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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”
46 years as “The Voice of Massachusetts Taxpayers”
— and
their Institutional Memory — |
|
CLT UPDATE
Sunday, July 26, 2020
Taxpayers — Stand and Defend
Proposition 2½
Jump directly
to CLT's Commentary on the News
|
Most Relevant News Excerpts
(Full news reports follow
Commentary)
Since 2002,
residents have had an option on Massachusetts state income
tax forms to pay a 5.85 percent state income tax rate. It’s
your choice: pay whatever the mandatory rate is, or pay the
higher rate of 5.85 percent.
The higher option
came about two years after Massachusetts residents voted to
lower the state income tax rate in 2000 from 5.85 percent to
5 percent, where it had been in the 1980s before a budget
crisis near the end of then-governor Michael Dukakis’s final
term led state legislators to increase it.
For the 2000
ballot question, about 59 percent (1,541,771) of voters in
Massachusetts voted in favor of the tax cut while 41 percent
(1,055,181) voted against it.
The 5 percent
state income tax rate was supposed to take effect in 2003.
But the state Legislature instead replaced the ballot
question measure with a statute that called for a slow,
gradual decrease to 5 percent — so gradual that the tax rate
reached its destination January 1, 2020, 17 years later....
The idea came from
Chip Ford, who proposed in December 2000 a way to let people
who support higher taxes pay more to the state. Ford, who at
the time was the director of operations of Citizens for
Limited Taxation, suggested offering taxpayers on their
income tax return each year two rates: the old higher rate
of 5.85 percent, and the new lower rate, whatever it might
be in a particular year.
In 2001, the House
minority leader of the time, Fran Marini (R-Hanson),
proposed the two-option system as an amendment to the state
budget. The state House of Representatives adopted it on May
10, 2002, according to State House News Service....
Ford, who is now
the executive director of Citizens for Limited Taxation,
says the muted response to the higher-tax-rate option is
telling.
“On the 2000
ballot, 41 percent of voters insisted that they ‘didn’t need
or want’ tax relief by campaigning and voting against our
ballot question to roll back the Dukakis-era 1989 ‘18-month,
temporary’ income tax hike,” Ford told New Boston Post in an
email message. “In the best of worlds, they shouldn’t be
forced to take it.
“CLT quickly came
up with its voluntary tax check-off on income tax returns, a
perfect resolution for all,” he added. “Since becoming law
in 2002 it has provided those defeated and wanting to be
taxed more with a second chance to win with honor if they
choose to take it. What could be more fair and equitable?
CLT’s goal when drafting our bill in 2000 was to make
everyone a winner, and yeah, maybe tweak them a little. The
results since have surely exposed their hypocrisy.” ...
Kurt Wise, a
senior policy analyst at the left-leaning Massachusetts
Budget and Policy Center, offers a different perspective.
He says that it’s
not surprising that relatively few opt to pay the higher tax
rate, and that it’s not hypocritical for supporters of
higher tax rates to pass on paying more voluntarily....
“Partly that’s
just human nature, but it’s also an accurate assessment of
who should be paying more taxes to fund these investments,”
Wise wrote...
As for the
higher-option tax check-off, Ford sees it as a win-win for
people who disagree about tax policy, saying it accommodates
the losing side in the 2000 tax cut referendum.
“Those who opposed
our income tax rollback ballot question in 2000 insisted
they ‘didn’t need or want’ it,” Ford wrote. “Now they aren’t
forced to take it. We generously provided them with what
they declared they wanted. Now they can feel like winners
too.”
Ford’s idea for
the voluntary tax check-off has its roots in an earlier
campaign on a different issue.
In 1986, Ford ran
an organization called Freedom First, which helped repeal
the mandatory seat belt law the state Legislature passed in
October 1985. He then proposed providing discounts on
insurance premiums for those who wore seat belts, a measure
then-state representative William Reinstein (D-Revere)
sponsored. Ford called the idea “The Buckle-Up Bonus.” It
did not pass, but it gave him another idea years later.
“The ‘carrot and
the stick’ Buckle-Up Bonus Bill flashed into my mind after
we won the tax rollback ballot question campaign,” Ford told
New Boston Post in an email message. “The voluntary tax
check-off was born!”
