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CLT UPDATE
Wednesday, August 3, 2016
Fallout begins from a
weekend of chaos
|
The Salem News /
Eagle-Tribune
Wednesday, August 3, 2016
A Salem News / Eagle-Tribune
editorial
Legislators end a mad rush for more of
your money
Saved by the bell — or whatever device
is used to signal the end of the legislative session at
the Massachusetts Statehouse.
The late Barbara Anderson of
Citizens for Limited Taxation used to say that she
always felt a measure of relief when legislators
departed the Statehouse and headed back to their home
districts. Better for us, she noted, when they were off
the clock rather than in Boston plotting ways to take
more money out of taxpayers' pockets.
Fortunately, these days we once again
have a fiscally responsible Republican governor in
Charlie Baker who is willing to take on the Democratic
majority's penchant for spending and taxation.
Determined to take care of their various
constituencies, legislators last weekend overrode
Baker's veto of some $200 million of spending measures
included in the 2016-17 state budget. Furthermore, the
House and Senate approved yet another increase in the
state's already high debt ceiling. The latter allows
more borrowing and more spending than would otherwise be
the case.
But it's only our money, after all.
As Anderson's successor at CLT, Chip
Ford of Marblehead, noted, "It looks like the state
government intends to go the way of the federal
government when it comes to borrowing and debt. When it
hits the debt ceiling (and) wants more money, it just
raises the ceiling and keeps the party rolling. As the
state hits its $21.8 billion limit, the Legislature
simply increased the borrowing limit by another $11.5
billion by exempting some debt from the 'statutory
limit.'
"That's what Congress does every year or
two as the federal debt ceiling approaches — (which is)
how it's put the nation into $19-$20 trillion of
accumulated debt. I wonder when the Legislature will
propose that the state begin printing its own money,
like the feds do when they run short?"
Never mind the fact that after
suspending business for the two weeks prior while
members attended their parties' national nominating
conventions in Cleveland and Philadelphia, the
Legislature had to make a mad dash to accomplish
something before the July 31 election-year deadline for
adjournment. (The early deadline was established so
members, most of whom are without opposition this year,
will have time to "campaign" before the November
election.)
House Minority Leader Bradley Jones Jr.,
R-North Reading, compared the hours before adjournment
to something out of a Three Stooges short with bills
flying out of committee and people trying to figure out
what they contained.
Every second counted this weekend on
Beacon Hill, where lawmakers said the wall clocks in the
House Chamber showed two different times, the roll-call
vote printer depicted a third, and their cellphones
relayed still another.
“It’s sort of like ‘The Three Stooges,’
” said Bradley Jones Jr., the House minority leader.
“Everybody’s got a different clock.”
Some 19 months into their session,
lawmakers waited until the last minutes to enact major
pieces of legislation, with little time for members to
review the bills and many advocates sidelined in the
final decision-making.
The Legislature’s rush to finish work on
bills years in the making included major policy changes
that were negotiated behind closed doors with sweeping
implications for the state’s energy industry and
ratepayers, ride-hailing companies and taxis, and
community development and job training. Rank-and-file
lawmakers had, at some points, mere minutes to read over
the agreements before they were hurried for a vote and
sent to Governor Charlie Baker’s desk.
Speaking with reporters on Monday, Baker
said the Legislature’s transparency had increased over
the years, in part because of technology, but said he
was stumped about how to pull back the curtains from the
sausage-making of passing legislation. The final vote
was cast shortly after the midnight deadline on Monday
morning.
The Boston Globe
Tuesday, August 2, 2016
Last-minute lawmaking for the Mass. legislature
The Massachusetts House and Senate ought
to be deeply embarrassed about the way they concluded
their formal sessions on Sunday night — well,
technically in the wee hours of Monday morning.
By rule each two-year legislative
session effectively ends after just 18 months. It’s just
the way things are done in an election year. After July
31 the Legislature meets only in informal sessions,
taking up noncontroversial items.
That deadline is a mystery to no one.
