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CLT UPDATE
Friday, May 24, 2013
Senate passes $34 billion state budget;
$1.5 billion increase over current budget —
and no EBT Card reforms
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Bay State Republicans — faced with a Senate
budget gutted of welfare reforms — are pushing a slew of amendments
to beef up protections inside the state’s embattled Department of
Transitional Assistance, ranging from adding photo IDs to EBT cards
to new attempts at limiting welfare recipients’ access to cash.
State Sen. Bruce Tarr, the Republican minority
leader, filed more than half-dozen amendments addressing welfare
reform, including one giving the Attorney General’s Office the power
to recover any welfare checks or assistance a convicted terrorist
has ever received. That measure appeared to be aimed at the family
of accused marathon bombers Tamerlan and Dzohkar Tsarnaev, which
received more than $100,000 in welfare benefits, as the Herald has
reported.
The Boston Herald
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
GOP pushes amendments to curb welfare abuse
Bottlenecked by a consuming focus on
transportation spending, tax hikes and the state budget, progress on
legislative priorities outlined by House and Senate leaders at the
outset of the session in January has been minimal over the first
five months of the year.
With the Senate prepared to begin debate on its
version of the fiscal 2014 budget Wednesday, action in both chambers
has been largely limited to dealing with state spending and an
unresolved tax package that will be relied upon to finance
transportation next year and moving forward. ...
As Senate Republicans tee up welfare reform
budget amendments, some House members last week criticized the
Senate Ways and Means budget for not including House provisions
creating of a new Bureau of Program Integrity to reduce fraud,
improving oversight and standardizing eligibility determination
processes for welfare benefits across agencies. The House budget
bill also required that electronic benefit transfer cards come with
photo IDs....
Sen. Robert Hedlund, a Weymouth Republican,
expressed frustration that at this point in the year he is still
working to get hearings scheduled before committees on priority
bills he filed this session.
“This used to be the busiest time of year. We’d
be finishing up hearings. We’d have bills sent to the floor. The
process has slowed because the process has become more centralized
as the autonomy of standing committee chairmen has been diminished,”
Hedlund said. “It’s definitely been the trend and more and more
people accept it because they think this is the way it is and how
things are supposed to work.” ...
Hedlund said he found it unusual to base a budget
on hundreds of millions of dollars in new tax revenue tied up in a
bill the Legislature has not taken a final vote on, and that Gov.
Patrick has not yet signed.
“The unusual is the new usual on Beacon Hill,”
Hedlund said, predicting that the Republican caucus would force some
discussion of the issue over the coming days. “We had an impending
deadline with the approaching budget that necessitated us not having
public hearings on the $500 million tax increases that are in the
bill, but maybe (Majority Leader) Stan Rosenberg will stand up and
give another speech telling us how transparent we are,” he said....
The conference committee is expected to meet for
the second time next Wednesday to review the work prepared by staff
and resume negotiations on the tax bill that Patrick has threatened
to veto if he finds it insufficient to address the needs of the
transportation system.
State House News Service
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Tax, spending bills occupy state's agenda over session's first five
months
Tacking on special commissions and bumping up
spending in areas across the nearly $33.9 billion budget proposal,
the Senate on Wednesday charged through more than half the 725
amendments before it during its first day of annual budget
deliberations.
“As long as it goes. I have enough coffee to last
me,” Senate President Therese Murray said after a session that
lasted about 12 hours, from 10 a.m. to just after 10 p.m.
With moderate tax revenue growth reflecting a
long, slow economic recovery, the spending plan crafted by Senate
Democrats boosts state spending by 4.2 percent, in part by relying
on revenues from a still-unapproved $500 million tax package and by
again drawing from the state’s reserves....
While the day included some congenial debate and
elucidation of the various proposals before the upper chamber, the
majority of the items that were tacked onto the budget, one of the
few bills moving on Beacon Hill so far in 2013, were whisked through
by voice vote with Murray wielding the gavel and alternately
declaring the amendments adopted or not based on a seemingly
prearranged script....
