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CLT UPDATE
Wednesday, February 6, 2013
Gov, clean out your cesspool
Not one dime more from us!
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After calling his outgoing welfare boss a “good
guy” who didn’t get the job done, Gov. Deval Patrick yesterday
defended the beleaguered agency, saying the millions of taxpayer
dollars laid to waste “is at or just around the national average.”
...
“It’s quite clear to us the outgoing
commissioner, though a good guy, was not getting the job done,”
Patrick told reporters in Springfield. “Our leakage, if that’s the
right term, is at or just around the national average. But we want
to be better than the national average because we have been on so
many other important issues.” ...
Newly sworn-in Health and
Human Services
Secretary John Polanowicz also admitted in a Herald front-page story
yesterday that the federal government had just notified him the
state has overpaid $27.8 million in food stamps to welfare
recipients since 2010.
The Herald reported last month that voter
registration letters to nearly 20,000 households on its mailing list
were returned as undeliverable. That figure was based on DTA
estimates, but after staffers hand-counted boxes of return mail, the
number swelled to 47,000,
according to Polanowicz.
The Boston Herald
Saturday, February 2, 2013
Gov: Welfare waste ‘average’
The Department of Health and Human Services has
named an interim commissioner of the Department of Transitional
Assistance following the exit of embattled former commissioner
Daniel J. Curley.
Stacey Monahan, chief of staff for HHS, will
begin serving as interim commissioner immediately, Secretary of
Health and Human Services John Polanowicz said today.
“I’ve given Stacey a mandate to make necessary
changes to the Department’s policies and procedures, and she will
report back to me soon with a plan that ensures precious taxpayer
resources are used only as intended,” said Polanowicz in a
statement....
Monahan, a Boston College graduate, has been
chief of staff at HHS since 2011. She is a former executive director
of the state Democratic Party and has worked for Gov. Deval Patrick
in several different roles since 2005, according to the
administration.
The Boston Herald
Saturday, February 2, 2013
Interim head of welfare department named
Stacey Monahan was named interim commissioner of
the Department of Transitional Assistance yesterday — two days after
embattled welfare boss Daniel J. Curley resigned under pressure.
She is tasked with changing department
procedures, but agency spokesman Alec Loftus declined to say exactly
what those changes might entail.
“Obviously I’m pleased that they finally saw a
need to make a change,” state House Minority Leader Rep. Bradley H.
Jones Jr. said. “But I think it was a potentially missed opportunity
to bring in someone with an outsider’s prospective.”
Monahan is the former head of the Massachusetts
Democratic Party and lost in a primary in March 2005 to replace
departing House Speaker Thomas Finneran. She served as U.S. Rep.
Stephen F. Lynch’s chief of staff, coordinated Patrick’s field
organization in 2010 and worked as Boston City Councilor Ayanna
Pressley’s campaign adviser, according to Pressley’s City Council
resolution last year on Monahan’s 40th birthday.
“She managed memorable road trips for
Massachusetts Democrats to the 2008 Democratic National Convention
in Denver and the Presidential inaugural in DC in 2009; Stacey
organized celebrations at Coors Field in Denver and Nationals Park
in Washington that people still talk about,” states the resolution.
In 2011, Monahan was hired as chief of staff for
former Secretary of Health and Human Services JudyAnn Bigby, who
resigned in December amid criticism for her handling of oversight at
a Framingham compounding pharmacy at the center of a national
meningitis outbreak and a police drug-lab scandal.
The Boston Herald
Sunday, February 3, 2013
Patrick picks insider to lead welfare dept.
“Leakage” — that’s what Gov.
Deval Patrick is
now calling rampant welfare fraud in his administration.
According to the inspector general, $25 million
has been wasted, and we all know that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Still, though — $25 million seems more like a flood than a leak.
But don’t worry, the governor assures us that the
fraud rate is only about “average.” That’s certainly a
relief. We’d
all hate to think that the commonwealth is “below average” in the
amount of fraud and abuse by the non-working classes.
But this is a governor who dismisses any and all
cases of welfare fraud as mere “anecdotes.” And by the way, it
appears we have a lot more “anecdotes” than were first reported —
closer to 50,000, rather than the original 19,000.
None of this welfare dirty laundry would have
come out if only Granny Warren’s daughter hadn’t forced the state to
order a voter-registration drive last summer among the layabout
class. A half-million letters went out (complete with prepaid return
envelopes) and almost 50,000 came back — “return to sender, address
unknown. No such number, no such zone.”
The Boston Herald
Sunday, February 3, 2013
Time to plug welfare ‘leakage’
By Howie Carr
Gov. Deval Patrick, who’s been touring the state
asking residents to tighten their belts to fund billions in new
taxes, has been lavishing taxpayers’ money on rental cars, meals and
more staff in a Corner Office budget that has skyrocketed over the
past four years.
The governor wants to increase his office budget
to more than $5.35 million next year — a bump of nearly $1 million,
or 23 percent since fiscal 2011, when spending dipped slightly from
fiscal 2010, according to Patrick’s budget documents. The current
year’s spending, projected at $5.24 million, is up more than half a
million dollars over last year....
“As legislators contemplate Gov. Patrick’s
proposed tax increases, they may wish to note he has been increasing
state spending on his own office at a rate that is twice the rate at
which state personal income has grown since he was first
inaugurated,” said David G. Tuerck of The Beacon Hill Institute. “It
is little wonder that the governor wants to increase taxes if he is
going to spend money on his own office so much faster than
Massachusetts residents can earn money to pay for it.”
House Minority Leader Rep. Brad Jones said, “When
people are being told we need to raise taxes by $2 billion to fund
the bare minimum of government, things like this just stand out.
Taxpayers are just tired of it.”
The Boston Herald
Monday, February 4, 2013
As tax hikes loom, gov’s budget grows
Patrick administration officials like to leave
the impression that it isn’t the high cost of doing business that is
holding back the state’s economy — heavens no! — it is simply
government’s failure to spend enough. But the Greater Boston
Chamber of Commerce is out with a report that challenges that
notion.
The Chamber puts it rather politely, calling the
state’s business competitiveness “mixed.” But the report notes that
current state policy makes Massachusetts’ corporate tax burden as a
share of the private sector economy 5th highest in the country — 74
percent above the national average....
