CLT UPDATE
Thursday, April 21, 2011
FY ’12 House budget: History repeats itself
Embracing common sense in
state government shouldn’t require unusual political courage.
But as cities and towns across Massachusetts creak under the
weight of their employees’ health care costs, House Speaker
Robert DeLeo and House Ways and Means Chairman Brian Dempsey
have incurred the wrath of powerful unions by proposing a
straightforward way to help local governments bring those costs
under control. Under their House budget plan, municipal
officials would have the power to alter the terms of health
insurance coverage without having to negotiate each provision
with unions....
Opponents of the House
proposal have linked it to Wisconsin’s effort to strip
public-employee unions of all collective bargaining rights. But
it’s nothing of the sort. Labor and management would still
bargain over what portion of the overall premium taxpayers would
have to cover — leaving unions significant influence over the
health care costs their members will bear.
What else, exactly, are cities
and towns supposed to do? Federal stimulus money is drying up.
And as the economy remains weak, and as private-sector workers
endure stagnant wages and higher health care costs, it’s
unthinkable to raise taxes to cover rising municipal health care
costs. DeLeo and Dempsey have advanced a fair way to avoid local
layoffs and service cuts, and lawmakers ought to pass it.
A Boston Globe editorial
Thursday, April 21, 2011
DeLeo’s plan to save on cities’ health costs has courage, vision
Fifty Democratic lawmakers,
including six of Speaker Robert DeLeo’s handpicked committee
chairs, have lined up behind a union-backed alternative to a
House leadership proposal that would permit cities and towns to
unilaterally shift health care costs onto their workers, setting
up a high-stakes policy battle during next week’s budget debate.
The issue presents a math
challenge for DeLeo and Democratic House leaders, who may be
forced to rely on Republican votes to pass their plan, unless
they can peel away support from a competing plan offered by Rep.
Martin Walsh (D-Dorchester) and favored by unions....
Walsh’s plan, backed primarily
by rank-and-file House members, including 10 freshmen, would
restore some collective bargaining power for municipal unions,
granting them a 45-day window to negotiate with administrators
over health benefits, and sending the matter to arbitration if
they fail to agree.
Under the plan offered by
Walsh, who also works as secretary-treasurer of the Boston
Building Trades Council, workers would also share in at least 25
percent of the savings cities and towns realize by shifting
health costs....
The head of the Massachusetts
Municipal Association told the News Service Wednesday that the
Walsh plan included “ridiculous” provisions and would represent
a “disaster for local taxpayers.”
But union officials have made
clear in letters to representatives that they consider the vote
on Walsh’s amendment a referendum on collective bargaining and
will hold opponents accountable politically.
“You are either on the side of
collective bargaining for the workers who have been willing to
compromise on this issue, or you are against those collective
bargaining rights and want to reward intractable, uncompromising
management advocates like the MMA,” Massachusetts AFL-CIO
President Robert Haynes wrote in a letter soliciting support for
Walsh’s amendment. The letter included one bolded line: “All
votes relating to the matters discussed in this letter may be
considered Labor Votes and calculated into Labor Voting Records
upon which endorsements and levels of support are determined.”
...
House leaders are also
operating, they believe, with public imprimatur. A Suffolk
University poll earlier this month showed that 51 percent of
voters believe unions have too much power and just 34 percent
believe that the employee-management balance is “just right.” In
that poll – a survey of 500 likely Massachusetts voters between
April 3 and April 5 with a 4.4 percent margin of error – 54
percent of respondents said they believe that public employees
receive higher pay and better benefits than private-sector
workers doing similar jobs....
The split in the Democratic
caucus over municipal workers’ collective bargaining power has
been fueled, in part, by union heads, who issued strongly worded
rejections of the Ways and Means version of the plan, calling it
a non-starter and threatening political retribution for
lawmakers who support it.
State House News Service
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Unions find House backers,
call health plan referendum on bargaining
If past is prologue (and let’s
face it, it usually is on Beacon Hill) the 758 amendments that
lawmakers have filed to the 2012 House budget proposal will be
dispensed with in a back room, never to inspire a single word of
debate on the House floor.