The 422 amendments that were taken up Wednesday
are a majority of the 725 filed. Budget deliberations resume at 10
a.m. Thursday, with another long session expected and the
possibility of a rare Friday session if budget deliberations do not
conclude by Thursday night.
State House News Service
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
Senate motors through budget amendments
The Senate voted 39-0 Thursday morning to send
Gov. Deval Patrick a record-setting $300 million local road repair
funding bill.
While Patrick also recommended a $300 million
Chapter 90 program, the governor has not yet filed a borrowing terms
bill. Passage of a borrowing terms bill is required before the funds
can flow to cities and towns, where local officials had hoped the
money would arrive by early April, in time for the prime
construction season. Patrick administration officials have raised
questions about whether a tax bill moving through the Legislature
will provide enough new transportation revenues to support the $300
million program.
With the arrival on his desk of the $300 million
bill, Patrick will have ten days to decide whether to sign the bill,
veto it, or send it back with an amendment. Judging from the slow
pace of conference committee talks it appears Patrick may need to
make a decision on the Chapter 90 bill before he receives
tax-raising legislation from the Legislature....
Municipal officials say the delay in receiving
road project funding from Beacon Hill is delaying the start of
construction projects for a second straight year and could lead to
repair projects becoming more expensive replacement projects.
State House News Service
Thursday, May 23, 2013
Road funding bill sent to Patrick, wait is on for terms bill
The Senate approved a $34 billion annual
state budget late Thursday that makes investments in early
education, elder care, local aid and other areas in part by
drawing from the state’s reserves and relying on revenues from a
developing package of tax increases linked to the transportation
system.
The budget, approved on a 36-3 vote, mirrors
the spending bottom line in the House budget approved in April.
Differences will be worked out by a six-member conference
committee in June, with fiscal 2014 starting July 1.
The Senate used floor amendments to add $68.4
million to a plan authored by the Ways and Means Committee,
putting the final bill “within a micro-dollar” of the House,
according to committee chairman Sen. Stephen Brewer....
Frustrating Republican senators, the Senate
also deferred action on reforms to public assistance programs in
anticipation of a comprehensive welfare reform bill Senate
President Therese Murray is expected to roll out in the coming
weeks. The Senate rejected attempts by Sen. Robert Hedlund
(R-Weymouth) to require photo ID on electronic benefit transfer
cards and to restrict access to cash from EBT cards.
Sen. Michael Knapik, a Westfield Republican,
was the only member of the minority party to vote in favor of
the budget, while Minority Leader Bruce Tarr and Sens. Hedlund
and Richard Ross vote against the bill.
"It’s based on what I consider an
unsustainable amount of spending, based on taxes that I don’t
think are appropriate,” Tarr said after the vote, concerned that
the budget was based on nearly $500 million in tax increases on
tobacco, gasoline and businesses included in a transportation
financing bill that is still being negotiated in conference
committee.
“We don’t have a completed tax bill yet and
this budget is based on revenue from that bill and I think it
would be inappropriate to move forward until we know how we’re
going to pay for things that are in the budget,” he said.
State House News Service
Friday, May 24, 2013
Senate stamps $35 billion budget after two-day debate
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Chip Ford's CLT
Commentary
Following what's going on up on Bacon Hill
— while watching what's going on in
Washington — is becoming much more than
a full-time job. Barbara and I have had to schedule what we're
watching, reading, and listening to so we don't waste time
over-lapping. We discuss each evening what happened just
today!
These are truly historic times. In
Washington, the Obama Administration is daily
— almost by the hour — melting
down beneath post-reelection scandals. Everyone that works for the
administration is ducking and weaving —
but drip by drip the the facts are emerging, and the stink is
odorously expanding. Just today it was announced that Lois
Lerner — at the center of the IRS
targeting scandal who on Wednesday invoked the 5th Amendment before
House of Representatives — has been
"suspended" by the administration — of
course, with pay. Somebody said, "This is my dream job!"
Mine too!
What's going on in Washington today is this
upcoming generation's introduction to what happened in '74 with
Nixon and "Watergate." Get in at the bottom so you can follow
and remember the details later! Somebody in the Obama
administration — or many of them
— already have failed this test.
