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CLT UPDATE
Friday, January 31, 2017
Gov says call your legislators
now
People opposed to the pay raise bill
vetoed on Friday should "make their voices heard" as the
House and Senate prepare for override votes this week, Gov.
Charlie Baker said Monday.
Massachusetts residents have already been
dialing into elected officials to give feedback about the
legislation that would cost $18 million to hike the pay of
legislative leaders, statewide elected officials and judges.
"It was the single largest number of calls
we've gotten on one day, on Friday," Baker said during his
monthly "Ask the Governor" segment Monday on WGBH Radio.
"And we've gotten a lot of calls on a lot of things. I mean,
keep in mind, we're the administration that had the MBTA
breakdown."
With a 116-43 vote in the House on Wednesday
and a 31-9 vote in the Senate on Thursday, both branches
would have enough votes to clear the two-thirds threshold
for a veto override if that level of support holds.
Both branches meet in formal sessions on
Thursday, giving them an opportunity to pass the pay raise
bill into law over the governor's objections.
"If it comes over from the House we are
planning to take it up on Thursday," Senate President Stan
Rosenberg told the News Service on Monday....
"People should encourage those who share
our views to reach out to and speak to their legislators
about it, because that is in fact the best way to bring
attention to this and to get it on people's radars," Baker
said. He said, "I think it's important for people to make
their voices heard."
State House News Service
Tuesday, January 31, 2017
Baker urges pay raise opponents to call lawmakers
Gov. Charlie Baker said he was flooded
with roughly 700 phone calls in one day from residents
protesting the Legislature’s controversial pay raise
package, a sign of public discontent as lawmakers prepare to
override his veto.
The bill, passed last week by a 116-44
margin in the House and a 31-9 vote in the Senate, is
expected to resurface in the Legislature this week for a
potential override vote. The whopping pay hike gives House
Speaker Robert A. DeLeo and Senate President Stanley C.
Rosenberg nearly 50 percent bumps and is expected to clear
the two-thirds majority needed to overturn Baker’s veto....
Lawmakers rushed the bill through the State
House last week, voting on back-to-back days without holding
a single formal hearing. If enacted, it would hike DeLeo and
Rosenberg’s salaries to $142,500 a year, while guaranteeing
other legislative leaders a range of padded stipends.
The Boston Herald
Tuesday, January 31, 2017
Outraged callers urge Charlie Baker to nix pay raise for
pols
Lawmakers who hold leadership positions that
did not even exist a decade ago are in line for a $35,000
salary increase, further putting the lie to the claim that
the pay package pushed by House Speaker Robert DeLeo and
Senate President Stan Rosenberg was to compensate
long-suffering pols who have gone too long without a raise.
It’s yet another reason to encourage lawmakers to do the
right thing and uphold Gov. Charlie Baker’s veto of the bill
when the House and Senate convene to address it.
Yes, thanks to some number-crunching by the
State House News Service we now know that the benefits in
the bill “are spread far and wide in the Legislature.” ...
The odds of upholding Baker’s veto would
improve if freshman lawmakers, who last week cast their very
first votes for a pay raise in their own favor, would
realize that doing so a second time would permanently brand
them as greedheads.
A Boston Herald editorial
Tuesday, January 31, 2017
Don’t let greed be guide
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Chip Ford's CLT
Commentary
We at CLT have worked literally around the clock for two weeks, since uncovering
the initial stealth hearing back on the evening of January 17. After
assuring ourselves that what we'd discovered was actually real, we issued the
first news release early the next morning alerting the media and the world.
From that late-night moment we've been doing everything we possibly can to bring
this despicable and shameless pay grab to the attention of as many as we can
reach.
According to Gov. Baker we have had significant impact in his office.
We haven't heard how much effect we've had with legislators, but I've been
assured by many members that they've made calls to their representatives and
senator expressing displeasure if not outright anger.
The vote to override the governor's veto is expected to happen on Thursday.
If it succeeds then the shameless pay grab will be a fait accompli and our
rapacious legislators will have stuck it to taxpayers —
again.
With the deadline so close, all we can do now is to reiterate and urge:
Call your state Representative and state Senator immediately.
