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CLT UPDATE
Friday, May 12, 2017
"Groundhog Day" on Beacon Hill
|
Slow-growing tax collections have eroded the
base of revenue expected to fund state government, and the
House budget chief thinks it is probable that the revenue
figure built into the fiscal 2018 budget will need to be
lowered.
"We're going to have those conversations. I
would say it's likely," House Ways and Means Chairman Brian
Dempsey told the News Service on Wednesday when asked if he
thought the revenue number would need to be adjusted. "I
don't have a number, but I would say it's likely that we
would have to come in and make some additional reduction
around what we're projecting currently."...
Legislative budget-writers and
Administration and Finance Secretary Kristen Lepore in
January agreed that fiscal 2017 would end with $26.056
billion in tax revenue, and predicted that tax revenues
would grow 3.9 percent in fiscal 2018 bringing the total tax
haul to $27.072 billion.
However a $462 million tax shortfall ten
months into fiscal 2017 has lowered prospects for
collections in the fiscal year that ends June 30. If fiscal
2017 revenue comes in significantly short of projections,
fiscal 2018 tax revenue would need to climb more steeply to
reach the $27.072 billion projection from January, which
House lawmakers used as the foundation of the $40.4 billion
budget they approved in late April....
Eileen McAnneny, president of the
Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, said the projected
fiscal 2018 revenue growth "looks unlikely," and she
anticipates fiscal 2017 revenues will come in below earlier
expectations.
Top officials in the legislative and
executive branches huddled in the speaker's office on
Monday, and afterward Senate President Stan Rosenberg said
he was comfortable putting together the Senate budget using
the consensus revenue figure agreed to in January.
"We'll look forward to the conference
process to iron out any difficulties," Rosenberg said.
State House News Service
Thursday, May 11, 2017
Revenue base eroding as annual budget talks ramp up
April showers are supposed to bring May
flowers, but very little was coming up roses this week for
state budgeteers who saw their hopes of avoiding another
scramble to balance state finances washed away in a torrent
of economic floodwaters.
Tax collections in April, when millions of
Bay Staters file their returns, were, if all went according
to plan, supposed to put the budget back on track.
The $220 million shortfall in revenue
through March - again, if all went according to plan - would
become much more manageable when the cash came pouring in
during the largest month for tax collections in the year.
Not only did that not happen, but the exact
opposite occurred.
New reports showed an economy contracting in
the first quarter, business confidence is on the decline and
the revenue gap more than doubled to $462 million when April
revenues not only failed to live up to expectations, but
dropped off $83 million from last year....
But it's hard to blame the governor and not
put a good chunk of the responsibility for the current
situation on the Democrat-led Legislature.
Democrats scoffed when Baker vetoed $265
million in spending last summer and warned that the budget
was unbalanced, promptly restoring most of the money to the
budget with assembly-line efficiency. Then they howled in
December when he cut $98 million in December for the same
reasons, calling it a "premature" move by a Republican
overeager to shrink the size of government.
Now they want Baker to resolve the mess that
slow-revenue growth has created, throwing their hands in the
air and suggesting none of this could have been predicted.
State House News Service
Friday, May 5, 2017
Weekly Roundup - Cloudy with a chance of rain
The Legislature last July steamrolled most
of Gov. Charlie Baker's budget vetoes, putting spending back
into a budget that Baker warned was imbalanced. Then in
December, House Speaker Robert DeLeo and Senate President
Stanley Rosenberg balked at Baker's unilateral spending
cuts, asserting they were made prematurely.
Now, with less than two months left in the
fiscal year and the budget tilting out of balance,
legislators are turning to Baker to solve the immediate
problem and operating with creeping doubts about the
structural integrity of fiscal 2018 budgets since tax
revenues are not coming in at the pace they anticipated.
The House has already put its budget to bed,
although its relevance seems to have been diminished in the
wake of the latest tax revenue reports.
State House News Service
Friday, May 5, 2017
Advances - Week of May 7, 2017
Baker has been a staunch opponent of new
broad-based tax hikes; DeLeo has been as well for the most
part, but he backs the proposed income-tax hike on
millionaires heading for the November 2018 ballot.
But when I
interviewed Rosenberg, a consistent voice for new taxes,
the other day, he pointed out that even the roughly $2
billion the millionaires tax might bring in could be wiped
out by Trumpcare, which if enacted could cut our federal
Medicaid funding by about that same amount.
So here’s the question – are you ready to
pay higher taxes, not just the millionaires, you, even
though chances are you haven’t been getting fat raises?
And if you aren’t, what do you want the Big
Three to start cutting?
WBZ CBS-Boston
Monday, May 8, 2017
Keller @ Large: What Should They Cut?
By Jon Keller
Whether you’re a public employee or retiree,
or just a taxpayer, the state of state and local pensions in
Massachusetts impacts you, so Pioneer Institute has created
a website that will allows people to educate themselves
about this critical issue.
Masspensions.com grades systems based on the number of
years they have left before achieving full funding. It
includes measures like a fund’s assumed rate of return,
asset allocation and investment performance based on the
most recent publicly available data. It also shows the
number of active and retired members in each system....
Over time, state and local governments have
routinely decided to fund more immediate priorities and
failed to live up to their responsibility to adequately fund
their pension plans.
Despite the promises made, future government
leaders were left to figure out how to fund the pensions.
Part of the financial challenge is a result of past
liabilities. Many jurisdictions enacted plans to pay down
unfunded liability over time, but when things got tight and
budgets need to be balanced, they extended the funding
schedules or used inflated assumptions in an attempt to mask
the problems....
Based on the assumptions in place at the
time, the average Massachusetts public pension plan was just
over 70 percent funded at the end of 2008. Thanks to factors
like adopting more realistic investment assumptions, that
percentage was barely above 60 percent at the end of 2015.
That translates to a collective statewide unfunded liability
of over $49 billion — nearly 25 percent more than the
commonwealth’s annual budget.
In 2015, public pension plans in
Massachusetts spent close to $400 million on management,
consulting and custodial fees. Far from a light at the end
of the tunnel, there now appears to be a pension tsunami
hurtling toward our shores.
As citizens, we must make it known that such
imprudence will not be tolerated. Never again should a
pension funding schedule be extended - and overall costs
dramatically increased - to balance a current operating
budget.