And while we understand being deadline-driven — and that
the national conventions messed with the calendar this
year — the House and Senate still couldn’t manage to
reach agreement on several major pieces of legislation
until there was literally no time left on the clock. Any
lawmaker who claims to have a clue what was in the final
bills before voting on them is fibbing. But this is such
business as usual that few bother even to make that
claim....
This is how mistakes get made. This is a
way of doing business that ought to be unacceptable to
taxpayers and voters who pay for a “full-time”
Legislature that works part-time and even then blows its
own deadlines.
A Boston Herald editorial
Wednesday, August 3, 2016
Beacon Hill rush job
Massachusetts Senate President Stan
Rosenberg urged Gov. Charlie Baker to file half his
legislation in the Senate next session. contending key
business and education bills died due to the
sluggishness of the House....
"None of the bills were in our shop"
until the waning days of the session, Rosenberg told
Herald Radio hosts Jaclyn Cashman and Kevin Franck.
"They were in the joint committee in the House because
the governor filed the bills in the House."
DeLeo yesterday placed the Legislature’s
failure to pass a bill reforming non-compete clauses at
the feet of the Senate yesterday — saying his colleagues
worked hard to reach a compromise with the business
community, but “things changed” when the measure reached
the upper chamber.
"We didn't point the finger at the House
when they didn't pass (noncompete legislation) last year
and we did," Rosenberg fired back today. "It's not about
pointing fingers, it's about getting good legislation
done. It just wasn't ready."
The Boston Herald
Wednesday, August 3, 2016
Rosenberg: Charlie Baker should file half his
legislation in Senate
Before abandoning Beacon Hill Sunday
night for their districts, the Democrat-controlled
Legislature restored about 90 percent of the funding
that Gov. Charlie Baker vetoed in the new state budget,
a decision that independent budget analysts say
increases the likelihood of mid-year budget reductions.
In a series of override votes taken over
three weekend days, the Legislature reversed $231.6
million in spending vetoes and let about $35.5 million
in spending reductions stand, according to the
Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation. Lawmakers engaged in
almost no debate on the overrides or the state's overall
budget picture, marching through scores of override
votes that took many hours to complete and became a
major focus of the end of formal sessions....
"Only one month into the fiscal year,
any estimates of a budget gap are very fluid and subject
to change," MTF wrote in an analysis of budget vetoes
Wednesday. "What is certain, however, is that another
challenging fiscal year lies ahead and that extent of
this year's spending overrides increases the likelihood
of midyear budget cuts."
State spending will increase 2.42
percent, including spending approved through overrides,
MTF said....
It's unclear what new budget strategies
Baker's team might deploy since the Legislature has
forced it to spend nearly $232 million that the
administration essentially said is not affordable....
Legislators, meanwhile, are gearing up
for fall reelection efforts and have been taking to
social media to tout the spending priorities they
preserved by undoing the governor's vetoes.
State House News Service
Wednesday, August 3, 2016
Overrides quickly punch hole in new state budget,
analysis says
|
|
Chip Ford's CLT
Commentary
Reactions to last weekend's
eleventh-hour legislative chaos are pretty much
universal — but not
unusual. This is how it works in Massachusetts,
the state of year-round dysfunction. People are
still trying to figure out what happened and what it all
means, and will be for weeks and months to come.
When the unanticipated results spring out everyone who
had a hand in it will wonder how that got included, was
passed.
"Any
lawmaker who claims to have a clue what was in the final
bills before voting on them is fibbing," the Boston
Herald pointed out. "But this is such business as usual
that few bother even to make that claim." This is
what legislating by "The Best Legislature Money Can Buy"
—
our "full-time" Legislature
—
has come down to. At the self-imposed deadline
with the clock running out our representatives and
senators simply vote for whatever is shoved in front of
them by their "leadership," then race home to campaign
for re-election.
This isn't
"sausage-making," which requires some skill. It's
tossing meat into a grinder and punching the on button
before walking away.