"Those who fail to learn from history are doomed
to repeat it."
The Associated Press, it was earlier exposed, was
targeted by this administration — so
much for freedom of the press, not that we felt it was being fully
utilized as intended. But this week we learned that James
Rosen of Fox News also was targeted, along with his parents.
But that's Washington.
Here, on Beacon Hill, the games go on.
The state Senate last night passed its version
of the state budget for the next fiscal year, $34 billion, an
increase of $1.5 billion over and above the current operating budget
for this fiscal year passed last June. (For last year's budget vote,
see: State House News Service, Jun. 28, 2012, "House,
Senate stamp approval on $32.5 Billion state budget.")
One thousand five hundred million dollars
($1,500,000,000) more of our money over what the state budgeted,
extracted from us, last year.
This spending is in part based on hiking taxes by $500
million, a supposition that has not yet been ratified
— in fact is still in dispute
— though
considering the opposition not by much.
Nobody's ever seen such a piecemeal budget
process before
— spending before the revenue to support it is
available.
Meanwhile, The Beacon Hill Institute recently issued a couple or reports
of interest to taxpayers.
The first, released on Monday: "Proposed
Tax Increases for Infrastructure and Education in the Commonwealth:
An Economic Analysis" reported:
The current version of the state
legislature’s proposed budget will diminish economic
activity less than the Governor’s original House 1
proposal. This is the finding of a new study from the
Beacon Hill Institute at Suffolk University.
Applying its State Tax Analysis Modeling Program
(STAMP), the Institute compared both budget proposals
and found that the legislature’s plan would destroy
fewer jobs and investment and impose a far lighter claim
on real household disposable income....
"While the legislature’s more modest proposal produces
less economic harm, lawmakers should recognize that
linking infrastructure funding to taxing products such
as tobacco and gasoline, whose consumption is falling
and will continue to fall in the future is a tenuous
proposition at best," writes lead author Rosolino
Candela. "The Governor and legislature need to seek
innovative alternatives to fund the state’s
infrastructure needs."
[FULL
REPORT]
Yesterday it released "Without
cost saving reforms, public sector unions pose future liability
crisis for states." In part it reported:
A one percentage point increase in
the unionization of a state’s public sector workforce is
associated with an additional $78 of state and local
government debt per capita. Meaning, if a state’s public
sector unionization were to fall from 50% to 49%, that
is associated with a fall in the public debt by $78 per
person living in the state. Thus states with higher
public sector unionized workforces are more likely to
face higher levels of state debt. These are the findings
of a new study from the Beacon Hill Institute at Suffolk
University.
The Great Recession of 2008 left state and local
governments exposed to structural deficiencies that
threaten their ability to deliver basic public services
in the future. For years, state and local governments
took the easy path of not raising taxes or cutting
spending to accommodate generous compensation packages
negotiated through collective bargaining.
The study first finds that a one percentage point
increase in the unionization of public sector employees
is associated with an additional $78 of state and local
government debt per capita. For instance, 59.8 percent
of public sector employees in Massachusetts are
unionized. So, the strength of unions in Massachusetts
leads to an additional $4,672.17 of state and local debt
per person....
[FULL
REPORT]
Also yesterday, CLT joined with the Massachusetts
Fiscal Alliance in again issuing a joint new release, "ALEC Report
Shows Massachusetts Dropped in Annual Economic Ranking; Third Year
in a Row, Massachusetts Declines." It announced:
Massachusetts dropped 4 spots to 29th
in their overall economic outlook ranking since last
year, and stands at 45th for economic performance.
Massachusetts has declined in its ranking since 2011,
from 24th, to 25th in 2012 and this year dropping to
29th.
ALEC’s report also shows that Massachusetts ranks as
the 49th best state for the “Debt Service as a Share of
Tax Revenue” category, which ranks how we spend our
revenue share compared to our debt burden....
