CLT News Release
Friday, February 6, 2015
Baker Plan to address Deval Patrick’s
budget gap
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Barbara Anderson
CLT applauds Gov. Baker’s gentlemanly declining to mention the former governor
by name as he addresses his leaving a huge budget gap for this fiscal year – and
we’re grateful that we have no such need to appear nice. Deval Patrick left a
huge deficit, and that, along with a long list of scandals, is his legacy. Too
bad, because he started out okay when he addressed municipal employee benefits.
We support Gov. Baker’s priorities in spending cuts, to address the short-term
problem. We expect he is planning savings from genuine reform for his own budget
this spring, as Bill Weld did when he inherited the Dukakis fiscal crisis. This
is an exciting time for us; looking forward to Massachusetts being led to
becoming great, or at least effective. And how nice to see something from the
governor’s office at long last that doesn’t include tax hikes.
We hear the criticism of candidate Charlie Baker’s support for the initiative
petition outlawing automatic gas tax hikes, while he now faces the problems with
the MBTA. We would remind everyone that the previous gas tax hikes, along with
the Legislature making extraordinary efforts to fund the T, didn’t get the job
done and won’t until someone takes control of the T budget. Deval Patrick didn’t
do that. We expect Charlie Baker will. His non-partisan choices of people to
address the commonwealth’s many problems looks like a good move to non-partisan
us.
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Citizens for Limited Taxation ▪ PO
Box 1147 ▪ Marblehead, MA 01945
▪ 508-915-3665
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