|
Help save yourself
— join CLT
today! |
CLT introduction and membership application |
What CLT saves you from the auto excise tax alone |
Make a contribution to support
CLT's work by clicking the button above
Ask your friends to join too |
Visit CLT on Facebook |
Barbara Anderson's Great Moments |
Follow CLT on Twitter |
CLT UPDATE
Tuesday, November 29, 2016
Eminent domain again raises it
vile head
|
Professional solicitors in 2015 collected
more than $201 million from donors in Massachusetts, but
only $82 million reached the charities favored by
contributors, according to a new report.
On average, 41 cents of every dollar
collected in 2015 by a professional solicitor was directed
to the charity. That's up from the 38 cents average in 2015,
Attorney General Maura Healey concluded in a report from her
office....
Attorney General Maura Healey concluded . .
. "On 'Giving Tuesday,' we want to remind people that while
most charities are reputable and need our support, it is
important to make informed decisions and understand how much
of a donation will ultimately go to the charity and the
mission it supports."
State House News Service
Tuesday, November 29, 2016
Charities get less than half of $$$ raised by pro solicitors
. . . In this bluest of blue states not
everyone was upset by the results of the presidential
election.
“Can you imagine how we’d be feeling right
now if it had gone the other way?” Marblehead’s Chip Ford,
executive director of Citizens for Limited Taxation,
wrote his members. “Hopelessness would describe my
disposition. America is fortunate in that when things look
blackest we citizens in large enough number rise and make
the necessary change that turns the darkening night into a
new sunrise, another ‘Morning in America’ in the nick of
time.”
The Salem News
Friday, November 18, 2016
Weekly column
By Nelson Benton
Hundreds of legislative staffers are slated
to receive a 6 percent pay hike — at a cost of $1.3 million
— in a move that comes as a still-unknown number of state
employees are seeking buyouts and as potential layoffs loom
ahead.
House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo’s office
announced the pay raises on Thanksgiving eve, awarding 468
House employees what his office described as “cost of
living” increases. They follow nearly two years to the day
the last time his office unveiled pay bumps, and, DeLeo’s
office said, will be covered by existing resources in the
House’s $40.2 million budget.
But they come amid a backdrop of financial
uncertainty for Gov. Charlie Baker and state government.
Baker’s budget office has said the state is facing a $294
million budget deficit, and earlier this month, it wrapped a
monthlong program in which it offered buyouts — with
incentives of $5,000 or $15,000 — to tens of thousands
executive branch employees....
“Considering they’ve got a budget shortfall
and they’re crying about, ‘Where are we going to get the
money,’ to come out with a 6 percent raise is just not right
in this climate,” said Chip Faulkner of the
Citizens for Limited Taxation.
The Boston Herald
Thursday, November 24, 2016
Legislative staffers to get raise as state worker layoffs
loom
Some to get pay hike, others to take a hike
Nobody moves to Carver, Mass., for its urban
flair. The town is rural and quiet, thickly wooded with pine
and cedar — the sort of place people move to when they have
a hankering to raise chickens, grow vegetables, and
luxuriate amid an abundance of open space....
If town officials get their way, however, a
great swath of rural Carver will be designated an “urban
renewal area,” and turned over to a private entrepreneur
with plans to build a giant complex of warehouse and
industrial-distribution facilities....
Like most towns, Carver wants to expand its
tax base and promote new growth; not surprisingly, local
officials couldn’t be happier that a private developer wants
to turn the old Whitworth Property into a valuable
commercial asset. Homeowners living next to the property
would be happy too — if that were all the developer had in
mind.
But Route 44 Development’s ambitions extend
far beyond the borders of the Whitworth Property. With the
active support of town officials, it intends to construct a
1.1 million-square-foot distribution center and two
warehouses totaling nearly 800,000 square feet, swallowing
up the land of numerous neighbors in the process. And if
those neighbors don’t want to leave? The developer is
counting on the town to force them out, by seizing their
property through eminent domain and turning it over to Route
44 Development.
Long before Carver residents had any hint of
this, town officials and the developer were planning it in
secret....
Two owners have already thrown in the towel.
Once their homes showed up on an “urban renewal” acquisition
list, they decided to sell and spare themselves the misery
of trying to fight a developer backed by Town Hall. But some
neighbors don’t want to go anywhere....
At best, eminent domain is an unfortunate
necessity — a last resort when land is needed for a public
purpose, such as building a new school or a highway. But
when government takes private property in order to benefit a
private developer, or when it threatens to do so, it abuses
its power and betrays the citizens it is supposed to
represent.