The Salem News
Wednesday, May 3, 2017
Preparing for the 'pension tsunami'
Mary Z. Connaughton and Charles Chieppo
Hoping to alleviate this problem, two North
Shore lawmakers want health officials consider a subsidy for
low-income families with children under 2, to cover what
some call the “diaper gap.” ...
It’s not that anyone disputes the need to
put a clean diaper on a baby. Families with tight budgets
resort to difficult measures to stretch their diaper dollar
— washing and reusing them, if possible. Others find savings
by reusing cloth diapers, though that can get expensive,
too....
“There’s no question that diapers are an
absolute health necessity for babies, and some parents can’t
afford it,” said state Sen. Joan Lovely, who with state Rep.
Paul Tucker suggested the state study a diaper subsidy. Both
are Democrats from Salem.
While we can agree with the cause, if not
the solution, it’s worth recognizing the large effort to put
babies in clean diapers that takes place outside of
government....
Diaper duty is fun for no one, and the
impulse to help parents is noble. But it shouldn’t take a
new government program to do it.
A Salem News editorial
Wednesday, May 3, 2017
Look for other ways to close the 'diaper gap'
The bill sponsored by Sen. Jason Lewis and
Rep. Kay Khan (H3329
/
S1562) could raise $368 million, according to the
lawmakers, and encourage people to choose drinks that don't
contribute to obesity and other ailments.
While supporters acknowledge the tax would
hit low-income communities harder than other, they say the
revenue could be used to fund programs, drinking fountains,
and other nutritional programs that would benefit them.
State House News Service
Wednesday, May 10, 2017
Baker no fan of proposed soda tax
The Constitutional Convention where
lawmakers plan to eventually vote on a surtax on household
incomes above $1 million has recessed until June 14 at 1
p.m.
Senate President Stanley Rosenberg, a
supporter of the so-called millionaire's tax, gaveled the
convention to order at 1:04 p.m. Wednesday, but lawmakers
immediately recessed without acting on any proposals on the
convention calendar....
The constitutional amendment, which
supporters say could yield $1.6 billion to $2.2 billion in
new revenue, needs affirmative votes from the Legislature in
two consecutive sessions to reach the 2018 ballot.
On May 18, 2016, the convention - a joint
meeting of the House and Senate - advanced the petition
135-57. Because the amendment is a citizens' petition, it
requires only 50 votes to advance each session.
Opponents of the measure say it could lead
to a graduated income tax structure in which over time more
people will be grouped in different tax brackets and taxed
at different rates.
State House News Service
Wednesday, May 10, 2017
Income surtax up first at June 14 Constitutional Convention
Senate President Stanley Rosenberg seemed to
slam the door Tuesday on tackling significant education
reform before the 2018 election, telling advocates that it
would be a "mistake" to do anything that would distract from
efforts to pass a ballot law next year to raise taxes on
income over $1 million....
Asked specifically about legislation backed
by the state's largest teachers union that would put a
moratorium on testing to evaluate student and teacher
performance, Rosenberg urged advocates to put their focus
elsewhere.
"So there are a lot of bills floating around
on education and my opinion at this point is that we need to
focus on the Fair Share ballot questions that's coming up in
November of '18 because the $2 billion or so that will be
raised will be a major source of funding for the future of
education, and anything that distracts from that debate and
divides us and doesn't allow us to move forward successfully
on that is, I think, a mistake," Rosenberg said.
The Amherst Democrat is backing a proposed
constitutional amendment that would impose a surtax of 4
percent on incomes over $1 million. The question requires
just one more vote in the Legislature where there is broad
support for putting it before voters in 2018.
State House News Service
Tuesday, May 9, 2017
Non-tax education reform efforts a "mistake," Rosenberg says
[Stuart Saginor, executive director of the
Community Preservation Coalition] was among about a dozen of
people who testified Monday before the Joint Committee on
Revenue in support of legislation (H2615
and
S1504) that would raise the Registry of Deeds filing
fees that feed the trust fund to a level sufficient to
ensure all CPA communities will receive state match of at
least 50 percent in their first round distribution each
year.
State House News Service
Monday, April 10, 2017
Frayed Community Preservation partnership in danger of
collapsing
Just as state officials are in a struggle
with the federal government over revenue sharing, the battle
for local aid in Massachusetts marches on between the state,
its cities and towns, and its counties.
Duxbury Rep. Josh Cutler is hopeful about
progress this session on a bill (H1499)
with bipartisan support that would allow counties to keep 30
percent of the revenue generated at the registries of deeds
that they operate, including fees associated with property
sales.
State House News Service
Sunday, April 30, 2017
Rep looks to curb state's money grab from counties
When your back-to-school shopping costs a
little more this August, remember to thank Massachusetts
lawmakers for the untimely demise of the sales tax holiday.
Held in 12 of the past 14 years, the tax-free weekends
typically fell in August, giving families loading up on new
clothes and school supplies a reprieve from the state’s 6.25
percent sales tax.
A Salem News editorial
Thursday, May 4, 2017
No holiday this August
|
|
Chip Ford's CLT
Commentary
No "sales tax holiday" again this year folks, the second
year in a row. A "cost" of $20 million in uncollected
revenue is too high a price if it benefits only taxpayers
and the economy. But the $18 million/year
obscene pay grab the Legislature stuffed into their own
pockets in January
— its first order of business
this session, snatched within two weeks
— was quite affordable and just fine with them.
Funny how that works, eh? We don't call them "The Best
Legislature Money Can Buy" lightly.
The latest self-imposed "fiscal crisis" is "worsening."
This can mean only one thing: The next tax hikes are
right on schedule.
The recurring "fiscal crisis" strategy over the decades
is
well-documented on the CLT website. This is but
the latest iteration on the longstanding formula.
Look back to 2002, in this CLT Update ("'Fiscal
crisis' and other boondoggles"). A Boston Herald
editorial on April 3, 2003 ("Romney:
Tax hikes add up") noted:
. . .
Romney on Tuesday released figures compiled by the state
Department of Revenue on the effect of last year's $1.14
billion tax increase on the average taxpayer.
The
department says an average family of four making $70,000
will pay an additional $162 in state taxes for 2002. The
reduction in the personal exemption for married couples
filing jointly from $8,800 to $6,600 and axing of the
charitable deduction account for the increase.
