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Post Office Box 1147 ●
Marblehead, Massachusetts 01945 ●
(781) 639-9709
“Every Tax is a Pay Cut ... A Tax Cut is a Pay Raise”
45 years as “The Voice of Massachusetts Taxpayers”
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their Institutional Memory — |
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CLT UPDATE
Tuesday, November 26, 2019
"A new
review is coming for an old law, Prop 2½"
Gov. Baker sells out taxpayers
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Here in
Massachusetts, Proposition 2½ is not just the law of the
land. It’s become a tradition, maybe almost a religion for
some.
But changes could
be coming now that the Legislature has decided it’s time to
give a fresh look to this four-decade-old cap on municipal
property taxes.
Nestled deep
within the educational funding bill that Governor Charlie
Baker signed on Tuesday is a proposal that is modest in
description but ambitious in scope: a requirement for the
administration to analyze the impact Proposition 2½ has had
on municipal budgets and potentially make recommendations to
mitigate those constraints....
A wave of antitax
sentiment pushed Prop 2½ onto the ballot in 1980, and then
into the law books. The two basic tenets: Municipalities
can’t increase tax collections by more than 2.5 percent a
year (not including new development), and overall
collections are capped at 2.5 percent of the value of all
taxable property within their borders.
It’s this second
element of Prop 2½ that has officials in slow-growth
communities particularly concerned. The annual spending
threshold can be overridden by voters. The ceiling can be
temporarily surpassed as well, by excluding new debt for
projects such as school buildings. But those votes can be
tough: Just ask the folks in Holyoke, where a debt-exclusion
vote on Nov. 5 for two new middle schools failed,
jeopardizing roughly $75 million in state school building
aid....
Many of the
communities with the highest tax rates are west of
Worcester. In fact, five of the top 10 are in the district
of new state senator Jo Comerford.
During her
campaign last year, the Northampton Democrat regularly heard
from towns approaching the ceiling and she wondered why they
were clustered together, in Western Mass. The reason?
Because economic prosperity has passed them by.
So she convinced
her Senate colleagues to include a Prop 2½ analysis in their
version of the ed-funding bill. The measure survived
House-Senate negotiations, and landed on Baker’s desk for
his signature.
Senator Eric
Lesser welcomes the review. The Democrat from Longfellow is
seeing many of the same issues in his district. The new ed-funding
bill helps school districts with many low-income families,
but Lesser worries many middle-class communities are being
left out.
Comerford and
Lesser say they simply want to make sure regional inequities
get reflected in future state aid formulas. They’re not,
they say, looking to open up the property-tax spigot.
But Chip Ford
isn’t so sure about that. Ford waves the Prop 2½ flag as
executive director for Citizens for Limited Taxation,
the antitax group that helped make the original levy limits
a reality four decades ago. Ford wrote to Baker on Sunday,
urging him to amend the bill and send it back to the
Legislature with the Prop 2½ language excised. (Baker
declined to do so.) Ford said reforms to Prop 2½ should be
discussed openly, not moved along in the back of an
education funding bill....
Mark Gold, a
member of Longmeadow’s select board ... would like the
option to move past the 2½ percent ceiling, to avoid
compromising valuable services, although that might be a
tough sell at the State House.
The Boston Globe
Tuesday, November 26, 2019
A new review is coming for an old law, Prop 2½
By Jon Chesto
Gov. Charlie Baker gestured to the
audience in the gymnasium of Boston's English High School
after signing a landmark education funding reform law on
Tuesday. [Photo: Sam Doran/SHNS]
Massachusetts will
invest an additional $1.5 billion in K-12 public education
over the next seven years after Gov. Charlie Baker signed a
funding reform bill, touted by supporters as a generational
change, into law Tuesday.
The legislation
directs the bulk of new funding toward districts weighed
down by cost drivers, aiming to close opportunity gaps that
for years have led to disparate educational outcomes across
the state.
The law comes four
years after a commission warned that Massachusetts was
underestimating the actual cost of education by $1 billion
annually and more than a year after the last attempt to
update the system fell short. Now the focus shifts to a
different challenge: following through on the commitment to
ramp up funding for schools starting next year.
"If there's one
thing I've learned in my 63 years, it's that talent is
evenly distributed. What's not evenly distributed is
opportunity, and there's a reason why this is the Student
Opportunity Act," Baker said at a bill-signing ceremony
hosted at English High School. "This legislation is about
making sure every kid in the commonwealth of Mass.,
regardless of where they live or where they're from or where
they go to school, has the opportunity to get the education
they need to be great."
The law requires
the state to spend an additional $1.4 billion — before
inflation — on Chapter 70 aid paid to districts, another $90
million on a special education circuit breaker and $10
million for an education innovation trust fund. It does not
outline a year-by-year funding schedule, but requires the
full investment to be made by fiscal year 2027.