Barbara Anderson, executive director
of CLT, noted the combination of high debt and high
taxes. “The debt level is amazing when you consider our
tax burden is also one of the highest in the nation,”
added Barbara Anderson, executive director, Citizens for
Limited Taxation. “So we tax a lot and then borrow a lot
to spend more – with little accountability for much of
that spending.”
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Chip Ford |
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The Boston Herald
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
GOP pushes amendments to curb welfare abuse
By Matt Stout
Bay State Republicans — faced with a Senate budget gutted of welfare
reforms — are pushing a slew of amendments to beef up protections
inside the state’s embattled Department of Transitional Assistance,
ranging from adding photo IDs to EBT cards to new attempts at
limiting welfare recipients’ access to cash.
State Sen. Bruce Tarr, the Republican minority leader, filed more
than half-dozen amendments addressing welfare reform, including one
giving the Attorney General’s Office the power to recover any
welfare checks or assistance a convicted terrorist has ever
received. That measure appeared to be aimed at the family of accused
marathon bombers Tamerlan and Dzohkar Tsarnaev, which received more
than $100,000 in welfare benefits, as the Herald has reported.
Other GOP proposals include:
• Requiring welfare recipients to sign off that they received a list
showing what they can buy and where they can go for state-approved
purchases;
• Cutting off any recipients immediately if their home address comes
back undeliverable;
• Ensuring that all new EBT cards include the fraud detection phone
number and the Department of Transitional Assistance website.
The Senate Ways and Means Committee scrubbed welfare reforms from
last week’s
$34 billion budget proposal. House Democrats scoffed at
state Sen. President Therese Murray’s explanation that she would
file a standalone welfare reform bill sometime this session. House
lawmakers vowed to push their own reforms in conference committee,
including demands to put photos on EBT cards and launch a Bureau of
Program Integrity to stem fraud. State Sen. Robert Hedlund
(R-Weymouth) and Tarr filed bills calling for those proposals.
Hedlund also filed a lengthy amendment calling for, among several
things, an online payment system in which cash-assistance recipients
will have money tabbed for rent and utility bills deducted and sent
directly to landlords and utility companies.
It proposes the online option be made available by Jan. 1, 2014, and
then mandatory by the following September, while giving state
officials far more leeway to crack down on fraud.
Senate Democrats, meanwhile, are expected to meet in Murray’s office
today to discuss their amendments before public debate on the Senate
floor starts tomorrow.
State House News Service
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Tax, spending bills occupy state's agenda over session's first five
months
By Matt Murphy
Bottlenecked by a consuming focus on transportation spending, tax
hikes and the state budget, progress on legislative priorities
outlined by House and Senate leaders at the outset of the session in
January has been minimal over the first five months of the year.
With the Senate prepared to begin debate on its version of the
fiscal 2014 budget Wednesday, action in both chambers has been
largely limited to dealing with state spending and an unresolved tax
package that will be relied upon to finance transportation next year
and moving forward.
But there is some light at the end of the Senate budget tunnel.
“We’re ready to go forward. We have a comprehensive welfare reform
bill that we expect to roll out in the coming weeks after the
budget,” Senate President Therese Murray told the News Service
Tuesday when asked about progress on priorities she flagged at the
start of the year.
Murray called the transportation financing bill a “huge” piece of
the legislative puzzle that demanded a lot of “energy” early in the
session, but she said work has been ongoing behind the scenes not
just on welfare reform, but on legislation to address gun violence,
the unemployment insurance system, compounding pharmacy oversight
and the start of a conversation about increasing the minimum wage.
As Senate Republicans tee up welfare reform budget amendments, some
House members last week criticized the Senate Ways and Means budget
for not including House provisions creating of a new Bureau of
Program Integrity to reduce fraud, improving oversight and
standardizing eligibility determination processes for welfare
benefits across agencies. The House budget bill also required that
electronic benefit transfer cards come with photo IDs.
“I was amused by some of the comments of House members that we
gutted their welfare reform,” Murray said. “It was so scattered and
not comprehensive, and we’ve made a commitment and spent a lot of
time on this. We’re not just throwing something out there because we
want the sound bite.”