On top
of that, the average taxpayer is paying about $140 more
in 2003 than he would have if the income tax rate had
fallen to 5 percent as called for by the voter-approved
income tax cut law.
Romney
also is showcasing a February Cato Institute study on
the negative long-term impact of high taxes on economic
growth.
Of
course, Democratic legislators were quick to pounce on
Romney's assertions, pointing out, correctly, that
Romney had not proposed cutting taxes in his budget, and
instead incorporated the new revenue.
They
neglect to mention that they left him little choice. By
raising taxes last year, the Legislature papered over
the state's significant structural deficit, exacerbating
the budget crisis and leaving Romney with a $3 billion
hole to fill. Romney has pledged to cut the income tax
to 5 percent as the voters demanded and he should be
aggressive about fulfilling that promise.
But the
priority in this budget must be to cut spending to
sustainable levels and fundamentally restructure state
government. If lawmakers fail to do so, Romney argues,
"the people of Massachusetts will have to accept yearly
tax increases to pay for the inefficient, wasteful
structure now in place." On all counts, Romney has the
better argument.
Our memo to the Legislature and CLT News Release of
October 6, 2005 ("The
economy in numbers") warned:
To:
Members of the General Court
October 6, 2005
Re: The economy in numbers
16 – The
number of years since the Legislature passed the
“temporary’ income tax hike to cover the 1989 fiscal
crisis, caused by overspending during the Dukakis
presidential campaign.
5 – The
number of years since the voters, 59-41%, told you to
“keep the promise” that the tax hike of 1989 would be
temporary, and roll the income tax rate back to its
traditional 5%.
4 – The
number of years since the last fiscal crisis caused by
overspending, caused by the “temporary” tax hike of 1989
that was carried through the high point of the economic
cycle in the ‘90s.
2 – The
number of years that the income tax rate should have
been 5% if you had done what the voters mandated.
10 – The number of years it usually takes to recover
from a fiscal crisis and, using that crisis’ continuing
tax hike, spend us into another fiscal crisis.
8 – The number of years remaining til the next fiscal
crisis and its next new “temporary” tax hike.
0 – The
deserved credibility of legislators who ignore economic
realities, lie about new taxes being temporary, break
promises, create fiscal crises, and disrespect the
voters.
9 out of
10 – The level of foolishness of the Massachusetts
Taxpayers Foundation as it makes recommendations for
efficiency and accountability while fighting the tax
cuts that would make reforms necessary.
25 – The
number of years since Proposition 2½ was passed by the
voters and respected by the Legislature, to the benefit
of taxpayers, the commonwealth’s image, and the state
economy.
Apparently it's not "The Best Legislature Money Can Buy"
but just over-paid buffoons who epitomize the definition of
insanity: Doing the same thing over and over,
expecting a different result.
Or,
they just hope taxpayers and voters will forget the lessons
of history.
The State House News Service reports (Non-tax education reform efforts a "mistake," Rosenberg says):
Senate President Stanley Rosenberg seemed to
slam the door Tuesday on tackling significant education
reform before the 2018 election, telling advocates that it
would be a "mistake" to do anything that would distract from
efforts to pass a ballot law next year to raise taxes on
income over $1 million....
Asked specifically about legislation backed
by the state's largest teachers union that would put a
moratorium on testing to evaluate student and teacher
performance, Rosenberg urged advocates to put their focus
elsewhere.
Sounds like Sen. Rosenberg is telling the teachers union
to focus on taking more taxpayers’ money "for the children,"
then come back and lower education standards. As we
know, on Beacon Hill the teachers unions tell Democrat
legislators when to jump and in unison those legislators
respond "How high, master?"
Last May
the sixth and latest incarnation of a Graduated Income Tax
constitutional amendment —
supported and primarily funded by the Massachusetts Teachers
Association — flew through the
Legislature's constitutional convention by a lopsided vote
of 135-57. The so-called "Millionaires Tax," aka, "The
Fair Share Amendment," is expected to do the same next month
in the second constitutionally required vote before going
onto the November 2018 ballot. Senate President
Rosenberg is asking them to not be too greedy, to think
strategically or they could lose the voters on their big
cash grab. One thing at a time, then come back later
to disembowel education results.
There's more legislation in the works to hike the deeds
excise (tax) on property transactions to fund the Community
Preservation Act with more, more, always more of our money.
More Is Never Enough (MINE) and never will be, until they
have it all.
Shortly after its passage Barbara Anderson described the
CPA best in her April 2001 column, "The
Community Preservation Act Explained"
. . . Well,
heaven forbid that some communities have a tax that
other communities don't have, even if those communities
have dirt soil and lots of water, or no open space left
anyhow. So inevitably the new tax became available for
everyone as a surcharge on property owners' property tax
bill. If some communities don't have open space left to
buy they can use the money for historic preservation or
affordable housing. In fact, they have to use at least
10 percent of it for each of the three categories.
The
affordable housing part is especially important because
as open space is removed from the market, housing
becomes more expensive. Thus the requirement that some
of the money raised be used to build affordable housing,
presumably on what was once open space. Are you
following this so far?
Once upon a
time there was lots of affordable housing, at least for
most people, since most people seemed to afford to live
somewhere. And then there were zoning laws that required
new homes to have one or two acres of land around them,
and rent control in some cities, and prohibitions
against mobile homes or commercial buildings, and
environmental restrictions regarding loosely-defined
wetlands.
So the
question is this: do we want open space, or do we want
affordable housing? The government wants both. So it
taxes us so it can preserve land, and taxes us so it can
use land, and hopes we won't notice that our efforts are
canceling themselves out.
It's
important that we not notice this, since we have to vote
to accept the Community Preservation Act and tax
ourselves. Then as we vote to raise taxes, more local
citizens who live in small affordable houses or own open
space can't afford the taxes and sell their property to
developers, who tear down the small houses and build
large ones that are no longer affordable, and build
affordable housing somewhere that was open space. . . .
Have you noticed a pattern here? "The more things
change the more they remain the same." Legislators
— our elected alleged
"representatives" — seem
incapable of learning from past mistakes, or conveniently
forget how "fiscal crises" are created. It's as if
Beacon Hill denizens are stuck in a "Groundhog Day"
loop of repetition, always ending up where they started off.
We hope citizens, taxpayers, voters are paying attention
when it comes time to elect qualified legislator
— not people who will spend
them into oblivion.