The New Boston
Post
Wednesday, July 22, 2020
On Taxes, A Tiny Fraction of Massachusetts Residents
Give More Than They Have To — Even Though They Can
When Connecticut
policymakers adopted an individual income tax in 1991, many
hoped that it would take pressure off state sales taxes and
local property taxes. Sales tax rates, hiked in the
preceding years, came down—but the Nutmeg State’s property
taxes remain among the highest in the country. As a
percentage of housing value, Connecticut homeowners now
pay 20 percent more than New Yorkers and almost 50 percent
more than their Massachusetts peers. Those two
neighboring states once had property tax burdens on par with
Connecticut’s, but after more than eight years under a
property tax limitation regime in New York and four
decades in Massachusetts, the states’ respective
property tax systems have diverged sharply.
Property tax
limitations exist in some form in 46 states, but they vary
in design or efficacy. Although they differ in some
particulars, both the Massachusetts and New York laws are
often cited as models for other states. This paper
explores whether the example of two neighboring states can
be salutary for Connecticut, reviewing the case for property
tax limitations, evaluating potential concerns, considering
different designs for such a system, and suggesting some
best practices should Connecticut seek to join the ranks of
those providing taxpayers with some measure of relief from
rising local property tax burdens. . . .
FULL REPORT
Tax Foundation
July 15, 2020
What Can Connecticut Learn from its Neighbors About Property
Tax Limitations?
The small group
tasked with producing a compromise bill to fund more than
$17 billion in transportation improvements is now in place.
The six-member conference has about a week to merge House
and Senate borrowing bills into a single plan.
The Senate on
Thursday appointed its three conference committee members:
Transportation Committee Co-chair Sen. Joe Boncore, Ways and
Means Committee Chair Sen. Michael Rodrigues, and Fitchburg
Republican Sen. Dean Tran. The House on Wednesday named its
conferees: Transportation Committee Co-chair Rep. William
Straus, Revenue Committee Co-chair Rep. Mark Cusack, and
Lakeville Republican Rep. Norman Orrall.
The conference
committee will work privately to reconcile an $18 billion
House bill (H 4547) and a roughly $17 billion Senate version
(S 2836) of transportation bond legislation.
The conferees may
need to scale back their wish lists. After the Senate
declined to tackle a major package of taxes and fees the
House approved, Straus said the state cannot afford to
authorize an $18 billion outlay.
Negotiators will
also debate a Senate plan to empower communities to raise
local taxes for transportation projects.
Because bond bills
require roll call votes, the conference faces pressure to
put a plan before the House and the Senate by next Friday,
July 31, when formal sessions are scheduled to end for 2020.
Roll calls can only occur during formal sessions.
State House News
Service
Thursday, July 23, 2020
Six-Man Conference Named to Negotiate Major Transportation
Bond
By Chris Lisinski
With 17 percent
unemployment, a recession, and a global pandemic, does
Massachusetts need to be raising more money right now to fix
the state’s ailing transportation system?
“Clearly the
Legislature needs to be thoughtful and considerate in a time
when so many folks are struggling about raising revenue, but
if we’re not making investments in transportation then we’re
not going to have that full and vibrant economy recovery we
all want,” said Chris Dempsey, director of Transportation
for Massachusetts, a transportation advocacy group that has
been leading the push for more revenue.
But John Regan,
president and CEO of the business group Associated
Industries of Massachusetts, disagrees. “With the economy in
such a state of flux, with state finances so far in a state
of confusion…adding even modest new revenue to the equation
right now is not prudent,” Regan said.
On this week’s
Codcast, Dempsey and Regan both agreed that the COVID-19
pandemic changed the way they saw the state’s transportation
needs. But they disagreed on virtually everything else, from
whether new transportation revenue is needed to what types
of revenues are worth looking at. Their debate mirrors the
one happening on Beacon Hill, with a slight twist. On Beacon
Hill, the business-friendly House in February passed a $600
million transportation revenue bill and the Senate, which is
generally considered more liberal, this month said it would
not take it up, due to the pandemic. The Senate passed a $17
billion transportation bond bill, but the House says that is
too large without new revenues....