The Senate this week is also planning to take a final vote to send a
bill authorizing $300 million in local road funding through Chapter
90 to Gov. Deval Patrick desk, and Murray said before debating the
budget she will call for a vote on a “Good Samaritan” bill giving
legal immunity to off-duty first responders such as EMS workers who
respond to emergencies like the Boston Marathon bombings.
The lack of tangible progress so far on other issues identified by
Murray and Speaker Robert DeLeo at the outset of the session in
January increases the likelihood that much of the work could be
pushed off until the fall or the second year of the session, which
will likely be Murray’s last at the helm of the Senate.
Among the priorities listed by Murray and DeLeo in January were sex
offender registry reform, additional home foreclosure protections,
public water infrastructure needs, compounding pharmacy oversight
and unemployment insurance reforms.
DeLeo resisted the rush to quickly respond to the national tragedy
in Newtown, Conn. with tougher gun laws. He set up a task force that
is currently sifting through ideas, and Public Safety Committee
Chairman Rep. Harold Naughton is readying a schedule of statewide
public hearings that will carry on through September.
The Senate is pursuing its own path on gun violence prevention led
by Sen. James Timilty, but is also far away from making legislative
recommendations.
DeLeo said the state budget addresses several of his own priorities,
including additional support for community colleges, and a spokesman
said DeLeo hoped to bring forward an economic development package in
the fall.
The House version of the budget included nearly $30 million in
additional funding for community colleges taken from anticipated
casino licensing revenue, including $5 million for competitive
grants and $4.75 million to fund a new STEM Starter Academy to
prepare students for jobs in science, technology, engineering and
math.
“Speaker DeLeo continues to examine options for an economic
development package to build on last year’s successes for discussion
in the fall,” said Seth Gitell, a spokesman for DeLeo. The House is
also expected to pass a bill on Wednesday moving 17-year-old
offenders out of the adult court system and into the juvenile
system.
Murray said in January that action would be taken “very, very early”
to reform the state's sex offender registry laws in the wake of
charges brought against a Wakefield man for abusing children at his
wife’s daycare. Now, Murray says the Senate will likely accept a
budget recommendation to post Level II sex offenders online and
adopt several other budget amendments to address issues with the
management of the registry and classification of sex offenders.
Sen. Robert Hedlund, a Weymouth Republican, expressed frustration
that at this point in the year he is still working to get hearings
scheduled before committees on priority bills he filed this session.
“This used to be the busiest time of year. We’d be finishing up
hearings. We’d have bills sent to the floor. The process has slowed
because the process has become more centralized as the autonomy of
standing committee chairmen has been diminished,” Hedlund said.
“It’s definitely been the trend and more and more people accept it
because they think this is the way it is and how things are supposed
to work.”
Murray said committee chairmen wield great authority over when bills
are heard and released from committee, especially in the House where
members of that branch outnumber senators on joint committees.
“Bob has his own way of looking at the world, and I get he’s not in
the majority party so he feels the committee process has lessened.
That is simply not true,” Murray said.
While the budget process has moved forward along its traditional
track, the House and Senate have yet to come to a resolution on a
proposed $500 million tax increase to fund transportation.
The six-member conference committee named to negotiate the final
bill between the branches has met only once, and members say the
work is largely being done on the staff level as the Senate turned
its attention to the budget.
Hedlund said he found it unusual to base a budget on hundreds of
millions of dollars in new tax revenue tied up in a bill the
Legislature has not taken a final vote on, and that Gov. Patrick has
not yet signed.
“The unusual is the new usual on Beacon Hill,” Hedlund said,
predicting that the Republican caucus would force some discussion of
the issue over the coming days. “We had an impending deadline with
the approaching budget that necessitated us not having public
hearings on the $500 million tax increases that are in the bill, but
maybe (Majority Leader) Stan Rosenberg will stand up and give
another speech telling us how transparent we are,” he said.
Murray called the critique a “distraction,” and said the Legislature
took a similar approach in 2005 to the budget with new revenue
pending when Mitt Romney was governor.