"While we have
much to celebrate today and the signing of this piece of
legislation is historic, I'd like to point out that this is
just the first step down what I predict is going to be not
an easy road," Education Committee Co-chair Rep. Alice
Peisch said at Tuesday's ceremony....
"Every single
child deserves access to an excellent public education,"
Sen. Jason Lewis, co-chair of the Education Committee, said
during the ceremony. "Massachusetts will now have the most
progressive school funding formula in the nation, designed
to meaningfully address the troubling, very troubling,
opportunity and achievement gaps that persist in our public
education system." ...
After praising
passage of the bill, some education advocates turned their
attention to higher education as the next target.
Massachusetts Teachers Association President Merrie Najimy
said that group would renew its focus on a $500 million bill
increasing funding for state colleges and university and
freezing tuition.
"When that is
achieved, Massachusetts really will deserve to be called
'the education state,'" Najimy said in a statement.
Baker signed the
bill alongside legislative leaders and Boston Mayor Martin
Walsh at Jamaica Plain's English High School, within
Chang-Diaz's district.
State House News Service
Tuesday, November 26, 2019
Baker Signs $1.5 Billion Education Bill
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Chip Ford's CLT
Commentary
Nobody can say
we didn't fight with everything we had at our disposal
to the last man standing. Thank you to those CLT
members who called their state reps, senators, and the
governor's office yesterday as we requested, and thank
you to those who let me know they'd done so. It
wasn't enough, but the powers-that-be know we're still
out here willing and ready to fight. And that CLT
is watching every step they take, every move they make,
and we are catching them at it —
even their obscure little schemes buried deeply out of
sight.
Frankly, I
didn't expect much from Gov. Baker
— but it was worth the attempt by bringing it to
his attention. I recall his strong affirmation of
Proposition 2½ when
he spoke his high praise for Barbara Anderson at
the
celebration of life service we held in memory of her soon after
she passed away. Those who attended might remember
Charlie's words as well:
“Prop 2½ was probably the single most important
thing to happen to fiscal and economic policy in the
Commonwealth of Mass in my lifetime. Period.
Anyone who suggests otherwise is just kidding
themselves.”
I thought he
meant those words. I really did, and hoped
he'd reflect on them; that, with the current attack on
Proposition 2½ brought to
his personal attention, he'd stand up and defend it.
Charlie's rosy oratory really meant nothing to him,
especially when it counted. His high praise of
Barbara and her greatest accomplishment was
little more than the usual blather from another
insincere politician.
I had intended
to send out the letter, which we delivered to his senior
staff to pass on to him, as a news release early
yesterday morning. Then it was decided that we
should give Gov. Baker some time to consider our request
before turning the media loose on him. (It was
published on the
CLT website on Sunday evening.) Maybe that was
a mistake; maybe it made no difference.
Jon Chesto, a
business reporter at The Boston Globe, called
yesterday morning to interview me about our opposition
to the conference committee bill. I mentioned that
CLT had sent a letter to the governor requesting he
strike the sentence weakening our Proposition 2½.
He asked for a
copy of our letter; I sent it to him.
We lost this one, so now what?
Buried deeply in the new law Governor Baker
proudly signed
today in part it states:
Not later than December 1,
2020, the division of local services within the
department of revenue and the department of
elementary and secondary education shall file a
report with the clerks of the senate and the house
of representatives, the chairs of the joint
committee on education and the chairs of the senate
and house committees on ways and means.
The report shall include, but
not be limited to:
(vi) an analysis of the impact
of Proposition 2½ on the ability of municipalities
to make their required local contributions in the
short-term and long-term and recommendations to
mitigate the constraints of Proposition 2½;
Next December
CLT will be watching and
awaiting the creation and filing of the required report
composed by the Division of Local Services and the
Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.
And then a new battle will likely need to be launched to
preserve and protect Proposition 2½.
This one is over. The next
one has yet to begin.
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Chip Ford
Executive Director |
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The Boston Globe
Tuesday, November 26, 2019
A new review is coming for an
old law, Prop 2½
By Jon Chesto
Here in Massachusetts, Proposition 2½ is not
just the law of the land. It’s become a
tradition, maybe almost a religion for some.
But changes could be coming now that the
Legislature has decided it’s time to give a
fresh look to this four-decade-old cap on
municipal property taxes.
Nestled deep within the educational funding bill
that Governor Charlie Baker signed on Tuesday is
a proposal that is modest in description but
ambitious in scope: a requirement for the
administration to analyze the impact Proposition
2½ has had on municipal budgets and potentially
make recommendations to mitigate those
constraints.