The upside
— if one is to be found
— is in Barbara's
observation, as noted in the Salem News/Eagle-Tribune
editorial: ". . .
she always felt a measure of relief when legislators
departed the Statehouse and headed back to their home
districts. Better for us, she noted, when they were off
the clock rather than in Boston plotting ways to take
more money out of taxpayers' pockets."
At least the Legislature
can do little more if any damage for the remainder of
the year while they vacation.
|
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|
Chip Ford
Executive Director |
|
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The Boston Globe
Tuesday, August 2, 2016
Last-minute lawmaking for the Mass. legislature
By Jim O’Sullivan
Every second counted this weekend on Beacon
Hill, where lawmakers said the wall clocks in
the House Chamber showed two different times,
the roll-call vote printer depicted a third, and
their cellphones relayed still another.
“It’s sort of like ‘The Three Stooges,’ ” said
Bradley Jones Jr., the House minority leader.
“Everybody’s got a different clock.”
Some 19 months into their session, lawmakers
waited until the last minutes to enact major
pieces of legislation, with little time for
members to review the bills and many advocates
sidelined in the final decision-making.
The Legislature’s rush to finish work on bills
years in the making included major policy
changes that were negotiated behind closed doors
with sweeping implications for the state’s
energy industry and ratepayers, ride-hailing
companies and taxis, and community development
and job training. Rank-and-file lawmakers had,
at some points, mere minutes to read over the
agreements before they were hurried for a vote
and sent to Governor Charlie Baker’s desk.
Speaking with reporters on Monday, Baker said
the Legislature’s transparency had increased
over the years, in part because of technology,
but said he was stumped about how to pull back
the curtains from the sausage-making of passing
legislation. The final vote was cast shortly
after the midnight deadline on Monday morning.
“I don’t have a good answer for the question
about the end-of-the-session squeeze,” the
governor said. “That’s happened as far back as I
can remember, and I’ve been paying attention to
this for over 20 years.”
At the end of the last two-year legislative
session, in 2014, a similarly frenetic set of
meetings in the final days gave passage to bills
designed to tackle the opioid-addiction crisis,
tighten gun laws, and suspend the state sales
tax for a weekend. The 2009-2010 session ended
in acrimony, with House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo
at odds with Governor Deval Patrick’s
administration over legislation sanctioning
casinos. The bill reemerged the next year and
became law.
“Delaying the resolution of major issues until
the final days of the legislative session is a
time-honored tradition that has gone on over all
the decades that I’ve been involved in
Massachusetts government,” said Michael Widmer,
who last year stepped down after 23 years as the
president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers
Foundation, a business-backed advocacy group.
“But recognizing that there will always be some
kind of rush in each legislative session, there
is no reason why more of the major bills can’t
be resolved before the final two weeks.”
State House veterans say the vanishing days on
the calendar can prove a useful incentive for
lawmakers to coalesce behind frequently
contentious bills.
“There’s sort of an inherent part of the
process, for people to want to use the clock to
their perceived benefit,” said Jones, a North
Reading Republican first elected in 1994.
In addition to the policy measures, the
Democrat-run Legislature voted this weekend to
override many of Baker’s vetoes to the state
budget, restoring a total of more than $200
million. But top legislative officials concede
privately that Baker is expected to use his
executive budget authority to cut much, if not
all, of that spending.
Three major bills — regulating ride-hailing
companies, requiring utilities to contract with
more hydro- and wind power, and a measure aimed
at economic development — all received final
votes after midnight. Some members said they did
not reach their homes until 4 a.m.
Lawmakers will continue to meet in informal
sessions, when an individual member’s objection
can block a bill from advancing.
Many long-sought measures failed to reach the
finish line this weekend, among them a ban on
handheld cellphones while driving, a measure
loosening the state’s rules on workers’
noncompetition contracts, a transfer of
authority over liquor licenses from the state to
cities and towns, the creation of a paid family
and medical leave program for workers, and a
boost in the minimum age for tobacco purchases
from 18 to 21.