Eminent-domain abuse, sadly, isn’t new. In
its execrable Kelo decision, the Supreme Court left
it up to states to protect individuals from having their
property condemned at the behest of an influential private
developer. Numerous states promptly enacted robust new
protections for private property rights.
But not Massachusetts. Here homeowners
remain at the mercy of large developers, and find themselves
blindsided by government officials so tempted by
“considerable real estate tax revenue” that they’re willing
to drive people from their homes to get it.
The Boston Globe
Sunday, November 20, 2016
Eminent-domain abuse rears its menacing head in Plymouth
County
By Jeff Jacoby
|
|
Chip Ford's CLT
Commentary
The state Attorney General today reported: "On average, 41
cents of every dollar collected in 2015 by a professional solicitor was directed
to the charity." If CLT depended on professional solicitors, had to hand
over 59 cents of every dollar that was contributed to it, CLT would have been
out-of-business decades ago!
We do all our fundraising personally, hands-on — I
know because I do it all, from designing the mailing to hand-delivering it to
the printer, to arranging its mailing out to you. I've been doing this
since the mid-90s when my old organization, Freedom First, merged with
CLT. Ever since, every cent after production and mailing costs stays with
CLT. It's how we've managed to survive for so long. Fundraising
can't be any more efficient or frugal.
Our end-of-the-year fundraising package is in the mail right now . We sure hope you'll consider a contribution to help keep CLT
fighting for you through the year and into the next. You can
click here to make a
contribution online right now.
Jeff Jacoby's column on eminent domain is horrifying.
The thought that government in collusion with private corporate interests can
just walk in and simply take your home so that it can increase its property tax
base is stunning.
CLT has been sponsoring and/or pushing for legislation
to prevent this travesty
ever since the U.S. Supreme Court's "Kelo" decision in 2005.
Barbara wrote a series of columns deploring the Supreme
Court's decision in the spring of 2005. In the first of two parts, on June
29, 2005 she wrote ("Court's
decision a cruel blow to the American dream"):
A
classic confrontation is about to occupy center
stage in the political arena: Big Government and Big
Business, the worst possible combination, against
the flag and the rest of us. I fear that Big Labor
leaders will join the other two giant institutions,
wanting the temporary jobs that the development
projects can provide. But I predict that most
working people, who value their property rights,
will break ranks.
She followed up on July 7, 2005 in her next
column ("Activist
voters are needed to reverse faulty decision"):
Politicians of Fall River and middle-class
homeowners everywhere: unite against the recent
Supreme Court decision that invalidates Americans’
property rights.
What can we do?
With the resignation of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor,
and the expected retirement of Chief Justice William
Rehnquist, the first move should be to support
replacement justices who would vote for property
rights as they did. Then at the first opportunity,
one of the liberals on the court should be replaced
with someone who also respects property rights, and
the decision can be reversed....
Americans across the political landscape were
appalled by the Kelo decision, which wipes out
almost 500 years of common law and could show up on
their own doorstep in the form of a government
taking for “higher public use.” Expect a coalition
of right/center/left activists at the state level to
support legislation to save our mini-castles, and
plan to support them by letting your legislators,
both federal and state, know how you feel.
CLT filed bills in the next legislative session to protect
property owners from such un-American government/corporate abuse, but they've
gone nowhere here in the People's Republic. The latest bills filed during
the current/past session — Senate 55 and
Senate
890 — again have been ignored, relegated to the "study" black hole as usual.
Leave it to the Massachusetts Legislature to be one of
only six states to ignore this critical abridgment of our rights — concerned more with
unisex bathrooms and safe spaces. In the first two years following the Kelo decision, the
Castle Coalition reported, "44 states have passed new laws
aimed at curbing the abuse of eminent domain for private use."
Massachusetts is still one of the six that hasn't bothered, hasn't considered
property rights significant enough to protect. (The other five are New York, New
Jersey, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Hawaii.)
In her second column on the topic Barbara has the ultimate
solution: "[A]t the first opportunity, one of the liberals on the court
should be replaced with someone who also respects property rights, and the
decision can be reversed." Apparently here in the People's Republic of
Taxachusetts this is our only hope for relief.
I wish she was around to see what President Trump's
imminent nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court and those who follow do to finally turn around this
travesty.
|
 |
 |
|
Chip Ford
Executive Director |
|
|
|
|
State House News Service
Tuesday, November 29, 2016
Charities get less than half of $$$ raised by
pro solicitors
By Michael P. Norton
Professional solicitors in 2015 collected more
than $201 million from donors in Massachusetts,
but only $82 million reached the charities
favored by contributors, according to a new
report.