The conference committee is expected to meet for the second time
next Wednesday to review the work prepared by staff and resume
negotiations on the tax bill that Patrick has threatened to veto if
he finds it insufficient to address the needs of the transportation
system.
State House News Service
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
Senate motors through budget amendments
By Andy Metzger
Tacking on special commissions and bumping up spending in areas
across the nearly $33.9 billion budget proposal, the Senate on
Wednesday charged through more than half the 725 amendments before
it during its first day of annual budget deliberations.
“As long as it goes. I have enough coffee to last me,” Senate
President Therese Murray said after a session that lasted about 12
hours, from 10 a.m. to just after 10 p.m.
With moderate tax revenue growth reflecting a long, slow economic
recovery, the spending plan crafted by Senate Democrats boosts state
spending by 4.2 percent, in part by relying on revenues from a
still-unapproved $500 million tax package and by again drawing from
the state’s reserves.
Murray and her aides noted of the 422 amendments considered
Wednesday, 67 were held for later discussion and 218 were rejected,
including a plan to boost spending in southeastern Massachusetts to
fight potentially deadly mosquito-borne diseases like EEE and West
Nile. Many others were withdrawn.
While the day included some congenial debate and elucidation of the
various proposals before the upper chamber, the majority of the
items that were tacked onto the budget, one of the few bills moving
on Beacon Hill so far in 2013, were whisked through by voice vote
with Murray wielding the gavel and alternately declaring the
amendments adopted or not based on a seemingly prearranged script.
“That’s the decision of the chair of ways and means after doing his
due diligence on the amendments. It was his recommendation,” said
Murray when asked about the decision-making. She said, “They’ve been
here for weeks, so as the amendments are filed they go through each
one, check and see what the cost is of each one, and if we can
afford it or if it’s a good idea or not a good idea make a
recommendation.”
The Senate adopted a Sen. Sonia Chang-Diaz (D-Jamaica Plain)
proposal to overhaul the commission established by the 1993
education reform law to determine the cost of providing education.
Chang-Diaz said the panel had only produced two reports since it was
established, the last one about 10 years ago.
A similar amendment proposed by Sen. Eileen Donoghue (D-Lowell) to
create a special commission investigating the cost and methods of
providing higher education was also adopted, while the Senate
rejected a proposal by Minority Leader Bruce Tarr (R-Gloucester) to
institute performance management reporting by state colleges and
universities.
Gov. Deval Patrick had proposed a nearly $1 billion investment in
education in his own budget, and while neither the House nor the
Senate went as far as the governor, both branches boosted education
accounts.
Sen. Michael Moore (D-Millbury) withdrew an amendment, backed by the
University of Massachusetts student trustees, to boost the state’s
funding of the university by about $24 million to $478.7 million, a
level supported by Patrick and the House and which would avert
tuition and fee increases. The Senate passed on a voice vote a Moore
amendment to boost by $1.5 million the line item for the state to
contract veterinary services with the Cummings School of Veterinary
Medicine at Tufts University.
Beyond education items, the Senate dispensed with many amendments
related to housing. Sen. Robert Hedlund (R-Weymouth) spoke at length
about reforms to the housing law that allows developers to skirt
local zoning bylaws in some communities if they dedicate a certain
percentage of units as affordable and limit their profit to 20
percent with excess profits intended to go toward the host city or
town.
“Why we do not put in place a process by which we give communities
the tools to recover these funds is beyond me,” said Hedlund, who
said even after former Inspector General Greg Sullivan exposed fraud
in the system in 2006 the law has remained unchanged. Hedlund’s
amendment fell 7-31, with three Democrats - Sens. Ken Donnelly of
Arlington, John Keenan of Quincy, and James Timilty of Walpole
voting in favor.
An expansion of the state’s bottle deposit law – which would add
water, sports drinks and coffee to the 5-cent deposit program, which
already includes beer and soda – was added to the budget by voice
vote. The proposal has been perennially pushed on Beacon Hill and
was passed by the Senate for the first time last year, as part of an
economic development bill, though the language was dropped in the
final version of the bill passed by both the House and Senate.