This year’s finale was made more difficult by
deteriorating relations between House and Senate
leaders, leaving several key bills on the table,
even though both chambers are led by Democrats.
And the July national conventions of both major
political parties, drawing lawmakers to
Cleveland and Philadelphia in the final two
weeks of July, added further distractions.
The frenzied final hours prompted some senators
to accuse the House, led by DeLeo, of being
beholden to big-business interests.
“I think the House’s operating procedure is: Do
as little as possible and still be able to say
you did stuff. I just think that’s where Bob’s
at,” said Senator Benjamin B. Downing, a
Pittsfield Democrat. “A convenient and unnoticed
byproduct of that is that doing as little as
possible happens to line up with the priorities
of the governor and some of the special
interests, business groups in particular.”
Senator Dan Wolf, a Harwich Democrat who like
Downing is not seeking reelection, echoed the
criticism, arguing that the Senate had paid
closer attention to the working and middle
classes.
“The idea of public policy is to blend all of
the interests, which includes business, but it
also includes the bottom-uppers, the workers,
the citizens,” Wolf said Monday. “In my six
years there, more attention has been paid from
the House side to the top-down, the business
owners, the investors.”
Through a spokesman, DeLeo declined to comment.
“I don’t think that Speaker DeLeo’s style is
limited at all,” said state Representative John
Fernandes, a Milford Democrat, defending the
leader of the House. “What he has is an
inclusive approach to legislation, not a
frivolous approach to legislation.”
Relations between the House and Senate began
souring notably last year, after state Senate
President Stanley C. Rosenberg started
implementing parliamentary reforms he said would
increase transparency, while also granting the
state Senate more power in legislative
committees.
House leaders bucked, and friction built in a
series of skirmishes over large-scale bills on
charter-school expansion and energy, as well as
smaller legislation, such as an inter-chamber
battle over a tightly targeted veterans’
benefits bill.
Some of that frustration bubbled over on
Saturday, when Rosenberg blamed the House for
slow-walking many of the Senate-backed measures.
He said the Senate had been “promised” bills
like an energy omnibus “last year and then in
the first quarter of this year, and then in the
second quarter of this year,” according to the
State House News Service.
“We got it three weeks ago,” Rosenberg said.
Joshua Miller of the Globe staff contributed
to this report.
The Boston Herald
Wednesday, August 3, 2016
A Boston Herald editorial
Beacon Hill rush job
The Massachusetts House and Senate ought to be
deeply embarrassed about the way they concluded
their formal sessions on Sunday night — well,
technically in the wee hours of Monday morning.
By rule each two-year legislative session
effectively ends after just 18 months. It’s just
the way things are done in an election year.
After July 31 the Legislature meets only in
informal sessions, taking up noncontroversial
items.
That deadline is a mystery to no one. And while
we understand being deadline-driven — and that
the national conventions messed with the
calendar this year — the House and Senate still
couldn’t manage to reach agreement on several
major pieces of legislation until there was
literally no time left on the clock. Any
lawmaker who claims to have a clue what was in
the final bills before voting on them is
fibbing. But this is such business as usual that
few bother even to make that claim.
As for the substance of the bills that were
rushed to Gov. Charlie Baker’s desk it will take
some time to review and analyze them.
Legislation that would regulate ride-hailing
services such as Uber and Lyft would seem to
have a great deal to recommend it — the final
agreement dropped a ban on drivers picking up at
Logan Airport and the Boston Convention &
Exhibition Center, for example. But besides a
new 20 cent fee per ride intended to buy off
local officials and grumpy cab owners, we don’t
know what else was stuffed in there to seal the
deal.
We know a complex economic development bill
dropped the idea of taxing short-term vacation
rentals and that it authorizes hundreds of
millions in borrowing for various job-creation
efforts. We don’t know much else.
Meanwhile a new energy policy bill is so complex
that it could take weeks to unpack. Baker gets
10 days — for that and all of the other business
dumped on his desk by lawmakers eager to hit the
campaign trail.