I know we sure are.
|
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Chip Ford
Executive Director |
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State House News Service
Thursday, May 11, 2017
Revenue base eroding as annual budget talks ramp
up
By Andy Metzger
Slow-growing tax collections have eroded the
base of revenue expected to fund state
government, and the House budget chief thinks it
is probable that the revenue figure built into
the fiscal 2018 budget will need to be lowered.
"We're going to have those conversations. I
would say it's likely," House Ways and Means
Chairman Brian Dempsey told the News Service on
Wednesday when asked if he thought the revenue
number would need to be adjusted. "I don't have
a number, but I would say it's likely that we
would have to come in and make some additional
reduction around what we're projecting
currently."
On Monday, Gov. Charlie Baker said he did not
believe the fiscal 2018 tax revenue estimate
needed to be changed before the Senate debates
its budget - the Senate is scheduled to release
its spending plan on Tuesday, May 16 and debate
it beginning May 23.
Even if the state hits its May and June tax
revenue targets on the nose, tax receipts would
need to grow by 5.77 percent in fiscal 2018,
significantly greater than any of the
projections experts presented to state
policymakers at a revenue forecasting hearing
last year.
"It's hard to see how the economy can grow fast
enough to yield that kind of tax revenue
growth," said Robert Nakosteen, a professor at
the UMass Amherst Isenberg School of Management
and executive editor of the economic journal
MassBenchmarks. He said, "Tax revenue growth has
to be generated by growth in the economy absent
changes in tax policy, and I just don't see that
kind of growth in our future."
An official at the Massachusetts Taxpayers
Foundation confirmed that if May and June
revenues hit benchmarks, the state would need
5.77 percent growth in tax receipts to meet its
target in fiscal 2018. Doug Howgate, director of
policy and research for the business-backed
group, said the last time the state exceeded
that level of growth was in fiscal 2015 when tax
revenues grew 7.8 percent.
When lawmakers solicited input on revenue
projections for the fiscal 2018 budget in
December, the Beacon Hill Institute provided the
rosiest projections of the bunch, estimating
growth of roughly 5.2 percent in fiscal 2018
over fiscal 2017. The institute's analysts also
exceeded others' estimates in the amount of tax
dollars they expected the state would receive by
the end of fiscal 2017.
Legislative budget-writers and Administration
and Finance Secretary Kristen Lepore in January
agreed that fiscal 2017 would end with $26.056
billion in tax revenue, and predicted that tax
revenues would grow 3.9 percent in fiscal 2018
bringing the total tax haul to $27.072 billion.
However a $462 million tax shortfall ten months
into fiscal 2017 has lowered prospects for
collections in the fiscal year that ends June
30. If fiscal 2017 revenue comes in
significantly short of projections, fiscal 2018
tax revenue would need to climb more steeply to
reach the $27.072 billion projection from
January, which House lawmakers used as the
foundation of the $40.4 billion budget they
approved in late April.
"It's obviously going to be a very high hill to
climb, and I guess we'll have to see what
happens. We know that the odds are probably
against us that we're going to be in that
neighborhood," Warren Rep. Todd Smola, the
ranking Republican on House Ways and Means, told
the News Service.
Smola anticipated some challenging work ahead
for the future budget conference committee - a
group of six lawmakers from the House and Senate
that meet to negotiate a compromise between the
budgets passed by either branch. It's possible
that major spending decisions, those stretching
beyond the usual push and pull of annual budget
talks, will be made secretly by that conference.
Eileen McAnneny, president of the Massachusetts
Taxpayers Foundation, said the projected fiscal
2018 revenue growth "looks unlikely," and she
anticipates fiscal 2017 revenues will come in
below earlier expectations.
Top officials in the legislative and executive
branches huddled in the speaker's office on
Monday, and afterward Senate President Stan
Rosenberg said he was comfortable putting
together the Senate budget using the consensus
revenue figure agreed to in January.
"We'll look forward to the conference process to
iron out any difficulties," Rosenberg said.
Dempsey declined to weigh in on how senators
should approach their budget when they take it
up later this month. He said state officials
have a track record of addressing financial
problems, which have been a perennial issue in
recent years.
"For us to come together last year after both
the House and the Senate passed its budgets and
come in and reduce that figure by $750 million
was significant and I think sends a very strong
message to the bond-rating agencies that we are
going to make sure that we're fiscally prudent
and fiscally responsible," the Haverhill
Democrat said.
Lawmakers have looked to Gov. Charlie Baker, who
has the power to unilaterally cut spending, to
address the fiscal 2017 revenue shortfall.
Massachusetts is not alone in facing budgetary
problems. Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy
reportedly announced a plan Wednesday to tap
into reserves, divert money intended for
municipalities and cut $33.5 million in
spending. Officials in Rhode Island reportedly
identified a $60.1 million revenue shortfall in
their current budget year.
Sluggish tax revenue growth dates back to former
President Barack Obama's administration but has
continued under President Donald Trump.
While saying state officials "can't afford to
wait" to respond to the shortfall, Dempsey
theorized that laggard receipts could be the
result of investors and businesses delaying
their own actions as they wait for potential
federal tax cuts from Capitol Hill. He said, "It
appears that a lot of what's happening
nationally is really investor-related activity.
I think folks are hitting pause to determine
what happens in Washington with respect to a
potential tax package. And it appears that
decision-making is on hold until the business
community determines what level of taxation
they'll see with a proposed tax package."
Rep. Jay Barrows, a Mansfield Republican, is
also looking to Washington, D.C. for potential
solutions to the state's budget woes. Barrows
said he is hoping Massachusetts will be granted
authority to take into consideration assets in
addition to income to determine eligibility for
MassHealth, the health care safety net that is
the primary driver of state spending growth.
"Hopefully there will be some help on that and
we can get the cost curve to come down," Barrows
told the News Service.
State House News Service
Friday, May 5, 2017
Weekly Roundup - Cloudy with a chance of rain
By Matt Murphy
April showers are supposed to bring May flowers,
but very little was coming up roses this week
for state budgeteers who saw their hopes of
avoiding another scramble to balance state
finances washed away in a torrent of economic
floodwaters.
Tax collections in April, when millions of Bay
Staters file their returns, were, if all went
according to plan, supposed to put the budget
back on track.
