To:
Members of the General Court
October 7, 2013
Re: Latest attack on Proposition 2½
Kudos to the Boston Globe for alerting its readers, in its
front-page October 5 story, that Rep. Marty Walsh supports
restoring compulsory binding arbitration for police and
firefighters, which would repeal an essential element of
Proposition 2½. Now he can no longer pretend he isn’t a tool of
the unions for which he’s been filing H.B. 2467 for over a
decade.
We are grateful
that the Public Safety Committee has not taken action on this
bill to restore compulsory binding arbitration, and don’t expect
it would pass – Prop 2½ has long been respected by the
Legislature and we appreciate this. But just in case Walsh
becomes mayor of Boston with that bully pulpit to hurt all our
communities, we’re sending this memo to alert younger
legislators who weren’t around for the 1980 Prop 2½ ballot
battle.
As you know, CLT
put Proposition 2½ on the ballot in 1980, where it was passed by
voters and is still state law after 34 years. Our major concern
is not that there will be a direct, obvious, outright assault,
like repealing it.
What we have to
watch for is a change in some obscure but essential provision
that will lead to later arguments for repeal or major change.
The last time this happened, in 2010, the Massachusetts
Municipal Association tried to exclude abatements from the levy
limit, which would have effectively doubled the allowed annual
increase in property taxes. Alerted by a friendly assessor, we
were able to stop this. We found out later that many members
didn’t connect this with Proposition 2½ and would have welcomed
an early heads-up, like this memo.
Compulsory binding
arbitration for police and firefighter unions was one of the
reasons that Massachusetts property taxes were the highest in
the world when we created our ballot question. If the community
and the union couldn't agree on a contract, it went to
compulsory arbitration, and the decision of the arbiter was
final and binding. In practice, we were told by municipal
officials, it always favored the union. This drove up costs,
which were covered by unlimited property taxes.
If property taxes
were to be limited, it was only fair to municipalities to give
them some control over their budgets; so Prop 2½ abolished both
compulsory binding arbitration and school board fiscal autonomy,
while also forbidding new unfunded state mandates on the cities
and towns.
In time there was a
change on the police and firefighters issue, also noted in the
Globe article, which restored a type of arbitration, but with
the requirement that city councils and town meetings approve the
decision or send it back to the negotiating table. This seemed
fair enough.
But returning to
the era of final binding arbitration, with no town meeting or
city council approval, would be a major violation of Proposition
2½, and a guarantee that the next legislative assault will be on
the levy limit, as municipal leaders argue that they need higher
property taxes to cover the expensive contracts.
The issue has come up during the mayoral election because an
arbiter just awarded a 25.4 percent pay hike, over six years, to
Boston Police patrol officers. The Boston City Council is
expected to balk at this. Walsh's bill would let the raises go
through without Council approval. We find this threatening not
only to Boston taxpayers, but to us all.