislature gives the city the ability
to impose a 1 percent meals tax and a tax on telecommunications
companies.
Two Menino administration officials said yesterday the mayor will
disclose his initiative today at the 75th annual meeting of the Boston
Municipal Research Bureau, an event Menino often uses to unveil major
proposals. Last year, Menino said at the luncheon that he wanted to
build a 1,000-foot tower on the site of a city garage downtown.
Governor Deval Patrick has thrown his support behind giving Boston and
other municipalities the option of both a local meals tax and a telecom
tax as a way to reduce property taxes, a centerpiece of his campaign
last year. Menino has long favored both, but House Speaker Salvatore F.
DiMasi, a Democrat who represents Boston, has consistently opposed the
idea because he doesn't want to increase taxes. Such local-option taxes
need the approval of the Legislature, which has traditionally been loath
to share its taxing authority because it fears fiscal imprudence by
cities and towns.
Menino's proposal, however, will put added pressure on the Legislature
by designating the entire revenue from a meals tax and a telecom tax --
estimated at a total of $35.5 million for Boston -- to go toward cutting
property taxes. Single-family homeowners's property taxes in Boston have
soared 78 percent since 2002 as healthcare and pension costs for
municipal employees have risen. Last year alone, the average
single-family tax bill rose 12 percent to $3,091. A $200 cut would
represent a 6 percent decrease for fiscal 2008, which ends June 30.
A city spokeswoman declined to comment.
Menino has unsuccessfully lobbied Beacon Hill for years to broaden
Boston's revenue base by allowing local-option taxes. The city gets 57
percent of its revenue from property taxes, far more than other big
cities around the country. A report by the Boston Foundation released
this month found that Boston is at a competitive disadvantage compared
to cities such as New York, Chicago, and Atlanta, which have more
diverse income streams that give them greater flexibility to make
investments and support economic development. In the six other cities
cited in the Boston Foundation study, the percentage of revenue coming
from the property tax is less than half that in Boston.
A 1 percent meals tax, as recently proposed by Menino, would raise an
estimated $20 million a year, one city official said. A tax on telecom
companies such as AT&T and Verizon would end a longstanding tax
exemption for property such as telephone poles, lines, and other network
equipment and raise an estimated $15.5 million for Boston and $140
million statewide. The restaurant and telecom industries have both long
opposed both taxes.
If Boston can apply the new revenue to property taxes, it would be the
first time since Proposition 2½, which limits the increase in a
community's property tax revenue to 2.5 percent a year plus revenue from
new construction, was approved in 1980 that the city would not raise
property taxes the annual maximum, the city official said.
Menino is also expected to unveil an initiative today to recruit
national and global companies to Boston. A city official said the new,
nonprofit recruitment effort will be privately funded and be headed by
Mark Maloney, who recently stepped down as head of the Boston
Redevelopment Authority. The new office will be empowered to offer
companies below-market loans of up to $2 million, the official said.
The Boston Herald
Saturday, March 3, 2007
A Boston Herald editorial
Let’s just say no to Menino’s ‘deal’
So Mayor Tom Menino has a deal to offer to Beacon Hill lawmakers and
city taxpayers.
“If we are given the power to close the telecom loophole and to
introduce a 1 percent meals tax, then I will reduce residential property
taxes next year,” Menino said yesterday in a speech to the 75th annual
meeting of the Boston Municipal Research Bureau.
Notice he said next year and he didn’t say by how much (even if an
administration leak to the Boston Globe put the figure at $200 for the
average taxpayer). So that would be one year -- count ’em one -- in
exchange for a lifetime of telecom taxes and what Menino called the
Hamburger Tax. (Sorry, Mayor, we dubbed it the Cheeseburger Tax and
we’re sticking to it.)
What kind of deal is that!
“Telecom lobbyists have tried to drive a wedge between the people and
the politicians who serve them, saying that any increase in costs would
be passed along to consumers, and would cause telecoms to decrease their
investment in new technologies,” Menino said.
But, he insisted, “That’s nothing but a scare tactic.”
So what does he think will happen? That companies will just swallow the
increased cost of doing business? (“Oh, thank you Sir, please tax us
some more!”)
As for the Cheeseburger Tax he urged, “Look at the numbers. If you go
into a fast-food restaurant and buy a hamburger with all the fixings,
maybe it’ll cost $5. That means you pay five cents. If you did that
every day, well, you’d end up in the hospital (now that was the most
accurate thing the mayor had to say), and you would pay a grand total of
18 bucks a year. That’s a whole lot less than recent property tax
increases.”
Of course that nickel is on top of the 25 cents the state already
collects on that Happy Meal.
And what Menino didn’t say was that while the property tax relief would
be temporary, the additional burger tax would be every year -- for every
man, woman and child who eats a meal in this city -- for The Rest Of
Their Natural Days.
What Menino likes about the idea is that it “allows non-residents to pay
some share of these revenues.” Well, non-residents already pay a hefty
share of the city’s bills. In fiscal year 2006 Boston got more than $539
million in state aid -- to help run its schools, clean its streets, pay
its police and firefighters.