The $220 million shortfall in revenue through
March - again, if all went according to plan -
would become much more manageable when the cash
came pouring in during the largest month for tax
collections in the year.
Not only did that not happen, but the exact
opposite occurred.
New reports showed an economy contracting in the
first quarter, business confidence is on the
decline and the revenue gap more than doubled to
$462 million when April revenues not only failed
to live up to expectations, but dropped off $83
million from last year.
"It's hard for us to really figure out what's
happening because our unemployment rate is low,
the economy is very well in Massachusetts, the
jobs are there. We're sitting back saying what
is stymieing our benchmark figures?" Rep. Paul
Donato, second assistant House majority leader,
said.
Gov. Charlie Baker does not seem to have hit the
panic button yet, and suggested he and his
budget team have been preparing for the
possibility of a shortfall for some time. The
governor said he was working on a solution to
preserve local aid and critical services for
taxpayers, and House and Senate lawmakers were
in agreement on one thing - hands off the "rainy
day" fund.
But Revenue Commissioner Michael Heffernan said
the numbers should give state leaders pause.
Heffernan said that not only will revenue this
fiscal year fall short of projections, but he
recommended rethinking the 3.9 percent growth
lawmakers are counting on for fiscal 2018.
The House has already passed its budget plan for
next year, and with the Senate preparing to take
its turn this month, House Speaker Robert DeLeo
said he wasn't ready to junk the work of the
House quite yet. "The assumptions for FY18, I
think, were based upon conservative estimates,"
he said. "So I'm hopeful we won't have to come
back and do the exercises we had to do this
year."
Except that's exactly what he and others said
last year, only to find themselves in the very
same predicament.
The budget woes played fittingly into the early
2018 gubernatorial election dynamics that could
pit one former state budget chief against
another.
Jay Gonzalez, who ran Gov. Deval Patrick's
budget office for roughly four years, used the
budget news to prod Baker, who has built a
reputation as a nuts-and-bolts governor, for
letting things get out of hand.
"We've got a governor whose whole case for being
governor is he's a great manager. And he is
failing at that," Gonzalez, one of two Democrats
officially in the race, told the Boston Globe.
Gonzalez's own budget management during the
Patrick years bears dissecting as well, but
maybe for another time. For now, suffice it to
say budgeting chops could become a major issue
in next year's election, and how Baker pulls
this rabbit out of his hat could be a big theme.
But it's hard to blame the governor and not put
a good chunk of the responsibility for the
current situation on the Democrat-led
Legislature.
Democrats scoffed when Baker vetoed $265 million
in spending last summer and warned that the
budget was unbalanced, promptly restoring most
of the money to the budget with assembly-line
efficiency. Then they howled in December when he
cut $98 million in December for the same
reasons, calling it a "premature" move by a
Republican overeager to shrink the size of
government.
Now they want Baker to resolve the mess that
slow-revenue growth has created, throwing their
hands in the air and suggesting none of this
could have been predicted.
"I know that Ways and Means is, I don't want to
say disappointed, but they're just sitting back
shrugging their shoulders as we have," Donato
said.
Whether it's overspending, a tax code that has
failed to keep up with the modern economy or
simply bad estimating, the chorus from elected
leaders of both parties this week made it seem
like the budget problems currently facing the
state would be child's play compared to what
will happen if the American Health Care Act
becomes law.
The GOP-led House in Washington successfully
pushed through a revised replacement for
Obamacare with the slimmest of margins, but
while D.C. Republicans celebrated, Massachusetts
officials blanched.
Baker said he was "disappointed" with the
proposed law that could jeopardize $1 billion or
more in federal Medicaid funding for
Massachusetts, and urged the Senate to reject
the bill as written. Democrats offered more
vivid and dire prognostications.
All of this taken together will surely light a
fire in the coming weeks under lawmakers who
believe that government has a revenue problem,
not a spending problem. But apart from broad
support for the surtax on millionaires headed
toward the ballot in 2018, there remains little
appetite for tax changes.
It's no wonder progressives are feeling a little
left out these days on Beacon Hill.
Some progressives gathered at the State House
week to try to figure out why with Democratic
supermajorities in both branches they can't get
more of their agenda accomplished.
"Something's been missing," said Harmony Wu, who
serves on the Progressive Massachusetts board.
Wu posited that one cause of stagnation on
Beacon Hill is the lack of grassroots organizing
with a singular voice, but another problem is
often money.
A group of liberal senators led by Sen. Sal
DiDomenico released its "Kids First" agenda this
week that called for raising wages for early
educators, eliminating the waiting list for
early education and care, ensuring access to
after-school and summer programs, and expanding
state education aid to cover younger children.
The House has often been painted as the obstacle
to priorities like these in the Senate, but
Speaker DeLeo and other House Democrats would
likely embrace the goals if someone could just
tell them how to pay for it.
STORY OF THE WEEK: Another year, another budget
crisis.
State House News Service
Friday, May 5, 2017
Advances - Week of May 7, 2017
The Legislature last July steamrolled most of
Gov. Charlie Baker's budget vetoes, putting
spending back into a budget that Baker warned
was imbalanced. Then in December, House Speaker
Robert DeLeo and Senate President Stanley
Rosenberg balked at Baker's unilateral spending
cuts, asserting they were made prematurely.
Now, with less than two months left in the
fiscal year and the budget tilting out of
balance, legislators are turning to Baker to
solve the immediate problem and operating with
creeping doubts about the structural integrity
of fiscal 2018 budgets since tax revenues are
not coming in at the pace they anticipated.
The House has already put its budget to bed,
although its relevance seems to have been
diminished in the wake of the latest tax revenue
reports.
As Senate Ways and Means Committee Chair Karen
Spilka assembles a proposed fiscal 2018 budget,
she and other state leaders face a triple
threat.
In addition to tax collections continuing to
fall well shy of their expectations, insurance
costs associated with the massive MassHealth
program are surging beyond state government's
ability to pay and with Friday's U.S. House vote
to pass a new health care law, state officials
are bracing for the possibility that the
American Health Care Act, if it can pass the
Senate and reach President Donald Trump's desk,
will remove critical federal funding and force
wholesale reevaluation of the Bay State health
care system.