The driving force behind the measure: the vast
economic disparity between the western and
eastern parts of the state. Growth continues
unabated on the eastern end, as Boston booms and
prospers. Out west, though, many cities and
towns struggle to raise enough money to pay
their bills; property values and new
construction simply have not kept pace with
municipal expenses.
A wave of antitax sentiment pushed Prop 2½ onto
the ballot in 1980, and then into the law books.
The two basic tenets: Municipalities can’t
increase tax collections by more than 2.5
percent a year (not including new development),
and overall collections are capped at 2.5
percent of the value of all taxable property
within their borders.
It’s this second element of Prop 2½ that has
officials in slow-growth communities
particularly concerned. The annual spending
threshold can be overridden by voters. The
ceiling can be temporarily surpassed as well, by
excluding new debt for projects such as school
buildings. But those votes can be tough: Just
ask the folks in Holyoke, where a debt-exclusion
vote on Nov. 5 for two new middle schools
failed, jeopardizing roughly $75 million in
state school building aid.
Even successful debt overrides can only go so
far, though. Operating budgets keep rising.
Sooner or later, the inexorable ceiling looms:
$25 per $1,000 of a municipality’s total
property value.
Many of the communities with the highest tax
rates are west of Worcester. In fact, five of
the top 10 are in the district of new state
senator Jo Comerford.
During her campaign last year, the Northampton
Democrat regularly heard from towns approaching
the ceiling and she wondered why they were
clustered together, in Western Mass. The reason?
Because economic prosperity has passed them by.
So she convinced her Senate colleagues to
include a Prop 2½ analysis in their version of
the ed-funding bill. The measure survived
House-Senate negotiations, and landed on Baker’s
desk for his signature.
Senator Eric Lesser welcomes the review. The
Democrat from Longfellow is seeing many of the
same issues in his district. The new ed-funding
bill helps school districts with many low-income
families, but Lesser worries many middle-class
communities are being left out.
Comerford and Lesser say they simply want to
make sure regional inequities get reflected in
future state aid formulas. They’re not, they
say, looking to open up the property-tax spigot.
But Chip Ford isn’t so sure about that.
Ford waves the Prop 2½ flag as executive
director for Citizens for Limited Taxation,
the antitax group that helped make the original
levy limits a reality four decades ago. Ford
wrote to Baker on Sunday, urging him to amend
the bill and send it back to the Legislature
with the Prop 2½ language excised. (Baker
declined to do so.) Ford said reforms to Prop 2½
should be discussed openly, not moved along in
the back of an education funding bill.
For Mark Gold, a member of Longmeadow’s select
board, there’s no time to waste. At $24.09 per
$1,000, Longmeadow had the highest residential
property tax rate of any town in the last fiscal
year, reflecting the area’s stalled economic
growth. By Gold’s estimates, Longmeadow will hit
the dreaded ceiling in four years. Town
officials can delay the inevitable by moving
some services, such as trash collection, off the
budget books and charging fees for them. There’s
a surplus property Longmeadow could sell. But
steps like those only buy momentary relief.
Longmeadow could be on a collision course with
its finances that could lead to layoffs of
teachers and firefighters.
Gold would like the option to move past the 2½
percent ceiling, to avoid compromising valuable
services, although that might be a tough sell at
the State House.
Local business leaders are also watching the
situation closely. Tricia Canavan, who runs a
Springfield-based staffing service and is vice
chair of the Western Massachusetts Economic
Development Council, says the outcome in Holyoke
underscores the precarious school funding
situation many communities in the region face.
Maybe, she says, this review of Prop 2½ could
eventually bring more state aid to the region.
Boston’s rising tide is only so powerful. It’s
the Tale of Two States, again. Western Mass.
might seem far away from policymakers on Beacon
Hill. But this latest development should remind
them why they can’t ignore the region’s
persistent economic challenges.
State House News
Service
Tuesday, November 26, 2019
Baker Signs $1.5 Billion Education Bill
By Chris Lisinski
Massachusetts will invest an additional $1.5
billion in K-12 public education over the next
seven years after Gov. Charlie Baker signed a
funding reform bill, touted by supporters as a
generational change, into law Tuesday.
The legislation directs the bulk of new funding
toward districts weighed down by cost drivers,
aiming to close opportunity gaps that for years
have led to disparate educational outcomes
across the state.
The law comes four years after a commission
warned that Massachusetts was underestimating
the actual cost of education by $1 billion
annually and more than a year after the last
attempt to update the system fell short. Now the
focus shifts to a different challenge: following
through on the commitment to ramp up funding for
schools starting next year.
"If there's one thing I've learned in my 63
years, it's that talent is evenly distributed.