And yes, that’s a fate that
the truly “out-there” amendments — and the ones drafted purely
so they can become the subject of hometown press releases —
deserve.
But there are plenty of others
— yes, typically offered by the tiny Republican minority — that
deserve a healthy debate and an up-or-down vote.
When budget deliberations get
underway next week, House Speaker Robert DeLeo and his new Ways
and Means Chairman Brian Dempsey (D-Haverhill) should make sure
they get both.
A Boston Herald editorial
Tuesday, April 19, 2010
A real budget debate
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Barbara Anderson's CLT
Commentary
It's been awhile since we asked you to
call your legislators, last spring during the Proposition 2˝ battle.
Usually there's not much point.
But there's a new House Ways & Means Chairman, Rep. Brian Dempsey
(D-Haverhill), and his budget that will be debated next week has
essential union reforms and no new taxes. It's up to CLT to help counter
the heavy lobbying, which can get nasty, from the public employee unions
who do not want the reforms.
As you probably know, the Governor proposes a budget for each fiscal
year, then the House and later the Senate prepare their own versions.
Massachusetts is presently finishing up FY 2011 and now the Legislature
is preparing the budget for FY 2012, which will begin July 1 of this
year.
The House Ways and Means Committee released its proposed budget, and the
entire House will vote on it early next week.
We e-mailed the memo below to all the House members
— but some of them
will pay attention only to a constituent from their district.
So if you call or e-mail them (click
here for contact information), just say you support the Ways and
Means Committee's "no new taxes" budget with reforms that address public
employee union benefits.
Rep. Dempsey has also addressed the issue reported in
my recent column about the state Inspector General's report on
non-MA residents getting free health care here: if MassHealth doesn't
create a system to validate clients, it will lose funding on December 1.
Dempsey also wants to try to recoup improper payments.
We look forward to some good roll call votes from next week's budget
that can be used in our legislators' ratings for Revolution 2012.
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Barbara Anderson |
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CLT MEMO —
FY ’12 House budget: History repeats itself
April 21, 2011
To: Members of the
Massachusetts House
Cc: Members of the Massachusetts Senate, Media
Over twenty years ago, realistic
Democrats teamed up with Republican fiscal conservatives to save the
commonwealth from fiscal meltdown. We are happy to see it happen
again.
The time was 1989, when the
Dukakis ’88 presidential campaign’s invented “Massachusetts Miracle”
had become the Massachusetts Mess. The House Ways & Means Committee,
led by liberal Chairman Richard Voke (D-Chelsea) and backed by
Speaker George Keverian, other committee chairmen, and of course
House Republicans, released a “no new taxes” budget with savings and
reforms, to make up for many years of overspending and deal with an
economic downturn. House W&M cut Dukakis’ proposed billion dollar
increase in half, and House members supported this. The battle
against Dukakis/tax-hiking liberals/public employee unions began.
CLT and some elements of the
productive business community strongly supported the House, which
put up a valiant fight until the Governor and Senate brought it to
an end. While some Dukakis proposed new spending was halted, the
Legislature passed a “temporary” income tax increase, which became
permanent. With fiscally-responsible momentum lost, another record
tax increase passed in 1990.
Some of this new money, used for
local aid, was the cause of the unsustainable benefit packages
gained by the local public employee unions. CLT stopped advocating
for increased local aid and counts on Proposition 2˝ to control
property taxes, with local voters in charge. Once again, we strongly
support a House Ways & Means Committee effort to get spending under
control, and applaud Chairman Dempsey on his first budget.
We appreciate Speaker’s DeLeo’s
statements in opposition to new taxes, and hope that this time the
Senate joins the House in fiscal responsibility. We also continue to
appreciate Governor Patrick’s early moves on the GIC issue. Maybe
this time, fiscal responsibility will prevail for the commonwealth
and its taxpayers.