Despite the
recession, Dempsey said his group still supports raising the
gas tax, noting that the state’s gas tax is below the
national average. Regan said his group opposes a gas tax
increase, although AIM does support the Transportation and
Climate Initiative, a regional effort that would impose a
price on transportation emissions, effectively raising the
cost of gas.
On the questions
of increasing fees on Uber and Lyft rides, Dempsey said yes
and Regan said no.
On regional ballot
initiatives – where individual communities can vote to raise
taxes to pay for a specific project – Regan worried about
creating “a hodgepodge of lots of different taxing
jurisdictions.” Dempsey touted the initiatives as a way to
“empower local leaders and residents to make decisions
themselves, not have every dollar go through Beacon Hill or
Washington, DC.”
CommonWealth
Magazine
Monday, July 20, 2020
Sharp split on need for new transpo revenues
Massachusetts tax
collections in the fiscal year that ended June 30 are about
$3 billion lower than what budget managers were expecting
when they crafted the $43.3 billion state budget a year ago,
according to preliminary data released Friday by the
Department of Revenue.
Revenue officials
said incomplete revenue collections for fiscal year 2020 so
far total $27.276 billion, which is $2.417 billion or 8.1
percent less than fiscal year 2019 and $3.014 billion or 9.9
percent below the year-to-date benchmark.
But because the
tax filing deadline was moved from April 15 to July 15 and
DOR is still collecting fiscal 2020 taxes, the agency said
the fiscal 2020 revenue total is expected to be updated over
the next several weeks.
"Approximately 81
percent of the year-to-date shortfall is in non-withheld
income tax, which is due in large part to the deferral of
the deadlines for personal income tax returns and payments
and the first two estimated payment installments to July 15,
2020," Revenue Commissioner Geoffrey Snyder said....
Since the sudden
evaporation of tax receipts began this spring as the state
forced businesses to close, consumer spending habits changed
dramatically and unemployment skyrocketed, the Baker
administration did not revise revenue expectations for
fiscal year 2020 -- which could have triggered the
governor's authority to make unilateral spending reductions
known as 9C cuts -- or announce other specific
budget-balancing plans.
The timing of the
COVID-19 outbreak made it difficult to slash spending given
that it came relatively late in the fiscal year, according
to budget analysts, but the state does have $3.5 billion
stashed away in its rainy day fund that could be needed this
year and beyond.
The state is also
without a plan for the fiscal year 2021 budget, which
typically would be in place by now. Instead, the state is
running through July on a $5.25 billion interim budget and
Baker this week filed another one-month spending bill that
would keep the state afloat through August with an
additional $5.51 billion.
State House News
Service
Friday, July 24, 2020
Interim Report Flags $3 Bil Gap in Last Year’s Budget
DOR Cautions State Still Collecting FY 2020 Revenue
A New Hampshire
think tank says businesses in the Granite State recently
avoided a tax hike thanks in part to "cigarette smokers and
flavored tobacco scavengers from Massachusetts."
Had general and
education fund revenue in fiscal year 2020 fallen at least 6
percent below New Hampshire's projections, it would have
triggered automatic business tax increases, the Josiah
Bartlett Center for Public Policy said. But buoyed by
tobacco tax revenue that came in $14.5 million or 7.3
percent above budget and $13.7 million or 6.9 percent higher
than last year, New Hampshire tax revenue appears to be 5.4
percent below estimates, the center said.
"If these figures
hold, business owners could reasonably thank smokers and
Massachusetts lawmakers for helping to prevent those
automatic tax hikes. Tobacco tax revenue was 34.6% above
budget in June, 34.9% above budget in April, and 10% above
budget in March," the center wrote in a report last week....
Before the law took effect, the New England Convenience
Stores and Energy Marketers Association said its member
businesses "fully expect Massachusetts menthol, mint and
wintergreen customers to travel to bordering states,
especially (New Hampshire), to purchase these products,"
eliminating a source of foot traffic for their stores and,
during the pandemic, encouraging interstate travel.
NECSEMA has said
that the Massachusetts excise and sales taxes on menthol
cigarettes and mint/wintergreen/menthol smokeless tobacco
totaled about $228.45 million annually.