The burden on businesses doesn’t fit Team
Patrick’s narrative as it seeks to sell yet another major tax
increase. But numbers — like the ones the Chamber is offering —
don’t lie.
A Boston Herald editorial
Monday, February 4, 2013
The chilly tax climate
Whatever confidence we might have had in the
Patrick administration’s ability to manage the problems inherent in
a complex bureaucracy evaporated last week with the release of more
damaging news about the state’s welfare operation. Now the head of
the Department of Transitional Assistance is out of a job and the
public is left wondering — just how many millions in taxpayer
dollars have been lavished on people who aren’t eligible for them?
Oh, it’s hardly news that the administration was
both failing to ensure that people who receive benefits are eligible
to receive them and doing a lousy job tracking fraud and abuse. The
Herald’s detailed reporting on failures in the electronic benefits
system had made that abundantly clear....
Turns out, the news was worse than we thought.
DTA has actually lost track of 47,087 households
receiving welfare benefits — fully one in 10 of the 478,000 that
were sent the recent agency mailings.
Meanwhile, the agency acknowledges that since
2010 it has overpaid federal food stamp recipients by nearly $28
million, while Inspector General Glenn Cunha this week reported a
possible overpayment of $25 million in welfare benefits — or 3
percent of the budget — to ineligible recipients....
But now it’s time to stop the actual bleeding.
Gov. Deval Patrick’s pitch for a tax increase to expand the size of
a government he can’t control as it is becomes more laughable by the
day.
A Boston Herald editorial
Monday, February 4, 2013
The welfare wilderness
The Bay State’s beleaguered welfare department —
after overpaying food stamp recipients to the tune of nearly $27
million — then shelled out overtime to staffers for months to fix
the blunder, the Herald has learned.
The Department of Transitional Assistance
couldn’t say yesterday how big the overtime tab was or how many
workers cashed in to fix the costly 2011 gaffe — just the latest
example of costly mismanagement to emerge from the troubled agency —
but insisted that by acting quickly, they stopped the overpayment
from getting worse....
“In order to avoid any unnecessary hardship for
families, and to prevent additional work for ourselves, it is
critical that all outstanding recertifications be completed on
time,” former DTA Commissioner Julia Kehoe wrote in a memo to DTA
staffers on Feb. 1, 2011. “I am also pleased to announce that we
will once again offer overtime for the purpose of completing SNAP
re-evaluations only.” ...
Meanwhile, state Rep. Shaunna O’Connell
(R-Taunton) told the Herald she plans to file an amendment to the
state’s supplemental budget that would strip all fraud prevention
and detection powers from DTA and give them to the inspector
general.
“It’s the fox guarding the henhouse,” O’Connell
said. “They’re just not doing their job.”
The Boston Herald
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
Welfare gaffes led to OT bonanza
Gov. Deval Patrick’s plan to jack up a wide range
of taxes and fees is facing growing popular resistance, as even
Democratic legislators said they are hearing widespread rage from
voters and other party members on the issue.
“Folks are really ticked off,” said state Rep.
James R. Miceli (D-Wilmington). “I haven’t seen it like this since
1990. … There’s no support out there whatsoever in my district.
They’re not going to bite the bullet.”
One veteran Democrat said he’s hearing from
taxpayers fed up with being asked to cough up more in taxes while
they simultaneously hear about a seemingly endless litany of waste
and fraud at state agencies.
“People are shell-shocked,” said state Rep.
Theodore C. Speliotis (D-Danvers). “It’s folks who when they read
the Herald about an abuse at the DTA (Department of Transitional
Assistance), about EBT cards, they put that together and it really
makes people very angry and frustrated. The middle class has always
felt they bear the brunt of the burden.” ...
“I don’t know if I’d use the words ‘grave
concern,’ ” said Thomas Scott, the head of the Massachusetts
Association of School Superintendents. “What we hear from parents in
communities is they want the best opportunities for their children.
So yes, this budget process hasn’t emerged into a full-fledged
debate or discussion. It’s still relatively new.”
State Sen. Patricia D. Jehlen (D-Somerville) said
she’s heard from people who want more state services, but not
everyone’s willing to foot the bill for it. “In principle, I think
people don’t want to live in Mississippi,” Jehlen said. “They want
to live in the kind of Massachusetts that we’ve come to believe is
possible.”
The Boston Herald
Wednesday, February 6, 2013
Dems: Middle class ‘ticked’ by tax plan
Pols say Deval’s fees face tough fight
While pledging to keep an open mind, House
Speaker Robert DeLeo said he has heard “grave concerns” from
lawmakers and constituents about Gov. Deval Patrick’s plan to enact
sweeping tax code changes that would raise $1.9 billion....
“As we started to review the proposals there was
various discussions about elimination of certain deductions, for
instance. And as I’m hearing from members, and I’m hearing from
constituents, and I’m hearing from folks who aren’t my constituents
but want the speaker of the House to know what their feelings are,
people have grave concerns about, you know, the proposal as a
whole,” DeLeo said. “But in fairness to the governor, I told him I
would keep an open mind, and I will keep an open mind.”
The elimination of some deductions - including
the mortgage interest and the college tuition tax deductions - have
drawn particular concerns from lawmakers and residents, DeLeo said.
State House News Service
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
DeLeo hearing "grave concerns" about Patrick's tax proposals
For a crew that may be on the verge of a major
tax hike the leadership on Beacon Hill seems remarkably blase about
the “leakage” in the welfare system. That’s apparently the technical
term for the millions in taxpayer dollars that might as well have
been flushed down the toilet over the past few years.
A top aide to Gov. Deval Patrick, just weeks on
the job, took the drastic step of relieving the welfare commissioner
of his duties last week — and yet the cool-as-a-cucumber governor
suggested the next day that the systemic failures cited in recent
reports means Massachusetts is experiencing “average” losses.
“Our leakage, if that’s the right term, is at or
just around the national average,” Patrick said Friday. “But we want
to be better than the national average because we have been on so
many issues.”
See, the administration isn’t failing —
it’s failing to overachieve. ...