On average, 41 cents of every dollar collected
in 2015 by a professional solicitor was directed
to the charity. That's up from the 38 cents
average in 2015, Attorney General Maura Healey
concluded in a report from her office.
The $201 million total reflects funds raised by
the 69 conventional solicitors registered in
Massachusetts and through the 776 fundraising
campaigns they reported to the attorney
general's charities division.
Healey advised donors to make direct
contributions to charitable organizations. When
contacted by professional solicitor, potential
donors should consider whether the caller is a
volunteer or professional fundraiser, find out
how much of every dollar donated will go to
charity, and confirm the charity's name and the
services it offers.
"Massachusetts has an incredible tradition of
charitable giving and we strongly encourage
people to give wisely to nonprofit organizations
that help people and strengthen communities
across the state," the attorney general said in
a statement accompanying her report. "On 'Giving
Tuesday,' we want to remind people that while
most charities are reputable and need our
support, it is important to make informed
decisions and understand how much of a donation
will ultimately go to the charity and the
mission it supports."
The Boston Herald
Thursday, November 24, 2016
Legislative staffers to get raise as state
worker layoffs loom
Some to get pay hike, others to take a hike
By Matt Stout
Hundreds of legislative staffers are slated to
receive a 6 percent pay hike — at a cost of $1.3
million — in a move that comes as a
still-unknown number of state employees are
seeking buyouts and as potential layoffs loom
ahead.
House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo’s office announced
the pay raises on Thanksgiving eve, awarding 468
House employees what his office described as
“cost of living” increases. They follow nearly
two years to the day the last time his office
unveiled pay bumps, and, DeLeo’s office said,
will be covered by existing resources in the
House’s $40.2 million budget.
But they come amid a backdrop of financial
uncertainty for Gov. Charlie Baker and state
government. Baker’s budget office has said the
state is facing a $294 million budget deficit,
and earlier this month, it wrapped a monthlong
program in which it offered buyouts — with
incentives of $5,000 or $15,000 — to tens of
thousands executive branch employees.
The Baker administration has yet to say how many
applied 10 days after the program closed.
Dominick Ianno, a spokesman for budget chief
Kristen Lepore, said yesterday that state
agencies were still “reviewing and processing
applications.”
Lepore has previously said that officials hoped
to save $25 million through the buyouts, with
the warning that they could move to further
“reduce the workforce” if that’s not met.
Asked about the House pay raises yesterday,
Baker’s office declined to comment.
But the timing baffled fiscal watchdogs.
“Considering they’ve got a budget shortfall and
they’re crying about, ‘Where are we going to get
the money,’ to come out with a 6 percent raise
is just not right in this climate,” said Chip
Faulkner of the Citizens for Limited
Taxation.
Paul Craney of the conservative nonprofit Mass
Fiscal Alliance jokingly chalked it up to
tryptophan — the drowiness-inducing amino acid
in turkey — making legislative leaders
“delirious.”
“Pay raises should only be considered after
spending, taxes and regulations have gone down,”
Craney said.
Noah Berger, president of the left-leaning
Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center, said he
felt the House raises were “reasonable,” and
matched what he’s seen in the private sector.
“Paying people a reasonable salary is important
to attract good people to do important work,” he
said.
In the Senate, individual senators are left to
consider pay raises for their own staff. It
wasn’t immediately clear which offices were
preparing to boost pay.
Pete Wilson, a spokesman for state Senate
President Stanley C. Rosenberg, said that “no
decisions have been in our office yet.” Aides in
the office of state Sen. Bruce Tarr, the
minority leader, did not respond to questions
about the Gloucester Republican’s plans.
The Boston Globe
Sunday, November 20, 2016
Eminent-domain abuse rears its menacing head in
Plymouth County
By Jeff Jacoby
Nobody moves to Carver, Mass., for its urban
flair. The town is rural and quiet, thickly
wooded with pine and cedar — the sort of place
people move to when they have a hankering to
raise chickens, grow vegetables, and luxuriate
amid an abundance of open space.
It’s also about as wet a place as you can find
in Massachusetts. Half the town consists of
wetland, much of it in the form of cranberry
bogs. The cranberry industry has always been a
Carver mainstay; in the 1940s, the town produced
more of the tart little fruits than any other
place on earth. Carver’s appeal is more
diversified today — visitors flock to the town
for the train rides at the Edaville amusement
park and the Renaissance-themed King Richard’s
Faire — but at heart, Carver is still cranberry
country.