This is how mistakes get made. This is a way of
doing business that ought to be unacceptable to
taxpayers and voters who pay for a “full-time”
Legislature that works part-time and even then
blows its own deadlines.
The Boston Herald
Wednesday, August 3, 2016
Rosenberg: Charlie Baker should file half his
legislation in Senate
By Jennifer Miller
Massachusetts Senate President Stan Rosenberg
urged Gov. Charlie Baker to file half his
legislation in the Senate next session.
contending key business and education bills died
due to the sluggishness of the House.
"I invite the governor to file an equal number
in the House and the Senate," he said on Boston
Herald Radio's "Morning Meeting" today. "Right
now, all of them get filed in the House and they
all get stuck in the joint committee and when
they get out they're still in the House."
Rosenberg fired back at House Speaker Robert
DeLeo, contending the House had lagged in
getting charter school and noncompete
legislation to the Senate -- dooming both to
truncated debate and eventual demise in a
last-minute session last weekend.
"None of the bills were in our shop" until the
waning days of the session, Rosenberg told
Herald Radio hosts Jaclyn Cashman and Kevin
Franck. "They were in the joint committee in the
House because the governor filed the bills in
the House."
DeLeo yesterday placed the Legislature’s failure
to pass a bill reforming non-compete clauses at
the feet of the Senate yesterday — saying his
colleagues worked hard to reach a compromise
with the business community, but “things
changed” when the measure reached the upper
chamber.
"We didn't point the finger at the House when
they didn't pass (noncompete legislation) last
year and we did," Rosenberg fired back today.
"It's not about pointing fingers, it's about
getting good legislation done. It just wasn't
ready."
Non-compete contract clauses prevent employees
from going to work for competing firms or
starting up their own firms in competition. Tech
startups say the non-competes stifle business
development and innovation, while larger
established firms say non-competes protect their
proprietary rights.
The House’s compromise with employers would have
limited non-compete clauses in employment
contracts to 12 months for high-level workers,
while banning them for low-wage workers. But the
House and Senate were never able to come to
agreement and the legislation died at last
weekend's session.
“Things changed, in terms of what happened in
the Senate, and unfortunately at the end of the
day we weren’t able to get it done,” DeLeo said.
Today, Rosenberg contended key pieces of
legislation had languished in joint committee
and the House for months before they finally
reached the Senate.
Next session, he said, he will urge Baker to
file half his legislation in the Senate.
DeLeo also said yesterday he "felt very
strongly" that charter school legislation school
have been taken up in the State House rather
than heading to the ballot box. Massachusetts
voters will face Question 2 in November which
would allow state officials to approve up to 12
new charter schools or enrollment expansions per
year.
In April, the Senate passed legislation that
would have more gradually raised the charter
school cap and provided substantial new
long-term funding for all public schools. But
the House never debated that bill.
"The Senate to their credit took it up," DeLeo
said yesterday. "Unfortunately quite frankly, I
think the legislation that came out of the
Senate in terms of what we had done was somewhat
unworkable, and there was no possible way that
we were going to be able to come up with a good
piece of legislation based upon what the Senate
had done."
Rosenberg responded that lawmakers must act with
a greater sense of urgency next session.
"We should do it in the first six months of the
term, not the last six weeks or six days," he
said.
State House News
Service
Wednesday, August 3, 2016
Overrides quickly punch hole in new state
budget, analysis says
By Michael P. Norton
Before abandoning Beacon Hill Sunday night for
their districts, the Democrat-controlled
Legislature restored about 90 percent of the
funding that Gov. Charlie Baker vetoed in the
new state budget, a decision that independent
budget analysts say increases the likelihood of
mid-year budget reductions.
In a series of override votes taken over three
weekend days, the Legislature reversed $231.6
million in spending vetoes and let about $35.5
million in spending reductions stand, according
to the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation.