The Senate budget debate on Wednesday was the first in which the
Senate posted its roll call votes on the budget page alongside the
amendment voted on, part of a rules change adopted earlier this
year.
The 422 amendments that were taken up Wednesday are a majority of
the 725 filed. Budget deliberations resume at 10 a.m. Thursday, with
another long session expected and the possibility of a rare Friday
session if budget deliberations do not conclude by Thursday night.
State House News Service
Thursday, May 23, 2013
Road funding bill sent to Patrick, wait is on for terms bill
By Michael Norton
The Senate voted 39-0 Thursday morning to send Gov. Deval Patrick a
record-setting $300 million local road repair funding bill.
While Patrick also recommended a $300 million Chapter 90 program,
the governor has not yet filed a borrowing terms bill. Passage of a
borrowing terms bill is required before the funds can flow to cities
and towns, where local officials had hoped the money would arrive by
early April, in time for the prime construction season. Patrick
administration officials have raised questions about whether a tax
bill moving through the Legislature will provide enough new
transportation revenues to support the $300 million program.
With the arrival on his desk of the $300 million bill, Patrick will
have ten days to decide whether to sign the bill, veto it, or send
it back with an amendment. Judging from the slow pace of conference
committee talks it appears Patrick may need to make a decision on
the Chapter 90 bill before he receives tax-raising legislation from
the Legislature.
While Patrick recommended a $1.9 billion tax proposal in January,
the six-member conference committee is working off of House and
Senate-approved bills that raised taxes by about $500 million. In an
early April letter to local officials, Patrick and Lt. Gov. Tim
Murray wrote, "Without the passage of either our tax reform proposal
or additional revenue that is derived from options substantively
comparable to that which we have proposed, investment in the Chapter
90 program will not be implemented. Without enactment of our plan,
necessary road and bridge projects, including your local
transportation needs, will go unaddressed, creating longer commutes,
eliminating public transit options and slowing economic recovery and
growth."
Asked about plans for a terms bill, a spokeswoman for Administration
and Finance Secretary Glen Shor said the administration "cannot file
a terms bill to determine the terms of the bonds until a law is
passed authorizing the bonds to be issued. As of this point, the
Governor has not received a Chapter 90 funding bill from the
Legislature."
Municipal officials say the delay in receiving road project funding
from Beacon Hill is delaying the start of construction projects for
a second straight year and could lead to repair projects becoming
more expensive replacement projects.
State House News Service
Friday, May 24, 2013
Senate stamps $34 billion budget after two-day debate
By Matt Murphy
The Senate approved a $34 billion annual state budget late Thursday
that makes investments in early education, elder care, local aid and
other areas in part by drawing from the state’s reserves and relying
on revenues from a developing package of tax increases linked to the
transportation system.
The budget, approved on a 36-3 vote, mirrors the spending bottom
line in the House budget approved in April. Differences will be
worked out by a six-member conference committee in June, with fiscal
2014 starting July 1.
The Senate used floor amendments to add $68.4 million to a plan
authored by the Ways and Means Committee, putting the final bill
“within a micro-dollar” of the House, according to committee
chairman Sen. Stephen Brewer.
The budget spends $350 million from the state’s rainy day fund and
includes a $15 million increase for early education to reduce the
pre-school waitlist by 2,000 students, a proposal not featured in
the House budget.
“We now have to get to work in reconciling the transportation
funding bill and also to get to resolve all of these budgets so we
have a lot of work throughout June, but we’ll get there,” Brewer
said.
House and Senate leaders head into budget talks knowing that their
spending plans fall roughly $800 million short of the requests of
Gov. Deval Patrick, who sought larger tax hikes and bigger
allocations for transportation and education that he said would help
grow the economy and address longstanding needs.
Over the course of two long days of debate, the Senate dispensed
with 725 amendments, adopting 195 proposals including plans to
overhaul the management of the Sex Offender Registry and expand the
5-cent bottle deposit law to include water and sports drinks.
