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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


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.
 

Chip Ford
Executive Director


 
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.

 

 

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


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