Does Menino think some office worker who has to travel here from far-off
Quincy -- a city which got a mere $37 million in state aid in 2006 --
will be happy coming up with that extra $18 a year for his lunch?
Legislative leaders are wise enough to know that a tax is a tax is a tax
and that their constituents are already taxed enough. This is one “deal”
from the mayor they can afford to pass up.
The Boston Herald
Sunday, March 4, 2007
Burgermeister of Bosh-thin
By Howie Carr
Mumbles Menino is so desperate to grab some of that new meals tax money,
he’s starting to sound like Popeye’s old friend Wimpy.
The mayor of Boston goes out Friday talking about hamburgers, and how
this proposed tax increase would only cost you 18 cents on a $9 bacon
double cheese with fries, which will work out great down the road
because your property taxes will go down by thousands of dollars because
of that extra 18 cents.
In short, Mumbles will gladly give you a tax cut Tuesday for an 18-cent
hamburger tax today.
It’s a scam of course. Gov. Coupe Deval’s budget is so bogus he’s lucky
nobody called the bunco squad. On Thursday, the legislative leadership
unleashed its own moonbats to put a rocket in his pocket. Rep. Alice
Wolf of the People’s Republic of Cambridge blistered Deval’s budget
chief for the governor’s proposal to hose, among so many others, the
MWRA ratepayers. Ratepayers? Alice Wolf? Who knew she cared?
Then Rep. David Linsky of Natick, who pays his own income taxes only
when he feels like it, asked how the Mumbles’ meals (and hotel) tax
would help his town of Sherborn, considering that Sherborn has exactly
one restaurant (a coffee shop), and no hotels.
The short answer: It wouldn’t. Not in the least.
As for Deval’s alleged property-tax relief, Linsky said it wouldn’t mean
much in a town like Sherborn, where the average property-tax bill is
$12,000. The “circuit-breaker,” in other words, is a typical liberal
shell game, tax relief for people who don’t pay taxes, a sop to “working
families” who don’t work.
But don’t tell Mumbles. Dammit, he needs that hamburger tax. Since
revaluation, he’s squeezing an extra $69 million out of the city’s
homeowners. And it’s just not enough, not when you have to keep paying
off all the greedy municipal unions that keep rolling Mumbles, one after
another.
So Mumbles moves endlessly throughout the city, stumping for higher
taxes, stressing “our commitment to the spirit of Bosh-thin.”
Yes, that’s what he called it, Bosh-thin. Other times, it sounds like
he’s talking about “Koston.” Occasionally, he simply calls the city
“Boss,” as in “Boss has become so strong in so many ways.”
And yet the Blutos of Beacon Hill would begrudge this man a simple
hamburger tax. Consider, in Mumbles’ own words, what he has
accomplished:
“We are putting 190 new police officer on the streets... Thousand people
use it... and my commitment to eliminate racial and ethic gaps in all
areas a special, especially academic achievement.”
Who could oppose eliminating the ethic gap?
“All of youse, let’s continue to work together,” Mumbles tells us.
“That’s why we here today.”
Let other posturing pols go to gala openings. Mumbles prefers to attend
“opens,” as in, “Every one of these opens I go to ...”
The man doesn’t mind sharing the credit either. At Northeastern, Mumbles
lauded the city’s tech neck works networks. Then there’s Fidelity. Even
as the Johnsons flee the city (and the state), Mumbles praises the
investment giant for so generously supporting the Boston Pops, or, as he
says, the “Popses.”
Some solons, even those from the city, grumble that Mumbles is a buffoon
who will only squander new windfalls he gets from the hamburger tax. But
this is a bum rap. Mumbles is a big thinker on issues like criminal
justice.
“Ya know, when a kid gets sentenced the parents has, should, go, has,
should have to go through some training also.”
Higher education -- you may call him a dreamer, but he’s not the only
one.
“It’ll be the five large university in our city came together.”
But, to paraphrase Edgar Allan Poe, he grows old, this dolt so bold, and
o’er his heart a shadow, falls as he finds no spot of ground, that looks
like a hamburger tax.
“I wanna say ummmm I’m the senior moment. OK? Senior moment of uhhh
senior person. I don’t know what I am but I’m here.”
Yes, you are. And that is the burden Bosh-thin must bear.
The Boston Globe
Sunday, March 4, 2007
Letter to the editor
The power to tax
RE "City Limits" (Ideas, Feb. 25): Authors David Barron and Gerald Frug
argue that Boston should have its own taxing authority as cities have in
other states. But except for New York City, the states used in their
study have an overall lower per capita tax burden than ours.
Local option taxes may make sense as tax policy, but you can't blame
Massachusetts taxpayers for seeing them as just more taxes piled on.
To get past this appropriate cynicism, Governor Patrick and other
proponents should place their new local option taxes in a constitutional
amendment that would limit total taxes, create a taxpayers' bill of
rights as Colorado has, and protect Proposition 2½.
Before they take this amendment to the voters, politicians should show
respect for them by restoring the income tax rate to 5 percent as
promised and showing a genuine proposal for lowering our property taxes.
Barbara Anderson
Citizens for Limited Taxation
Marblehead
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