State House News
Service
Thursday, July 23, 2020
Report: Mass. Smokers, Vapers Help N.H. Avoid Tax Hike
Only half of
Massachusetts small business owners whose operations are
still closed said they are confident they will ever reopen,
indicating lingering uncertainty months after forced
shutdowns began to limit the spread of COVID-19, according
to a new poll....
The pandemic's
economic consequences continue even as Massachusetts
progresses through a plan to revive public and business
activity gradually. In June, the state had the highest
unemployment rate in the country at 17.4 percent.
State House News
Service
Thursday, July 23, 3030
Poll: Reopenings Uncertain for Many Still-Closed Small
Businesses
The typical end
date for the legislative session is July 31, a week from
Friday. Normally lawmakers end the session and head home to
their districts to run for reelection.
But this year may
be different. Between the massive health and budgetary
impacts of COVID-19 and the push for police reform prompted
by the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, the
Legislature’s regular timetable may no longer be viable.
No state budget
for the current fiscal year has been filed yet, and even
crafting a budget may be impossible until state tax revenue
numbers for July are released and Congress decides whether
or not to pass another stimulus bill that would funnel
additional money to states. Only once the state and federal
revenue picture becomes clearer can budget writers begin to
draw up a real spending plan – and that may not happen until
August.
There’s also a
host of other legislation awaiting action. The Senate has
passed three health care bills dealing with prescription
drugs, mental health, and telehealth – and none of them have
passed the House yet. The House and Senate are at odds on
transportation funding and no action has been taken yet on
climate change legislation, which was once a top priority on
Beacon Hill.
With police reform
consuming all the oxygen on Beacon Hill this week, the
health care, transportation, and climate change bills – and
many others, as well – are waiting for a chance to see some
action.
The end of the
legislative session on July 31 doesn’t mean the House and
Senate stop meeting. It just means that lawmakers meet
informally, where they typically handle only minor,
noncontroversial pieces of legislation and any individual
lawmaker can block a bill from moving forward by raising an
objection. It’s not ideal for passing complicated pieces of
legislation....
Many lawmakers
eager to see their bills move forward are speculating about
the options to meet longer this year. Details are scarce,
but the joint rules of the House and Senate allow for
special sessions to be called if they have the support of a
majority of the House and Senate members.
Some lawmakers
have speculated that a special session could be held in
August, while others have suggested gathering after the
election in early November and meeting through the end of
the year. Normally, lawmakers are reluctant to meet in
lame-duck sessions, but one lawmaker said it wasn’t that big
of a deal, pointing out that two-thirds of incumbent state
lawmakers are facing no challenge in either the primary or
the general election this year.
CommonWealth
Magazine
Tuesday, July 21, 2020
Legislature’s regular timetable may not be viable this year
In one of the
clearest signs yet that Beacon Hill may fade into a summer
recess without even debating the overdue annual state
budget, Gov. Charlie Baker on Tuesday filed another
one-month spending bill to keep state government funded
through August with an additional $5.51 billion.
Baker in January
filed a $44.6 billion fiscal 2021 budget that soon
thereafter became obsolete due to a tax revenue collapse
sparked by government-forced shutdowns of businesses and
commerce during and after the peak COVID-19 surge....
Without any
full-year, post-pandemic budgets on the table, it appears
certain that this year's budget deliberations will extend
beyond the July 31 end of formal sessions, although
legislative leaders refuse to give voice to plans for a fall
budget debate, which would blend into the election season.
Asked Tuesday if
lawmakers planned to pass a fiscal 2021 annual budget by
July 31, or if not then when, Senate budget chief Michael
Rodrigues said he would be "happy" to answer questions about
the budget "some other time."
Both branches are
in session this week with an opportunity to adopt an interim
budget for August, which seems inevitable given that the
alternative would be for state government to shut down. When
coupled with July's $5.25 billion interim budget, the two
interim budgets total $10.76 billion in spending, but Baker
administration officials say spending levels can fluctuate
significantly during the fiscal year and the summer budgets
include some larger expenditures.
Budget clarity
could be coming soon to one important budget constituency -
the 351 cities and towns that deliver essential services at
the local level....
Massachusetts
Budget and Policy Center President Marie-Frances Rivera said
Beacon Hill needs the "moral courage" to raise taxes, as the
Legislature has in previous recessions, and to ask for more
revenues from the state's "richest neighbors and most
profitable corporations." She called the alternatives of
receiving massive amounts of federal aid or making steep
state budget cuts a "false choice."
