The midyear cuts that Gov. Charlie Baker
announced this week as part of an effort to bring the state
budget back into balance amount to $98 million — a
vanishingly small percentage of the $39.3 billion state
budget. One-quarter of 1 percent, to be exact.
That’s not to suggest the cuts won’t be
painful in some program areas. But they might not have been
necessary at all had the Legislature not reversed Baker’s
earlier spending reductions.
And the revenue picture remains uncertain.
So Baker’s move this week isn’t “premature,” as House
Speaker Robert DeLeo said Monday. It’s fiscally responsible
— certainly more responsible than a policy of just
waiting-and-hoping for things to improve.
Naturally after Baker detailed his
budget-balancing efforts, some lawmakers turned right to
their happy place — to exaggerated claims that the cuts are
a threat to life and safety. We trust that those lawmakers
will be too distracted by the sky falling down upon them to
detail the $53 million worth of legislative earmarks that
the governor excised, so allow us to provide some
examples....
The Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation
weighed in after Baker acted this week, noting that
“disappointing tax revenues and growing exposures have
heightened the need for midyear spending reductions.” The
Legislature can reject Baker’s solution — they’re already
talking about restoring the cuts in January — but given
current conditions it would be a difficult choice to defend.
A Boston Herald editorial
Thursday, December 8, 2016
Beacon Hill in denial
A wise man — made to seem wiser by the
results of the most recent presidential election — once said
that the problem with Democrats is that whenever times are
good they view it as a signal to open the spigot on
government spending. Then, when times get bad again, as they
inevitably will, higher taxes are required to support all
that additional spending.
At which point voters bring back the
Republicans to get things under control.
Fear of excess federal spending was part of
what brought Hillary Clinton’s campaign down last month. And
her opponent, President-elect Donald Trump, this week is
winning accolades for saying the government ought to cancel
its order for a new Air Force One which he has deemed too
expensive. (Which could also affect the bottom line at
Boston-based General Electric, which would produce the
engines for the new aircraft.)
Yet that hasn’t stopped Massachusetts House
Speaker Robert DeLeo and other members of the Democratic
leadership from whining about Gov. Charlie Baker’s threat to
cut $98 million from the current year’s budget. The
Republican chief executive says that with revenues running
behind projections, the state can’t afford the level of
spending approved by the Legislature last summer.
“Meanwhile,” notes Chip Ford of
Citizens for Limited Taxation, “the Bacon Hill spending
games go on: Pay raises for insiders, unchecked welfare
abuses by the Takers — and for us, yet more tax hikes under
consideration.”
However, if the Democrats’ threatened
correction includes new taxes of any sort, it might just
provide the GOP with the ammunition it needs to increase its
meager ranks in the House and Senate in 2018.
The Salem News
Friday, December 9, 2016
GOP gets a grip on spending
By Nelson Benton
House Speaker Robert DeLeo and his band of
not-so-merry Democrats tiptoed out on a limb this week made
of brittle budget projections and the hopes of a snowless,
crimeless, healthy winter full of Main Street shopping and
large bonus checks.
Underneath, Gov. Charlie Baker sat with his
calculator banking on the branch to crack.
Baker warmed an otherwise mild political
off-season on Tuesday when he announced that he would use
his executive authority to trim $98 million from the state's
$39.25 billion state budget, a rather modest sum until
lawmakers began to see where he applied his X-Acto knife.
From the governor's perch, he decided he had
seen enough of yo-yoing revenue reports - including a
disappointing November - that had tax collections up one
month and down the next. Rather than wait to see what
December or January brings, he started paring back spending
immediately.
"Premature," DeLeo and the Democrats
shouted. "Outrageous and immoral," the more partisan-prone
crowed.
New Massachusetts Democratic Party Chairman
Gus Bickford went so far as to call on the governor to
postpone his business development mission to Israel - which
the governor left for on Thursday - in order to explain to
the people why he cut funding for compulsive gambling
treatment, parks and the State Police crime lab when
revenues are only trailing projections by $20 million.
Someone will end up being right in this
budget row, and someone will be wrong.
State House News Service
Friday, December 9, 2016
Weekly Roundup - STORY OF THE WEEK
When to cut and how deeply becomes a matter of budgetary,
and partisan, philosophy
Remember how ex-Gov. Deval Patrick used to
describe all examples of welfare waste, fraud and abuse as
“anecdotes?”
Well, here’s another one of those anecdotes
for Deval.
On April 29, 2015, a “needy” Massachusetts
resident accessed an ATM in Nevada — at the Las Vegas
Metropolitan Police Department. One hundred bucks, plus a $3
service charge.
I wonder what this “needy” person was doing
at the LVPD.