Spilka's panel plans to release its fiscal 2018
budget on Tuesday, May 16 and senators have been
advised to expect budget deliberations to begin
Tuesday, May 23 and run through May 26, if
necessary.
WBZ CBS-Boston
Monday, May 8, 2017
Keller @ Large: What Should They Cut?
By Jon Keller
BOSTON (CBS) – Governor Baker, Senate President
Rosenberg, and House Speaker DeLeo will meet
Monday afternoon at the State House and they
have a lot to talk about.
For instance: what on earth is going bad with
our local economy, and how much worse things
could get in the very near future.
Tax receipts for the fiscal year that ends June
30th are coming in way below the projections the
budget was based on.
And according to the most recent report by Mass
Benchmarks, a consortium of local experts who
track the state economy, our gross domestic
product and overall economic growth are lagging
well behind the nation, a complete reversal of
the trend in recent years.
Despite all the profits employers have been
pocketing during the boom times, according to
Mass Benchmarks, “wage and salary growth in
Massachusetts has stalled in the last two
quarters.”
Which brings us back to this meeting of the Big
Three on Beacon Hill.
Baker has been a staunch opponent of new
broad-based tax hikes; DeLeo has been as well
for the most part, but he backs the proposed
income-tax hike on millionaires heading for the
November 2018 ballot.
But when I
interviewed Rosenberg, a consistent voice
for new taxes, the other day, he pointed out
that even the roughly $2 billion the
millionaires tax might bring in could be wiped
out by Trumpcare, which if enacted could cut our
federal Medicaid funding by about that same
amount.
So here’s the question – are you ready to pay
higher taxes, not just the millionaires, you,
even though chances are you haven’t been getting
fat raises?
And if you aren’t, what do you want the Big
Three to start cutting?
The Salem News
Wednesday, May 3, 2017
Preparing for the 'pension tsunami'
Mary Z. Connaughton and Charles Chieppo
Moody’s Investors Service estimates that total
U.S. state and local government pension unfunded
liability will reach $1.75 trillion this year,
and the commonwealth is hardly immune from this
alarming trend. The Massachusetts Teachers
Pension Fund pays out more than $2.6 billion in
annual benefits and has barely half the money it
needs to meet its long-term obligations. Many of
the commonwealth’s more than 100 local pension
systems are in a similar condition, and the MBTA
Retirement Fund is worse.
This isn’t just a nightmare for the
commonwealth, local governments and state
taxpayers; more than 10 percent of all adults in
Massachusetts are members of these various
systems.
Employees were promised that if they performed
public service, a significant portion of their
overall compensation would come in the form of a
defined benefit pension. The deal was that the
workers would contribute part of their wages and
the commonwealth or local governments would make
up the difference between employee contributions
and the cost of funding their pensions. That
amount would be based on a variety of
assumptions, including mortality rates, pension
fund investment returns and length of service
the workers would provide.
Whether you’re a public employee or retiree, or
just a taxpayer, the state of state and local
pensions in Massachusetts impacts you, so
Pioneer Institute has created a website that
will allows people to educate themselves about
this critical issue.
Masspensions.com grades systems based on the
number of years they have left before achieving
full funding. It includes measures like a fund’s
assumed rate of return, asset allocation and
investment performance based on the most recent
publicly available data. It also shows the
number of active and retired members in each
system.
Because its pension plan won’t be funded until
2031, the City of Salem received a ‘D’ grade on
our MassPensions site.
Over time, state and local governments have
routinely decided to fund more immediate
priorities and failed to live up to their
responsibility to adequately fund their pension
plans.
Despite the promises made, future government
leaders were left to figure out how to fund the
pensions. Part of the financial challenge is a
result of past liabilities. Many jurisdictions
enacted plans to pay down unfunded liability
over time, but when things got tight and budgets
need to be balanced, they extended the funding
schedules or used inflated assumptions in an
attempt to mask the problems.
You can revise assumptions based on a higher
anticipated rate of return on pension
investments, but you can’t make those returns
materialize. Similarly, you can push out the
time by which a fund is expected to be fully
funded, but doing so is like an interest-only
mortgage; reducing short-term cash outflow, but
costing taxpayers more over time.
Based on the assumptions in place at the time,
the average Massachusetts public pension plan
was just over 70 percent funded at the end of
2008. Thanks to factors like adopting more
realistic investment assumptions, that
percentage was barely above 60 percent at the
end of 2015. That translates to a collective
statewide unfunded liability of over $49 billion
— nearly 25 percent more than the commonwealth’s
annual budget.
In 2015, public pension plans in Massachusetts
spent close to $400 million on management,
consulting and custodial fees. Far from a light
at the end of the tunnel, there now appears to
be a pension tsunami hurtling toward our shores.
As citizens, we must make it known that such
imprudence will not be tolerated. Never again
should a pension funding schedule be extended -
and overall costs dramatically increased - to
balance a current operating budget.
As is the case in so many areas, putting off
necessary action on public pensions
exponentially increases the magnitude of the
problem. Masspensions.com is a tool taxpayers
can use to tell their elected leaders that when
it comes to this issue, procrastination and the
additional costs it creates are no longer
acceptable.
Mary Z. Connaughton is director of government
transparency and Charles Chieppo is a senior
fellow at Pioneer Institute, a Boston-based
think tank.
The Salem News
Wednesday, May 3, 2017
A Salem News editorial
Look for other ways to close the 'diaper gap'
Any parent knows the endless call of diaper
duty. It invariably comes at inopportune times,
and if you’re outside the house, you’re lucky to
have remembered to pack a fresh one.
Parents also know how fast their babies plow
through diapers — a healthy child fills six to
10 per day — and how expensive it all can get.
Wrapping clean diapers on your baby can set you
back $800 to $1,000 per year, according to the
National Diaper Bank Network. That’s a pile of
money, and 1 in 3 mothers say at some point
they’ve been hard pressed to afford it,
according to the network of more than 300 local
groups that distribute diapers to families in
need.
Hoping to alleviate this problem, two North
Shore lawmakers want health officials consider a
subsidy for low-income families with children
under 2, to cover what some call the “diaper
gap.” Should it come to pass, the benefit may
resemble a California plan that sends $50
monthly diaper vouchers to welfare recipients
with young children.
This seems to be one of those ideas born of
good, though misplaced intentions. The expense
looming over low-income families is better
handled in Washington by addressing the
underlying issue — benefits programs that cannot
be used for diapers. That, after all, seems to
be the rub behind this case of diaper rash.