"With two weeks
before the close of formal session, our state's elected
leaders have still not announced plans to unveil an overdue
Fiscal Year (FY) 2021 budget. Meanwhile, people across the
state - especially our Black, Indigenous, and People of
Color (BIPOC) communities - are still suffering," Rivera
said in a statement Thursday. "These ongoing delays and
uncertainty in funding levels for critical supports such as
early education, public schools, care for elders and people
with disabilities, public health facilities and others are
causing panic in communities across the Commonwealth."
As of July 8, 42
states have enacted a full-year budget for fiscal 2021,
including 17 states that previously enacted a two-year
budget, according to the National Association of State
Budget Officers.
Budget writers
here have focused their attention on documented revenue
volatility, but spending levels are another area of
uncertainty.
State House News
Service
Tuesday, July 21, 2020
Lawmakers May Break for Election Cycle Without Annual Budget
Most State Have Passed Budgets, But Mass. Taking Interim
Approach
With nine days
remaining in the pandemic-disrupted legislative season and
several major items still unresolved, Senate and House
leaders have had some conversations about continuing past
their traditional end-of-July deadline to continue
deliberations on weighty bills.
Senate President
Karen Spilka on Wednesday outlined a list of priorities,
including the overdue fiscal 2021 budget and bills
addressing climate change and police accountability, and
said the Senate would be ready to work past July 31 if those
bills are not completed. The branches would need to agree to
an extension and House Speaker Robert DeLeo is open to
"various scenarios" that involve going past July 31 if
necessary, according to his office.
"There's no reason
why we can't get most of this done by July 31, but if we
need to work through these extraordinary circumstances and
work past July 31, we will," Spilka told the News Service.
She said she's had "initial discussions" with the House
about the timeline.
Under joint
House-Senate rules, July 31 marks the end of formal
legislative sessions for the two-year term, after which
lawmakers pivot into campaign mode ahead of the summer and
fall elections and continue to meet in informal sessions for
the rest of the year. Informal sessions are usually lightly
attended, and all lawmakers present must agree to advance
bills during such sessions, where recorded or roll call
votes are not allowed....
The Legislature
over the years has adhered closely to the July 31 deadline
that serves as a cutoff between policymaking and campaign
seasons, and it seems likely that if Democrats agree to take
up major matters beyond the deadline they will need to first
agree on an agenda. There's also a question of whether they
would assign themselves a new deadline to end formal
sessions in 2020, or leave it open-ended.
"Given the
COVID-19 emergency, Speaker DeLeo remains open to various
scenarios involving going past 7/31, if necessary, and is in
discussions with the Senate President and members on them,"
a DeLeo spokesperson said in a statement to the News
Service....
The Legislature's
Joint Rule 12A specifies that all formal business in the
second year of a session "be concluded not later than the
last day of July of that calendar year." That rule requires
a two-thirds vote from each branch to be suspended.
Another joint
rule, Rule 26A, lays out the process of calling lawmakers
back from recess into a special session -- it requires
written statements from 21 senators and 81 representatives
saying there should be a special session, and the first vote
at a special session is whether such a session is necessary.
Lawmakers could
also attempt to resolve any unfinished business in informal
sessions, but that can present obstacles as any one
legislator's objection can halt a bill's progress.
State House News
Service
Wednesday, July 22, 2020
Legislative Leaders in Talks About Extending Session
Votes on Major Bills Could Spill Into Election Season
Baker extended the
moratorium on evictions and foreclosures by two months, and
filed another one-month budget bill to keep the lights of
government on through August while he and legislative
leaders wait for Congress to decide on another COVID-19
relief package. The budget relief sought by states to the
tune of $500 billion is likely to come up when Baker meets
with Vice President Mike Pence on Nantucket on Saturday.
The two
Republicans plan to sit down to discuss the pandemic, but
Baker will be skipping the high-dollar fundraiser at the
home of Putnam Investments CEO Robert Reynolds in the
afternoon.