“You’re always going to have a system that may
have some fraud that may be involved,” DeLeo said. “I think it’s up
to the powers that be and for us watching over them to make sure
that we keep that fraud to a minimum so that those people who should
be getting the money get the money.”
Well, obviously — but isn’t that the crux of the
problem?
A Boston Herald editorial
Wednesday, February 6, 2013
Too weak on welfare
Tucked away unused in a conference room on
the sixth floor of 2 Boylston Street in Boston sit more than 30
chairs, gathering dust since last June.
The Massachusetts Division of Health Care
Finance and Policy bought 78 of them in all, spending $213.40
each, a total of $16,645, to replace aging chairs that an agency
spokesperson says was a "safety issue" for employees.
"Did they really say that?" laughed taxpayer
advocate Barbara Anderson of Citizens for Limited
Taxation. "The chairs are for the safety of employees?"
"I don't believe that every chair they had in
that department was unsafe. There might've been one that was
unsafe, and they could've replaced it, but then they think,
'Well, as long as we're getting one, let's just replace all of
them,'" Anderson said....
"You don't want them all sitting on a folding
chair. Somewhere between that and 200-and-some dollars a chair
has to be a state chair that's affordable and yet that their
little tushies can sit on without suffering," Anderson said.
Fox News 25 — Fox
Undercover
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
You might want to sit down for this: state spending on furniture
tops $8M
CLICK
GRAPHIC TO WATCH VIDEO
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Chip Ford's CLT
Commentary
What's with the governor and his administration?
It seems lately that everything they do they need to do over again.
Remember the recent
state drug lab scandal?
The State House News Service yesterday reported:
"The House supplemental budget allocates ... $30 million to cover
expenses associated with the Hinton drug lab scandal where a former
chemist is accused of tampering with evidence."
That's just the beginning, a down payment. In
late November the Boston Globe reported ("Cost soars in Mass. drug
lab scandal; Defending the thousands affected by suspect evidence
could take $332m, state agency says"): "The administration has said
it is open to seeking more money once more is learned about the
damage to the criminal justice system that can be linked to Dookhan
and the state lab."
We taxpayers already paid to prosecute the perps,
pay for their court-appointed lawyers, put them behind bars, are
more lately releasing them for retrials. Talk about double
jeopardy — but it's we taxpayers
who're paying the price twice! We're paying twice due
to an inept governor and his befuddled administration without a clue
among them.
Now that welfare fraud has been exposed, it we
taxpayers who not only funded the fraud but are now paying state
employees overtime to straighten it out
— because they couldn't get it right the first time
too.
In November it was
Sheila Burgess, director of the Massachusetts Highway Safety
Division — another administration
political hack appointee you'll recall.
On Dec. 14 the State House News Service reported:
The rumored overhaul of Patrick's Cabinet
actually came to fruition this week, a significant reshaping
of his senior team heading into the final two-year stretch
of his governorship. Gone next month are ... embattled
Public Safety and Health and Human Services secretaries
MaryBeth Heffernan and JudyAnn Bigby.
Patrick insisted none of the moves were
forced on his part to clean house in the wake of a drug lab
and pharmacy oversight scandals at the Department of Public
Health, or the "embarrassment" of hiring Sheila Burgess for
a plum job she was not qualified to hold. Rather, the
administration projected the shakeup as a natural transition
for many Cabinet members who have put as many as six years
of their lives into their work for the governor.
Gov. Patrick blames massive welfare fraud and
mismanagement on "leakage . . . around the national average." The
ongoing wholesale firing of incapable administration managers is
fluffed off as "a natural transition." Do I have this correct, Your
Excellency?
He subsequently nominated MaryBeth Heffernan to a
judgeship. She was confirmed just today by the Governor's Council to
a hack job for life.
He and his administration have cost
— and continue to waste
— billions of taxpayer dollars.
Considering the effort required to expose even the tip of
this iceberg, and the rate at which the scandals keep rolling out,
we may never know the full extent of his waste and
mismanagement.
Is it any wonder why Gov. Patrick is calling for
the largest revenue increase in state history?
Somebody (you and me) must be forced to fill in
this bottomless hole still being dug by the Patrick administration.
It's much easier to jam his hand deeper into our pockets than get a
grip on his responsibilities.
House Minority Leader Rep. Brad Jones (R-Reading)
got it right: “When people are being told we need to raise taxes by
$2 billion to fund the bare minimum of government, things like this
just stand out. Taxpayers are just tired of it.”
We're damned sick and tired of it!
Governor, clean up your cesspool. Pumping
it out is long overdue. Start earning the generous salary and
benefits we provide to you and your "team" of connected hacks to
allegedly manage our state.
Don't even think about even trying to
squeeze us taxpayers for more that you can squander.
Not one thin dime more!
With the rising awareness among many legislators
that we taxpayers and voters are angry and getting furious
— that their positions are very much at
risk in 2014 — they are getting very
nervous. They should be. Any increase in
taxpayers' cost for this already too expensive government is
beyond absurd. Going along to get along on Bacon Hill this year will
be political suicide. Legislators are slowly coming to that
realization as well.
Today the House will be considering an amendment
by Reps. Shaunna O'Connell and Russell Holmes to turn oversight of
the Department of Transitional Assistance over to the state
Inspector General. (Currently the DTA inspects itself!) Call
your state representative immediately and instruct them to support
this reform.
Find and contact your State
Representative
Who are my
elected officials
- or -
Massachusetts State Representatives
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Chip Ford |
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The Boston Herald
Saturday, February 2, 2013
Gov: Welfare waste ‘average’
By John Zaremba
After calling his outgoing welfare boss a “good guy” who didn’t get
the job done, Gov. Deval Patrick yesterday defended the beleaguered
agency, saying the millions of taxpayer dollars laid to waste “is at
or just around the national average.”
Patrick’s statements came a day after the Herald reported the forced
resignation of Department of Transitional Assistance Commissioner
Daniel J. Curley following an internal audit showing thousands of
missing recipients and millions in food stamps going to ineligible
families.
“It’s quite clear to us the outgoing commissioner, though a good
guy, was not getting the job done,” Patrick told reporters in
Springfield. “Our leakage, if that’s the right term, is at or just
around the national average. But we want to be better than the
national average because we have been on so many other important
issues.”