Click on the above link and just type in your
street address and zip code;
everything you need to know to contact them will appear.
Your State Rep. and State Senator will appear near the bottom.
If you've already called, it won't hurt to call them again.
And tell
your friends to call them too!
The State House News Service has provided more detailed information on this
disgusting pay grab:
To download a copy of an Excel spreadsheet created by the
State House News Service
showing the effects of the pay raise bill
CLICK HERE
For a bill summary by the State House News Service
CLICK HERE
Let's keep those calls to legislators going. Time is running out.
Thank you for all our efforts to kill this thing.
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Chip Ford
Executive Director |
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State House News Service
Tuesday, January 31, 2017
Baker urges pay raise opponents to call
lawmakers
By Andy Metzger
People opposed to the pay raise bill vetoed on
Friday should "make their voices heard" as the
House and Senate prepare for override votes this
week, Gov. Charlie Baker said Monday.
Massachusetts residents have already been
dialing into elected officials to give feedback
about the legislation that would cost $18
million to hike the pay of legislative leaders,
statewide elected officials and judges.
"It was the single largest number of calls we've
gotten on one day, on Friday," Baker said during
his monthly "Ask the Governor" segment Monday on
WGBH Radio. "And we've gotten a lot of calls on
a lot of things. I mean, keep in mind, we're the
administration that had the MBTA breakdown."
With a 116-43 vote in the House on Wednesday and
a 31-9 vote in the Senate on Thursday, both
branches would have enough votes to clear the
two-thirds threshold for a veto override if that
level of support holds.
Both branches meet in formal sessions on
Thursday, giving them an opportunity to pass the
pay raise bill into law over the governor's
objections.
"If it comes over from the House we are planning
to take it up on Thursday," Senate President
Stan Rosenberg told the News Service on Monday.
The matter came up when a caller - identified as
Ken in Amesbury - thanked the governor for the
veto and asked, "Is there anything more that we
can do, the taxpayers of Massachusetts, to keep
these legislators from overriding your veto?"
All Republicans in the House and Senate voted
against the measure, and they were joined by
nine Democrats in the House and three Democrats
in the Senate. Those hoping to sustain the veto
would need to flip either 10 Democrats in the
House or five in the Senate.
"People should encourage those who share our
views to reach out to and speak to their
legislators about it, because that is in fact
the best way to bring attention to this and to
get it on people's radars," Baker said. He said,
"I think it's important for people to make their
voices heard."
The bill (H 58) is the first major legislation
to reach the governor's desk this session.
Last week Rosenberg said the legislation would
provide needed updates to the compensation of
lawmakers, which starts at a base salary of
about $62,000.
"We are losing young people every election
cycle," Rosenberg told reporters Thursday. He
said, "Particularly the younger members who are
trying to start families and start their own
career - they cannot live on this."
When he vetoed the bill on Friday, Baker also
suggested that the bill would eliminate a ballot
law, which remains in state statute, prohibiting
statewide officeholders from receiving pay for
more than two straight terms, though evidence
suggests that law was already effectively killed
by the courts.
Secretary of State William Galvin, a Brighton
Democrat now in his sixth term, said the Supreme
Judicial Court struck down that ballot law, an
assertion backed up by media coverage at the
time of the 1997 decision.
"What you had is in the statute unconstitutional
language now for 20 years - that's a 1997 case -
which was never cleaned up because it was just
dead law, dead letter. All they're doing now is
cleaning that up when they're rewriting the
section. That's the one part of this whole
effort that I have absolutely no problem with,
cleaning up the statute," Galvin told the News
Service on Monday. "It's ridiculous to leave
dead-letter language in there."
Baker had suggested the bill would make
substantive changes, overturning the 1994 ballot
law. "Upon our further review, this legislation
would effectively repeal the terms limits voters
set for constitutional offices at the ballot box
in 1994," Baker said on Friday.
Galvin said Baker's suggestion that cleaning up
the old statute was a "policy decision" was
"misguided to say the least."
Standing to make another $28,000 per year under
the bill, bringing his salary to $165,000,
Galvin said the size of his raise "doesn't
trouble me" though he is bothered by the overall
cost of the bill.