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The Boston Globe
Thursday, April 21, 2011
A Boston Globe editorial
DeLeo’s plan to save on cities’ health costs has courage, vision
Embracing common sense in state government shouldn’t require unusual
political courage. But as cities and towns across Massachusetts creak
under the weight of their employees’ health care costs, House Speaker
Robert DeLeo and House Ways and Means Chairman Brian Dempsey have
incurred the wrath of powerful unions by proposing a straightforward way
to help local governments bring those costs under control. Under their
House budget plan, municipal officials would have the power to alter the
terms of health insurance coverage without having to negotiate each
provision with unions.
The long-overdue change goes well beyond a fuzzier plan by Governor
Patrick that calls for further negotiations between towns and local
unions, and it’s far superior to a union-backed plan that raises the
prospect of binding arbitration. The $100 million a year the House plan
will save would greatly assist municipal governments in preventing
layoffs, keeping parks and libraries open, and preserving education
programs. The House plan would ease the adjustment for local employees
by allowing cities and towns to use 10 percent of the first year’s
savings to pay for health-related expenses. But ultimately, local
workers would be under the same rules as state employees — who still
enjoy more extensive health benefits than comparable private workers.
A recent report by the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation and the Boston
Foundation concluded that the average family premium for city and town
employees is 37 percent higher than the typical private-sector policy
and 21 percent higher than that of state employees.
Local taxpayers can’t keep absorbing huge increases in health premiums.
But when each provision is subject to negotiation, it’s extraordinarily
difficult to reduce costs as private employers might — for instance, by
switching to a $20 primary-care copay from the current municipal average
of $11. Nor can cities and towns easily enroll their employees in the
Group Insurance Commission, which offers high-quality coverage for state
employees at a reasonable price.
Current law allows cities and towns to join the state insurance plan,
but unions have a veto. So while some communities have reaped savings —
DeLeo’s hometown of Winthrop, for instance, is saving $800,000 or more a
year — few others have been able to follow suit.
Opponents of the House proposal have linked it to Wisconsin’s effort to
strip public-employee unions of all collective bargaining rights. But
it’s nothing of the sort. Labor and management would still bargain over
what portion of the overall premium taxpayers would have to cover —
leaving unions significant influence over the health care costs their
members will bear.
What else, exactly, are cities and towns supposed to do? Federal
stimulus money is drying up. And as the economy remains weak, and as
private-sector workers endure stagnant wages and higher health care
costs, it’s unthinkable to raise taxes to cover rising municipal health
care costs. DeLeo and Dempsey have advanced a fair way to avoid local
layoffs and service cuts, and lawmakers ought to pass it.
State House News Service
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Unions find House backers,
call health plan referendum on bargaining
By Kyle Cheney
Fifty Democratic lawmakers, including six of Speaker Robert DeLeo’s
handpicked committee chairs, have lined up behind a union-backed
alternative to a House leadership proposal that would permit cities and
towns to unilaterally shift health care costs onto their workers,
setting up a high-stakes policy battle during next week’s budget debate.
The issue presents a math challenge for DeLeo and Democratic House
leaders, who may be forced to rely on Republican votes to pass their
plan, unless they can peel away support from a competing plan offered by
Rep. Martin Walsh (D-Dorchester) and favored by unions.
The prospect of a gubernatorial veto – Gov. Deval Patrick’s proposal on
municipal health closely mirrors Walsh’s plan – also further clouds the
issue, which has divided legislators for years.
Walsh’s plan, backed primarily by rank-and-file House members, including
10 freshmen, would restore some collective bargaining power for
municipal unions, granting them a 45-day window to negotiate with
administrators over health benefits, and sending the matter to
arbitration if they fail to agree.
Under the plan offered by Walsh, who also works as secretary-treasurer
of the Boston Building Trades Council, workers would also share in at
least 25 percent of the savings cities and towns realize by shifting
health costs. Cities and towns would be guaranteed a quarter of the
savings as well, and the remainder would be subject to negotiations. A
nearly identical proposal narrowly passed the Senate last year.