The welfare office has come
under fire after Herald reports
indicating rampant mismanagement of the agency, including tens of
thousands of outdated addresses for recipients, and an audit by the
inspector general this week showing $25 million in possible
overpayments to households receiving benefits.
Newly sworn-in Health and
Human Services Secretary John Polanowicz
also admitted in a Herald front-page story yesterday that the
federal government had just notified him the state has overpaid
$27.8 million in food stamps to welfare recipients since 2010.
The Herald reported last month that voter registration letters to
nearly 20,000 households on its mailing list were returned as
undeliverable. That figure was based on DTA estimates, but after
staffers hand-counted boxes of return mail, the number swelled to
47,000,
according to Polanowicz.
However, the agency yesterday insisted that only half that total, or
roughly 24,000, were active welfare recipients at the time of the
mailing. Of those:
• nearly 8,000 left forwarding addresses;
• 5,800 had their welfare cases closed for various reasons since the
mailing;
• 4,300 more have provided updated addresses, and
• 6,800 still list the bad
address, even though
their letters
were returned as
undeliverable. Of those, 3,075 had failed to
report an address change and will be cut off from benefits, the
agency said.
Patrick gave no hint of who will succeed Curley, but two GOP
lawmakers recommended former
Inspector General Gregory W. Sullivan
and Mary Z. Connaughton, who lost a 2010 bid for state
auditor.
Connaughton could not be reached. Sullivan did not rule out taking
the post.
“I wouldn’t presume to comment whether I would qualify, or whether
Gov. Patrick would be interested in me,” Sullivan said. “But I have
a great interest in public service, and I think taxpayers deserve a
very tough-minded, vigilant person in that office.”
The Boston Herald
Saturday, February 2, 2013
Interim head of welfare department named
By Jordan Graham
The Department of Health and Human Services has named an interim
commissioner of the Department of Transitional Assistance following
the exit of embattled former commissioner Daniel J. Curley.
Stacey Monahan, chief of staff for HHS, will begin serving as
interim commissioner immediately, Secretary of Health and Human
Services John Polanowicz said today.
“I’ve given Stacey a mandate to make necessary changes to the
Department’s policies and procedures, and she will report back to me
soon with a plan that ensures precious taxpayer resources are used
only as intended,” said Polanowicz in a statement.
Monahan’s appointment comes after the forced resignation of Curley
on Thursday after a series of Herald reports detailing rampant
mismanagement at the agency. An internal audit found that the
welfare department had lost track of thousands of welfare recipients
and the federal government last week notified the state that it has
overpaid $27.8 million in food stamps to welfare recipients since
2010. In addition, an audit by the state inspector general also
revealed the DTA doled out $25 million, or 3 percent of its budget,
in possible overpayments to welfare recipients.
Monahan, a Boston College graduate, has been chief of staff at HHS
since 2011. She is a former executive director of the state
Democratic Party and has worked for Gov. Deval Patrick in several
different roles since 2005, according to the administration.
The Boston Herald
Sunday, February 3, 2013
Patrick picks insider to lead welfare dept.
By Erin Smith
Gov. Deval Patrick tapped a trusted political insider to oversee the
state’s welfare department after a series of Herald reports on waste
and mismanagement in the taxpayer-funded program shook up the
agency.
Stacey Monahan was named interim commissioner of the Department of
Transitional Assistance yesterday — two days after embattled welfare
boss Daniel J. Curley resigned under pressure.
She is tasked with changing department procedures, but agency
spokesman Alec Loftus declined to say exactly what those changes
might entail.
“Obviously I’m pleased that they finally saw a need to make a
change,” state House Minority Leader Rep. Bradley H. Jones Jr. said.
“But I think it was a potentially missed opportunity to bring in
someone with an outsider’s prospective.”
Monahan is the former head of the Massachusetts Democratic Party and
lost in a primary in March 2005 to replace departing House Speaker
Thomas Finneran. She served as U.S. Rep. Stephen F. Lynch’s chief of
staff, coordinated Patrick’s field organization in 2010 and worked
as Boston City Councilor Ayanna Pressley’s campaign adviser,
according to Pressley’s City Council resolution last year on
Monahan’s 40th birthday.
“She managed memorable road trips for Massachusetts Democrats to the
2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver and the Presidential
inaugural in DC in 2009; Stacey organized celebrations at Coors
Field in Denver and Nationals Park in Washington that people still
talk about,” states the resolution.
In 2011, Monahan was hired as chief of staff for former Secretary of
Health and Human Services JudyAnn Bigby, who resigned in December
amid criticism for her handling of oversight at a Framingham
compounding pharmacy at the center of a national meningitis outbreak
and a police drug-lab scandal.
She earned $113,000 as chief of staff, but Loftus said he did not
know her new salary.
The Boston Herald
Sunday, February 3, 2013
Time to plug welfare ‘leakage’
By Howie Carr
“Leakage” — that’s what Gov.
Deval Patrick is now calling rampant
welfare fraud in his administration.
According to the inspector general, $25 million has been wasted, and
we all know that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Still, though — $25
million seems more like a flood than a leak.
But don’t worry, the governor assures us that the fraud rate is only
about “average.” That’s certainly a
relief. We’d all hate to think
that the commonwealth is “below average” in the amount of fraud and
abuse by the non-working classes.
But this is a governor who dismisses any and all cases of welfare
fraud as mere “anecdotes.” And by the way, it appears we have a lot
more “anecdotes” than were first reported — closer to 50,000, rather
than the original 19,000.
None of this welfare dirty laundry would have come out if only
Granny Warren’s daughter hadn’t forced the state to order a
voter-registration drive last summer among the layabout class. A
half-million letters went out (complete with prepaid return
envelopes) and almost 50,000 came back — “return to sender, address
unknown. No such number, no such zone.”
Here are a few anecdotes from the inspector general’s report
involving leakage:
• A gimme girl was receiving Transitional Aid to Families with
Dependent Children while in jail, while simultaneously “submitting
time sheets stating she was participating in a work program at a
career center.”
• In 2010, a gimme girl stated she did not know the whereabouts
of the father of her child. Eighteen months later, she gave birth to
a second child “and named the same father on the birth certificate.”