Lawmakers engaged in almost no debate on the
overrides or the state's overall budget picture,
marching through scores of override votes that
took many hours to complete and became a major
focus of the end of formal sessions.
In announcing his vetoes in July, Baker said the
Legislature's $39.1 billion budget had
underfunded accounts by about $250 million,
money that he said the state will have to
appropriate in the coming months. The vetoes, he
said, would make room for that spending.
Instead, with the funding restorations, MTF
estimates a $240 million gap in the
one-month-old $39.259 billion budget, which
itself calls for the administration to hold back
on $200 million in spending in order to create
"reversions."
"Only one month into the fiscal year, any
estimates of a budget gap are very fluid and
subject to change," MTF wrote in an analysis of
budget vetoes Wednesday. "What is certain,
however, is that another challenging fiscal year
lies ahead and that extent of this year's
spending overrides increases the likelihood of
midyear budget cuts."
State spending will increase 2.42 percent,
including spending approved through overrides,
MTF said.
Among the spending cuts that the Legislature let
stand was a $3 million reduction to the
advertising account at the state Lottery, where
profits last fiscal year were flat in the face
of competition from online entities and a slot
machine facility in Plainridge. Baker left the
Lottery with $4.5 million for ads, saying that
is the amount that's "necessary." Lottery
officials over the years have argued that ad
spending is critical to boosting profits and
returning local aid to cities and towns, a
priority for Baker.
Other Baker vetoes that legislators let stand
were reductions in funding for county sheriffs,
district attorneys, registries of deeds,
information technology efforts, the Medicaid
Fraud Control Unit, the Illegal Tobacco Task
Force, National Guard tuition and fee waivers,
the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency,
and the administrative account at the state
Lottery, according to a preliminary list from
the Executive Office of Administration and
Finance.
Before embarking on overrides, House Speaker
Robert DeLeo said the Legislature's budget was
balanced - essentially disagreeing with Baker's
claims about underfunded accounts - and
suggested the Legislature could override all of
the governor's vetoes and still have a balanced
budget.
The Baker administration last month instituted a
partial hiring freeze as part of
budget-balancing efforts after state officials
were caught off guard by investment-related tax
collections that fell far short of their
estimates, forcing the state to pull back on
spending plans.
It's unclear what new budget strategies Baker's
team might deploy since the Legislature has
forced it to spend nearly $232 million that the
administration essentially said is not
affordable.
Asked about post-override budget management
strategies, Executive Office of Administration
and Finance spokesman Garrett Quinn said in a
statement, "A&F will continue to monitor
revenues and spending and actively manage the
Commonwealth's finances in Fiscal Year 2017,
using the tools available to us to ensure the
budget is balanced."
The taxpayer foundation's analysis also raised
another concern about the state's finances.
According to MTF, state law calls for the state
to allocate about $125 million in tobacco
industry settlement revenue to retiree health
care costs in fiscal 2017. The Legislature's
budget set aside $25 million and Baker returned
that part of the budget with a proposal calling
for a $75 million allocation.
Baker wrote in a letter to lawmakers that the
$25 million allocation "represents a substantial
step backwards from our current funding
commitment." He said the reduction
"unnecessarily places into question our strong
double AA+ bond rating."
Lawmakers did not take up Baker's amendment.
Saying the issue could be a "red flag for credit
rating agencies," MTF predicted it's likely that
lawmakers will act on a reduced contribution in
the coming months "but such a reduction could be
a red flag for credit rating agencies."
Legislators, meanwhile, are gearing up for fall
reelection efforts and have been taking to
social media to tout the spending priorities
they preserved by undoing the governor's vetoes.
"PASSED - an override restoring $3 mil to the
state's tourism fund. Investments in tourism
have a huge return for our economy!" Sen. Eric
Lesser tweeted Sunday night. |
| |
NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this
material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior
interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes
only. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
Citizens for Limited Taxation ▪
PO Box 1147 ▪ Marblehead, MA 01945
▪ 508-915-3665
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