The head of the Massachusetts Municipal Association told the News
Service Wednesday that the Walsh plan included “ridiculous” provisions
and would represent a “disaster for local taxpayers.”
But union officials have made clear in letters to representatives that
they consider the vote on Walsh’s amendment a referendum on collective
bargaining and will hold opponents accountable politically.
“You are either on the side of collective bargaining for the workers who
have been willing to compromise on this issue, or you are against those
collective bargaining rights and want to reward intractable,
uncompromising management advocates like the MMA,” Massachusetts AFL-CIO
President Robert Haynes wrote in a letter soliciting support for Walsh’s
amendment. The letter included one bolded line: “All votes relating to
the matters discussed in this letter may be considered Labor Votes and
calculated into Labor Voting Records upon which endorsements and levels
of support are determined.”
Walsh’s proposal would undo the plan endorsed by the House Ways and
Means Committee that would sharply reduce municipal employee unions’
influence over their health care costs. The Ways and Means plan – backed
by mayors, business groups, education groups and municipal officials –
would grant city and town managers the power to raise co-pays and
deductibles, within certain constraints, without negotiating with
unions.
Backers of the Ways and Means plan argue that the ever-increasing cost
of municipal health care has deflated attempts to invest in education
and public safety, tying the hands of city and town governments
struggling to balance their budgets. The proposal, they note, preserves
collective bargaining over premiums – a power state workers don’t enjoy
– and caps unilateral co-pay and premium increases at the level of the
most popular plan to which state workers subscribe.
In addition, the proposal would permit cities and towns to enter the
Group Insurance Commission --- the state employee health plan – without
obtaining union support. In all, supporters say it would save $100
million across the state’s 351 cities and towns.
“This has been a reform that’s been a long time coming,” Rep. Stephen
Kulik (D-Worthington), vice chair of the Ways and Means Committee, said
when the proposal was unveiled last week. “The time has finally come for
us to give cities and towns a management tool that will help to save
money for them and to preserve jobs and services at the local level.
That’s what it’s all about.”
Rep. Brian Dempsey, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, told
the News Service that the Walsh amendment is proof that House lawmakers
agree on the need to reform the municipal health care system, despite
differences in their approach.
“What we’re doing is analyzing the amendment and will be identifying for
the members some of the concerns about that particular amendment
relative to the difficulty it presents for municipalities ability to go
into GIC, as well as some of the other issues with that,” he said. “I
think it will certainly be a healthy debate.”
Asked about the tenor of the debate between unions, municipalities and
other groups, Dempsey said the House’s proposal, in part, was the result
of a failure of the groups to agree on a solution for years.
“Certainly it was, I think our hope that for the last few years some of
these issues would’ve been resolved because folks have been at the
table. Unfortunately, they haven’t been resolved to a large degree,
which has led us to our proposal. I think we’re going to have a lengthy
and healthy debate on this.”
House leaders are also operating, they believe, with public imprimatur.
A Suffolk University poll earlier this month showed that 51 percent of
voters believe unions have too much power and just 34 percent believe
that the employee-management balance is “just right.” In that poll – a
survey of 500 likely Massachusetts voters between April 3 and April 5
with a 4.4 percent margin of error – 54 percent of respondents said they
believe that public employees receive higher pay and better benefits
than private-sector workers doing similar jobs.
It remains to be seen whether Democrats who endorsed the Walsh proposal
will continue to stand against leadership when it comes time to vote.
However, if the numbers hold, Democratic leaders will be forced to count
on Republican votes to ensure passage of their municipal health care
plan, a rare dynamic in a reliably dark-blue Legislature.
“Whenever the possibility exists that Republican votes could impact the
outcome of a vote, it’s sort of a different day around here,” said House
Minority Leader Bradley Jones (R-North Reading).
Jones said his caucus, which has concerns about the cost of health care
within cities and towns and the way existing law is structured, would
take a serious look at the proposals on the table.
Another surprising fact: 13 of the 26 Democrats on the Ways and Means
Committee signed onto Walsh’s plan to undo the proposal that the
committee endorsed last week, although none spoke against it on the day
the budget was released and approved by the Ways and Means panel on a
voice vote.