• Another deadbeat claimed she’d been unemployed for more than
six years and that her husband was incarcerated. The inspector
general discovered a bank account into which she had recently
deposited $7,000, while withdrawing $8,500. There was of course “no
evidence” of investigation by the Department of Transitional
Assistance.
The inspector general discovered some problems with “the
relationship status between grantees and dependent children.” Does
this mean that children are being claimed by multiple women as their
own in order to qualify for yet more handouts? Why not? Apparently
nobody ever checks.
Don’t worry though. Deval is on the case. The hacks are setting up
an “Integrated Eligibility System … with anticipated implementation
by 2015.”
Only two more years of leakage among the anecdotes. That’s a load
off the taxpayers’ minds.
All in all, it’s a tough report. Even Deval had to do something. So
he regretfully fired his DTA commissioner, Dan Curley.
“A good guy,” Deval said.
Too bad Curley’s not a lawyer. Deval could make him a judge, just
like he’s doing with Mary Beth Heffernan after her bang-up job as
public safety secretary.
Are there any clerk magistrates’ jobs open? Give Curley the job, and
I guarantee you in three months his nickname at the courthouse will
be “Personal Recognizance.”
Or maybe “Leakage.”
The Boston Herald
Monday, February 4, 2013
As tax hikes loom, gov’s budget grows
By Erin Smith and Chris Cassidy
Gov. Deval Patrick, who’s been touring the state asking residents to
tighten their belts to fund billions in new taxes, has been
lavishing taxpayers’ money on rental cars, meals and more staff in a
Corner Office budget that has skyrocketed over the past four years.
The governor wants to increase his office budget to more than $5.35
million next year — a bump of nearly $1 million, or 23 percent since
fiscal 2011, when spending dipped slightly from fiscal 2010,
according to Patrick’s budget documents. The current year’s
spending, projected at $5.24 million, is up more than half a million
dollars over last year.
According to online state records, since fiscal 2010, the governor’s
office has:
• increased staff from 66 to 70 state employees;
• charged $61,919 to office credit cards;
• spent $7,291 on food from Ashburton Cafe, the restaurant inside
the McCormack State Office Building on Beacon Hill; and
• racked up $40,101 in rental car expenses at Enterprise.
Patrick and his employees spent $15,621 on rental cars alone last
year — even though state police drive both the governor and Murray
around in state-owned cars with cruiser escorts. The office also
uses two state-owned 2004 Chevrolet passenger vans to transport
staff and large items, such as podiums, according to state
officials.
Patrick and his employees use rental cars for trips in which the
rental rates are cheaper than reimbursing staff for official travel
in their personal vehicles, according to Patrick’s staff. The
governor’s office told the Herald that meals from Ashburton Cafe
were to entertain office guests and constituents at events.
The governor’s office said in a statement that spending is being
curtailed in the coming year, limited to a roughly $100,000
increase: “The Governor’s proposed FY14 budget number reflects a
modest 2 percent increase from FY13 spending. This figure also
reflects a voluntary 1 percent (midyear) reduction in FY13 spending
and is consistent with how the Legislature and Constitutional
Officers were funded.”
The spending practices prompted watchdogs to question Patrick’s bid
to raise taxes.
“As legislators contemplate Gov. Patrick’s proposed tax increases,
they may wish to note he has been increasing state spending on his
own office at a rate that is twice the rate at which state personal
income has grown since he was first inaugurated,” said David G.
Tuerck of The Beacon Hill Institute. “It is little wonder that the
governor wants to increase taxes if he is going to spend money on
his own office so much faster than Massachusetts residents can earn
money to pay for it.”
House Minority Leader Rep. Brad Jones said, “When people are being
told we need to raise taxes by $2 billion to fund the bare minimum
of government, things like this just stand out. Taxpayers are just
tired of it.”
Patrick has proposed $2 billion in new taxes to fund new education
and transportation projects and wants to hike income taxes, to make
regular increases in MBTA fares, RMV fees, highway tolls and the gas
tax, and raise taxes on cigarettes, candy and soda, while lowering
the state sales tax.
The Boston Herald
Monday, February 4, 2013
A Boston Herald editorial
The chilly tax climate
Patrick administration officials like to leave the impression that
it isn’t the high cost of doing business that is holding back the
state’s economy — heavens no! — it is simply government’s failure to
spend enough. But the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce is
out with a report that challenges that notion.
The Chamber puts it rather politely, calling the state’s business
competitiveness “mixed.” But the report notes that current state
policy makes Massachusetts’ corporate tax burden as a share of the
private sector economy 5th highest in the country — 74 percent above
the national average.
“When a state’s corporate tax system is uncompetitive, it is at a
significant disadvantage in the never-ending competition for jobs
and investment,” the Chamber wrote. “That competition is not
theoretical; it affects real people.”
Because this state’s for-profit sector is smaller as a percentage of
the total economy than most other states, the burden makes us “even
less competitive,” the report notes.
The Chamber’s recommendation is for Beacon Hill to take up four
specific tax reforms that might mean little to the average citizen
but would mean a great deal to businesses large and small, putting
them on a more even playing field with other states.
Frankly we’d settle first for the administration simply putting an
end to all the happy talk on taxes — as if the only issue is that
Massachusetts individuals and businesses aren’t digging deep enough.
In an op-ed on these pages last week Gov. Deval Patrick’s economic
development czar insisted the plan to raise taxes on individuals
(and of course the many businesses that file taxes as
individuals) will keep us “competitive with our neighbors and with
other states.” He cited the administration’s record that includes a
cut in the corporate tax rate (never mentioning that the modest cut
was a trade-off for a big corporate tax increase in 2008).
The burden on businesses doesn’t fit Team Patrick’s narrative as it
seeks to sell yet another major tax increase. But numbers — like the
ones the Chamber is offering — don’t lie.
The Boston Herald
Monday, February 4, 2013
A Boston Herald editorial
The welfare wilderness
Whatever confidence we might have had in the Patrick
administration’s ability to manage the problems inherent in a
complex bureaucracy evaporated last week with the release of more
damaging news about the state’s welfare operation. Now the head of
the Department of Transitional Assistance is out of a job and the
public is left wondering — just how many millions in taxpayer
dollars have been lavished on people who aren’t eligible for them?