Food stamps — or the Supplemental Nutrition
Assistance Program — cannot be used to buy
diapers. Neither will the Women, Infants and
Children nutrition program. State-administered
welfare benefits can be used to buy diapers, but
advocates note those monthly checks are only
$633 for a three-person family living in
subsidized housing, while diapers cost upward of
$80 per month. Also, only one-quarter of
low-income families with children collect those
benefits, called Temporary Assistance for Needy
Families.
So, why not stretch the limits of these
programs, particularly nutrition ones, to reach
more families and allow parents to put money
toward a must-have? Certainly parents use these
benefits to buy formula and food for their
babies. Why not diapers?
It would be a more practical, efficient solution
than creating yet another government program.
It’s not that anyone disputes the need to put a
clean diaper on a baby. Families with tight
budgets resort to difficult measures to stretch
their diaper dollar — washing and reusing them,
if possible. Others find savings by reusing
cloth diapers, though that can get expensive,
too. In the meantime, babies forced to wait on a
fresh diaper can develop health issues, from
irritating rashes to more serious urinary tract
infections.
“There’s no question that diapers are an
absolute health necessity for babies, and some
parents can’t afford it,” said state Sen. Joan
Lovely, who with state Rep. Paul Tucker
suggested the state study a diaper subsidy. Both
are Democrats from Salem.
While we can agree with the cause, if not the
solution, it’s worth recognizing the large
effort to put babies in clean diapers that takes
place outside of government.
The first diaper bank was created in 2000 in
Tucson, Arizona, according to the national
network. That helped to encourage a social
worker in New Haven, Connecticut, to start one
there. The model has since spread to 45 states,
as well as the District of Columbia. The
National Diaper Bank Network includes 13
organizations in Massachusetts that send out
more than 1.3 million diapers a year. In New
Hampshire there are two such groups. The big
diaper-makers report making various charitable
donations, as well.
Diaper duty is fun for no one, and the impulse
to help parents is noble. But it shouldn’t take
a new government program to do it.
State House News Service
Wednesday, May 10, 2017
Baker no fan of proposed soda tax
By Matt Murphy
Count the proposed soda tax among the revenue
generating ideas that Gov. Charlie Baker is not
willing to consider.
A day after proponents pitched legislation to
levy an excise tax on sugary drinks as a way to
both generate money for the state and promote
good health, Baker dismissed the idea.
“I don't think we should be raising taxes, and
I've said that before, especially not a tax that
hits low-income people a lot harder than it hits
everybody else,” Baker told reporters on
Wednesday.
The bill sponsored by Sen. Jason Lewis and Rep.
Kay Khan (H3329
/
S1562) could raise $368 million, according
to the lawmakers, and encourage people to choose
drinks that don't contribute to obesity and
other ailments.
While supporters acknowledge the tax would hit
low-income communities harder than other, they
say the revenue could be used to fund programs,
drinking fountains, and other nutritional
programs that would benefit them.
State House News Service
Wednesday, May 10, 2017
Income surtax up first at June 14 Constitutional
Convention
By Michael P. Norton
The Constitutional Convention where lawmakers
plan to eventually vote on a surtax on household
incomes above $1 million has recessed until June
14 at 1 p.m.
Senate President Stanley Rosenberg, a supporter
of the so-called millionaire's tax, gaveled the
convention to order at 1:04 p.m. Wednesday, but
lawmakers immediately recessed without acting on
any proposals on the convention calendar.
Asked afterward when the convention would take
up the tax amendment, Rosenberg said, "We will
reconvene on June 14 and it's the first item on
the calendar. We will see how the convention
goes."
Asked if he planned to take up the amendment
June 14, he said, "We'll be convening on June 14
for sure."
The constitutional amendment, which supporters
say could yield $1.6 billion to $2.2 billion in
new revenue, needs affirmative votes from the
Legislature in two consecutive sessions to reach
the 2018 ballot.
On May 18, 2016, the convention - a joint
meeting of the House and Senate - advanced the
petition 135-57. Because the amendment is a
citizens' petition, it requires only 50 votes to
advance each session.
Opponents of the measure say it could lead to a
graduated income tax structure in which over
time more people will be grouped in different
tax brackets and taxed at different rates.
Rosenberg on Tuesday seemed to slam the door on
tackling significant education reform within the
Legislature before the 2018 election, telling
advocates that it would be a "mistake" to do
anything that would distract from efforts to
pass the proposed income surtax.
"So there are a lot of bills floating around on
education and my opinion at this point is that
we need to focus on the Fair Share ballot
questions that's coming up in November of '18
because the $2 billion or so that will be raised
will be a major source of funding for the future
of education, and anything that distracts from
that debate and divides us and doesn't allow us
to move forward successfully on that is, I
think, a mistake," Rosenberg said.
State House News Service
Tuesday, May 9, 2017
Non-tax education reform efforts a "mistake,"
Rosenberg says
By Matt Murphy
Senate President Stanley Rosenberg seemed to
slam the door Tuesday on tackling significant
education reform before the 2018 election,
telling advocates that it would be a "mistake"
to do anything that would distract from efforts
to pass a ballot law next year to raise taxes on
income over $1 million.
Rosenberg spoke at a policy luncheon hosted by
Education Reform Now in downtown Boston where he
focused on the Senate's "Kids First" initiative,
which has aimed to put together an updated
policy blueprint for education from infancy
through college.
Asked specifically about legislation backed by
the state's largest teachers union that would
put a moratorium on testing to evaluate student
and teacher performance, Rosenberg urged
advocates to put their focus elsewhere.
"So there are a lot of bills floating around on
education and my opinion at this point is that
we need to focus on the Fair Share ballot
questions that's coming up in November of '18
because the $2 billion or so that will be raised
will be a major source of funding for the future
of education, and anything that distracts from
that debate and divides us and doesn't allow us
to move forward successfully on that is, I
think, a mistake," Rosenberg said.
The Amherst Democrat is backing a proposed
constitutional amendment that would impose a
surtax of 4 percent on incomes over $1 million.
The question requires just one more vote in the
Legislature where there is broad support for
putting it before voters in 2018.