State House News
Service
Friday, July 24, 2020
Weekly Roundup - House of the Setting Sun
With a week left
for formal sessions, the House is only just now getting
around to consideration of major economic development and
health care bills. Representatives are scrambling to tee
those measures up for debate early next week - the jobs bill
(H 4879) is on for Monday - and the initiatives come at a
time when the state's jobless rate is the highest in the
nation and as many Americans lose access to health insurance
tied to their former employers.
Absent a full
fiscal 2021 budget or a solution to fiscal 2020 budget
troubles, the state has enough money appropriated to run the
government for another week, with another $5.5 billion
interim budget filed by Gov. Charlie Baker to get the state
through August....
A pair of
long-term borrowing bills to invest in transportation (H
4547, S 2836) and information technology (H 4733, S 2819)
are in separate six-member conference committees, which
could generate consensus proposals at any time. And time is
no longer on the Legislature's side.
The Democrats who
hold super-majorities in the House and Senate have had more
than 18 months to reach agreement on these major issues,
most of which date back to previous sessions, but have left
major decisions -- and in some cases the bulk of their work
-- until the final days before formal sessions expire under
legislative rules on Friday, July 31.
And the major
unknowns that loom over all of the legislative priorities,
as well as other key bills that are competing for attention,
are accentuated by the biggest unknown of all: whether House
Speaker Robert DeLeo and Senate President Karen Spilka will
attempt to extend formal sessions.
Within that
question are other key questions. How long would extended
sessions last? Will the agenda be limited and what will it
include? When will the overdue state budget be tackled? And
how would an extension affect the limited leverage that
governors are afforded when bills are sent to them at the
tail end of formals?
State House News
Service
Friday, July 24, 2020
Advances - Week of July 26, 2020
|
Chip Ford's CLT
Commentary
Sometimes politics and
political activism can be such fun and so rewarding
— even twenty years later.
My thanks to Tom Joyce at The New Boston Post for
remembering CLT's poke at The Takers and using
our Voluntary Tax Check-Off to
expose their hypocrisy.
In the second installment ("On Taxes, A Tiny Fraction of Massachusetts Residents
Give More Than They Have To — Even Though They Can," below) of his
series he wrote:
Since 2002,
residents have had an option on Massachusetts state income
tax forms to pay a 5.85 percent state income tax rate. It’s
your choice: pay whatever the mandatory rate is, or pay the
higher rate of 5.85 percent.
The higher option
came about two years after Massachusetts residents voted to
lower the state income tax rate in 2000 from 5.85 percent to
5 percent, where it had been in the 1980s before a budget
crisis near the end of then-governor Michael Dukakis’s final
term led state legislators to increase it.
For the 2000
ballot question, about 59 percent (1,541,771) of voters in
Massachusetts voted in favor of the tax cut while 41 percent
(1,055,181) voted against it.
The 5 percent
state income tax rate was supposed to take effect in 2003.
But the state Legislature instead replaced the ballot
question measure with a statute that called for a slow,
gradual decrease to 5 percent — so gradual that the tax rate
reached its destination January 1, 2020, 17 years later....
The idea came from
Chip Ford, who proposed in December 2000 a way to let people
who support higher taxes pay more to the state. Ford, who at
the time was the director of operations of Citizens for
Limited Taxation, suggested offering taxpayers on their
income tax return each year two rates: the old higher rate
of 5.85 percent, and the new lower rate, whatever it might
be in a particular year. . . .
Ford, who is now
the executive director of Citizens for Limited Taxation,
says the muted response to the higher-tax-rate option is
telling.
“On the 2000
ballot, 41 percent of voters insisted that they ‘didn’t need
or want’ tax relief by campaigning and voting against our
ballot question to roll back the Dukakis-era 1989 ‘18-month,
temporary’ income tax hike,” Ford told New Boston Post in an
email message. “In the best of worlds, they shouldn’t be
forced to take it.
“CLT quickly came
up with its voluntary tax check-off on income tax returns, a
perfect resolution for all,” he added. “Since becoming law
in 2002 it has provided those defeated and wanting to be
taxed more with a second chance to win with honor if they
choose to take it. What could be more fair and equitable?
CLT’s goal when drafting our bill in 2000 was to make
everyone a winner, and yeah, maybe tweak them a little. The
results since have surely exposed their hypocrisy.” . . .