Oh, it’s hardly news that the administration was both failing to
ensure that people who receive benefits are eligible to receive them
and doing a lousy job tracking fraud and abuse. The Herald’s
detailed reporting on failures in the electronic benefits system had
made that abundantly clear.
Then last month DTA acknowledged it was having trouble simply
locating thousands of electronic benefits recipients, the result
of a cockamamie voter registration mailing that went undelivered to
19,000 households.
Turns out, the news was worse than we thought.
DTA has actually lost track of 47,087 households receiving welfare
benefits — fully one in 10 of the 478,000 that were sent the recent
agency mailings.
Meanwhile, the agency acknowledges that since 2010 it has overpaid
federal food stamp recipients by nearly $28 million, while Inspector
General Glenn Cunha this week reported a possible overpayment of $25
million in welfare benefits — or 3 percent of the budget — to
ineligible recipients.
Secretary of Health and Human Services Secretary John Polanowicz,
sworn in just last month, asked for DTA Commissioner Daniel Curley’s
resignation on Thursday. Given the damaging revelations and with a
new HHS sheriff in town Curley was surely on borrowed time as it
was.
But now it’s time to stop the actual bleeding. Gov. Deval Patrick’s
pitch for a tax increase to expand the size of a government he can’t
control as it is becomes more laughable by the day.
The Boston Herald
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
Welfare gaffes led to OT bonanza
By Chris Cassidy
The Bay State’s beleaguered welfare department — after overpaying
food stamp recipients to the tune of nearly $27 million — then
shelled out overtime to staffers for months to fix the blunder, the
Herald has learned.
The Department of Transitional Assistance couldn’t say yesterday how
big the overtime tab was or how many workers cashed in to fix the
costly 2011 gaffe — just the latest example of costly mismanagement
to emerge from the troubled agency — but insisted that by acting
quickly, they stopped the overpayment from getting worse.
The overtime was authorized to ease a backlog of 30,000 food stamp
cases, many of which weren’t properly recertified after their
benefits had expired, causing the feds to raise the alarm.
“In order to avoid any unnecessary hardship for families, and to
prevent additional work for ourselves, it is critical that all
outstanding recertifications be completed on time,” former DTA
Commissioner Julia Kehoe wrote in a memo to DTA staffers on Feb. 1,
2011. “I am also pleased to announce that we will once again offer
overtime for the purpose of completing SNAP re-evaluations only.”
A subsequent memo issued March 22 announced the overtime hours would
continue until the end of March.
“This overtime helped DTA staff eliminate a backlog of nearly 30,000
cases in 2011, preventing millions in additional overpayments to
clients,” said interim DTA Commissioner Stacey Monahan. “However,
the fact that any overpayments were made at a cost to taxpayers is
unacceptable. Secretary (John) Polanowicz has taken decisive action
to change the leadership at DTA to address these serious challenges
and focus on solutions.”
State officials said the backlog was caused by the recession when
food stamp benefits in Massachusetts skyrocketed by more than $70
million per month and caseloads more than doubled while staffing
levels dropped.
But the head of the union that represents 1,100 DTA workers blasted
the state for relying on overtime rather than hiring more workers to
“stem the tide of rising caseloads” over the years.
“DTA has had the choice of solving the problem or kicking it down
the road for another day,” said Susan Tousignant, the president of
SEIU Local 509. “Unfortunately, they’ve chosen again and again to
bring in already overworked caseworkers for overtime rather than
hiring additional workers.”
Meanwhile, state Rep. Shaunna O’Connell (R-Taunton) told the Herald
she plans to file an amendment to the state’s supplemental budget
that would strip all fraud prevention and detection powers from DTA
and give them to the inspector general.
“It’s the fox guarding the henhouse,” O’Connell said. “They’re just
not doing their job.”
The overtime revelation comes just days after DTA Commissioner
Daniel J. Curley resigned under pressure amid an agency shake-up
ordered by new Health & Human Services Secretary John Polanowicz.
The Herald reported Friday that thousands of mailings sent to
welfare recipients came back undeliverable and that the state had
overpaid food stamp recipients by nearly $27 million. It also comes
on the heels of a report from the inspector general, first reported
by the Herald, that another $25 million in welfare money may be
going to recipients who aren’t eligible.
The Boston Herald
Wednesday, February 6, 2013
Dems: Middle class ‘ticked’ by tax plan
Pols say Deval’s fees face tough fight
By Chris Cassidy
Gov. Deval Patrick’s plan to jack up a wide range of taxes and fees
is facing growing popular resistance, as even Democratic legislators
said they are hearing widespread rage from voters and other party
members on the issue.
“Folks are really ticked off,” said state Rep. James R. Miceli
(D-Wilmington). “I haven’t seen it like this since 1990. … There’s
no support out there whatsoever in my district. They’re not going to
bite the bullet.”
One veteran Democrat said he’s hearing from taxpayers fed up with
being asked to cough up more in taxes while they simultaneously hear
about a seemingly endless litany of waste and fraud at state
agencies.
“People are shell-shocked,” said state Rep. Theodore C. Speliotis
(D-Danvers). “It’s folks who when they read the Herald about an
abuse at the DTA (Department of Transitional Assistance), about EBT
cards, they put that together and it really makes people very angry
and frustrated. The middle class has always felt they bear the brunt
of the burden.”
House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo (D-Winthrop) told reporters yesterday:
“I’m hearing from members, and I’m hearing from constituents, and
I’m hearing from folks who aren’t my constituents but want the
speaker of the House to know what their feelings are. People have
grave concerns about the proposal as a whole. But in fairness to the
governor, I told him I would keep an open mind, and I will keep an
open mind.”
Patrick spokeswoman Jesse Mermell said the governor is committed to
expanding transportation and education to promote growth statewide.
“We know that there will be a debate about how to pay for that,”
Mermell said. “We’re looking forward to having the conversation
about how we give the people and employers of Massachusetts the
complete set of tools they need to succeed.”
State Rep. George N. Peterson Jr. (R-Grafton) suggested it will be a
short chat.
“Dead on arrival,” Peterson said. “There is not one person I’ve
heard from that’s in favor of this. Not one.”
But a top state education leader downplayed the negative
reaction.