Probably the same thing as all the Hillary
voters who were using the ATM at the Worcester Police
Department — 10 withdrawals for a total of $1,000 between
Jan. 1, 2015, and June 30, 2016.
Just consider the name of the state’s cash
welfare program — Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF).
Temporary? Hardly. Needy? No way. Families?
Uh, not so much.
But their unlimited millions in free cash —
that’s definitely assistance....
Rep. Shaunna O’Connell (R-Taunton) usually
leads the fight in the Legislature to get a handle on this
massive fraud. A year or so ago, her local police department
busted an alleged heroin dealer. In the woman’s apartment
the cops found 11 EBT cards, issued to 11 different “needy
families.”
What do you suppose they really “needed?” So
they sell the cards (with the PIN), buy a few more fixes. If
they need any food, they still have the SNAP (food stamps)
on the EBT card. Or they just go down to the local food
bank. Their kids get free meals at the public schools.
Another reform that’s perennially suggested
is putting the layabout’s mug shot on every card. This
really drives the non-working classes crazy. Why, why —
it’ll cost $7 per card! Suddenly the tribunes of the illegal
aliens are worried about the high cost to the taxpayers.
That proposal isn’t to shame any EBT card
holders — after four or five generations on the dole, you
can’t shame them. It’s to reduce the resale value. Might not
work, but at least it’ll force them to go downtown.
What’s that old joke? The War on Poverty is
over. Poverty won.
The Boston Herald
Thursday, December 8, 2016
EBT ‘anecdotes’ galore
$$ trail should leave taxpayers feeling green
By Howie Carr
Two years ago at this time the State House
was flush with speculation that Democratic leadership could
try to advance a lame-duck session package of pay raises to
hike the salaries of top elected legislators, the governor
and other constitutional officers.
The rumored pay package never came to pass.
Gov. Deval Patrick, who was open to the idea, left office.
And Gov. Charlie Baker has threatened, though not recently,
to veto pay raises while the state struggles to balance its
finances.
As legislative leaders again prepare for the
start of a new session in the midst of financial
uncertainty, the idea of stipend increases promoted by an
independent compensation commission in December 2014 has
been put on the back burner.
"There's not currently any effort underway to increase
stipends for legislators," said Pete Wilson, the spokesman
for Senate President Stanley Rosenberg....
Massachusetts lawmakers earn a base salary
of just over $60,000 a year, with additional stipend pay
dependent on whether they chair committees or are assigned
special duties by legislative leaders. Stipends can range
from $7,500 for a committee chairman to $25,000 for the Ways
and Means chairs and $35,000 for the speaker and Senate
president.
Lawmakers may still get a small pay raise
depending on an analysis of median household incomes in
Massachusetts that the Baker administration must finalize
before Jan. 4. The last time the biennial review led to a
base pay increase for lawmakers was 2009.
State House News Service
Thursday, December 8, 2016
Rosenberg spokesman says no effort underway to boost
lawmaker stipends
Gov. Charlie Baker has slashed millions from
the budget, offered buyouts and has yet to rule out layoffs.
Next up? Potentially changing his and
lawmakers’ salary.
Next month, Baker is constitutionally
required to adjust the pay for lawmakers and the state’s top
officers, including himself, based on changes to the state’s
median household income over the past two years.
The process, however, isn’t straightforward.
The law gives the Corner Office wide latitude in deciding
how to calculate the change, which is due on the first
Wednesday of every odd-numbered year. (It’s Jan. 4 this
time.) That makes it difficult to predict how Baker could
act on the heels of efforts to trim and slim state
government....
That makes Baker’s decision one worth
watching. The $98 million he cut from the budget last week
quickly riled many lawmakers, and a decision to either cut
or freeze their pay could give them more reason to pile on.
Alternatively, while a decision to raise
their salaries could go toward easing the tensions, it would
hike Baker’s pay, too, at a time when many advocates are
decrying his decision to cut funding to their projects.
So how could Baker do it? Patrick said he
typically made the decision using data from the U.S. Census’
American Community Survey, as well as state wage data. But
it’s not an exact science. Some budget watchers, pointing to
Patrick’s methods, said they expected a pay increase two
years ago.
A commission created to study public
officials’ pay recommended two years ago to use the Bureau
of Economic Analysis’ quarterly data on salaries and wages
in Massachusetts from the most recent eight quarters. The
commission said if Patrick opted to use that, it would have
mounted to a 6 percent increase in 2015.
“(The) lack of timely median household
income data has forced administrations to improvise when
estimating the growth in income for the year preceding the
start of each session,” the commission argued in its report.
“As a result, there is no consistent method for determining
the biennial change in legislative salaries.”
The Boston Herald
Sunday, December 11, 2016
Beacon Hill salaries on tap as Baker wrings in new year