“Everyone got an opportunity to participate and debate and it was a
real lesson in democracy,” Senate President Therese Murray said
after the final vote Thursday night. In a heartfelt tribute, Murray
sponsored a successful amendment naming the state’s ALS Registry
after former Gov. Paul Cellucci, who is battling the disease.
Senators also voted to make nearly $40 million from a distressed
hospital fund available to increase reimbursement rates to community
and safety net hospitals that provide a disproportionate amount of
care to Medicaid patients.
"Many hospitals are hanging on by their fingernails, and we're
trying to throw a lifeline to keep some of them operating," Brewer
said.
The House and Senate budgets differ significantly in their support
for the University of Massachusetts where officials have pledged to
avoid tuition and fees hike for the next school year if state
support is increased to levels they have requested.
Sen. Michael Moore, the co-chair of the Higher Education Committee,
backed off his amendment to boost funding for UMass by $24 million
that would have put the Senate in line with the House. Moore said he
was unsure of support levels for his amendment and didn’t want to
undermine the Senate’s bargaining position in conference.
Frustrating Republican senators, the Senate also deferred action on
reforms to public assistance programs in anticipation of a
comprehensive welfare reform bill Senate President Therese Murray is
expected to roll out in the coming weeks. The Senate rejected
attempts by Sen. Robert Hedlund (R-Weymouth) to require photo ID on
electronic benefit transfer cards and to restrict access to cash
from EBT cards.
Sen. Michael Knapik, a Westfield Republican, was the only member of
the minority party to vote in favor of the budget, while Minority
Leader Bruce Tarr and Sens. Hedlund and Richard Ross vote against
the bill.
"It’s based on what I consider an unsustainable amount of spending,
based on taxes that I don’t think are appropriate,” Tarr said after
the vote, concerned that the budget was based on nearly $500 million
in tax increases on tobacco, gasoline and businesses included in a
transportation financing bill that is still being negotiated in
conference committee.
“We don’t have a completed tax bill yet and this budget is based on
revenue from that bill and I think it would be inappropriate to move
forward until we know how we’re going to pay for things that are in
the budget,” he said.
Senators on Thursday night debated an amendment offered by Sen. Mark
Montigny that would have required mutual corporations to allow
policy holders to weigh in through non-binding proxy votes on the
compensation of executives.
Invoking the generous compensation package for former Liberty Mutual
CEO Ted Kelly, Montigny said it was only fair that policy holders
who own mutual corporations be given the same rights as stockholders
in publicly traded companies. Financial Services Committee Co-Chair
Sen. Anthony Petruccelli urged his colleagues to give his committee
time to seek testimony on a bill before making a recommendation.
Senators from western Massachusetts expressed concern that the
amendment could have unintended consequences for Mass Mutual, the
largest employer in that area, and said the Senate shouldn’t rush
into a change that could cost jobs. “The road to hell is paved with
good intentions . . . I can’t take that risk,” Sen. Gale Candaras
said.
Montigny scoffed at his colleagues protesting the idea of adding
policy changes to a budget already full of complex policy
initiatives, echoing former Minority Leader Brian Lees when he said,
“Give me a break.” The amendment was rejected 9-26.
The Senate also rejected a Tarr amendment that would have increased
to $2 million the minimum value of a contract for state services
triggering the so-called “Pacheco Law” that requires agencies to
prove savings and meet other criteria before it can privatize
services. Tarr called the law “cumbersome” and said it had a
“chilling effect on innovation.” The House budget increased the
threshold from $500,000 to $750,000.
Pacheco said the law dating to the early 1990s was meant to protect
taxpayers from administrations funneling state contracts to
political donors and friends. He said any agency can privatize a
service if they can prove it saves one penny. The amendment failed
8-30.
The Senate unanimously approved two $11.5 million salary reserves to
human service and child care providers. Sens. Karen Spilka and
Michael Moore said the goal was to boost pay for some of the lowest
paid human service workers.
Sen. Brian Joyce’s amendment to give judicial pay raise similar to
those approved in the House also passed, but another amendment he
filed to tie judicial pay to the rate of inflation failed.
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