“I don’t know if I’d use the words ‘grave concern,’ ” said Thomas
Scott, the head of the Massachusetts Association of School
Superintendents. “What we hear from parents in communities is they
want the best opportunities for their children. So yes, this budget
process hasn’t emerged into a full-fledged debate or discussion.
It’s still relatively new.”
State Sen. Patricia D. Jehlen (D-Somerville) said she’s heard from
people who want more state services, but not everyone’s willing to
foot the bill for it. “In principle, I think people don’t want to
live in Mississippi,” Jehlen said. “They want to live in the kind of
Massachusetts that we’ve come to believe is possible.”
State House News Service
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
DeLeo hearing "grave concerns" about Patrick's tax proposals
By Colleen Quinn
While pledging to keep an open mind, House Speaker Robert DeLeo said
he has heard “grave concerns” from lawmakers and constituents about
Gov. Deval Patrick’s plan to enact sweeping tax code changes that
would raise $1.9 billion.
Emerging from a Democratic caucus, DeLeo said he gives the governor
credit for offering a plan to raise revenues to invest in education
and transportation. But the plan went further than lawmakers thought
it would after Patrick highlighted some elements of it in his State
of the Commonwealth address, he said.
The governor wants to raise the income tax to 6.25 percent, cut the
sales tax to 4.5 percent, double personal tax exemptions, and
eliminate handfuls of other personal and corporate tax deductions.
The governor also wants to allow regular hikes in transportation
fees, raise the cigarette tax, eliminate the sales tax exemption on
candy and soda, and expand the bottle redemption law.
“As we started to review the proposals there was various discussions
about elimination of certain deductions, for instance. And as I’m
hearing from members, and I’m hearing from constituents, and I’m
hearing from folks who aren’t my constituents but want the speaker
of the House to know what their feelings are, people have grave
concerns about, you know, the proposal as a whole,” DeLeo said. “But
in fairness to the governor, I told him I would keep an open mind,
and I will keep an open mind.”
The elimination of some deductions - including the mortgage interest
and the college tuition tax deductions - have drawn particular
concerns from lawmakers and residents, DeLeo said.
DeLeo said he was working with Rep. Brian Dempsey (D-Haverhill), the
chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, and Rep. Jay Kaufman
(D-Lexington), chairman of the Revenue Committee last session, to
get a sense of what the entire tax package would mean to residents
at all income levels.
Patrick proposed what he calls a “growth budget” for fiscal year
2014 that relies on $1.2 billion in new tax revenue to support major
investments in education and transportation. The governor has said
his plan would create a tax code that is fair to lower- and
middle-income residents, make Massachusetts more competitive with
other states, and produce revenues for needed investments that could
boost the economy.
In caucus, House Democrats discussed a $115 million supplemental
budget, and DeLeo said Democrats were “pretty much in agreement”
about the midyear spending bill. Patrick filed his supplemental
budget in December to address a $540 million budget gap, as well as
cover increased costs in some accounts. The House supplemental
budget allocates $44 million to homeless shelter costs, $18.5
million to cover sheriffs’ department expenses, and $30 million to
cover expenses associated with the Hinton drug lab scandal where a
former chemist is accused of tampering with evidence. The House bill
does not authorize Gov. Patrick to cut local aid by $9 million, as
he had requested, but would grant Patrick the power to use $200
million more from the rainy day fund to support spending in this
year’s $32.5 billion budget.
“I think every representative has heard from their local cities and
towns in terms of the dire condition that a lot of cities and towns,
despite the generosity that I think we have provided in local aid
from a legislator’s perspective,” DeLeo said. “And I think that
people are concerned what those additional cuts could mean at the
local level, whether it’s the employment of police, fire, teachers,
DPW workers, whatever it may be. So we felt that we wanted to keep
them away from any further cuts.”
The House plans on Wednesday to take up the midyear spending bill.
Revenues have started to move upward in the past two months, a trend
budget makers are looking at to see if it will continue, DeLeo said.
Tax collections in January totaled $2.28 billion, a 12.2 percent or
$249 million increase over January 2012, according to figures
released by the Department of Revenue Tuesday afternoon.
The collections eclipsed the monthly benchmark by $173 million, with
“weak” withholding and corporate and business tax collections offset
by stronger estimated income tax payments, according to DOR. Tax
collections over the first seven months of fiscal 2013 are up $455
million or 3.8 percent compared to the same period in fiscal 2012
and are running $307 million above a benchmark that was revised
downward midyear by the Patrick administration as the governor made
$225 million in unilateral budget cuts in December.
Revenue Commissioner Amy Pitter said the January numbers reflect
fallout from the recent settlement of federal tax policy questions
as part of fiscal cliff deliberations.
“The question I have right now, what I have to discover is why are
they trending that way? Are they trending that way because of, for
instance, are people taking of some tax changes that may be
occurring so they may be getting their money earlier than they
normally would?” DeLeo said. “Or is there a trend that that’s
actually because of whether its sales tax or you know whatever it
may be that the revenues are actually increasing as to actual
revenue? So I think we have to make sure that to see a little bit,
probably February, March, April, probably by April or so see if we
still see that trend.”
As discussions about the governor’s tax plan and the fiscal year
2014 budget get underway, DeLeo has yet to name committee chairs
charged with overseeing pending legislation.
Several House members said lawmakers were starting to be on “edge”
about it, but they expect an announcement sometime this week, as
early as Wednesday.
DeLeo would not say when he planned to name his leadership team,
only saying, “I would say very soon, hopefully we’ll have that.”
The speaker said he had to wait until the Senate adopted the joint
rules last Thursday to name lawmakers to committees. “I would hope
very soon,” he said when pressed for an exact day.
The Boston Herald
Wednesday, February 6, 2013
A Boston Herald editorial
Too weak on welfare
For a crew that may be on the verge of a major tax hike the
leadership on Beacon Hill seems remarkably blase about the “leakage”
in the welfare system. That’s apparently the technical term for the
millions in taxpayer dollars that might as well have been flushed
down the toilet over the past few years.
A top aide to Gov. Deval Patrick, just weeks on the job, took the
drastic step of relieving the welfare commissioner of his duties
last week — and yet the cool-as-a-cucumber governor suggested the
next day that the systemic failures cited in recent reports means
Massachusetts is experiencing “average” losses.