“Those who opposed
our income tax rollback ballot question in 2000 insisted
they ‘didn’t need or want’ it,” Ford wrote. “Now they aren’t
forced to take it. We generously provided them with what
they declared they wanted. Now they can feel like winners
too.”
Ford’s idea for
the voluntary tax check-off has its roots in an earlier
campaign on a different issue.
In 1986, Ford ran
an organization called Freedom First, which helped repeal
the mandatory seat belt law the state Legislature passed in
October 1985. He then proposed providing discounts on
insurance premiums for those who wore seat belts, a measure
then-state representative William Reinstein (D-Revere)
sponsored. Ford called the idea “The Buckle-Up Bonus.” It
did not pass, but it gave him another idea years later.
“The ‘carrot and
the stick’ Buckle-Up Bonus Bill flashed into my mind after
we won the tax rollback ballot question campaign,” Ford told
New Boston Post in an email message. “The voluntary tax
check-off was born!”
J oyce's third
installment published on Friday —
"Ed
Markey and Joe Kennedy III Chose Not To Pay Voluntary
Income Tax Despite Calls For Massive Spending Increases"
— can be found on The New Boston Post website.
The History of CLT's Voluntary Tax Check-Off
As bad as property taxes are
in Massachusetts, thanks to CLT's Proposition 2½
the Bay State's property tax limitation is recognized as the national
gold standard among the states. The Washington, DC-based Tax Foundation
released a report on July 15 ("What Can Connecticut Learn from its
Neighbors About Property Tax Limitations?"):
As
a percentage of housing value, Connecticut
homeowners now pay 20 percent more than New Yorkers
and almost 50 percent more than their
Massachusetts peers. Those two neighboring
states once had property tax burdens on par with
Connecticut’s, but after more than eight years under
a property tax limitation regime in New York and
four decades in Massachusetts, the states’
respective property tax systems have diverged
sharply.
Property tax limitations exist in some form in 46
states, but they vary in design or efficacy.
Although they differ in some particulars, both
the Massachusetts and New York laws are often cited
as models for other states.
FULL REPORT
On Friday the State House News Service
reported ("Interim Report Flags $3 Bil Gap in Last Year’s Budget"):
Massachusetts tax
collections in the fiscal year that ended June 30
are about $3 billion lower than what budget managers
were expecting when they crafted the $43.3 billion
state budget a year ago, according to preliminary
data released Friday by the Department of Revenue.
Meanwhile, the News Service
reported ("Report: Mass. Smokers, Vapers Help N.H. Avoid
Tax Hike"):
A New Hampshire think
tank says businesses in the Granite State recently avoided a tax
hike thanks in part to "cigarette smokers and flavored tobacco
scavengers from Massachusetts."
Had general and education fund
revenue in fiscal year 2020 fallen at least 6 percent
below New Hampshire's projections, it would have
triggered automatic business tax increases, the Josiah
Bartlett Center for Public Policy said. But buoyed by
tobacco tax revenue that came in $14.5 million or 7.3
percent above budget and $13.7 million or 6.9 percent
higher than last year, New Hampshire tax revenue appears
to be 5.4 percent below estimates, the center said.
"If
these figures hold, business owners could reasonably thank smokers
and Massachusetts lawmakers for helping to prevent those automatic
tax hikes. Tobacco tax revenue was 34.6% above budget in June, 34.9%
above budget in April, and 10% above budget in March," the center
wrote in a report last week.
New Hampshire and its
taxpayers have progressive, PC Massachusetts to again
thank for sending Bay State residents racing across the
border to spend their money and fill the Granite State's
treasury.
Meanwhile, the News Service reported on
Thursday ("Poll: Reopenings Uncertain for Many Still-Closed Small
Businesses"):
Only half of
Massachusetts small business owners whose operations are still
closed said they are confident they will ever reopen, indicating
lingering uncertainty months after forced shutdowns began to limit
the spread of COVID-19, according to a new poll....
The pandemic's
economic consequences continue even as Massachusetts progresses
through a plan to revive public and business activity gradually.
In June, the state had the highest unemployment rate in the country
at 17.4 percent.
On Monday CommonWealth Magazine reported
("Sharp split on need for new transpo revenues"):
With 17 percent
unemployment, a recession, and a global pandemic, does Massachusetts
need to be raising more money right now to fix the state’s ailing
transportation system?