After last year's bruising and divisive ballot
campaign to expand charter schools fell in
defeat, Rosenberg said he was hesitant to wade
into another policy debate that could divide
interest groups and jeopardize passage of the
so-called Fair Share Amendment.
"From my point of view, we need to unify the
education community. We had a rough time two
years ago. We need to get ourselves together. We
need to unify ourselves. Because we need that
success. We don't have that money to invest in
the Foundation Review Commission's
recommendations and the 'Kids First' vision," he
said.
"We can entertain other questions further down
the road. And I'm not pulling any punches here.
I said the same thing to the MTA, so pick your
battles," Rosenberg said.
The Senate president's comments came a day
before the Massachusetts Teachers Association is
scheduled to hold a policy briefing at the State
House on a bill (S 308) filed by Sen. Michael
Rush, of West Roxbury, requiring hundreds of
millions of dollars in new state funding to be
poured into public education.
The bill would also put a a three-year
moratorium on the use of high-stakes testing for
graduation, district accountability and teacher
evaluations.
MTA President Barbara Madeloni said the effort
to generate new revenue for education should go
"hand-in-hand" with debate over what
Massachusetts residents want from their public
education system.
"Divide is confusing to me, quite honestly, when
we have so many sponsors, so that puzzles me,
but young people and educators are in school
right now and they are having experiences that
matter and we have an opportunity to have
meaningful conversations about what we want our
schools to look like," Madeloni said.
One hundred and six House and Senate lawmakers
have signed on to the Rush bill, which was
co-sponsored in the House by Rep. Marjorie
Decker. Madeloni said the Fair Share Amendment
is a "huge part" of the MTA's agenda, but
doesn't need the exclusive focus.
"We should be taking this opportunity, not
waiting until the fall of 2018. We can do both
of those things at the same time, and I think it
serves the Fair Share Amendment and passage of
the Fair Share Amendment to get people excited
about talking about the future of their schools.
I think that's going to bring more people to the
polls to vote yes," she said.
Democrats for Education Reform, which stood on
the opposite side of Rosenberg last year when
the group backed the Question 2 charter school
expansion, were encouraged by the Senate
leader's remarks.
"We believe in holding students and teachers in
schools to high standards and there has to be a
way to measure whether we're meeting those
standards," said former state Rep. Marty Walz,
who now works with Democrats for Education
Reform.
Walz, who once chaired the Education Committee,
said accountability through standardized testing
has contributed to the state's top ranking for
education in the county.
Liam Kerr, the state director for Democrats for
Education Reform, said the group backs the Fair
Share Amendment as well as reforms in public
education that would provide more
accountability, which has put it at odds with
unions. "The best way to get added resources is
to show people we're spending the money well,"
Kerr said.
Rep. Alice Peisch, the House chair of the
Education Committee, attended Tuesday's
luncheon, but declined to respond directly to
Rosenberg's comments. Instead, the Wellesley
Democrat said the testing and evaluation pieces
of the Rush bill also gave her pause.
"I have some serious concerns about some of the
elements of the bill," Peisch said.
Rosenberg said the "Kids First" working group in
the Senate plans to publish a second set of
recommendations before the end of the year
covering fourth grade through 12th grade
followed by the third and final phase next year
addressing post-secondary education.
Rosenberg said that despite ranking among the
best public school systems in the country, many
third graders still can't read at grade level
affecting their future chances for success.
"There is a lot of progress we have made, and we
should all pat ourselves on the back and take a
bow, but that should last 10 seconds because we
have a lot of work to do," Rosenberg said.
State House News Service
Sunday, April 30, 2017
Rep looks to curb state's money grab from
counties
By Michael P. Norton
Just as state officials are in a struggle with
the federal government over revenue sharing, the
battle for local aid in Massachusetts marches on
between the state, its cities and towns, and its
counties.
Duxbury Rep. Josh Cutler is hopeful about
progress this session on a bill (H1499)
with bipartisan support that would allow
counties to keep 30 percent of the revenue
generated at the registries of deeds that they
operate, including fees associated with property
sales.
According to Cutler, the state currently takes
about 90 percent of those monies, despite an
original agreement to share a 50-50 split.
The bill's advancement would address an "unfair"
practice, Cutler told WATD this month, and would
help with the goal of delivering better regional
services at the county level. "It's really a
local aid bill," said Cutler.
Cutler expressed optimism, based on his
conversations, about getting the bill out of the
Revenue Committee. But he also identified a
barrier for the bill. "It's a challenging
conversation because no one wants to be the one
to give up any revenue," he said.
Plymouth County Treasurer Thomas O'Brien, a
former state representative, brought the issue
to the attention of lawmakers and has been
corraling support for the bill, according to
Cutler.
The Salem News
Thursday, May 4, 2017
A Salem News editorial
No holiday this August
When your back-to-school shopping costs a little
more this August, remember to thank
Massachusetts lawmakers for the untimely demise
of the sales tax holiday. Held in 12 of the past
14 years, the tax-free weekends typically fell
in August, giving families loading up on new
clothes and school supplies a reprieve from the
state’s 6.25 percent sales tax.
The tax-free weekends were a boon for retailers
because they nudged customers into their stores.
They were especially helpful for Merrimack
Valley businesses competing with shops
unencumbered by sales tax on the other side of
the border in New Hampshire.
Lawmakers who turned down a budget amendment to
hold the next tax holiday cited its cost — that
is, if one considers withholding money the state
never had in the first place a “cost.” The
tax-free weekends were said to hold back about
$20 million that the state otherwise would have
collected.
Questions about whether that big pile of
unrealized tax justified the consumer spending
it inspired long swirled around the tax
holidays. And, certainly, if lawmakers had been
truly interested in giving the taxpaying public
a break, they’d have rolled back the sales tax
365 days a year — not just on two days in
August.
But while a tax-free weekend could hardly be
considered real budgetary reform, it can’t be
encouraging that lawmakers have now closed the
door even on that. The symbolism of its death
shouldn’t be lost on those of us paying the
state’s bills.
To be sure, the state House of Representatives
has said it will study the issue, and Minority
Leader Brad Jones has expressed hope the tax
holiday can be brought off “life support.” Keep
in mind that Jones is one of 34 Republicans in
the House. For every one of them, there are more
than three-and-a-half Democrats.
So, come late summer, don’t hold off on your
back-to-school shopping in hopes of a tax-free
deal. |
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