“Our leakage, if that’s the right term, is at or just around the
national average,” Patrick said Friday. “But we want to be better
than the national average because we have been on so many issues.”
See, the administration isn’t failing — it’s failing to
overachieve.
On Monday House Speaker Robert DeLeo noted that Health and Human
Services Secretary John Polanowicz’s decision to fire the Department
of Transitional Assistance commissioner was “pretty strong out of
the box.” That was before DeLeo uttered this pure pabulum:
“You’re always going to have a system that may have some fraud that
may be involved,” DeLeo said. “I think it’s up to the powers that be
and for us watching over them to make sure that we keep that fraud
to a minimum so that those people who should be getting the money
get the money.”
Well, obviously — but isn’t that the crux of the problem?
This is where the lack of strong opposition on Beacon Hill is made
manifest — in the “c’est la vie” attitude of politicians who are
confident that there won’t be political repercussions for their
failures or their inaction.
We understand that elected leaders can’t panic like so many Chicken
Littles at the first sign of a problem. But would it kill these guys
to pretend they understand the outrage of the average
taxpayer?
Meanwhile one of the few lawmakers who has mustered outrage over the
flawed welfare bureaucracy, Rep. Shaunna O’Connell (R-Taunton), has
made an intriguing proposal — stripping DTA of its fraud
investigation and oversight role and investing it with the state
inspector general.
“They’re just not doing their job,” O’Connell said.
It may not be the only answer, but at least O’Connell is expressing
a sense of urgency. That’s more than we can say for many of her
colleagues.
Fox News 25
Fox Undercover
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
You might want to sit down for this: state spending on furniture tops
$8M
By Mike Beaudet, Kevin Rothstein, Producer
Tucked away unused in a conference room on the sixth floor of 2 Boylston
Street in Boston sit more than 30 chairs, gathering dust since last
June.
The Massachusetts Division of Health Care Finance and Policy bought 78
of them in all, spending $213.40 each, a total of $16,645, to replace
aging chairs that an agency spokesperson says was a "safety issue" for
employees.
"Did they really say that?" laughed taxpayer advocate Barbara
Anderson of Citizens for Limited Taxation. "The chairs are
for the safety of employees?"
"I don't believe that every chair they had in that department was
unsafe. There might've been one that was unsafe, and they could've
replaced it, but then they think, 'Well, as long as we're getting one,
let's just replace all of them,'" Anderson said.
The agency tells FOX Undercover the chairs were picked partly because
they match other conference room chairs bought in 2008.
They aren't the most expensive in the catalog, but they also aren't the
cheapest.
"You don't want them all sitting on a folding chair. Somewhere between
that and 200-and-some dollars a chair has to be a state chair that's
affordable and yet that their little tushies can sit on without
suffering," Anderson said.
The state agency that bought the chairs, which is now known as the
Center for Health Information and Analysis, or CHIA, initially turned
down our request for an on-camera interview. But after we asked to talk
to Gov. Deval Patrick about the chairs, CHIA Executive Director Aron
Boros was suddenly available.
"Is this a waste of money?" asked FOX Undercover reporter Mike Beaudet.
"Of course not," Boros replied.
"Why do you need all these new chairs?" Beaudet asked.
"We purchased new chairs because the chairs our employees were sitting
on were falling apart," Boros replied.
The agency showed us a handful of the old chairs which are in rough
shape. But we discovered most of the old chairs were snatched up for
free by other agencies through the state's surplus property program.
The Department of Correction took 22 of them. State Police took 12.
"If the chairs are so dangerous, why did 34 of them go to two other
state agencies?" Beaudet asked.
"When we have property that we need to get rid of, there's a process
that we go through. And DOC and the State Police are free to reject any
of the chairs through the process," Boros replied.
"Are you worried people over in those agencies are sitting in those
dangerous chairs?" Beaudet asked.
"I just follow the process. I don't have any control over what chairs
they take and how they use them.," Boros replied. "Maybe they're using
them for different purposes than we did for different people in
different places."
"Sculptures?" Beaudet asked.
"Maybe. I don't know. I have no control over what the other agencies
do," Boros said.
"If they're really dangerous, why would other state agencies want them?"
Beaudet asked.
"I don't know," Boros replied.
As for the new chairs, almost half still aren't being used eight months
after they were bought.
State Rep. George Peterson, R-Grafton, doesn't get it.
"I've got teachers that don't have pencils and paper in their classroom
so parents are bringing that stuff in," he said. "For the state to buy
78 chairs and half of them not even being used at this point in time I
think is absurd."
So FOX Undercover asked CHIA's Boros why half the chairs aren't being
used.
"We're in the process of growing," he replied. "So we expect that many
of these chairs if not all of them will be used in the next few months
with new employees."
New employees being hired are part of a reorganization that happened
last summer, after the new chairs were purchased. Boros insists he
planned on hiring more people anyway and points out his agency gets its
funding from hospitals and health plans, but the money spent on chairs
is part of $8 million the state spent on office furnishings in fiscal
year 2012. That's up from the $7 million spent the year before.
It comes as Gov. Patrick is proposing $1.9 billion in tax increases
"You're asking people to pay higher taxes. Do you think the state has
eliminated all wasteful spending?" Beaudet asked Gov. Patrick.
"I think this administration has an unparalleled record in squeezing out
waste and squeezing out nonsense and capturing efficiencies. And do I
think that is ever finished in any large organization? Public or
private? No," Patrick replied.
"Are you troubled to see new chairs sitting unused for months in a
conference room?" Beaudet asked.
"Well that's what you say. I don't have that information," Patrick
replied.
"You can see the pictures tonight, governor," Beaudet said.
But Peterson, the state representative from Grafton, said buying the new
chairs was indicative of a bigger problem.
"It all comes down to oversight. Somebody's not watching where the
dollars are going," he said.
The Patrick administration tells us a lot of the dollars are going to
buy furniture for new or renovated buildings, but clearly not all of the
money.
As for the state's surplus property program, where the agency with the
news chairs passed on its old chairs to other agencies, at last check
there are hundreds of items available to state agencies for free,
including more than 100 chairs. |
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