Ways and Means Committee members passed on a chance to amend the
committee plan. Amendments during committee executive sessions, once a
fairly common practice, have become rare over the years, especially
given the increasing frequency of committee votes occurring via polling.
The split in the Democratic caucus over municipal workers’ collective
bargaining power has been fueled, in part, by union heads, who issued
strongly worded rejections of the Ways and Means version of the plan,
calling it a non-starter and threatening political retribution for
lawmakers who support it.
The Walsh proposal drew support from six House committee chairs: Walsh,
who chairs the Ethics Committee, and Reps. Frank Smizik, Alice Wolf,
Antonio Cabral, Rep. Cheryl Coakley-Rivera, and Kay Khan (D-Newton). The
rest are rank-and-file Democrats. The 10 freshmen who endorsed Walsh’s
plan represent more than half of the newest Democrats in the
Legislature.
Members of the Ways and Means Committee who are seeking to undo the
panel’s municipal health provision include: Reps. Koczera, Christine
Canavan, Timothy Toomey, Benjamin Swan, Colleen Garry, Geraldine Creedon,
David Sullivan, Ruth Balser, John Fresolo, Joyce Spiliotis, Carl
Sciortino, Michael Brady, and James Dwyer.
Municipal officials and education groups backing the Ways and Means
proposal showcased their support Wednesday, holding a press conference
in Revere.
Geoff Beckwith, executive director of the Massachusetts Municipal
Association, said the Walsh amendment “would represent no real reform”
and would expand binding arbitration, which he called “a disaster for
local taxpayers.”
“It allows an independent, unaccountable outside person to make
decisions affecting not only municipal health benefits but what
taxpayers pay,” he said. “That’s totally unacceptable.”
Beckwith also called [the] provision requiring that 25 percent of the
savings go to city and town coffers “ridiculous.”
“The reason why it’s ridiculous is that the whole purpose of municipal
health insurance reform is to save taxpayers money and services and
protect municipal jobs,” he said.
Walsh on Wednesday declined to talk with the News Service about his
amendment. The issue was the topic of discussions during a meeting of
House leaders in DeLeo’s office on Wednesday.
The Boston Herald
Tuesday, April 19, 2010
A Boston Herald editorial
A real budget debate
If past is prologue (and let’s face it, it usually is on Beacon Hill)
the 758 amendments that lawmakers have filed to the 2012 House budget
proposal will be dispensed with in a back room, never to inspire a
single word of debate on the House floor.
And yes, that’s a fate that the truly “out-there” amendments — and the
ones drafted purely so they can become the subject of hometown press
releases — deserve.
But there are plenty of others — yes, typically offered by the tiny
Republican minority — that deserve a healthy debate and an up-or-down
vote.
When budget deliberations get underway next week, House Speaker Robert
DeLeo and his new Ways and Means Chairman Brian Dempsey (D-Haverhill)
should make sure they get both.
The GOP minority wants the budget to reflect some sensible, money-saving
changes in state law, including:
• A repeal of the Pacheco law, which blocks private vendors from
performing many state services and saving taxpayers money;
• A series of changes to the state pension system, including a cap, as
well as a shift from the use of “high three” salary years to calculate
pensions to “high five”;
• A two-day August sales tax holiday;
• A commission to study when project labor agreements, which favor
union contractors (and drive up costs), should be used on public
projects;
• The elimination of barriers to the use of discount coupons for
prescription drugs, which only Massachusetts bans.
There are more, and while we always prefer that major policy debates be
conducted outside the budget process, unfortunately, legislative leaders
too often prevent that from happening.
So Mr. Speaker, by all means, send the request for $210,000 to fund
“naturally-occurring retirement communities” (whatever those might be)
and the bid for $50,000 to rid two Lynn beaches of algae to the discard
pile.
But let the grownups in the House chamber debate the issues that might
actually make a difference for taxpayers.
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Citizens for Limited Taxation ▪
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