If town officials get their way, however, a
great swath of rural Carver will be designated
an “urban renewal area,” and turned over to a
private entrepreneur with plans to build a giant
complex of warehouse and industrial-distribution
facilities. The entrepreneur — a Boston-based
company called Route 44 Development LLC —
already owns a large piece of land in the area:
a 127-acre parcel, known as the Whitworth
Property, that has lain unused since a
sand-and-gravel mining operation shut down in
2000. The parcel isn’t much to look at; in a
report last month, the Carver Redevelopment
Authority described it as being littered with
“debris, stumps and other materials, building
slabs . . . generally unkempt and unsightly.”
Like most towns, Carver wants to expand its tax
base and promote new growth; not surprisingly,
local officials couldn’t be happier that a
private developer wants to turn the old
Whitworth Property into a valuable commercial
asset. Homeowners living next to the property
would be happy too — if that were all the
developer had in mind.
But Route 44 Development’s ambitions extend far
beyond the borders of the Whitworth Property.
With the active support of town officials, it
intends to construct a 1.1 million-square-foot
distribution center and two warehouses totaling
nearly 800,000 square feet, swallowing up the
land of numerous neighbors in the process. And
if those neighbors don’t want to leave? The
developer is counting on the town to force them
out, by seizing their property through eminent
domain and turning it over to Route 44
Development.
Long before Carver residents had any hint of
this, town officials and the developer were
planning it in secret.
In a confidential letter to Carver’s board of
selectmen dated Jan. 20, 2015, the developer —
who describes himself as a specialist in
“eminent-domain cases” — wrote that his company
had bought the Whitworth Property in order to
build a large commercial facility on it, but
understood that it wouldn’t be possible to
secure the needed state environmental approvals
without acquiring the surrounding properties. He
urged the town to make that happen through an
“urban renewal” designation covering the whole
area, and dangled the irresistible bait:
“considerable real estate tax revenues.”
Carver’s selectmen, meeting behind closed doors
the same day, were keenly interested. “They need
the Town to step in to help the development,”
the notes of their executive session read,
“since all surrounding property is privately
owned.” (The letter and the notes were uncovered
after a local homeowner filed an open records
request.)
Town officials energetically set about putting
the proposal in motion. But it was more than a
year before residents learned of the peril to
their property. In February 2016, a Carver
official
told the local paper that Town Hall would
“plan to begin reaching out” to homeowners in
mid-March. In fact, it wasn’t until April — more
than 14 months after Route 44 Development and
the Carver selectmen were already making plans —
that neighbors found out they could lose their
homes.
Two owners have already thrown in the towel.
Once their homes showed up on an “urban renewal”
acquisition list, they decided to sell and spare
themselves the misery of trying to fight a
developer backed by Town Hall. But some
neighbors don’t want to go anywhere. Karen and
Bruce Tuscher have lived in their home on
Montello Street for almost four decades. Karen’s
father and grandfather owned the property before
she did, and after Bruce got out of the Navy, he
and Karen settled in to raise a family — which,
in classic Carver fashion, included not just
their daughter, but a whole menagerie: a pig, a
Welsh pony, lambs, goats, and chickens.
The threat of losing their home to eminent
domain would come as a shock to anyone, but in
the Tuschers’ case it is compounded by the fact
that Bruce has multiple myeloma, a rare form of
blood cancer. In July, as the couple was coming
under pressure to sell out to the developer,
Bruce was in the hospital, undergoing bone
marrow replacement and chemotherapy.
“We would love to live in the home where we have
been for 37 years,” Karen told Carver’s
redevelopment authority. “We are not opposed to
a business at the 127-acre parcel. We have seen
many businesses on that land. My husband and I
worked for one of them several years ago.”
At best, eminent domain is an unfortunate
necessity — a last resort when land is needed
for a public purpose, such as building a new
school or a highway. But when government takes
private property in order to benefit a private
developer, or when it threatens to do so, it
abuses its power and betrays the citizens it is
supposed to represent.
Eminent-domain abuse, sadly, isn’t new. In its
execrable Kelo decision, the Supreme
Court left it up to states to protect
individuals from having their property condemned
at the behest of an influential private
developer. Numerous states promptly
enacted robust new protections for private
property rights.
But not Massachusetts. Here homeowners remain at
the mercy of large developers, and find
themselves blindsided by government officials so
tempted by “considerable real estate tax
revenue” that they’re willing to drive people
from their homes to get it. |
| |
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
BACK TO CLT
HOMEPAGE
|