"The $18 million does trouble me," Galvin said.
Baker was scheduled to meet Monday afternoon
with legislative leaders but their meeting was
cancelled Monday morning.
>>> To download a copy of an Excel spreadsheet
created by the News Service showing the effects
of the pay raise bill
CLICK HERE.
>>> For a bill summary by the News Service,
CLICK HERE.
The Boston Herald
Tuesday, January 31, 2017
Outraged callers urge Charlie Baker to nix pay
raise for pols
By Matt Stout
Gov. Charlie Baker said he was flooded with
roughly 700 phone calls in one day from
residents protesting the Legislature’s
controversial pay raise package, a sign of
public discontent as lawmakers prepare to
override his veto.
The bill, passed last week by a 116-44 margin in
the House and a 31-9 vote in the Senate, is
expected to resurface in the Legislature this
week for a potential override vote. The whopping
pay hike gives House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo and
Senate President Stanley C. Rosenberg nearly 50
percent bumps and is expected to clear the
two-thirds majority needed to overturn Baker’s
veto.
A DeLeo spokesman said yesterday he had no
update on when the vote would happen. The House,
however, has just one formal session scheduled
for this week, on Thursday, and any override
effort needs a formal roll call in the chamber.
The impending override prompted Baker to
continue advocating for residents to press their
lawmakers, saying yesterday that the pay raise
sparked the “single-largest number of calls
we’ve gotten on one day.”
Asked to elaborate, Baker aides said the office
received roughly 700 angry calls last Thursday
when the legislation passed.
His office did not say what was the previous
high for calls in a single day but noted that it
gets a “variety of calls on different issues,
ranging from the (Health) Connector to (the)
MBTA.”
Lawmakers rushed the bill through the State
House last week, voting on back-to-back days
without holding a single formal hearing. If
enacted, it would hike DeLeo and Rosenberg’s
salaries to $142,500 a year, while guaranteeing
other legislative leaders a range of padded
stipends.
It also gives Baker a $34,000 raise to $185,000,
plus a $65,000 housing stipend, though the
Swampscott Republican said he won’t take it.
Other constitutional officers would get various
hikes to $165,000 or $175,000 a year, but only
state Auditor Suzanne Bump has said she’ll take
the raise.
Aides to Treasurer Deb Goldberg and Secretary of
State Bill Galvin have said they haven’t decided
what to do, while Attorney General Maura Healey
has refused to answer questions since Thursday.
Democrats vying to replace Baker have pounced on
the raises. Jay Gonzalez, the only Democrat to
officially launch a campaign, said he would have
vetoed the bill because it’s the “wrong” time to
push for hikes. Newton Mayor Setti Warren, close
to mounting his own gubernatorial run, has
called on lawmakers to flip their votes and has
slammed the speed they used to pass it.
The Boston Herald
Tuesday, January 31, 2017
A Boston Herald editorial
Don’t let greed be guide
Lawmakers who hold leadership positions that did
not even exist a decade ago are in line for a
$35,000 salary increase, further putting the lie
to the claim that the pay package pushed by
House Speaker Robert DeLeo and Senate President
Stan Rosenberg was to compensate long-suffering
pols who have gone too long without a raise.
It’s yet another reason to encourage lawmakers
to do the right thing and uphold Gov. Charlie
Baker’s veto of the bill when the House and
Senate convene to address it.
Yes, thanks to some number-crunching by the
State House News Service we now know that the
benefits in the bill “are spread far and wide in
the Legislature.”
For example, the speaker pro tempore and senate
president pro tempore — positions that were
created out of whole cloth about a decade ago —
are entitled to a $35,000 stipend under the new
formula, up from $15,000, in addition to an
increase in expenses.
Meanwhile positions that are currently unpaid —
many House vice chairmanships, for example,
including vice chair of the obscure House
Committee on Bills in Third Reading — would now
come with a $15,000 stipend.
The odds of upholding Baker’s veto would improve
if freshman lawmakers, who last week cast their
very first votes for a pay raise in their own
favor, would realize that doing so a second time
would permanently brand them as greedheads.
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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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