What's not evenly distributed is opportunity,
and there's a reason why this is the Student
Opportunity Act," Baker said at a bill-signing
ceremony hosted at English High School. "This
legislation is about making sure every kid in
the commonwealth of Mass., regardless of where
they live or where they're from or where they go
to school, has the opportunity to get the
education they need to be great."
The law requires the state to spend an
additional $1.4 billion — before inflation — on
Chapter 70 aid paid to districts, another $90
million on a special education circuit breaker
and $10 million for an education innovation
trust fund. It does not outline a year-by-year
funding schedule, but requires the full
investment to be made by fiscal year 2027.
Under the law, the state will also ramp up its
reimbursement paid to communities to cover 100
percent of charter school tuition within three
years. Charter school funding been a divisive
issue over the years.
"While we have much to celebrate today and the
signing of this piece of legislation is
historic, I'd like to point out that this is
just the first step down what I predict is going
to be not an easy road," Education Committee
Co-chair Rep. Alice Peisch said at Tuesday's
ceremony.
Authors believe the updated formula will
properly account for four areas of cost
underestimated by the current system: employee
health care, special education, and high numbers
of both low-income students and English language
learners.
By properly funding those areas, officials hope
to help close persistent gaps that exist between
districts.
"Every single child deserves access to an
excellent public education," Sen. Jason Lewis,
co-chair of the Education Committee, said during
the ceremony. "Massachusetts will now have the
most progressive school funding formula in the
nation, designed to meaningfully address the
troubling, very troubling, opportunity and
achievement gaps that persist in our public
education system."
The path to updating the foundation budget —
implemented in 1993 in the wake of a court
ruling that Massachusetts had a constitutional
duty to provide sufficient education for all
students — has been rocky.
A commission in 2015 identified the four major
cost drivers and warned about the chronic
underinvestment. Since then, lawmakers had been
unable to get a compromise bill over the finish
line, even as advocates continued pressure and
lawsuits were threatened or filed, until this
year.
The version they sent Baker last week closely
mirrors the bill that emerged from the Joint
Education Committee, including language on
accountability to ensure the money is spent on
student-centric purposes as intended.
American Federation of Teachers Massachusetts
President Beth Kontos said the new law is "a
true game-changer for low-income students and
their communities."
"The Student Opportunity Act will deliver
increased state funding to every district, but
the greatest increases, rightfully, will go to
low-income districts whose students have the
greatest needs," Kontos said. "This means that
students of all backgrounds will finally be able
to enjoy the benefits that their peers in
wealthier districts take for granted —
everything from smaller classes and additional
counselors to up-to-date classroom supplies and
more art, music and enrichment."
Lawmakers did not include any new taxes or fees
to fund the steady investment increase, so the
funding will have to come from existing revenue
streams unless a future Legislature revisits the
topic.
The education funding will not receive a
carveout in the annual consensus revenue process
as other transfers such as the MBTA and pension
funds do, but Baker said last week schools will
"have to be sort of first-in when we make
decisions about what the budget looks like."
The full scale of the law may not be felt for
several years, but some impacts will be quick:
districts must complete their accountability
plans for how to use additional funding by
April.
"I expect it will be a handful of years, but the
good news is there is a real sense of urgency
baked into this bill," said Sen. Sonia
Chang-Diaz, who served as Education Committee
chair last session and has long been an advocate
of school funding changes. "The plans from
districts are due on April 1, just a few months
from now. That will be our first look at how
districts intend to use these new resources.
Particularly for those higher-poverty
communities, significant money is going to start
hitting the ground right away, within a year."
After praising passage of the bill, some
education advocates turned their attention to
higher education as the next target.
Massachusetts Teachers Association President
Merrie Najimy said that group would renew its
focus on a $500 million bill increasing funding
for state colleges and university and freezing
tuition.
"When that is achieved, Massachusetts really
will deserve to be called 'the education
state,'" Najimy said in a statement.
Baker signed the bill alongside legislative
leaders and Boston Mayor Martin Walsh at Jamaica
Plain's English High School, within Chang-Diaz's
district.
Chang-Diaz told reporters she did not play a
role in selecting where the ceremony would take
place, but she said the school is a fitting
representation of where the impact will be felt
most strongly.
"It's really meaningful, certainly for me
personally, but really for many of the advocates
who held this bill high for so many years,"
Chang-Diaz said. "To have it be right here in a
district that's a high-impact district at a
school that predominantly serves disadvantaged
students, low-income students, students of
color, English learners — everything this bill
is about targeting."
In a common ceremonial step, Baker handed out
pens to about a dozen lawmakers right after
signing the bill.
When Chang-Diaz received hers, she thrust it
straight into the air in celebration.
Said Lewis, "This moment for me ranks right up
there with my wedding day and the birth of my
two daughters."
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▪ (781) 639-9709
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