“Clearly the
Legislature needs to be thoughtful and considerate in a time when so
many folks are struggling about raising revenue, but if we’re not
making investments in transportation then we’re not going to have
that full and vibrant economy recovery we all want,” said Chris
Dempsey, director of Transportation for Massachusetts, a
transportation advocacy group that has been leading the push for
more revenue. . . .
Dempsey said the
bond bill is “essentially a status quo amount” that “says we’re
going to spend the same dollars on the same things next year, three
years from now, as we did last year or three years ago….Was the
system we had in transportation last year or three years ago working
for you?” . . .
Despite the
recession, Dempsey said his group still supports raising the gas
tax, noting that the state’s gas tax is below the national average.
. . .
On regional ballot
initiatives – where individual communities can vote to raise taxes
to pay for a specific project – Dempsey touted the initiatives as a
way to “empower local leaders and residents to make decisions
themselves, not have every dollar go through Beacon Hill or
Washington, DC.”
Meanwhile the assault on
Proposition 2½ has moved to a
joint House-Senate conference committee, and its members
have been named. On Thursday the New Service
reported ("Six-Man Conference Named to Negotiate Major
Transportation Bond"):
The small group
tasked with producing a compromise bill to fund more than $17
billion in transportation improvements is now in place. The
six-member conference has about a week to merge House and Senate
borrowing bills into a single plan.
The Senate on
Thursday appointed its three conference committee members: Transportation Committee Co-chair Sen. Joe Boncore, Ways and Means
Committee Chair Sen. Michael Rodrigues, and Fitchburg Republican
Sen. Dean Tran. The House on Wednesday named its conferees: Transportation Committee Co-chair Rep. William Straus, Revenue
Committee Co-chair Rep. Mark Cusack, and Lakeville Republican Rep.
Norman Orrall.
The conference
committee will work privately to reconcile an $18 billion House bill
(H 4547) and a roughly $17 billion Senate version (S 2836) of
transportation bond legislation.
The conferees may
need to scale back their wish lists. After the Senate declined to
tackle a major package of taxes and fees the House approved, Straus
said the state cannot afford to authorize an $18 billion outlay.
Negotiators
will also debate a Senate plan to empower communities to raise local
taxes for transportation projects.
Because bond bills
require roll call votes, the conference faces pressure to put a plan
before the House and the Senate by next Friday, July 31, when formal
sessions are scheduled to end for 2020. Roll calls can only occur
during formal sessions.
How
about that? They're going to "empower"
communities to raise local taxes! The difference
between that and Prop 2½ is that our municipal taxes
limitation empowers the residents — protects them
from higher taxes.
|
Have you contacted your State Rep and Senator
yet?
You need to contact both of them
immediately.
Ask both of them to reach out to their respective chamber's
members on the Joint Conference Committee for the
Transportation Bond Bill.
Tell both of yours that you want
Section 5 — "Local and Regional Transportation Initiatives"
— removed if the bond bill is voted out favorably from the
committee.
Tell your State Representative and State Senator to put
their pressure on the committee members to "strike Section
5" — no end-runs around Proposition 2½.
If you need more talking points
see CLT's July 12 memo to the Senate.
As noted in the CLT Alert on Friday, Mass Fiscal Alliance,
which has joined us in this battle, has made this easy — but
it's only fair to advise you that it is through a website
form (like all the other online forms, questionnaires, and
surveys you've come across) that will capture and store your
contact information (your name, address, phone number, email
address) for potential future use (or sale, improbable in
this situation). Aware of this, personally I never fill out
any.
Reminder: CLT has vowed from the beginning that
we will never reveal or divulge any of our
members' information to anyone: not your
name, address, contact information, number or amounts of
your contributions, or anything else.
Mass Fiscal's portal is definitely the easiest way to reach
your State Representative and State Senator on this bill.
The message is already written for you, though you can add
your own personal comments to it for your State
Representative and Senator. You can find this at Mass
Fiscal Alliance's Action Center on its website: "Help
us stand up for Prop 2 1/2! Contact your legislator today."
If you're not comfortable with that method, the
"tried-and-true" way is to identify your State
Representative and State Senator (if you don't know them
already) through the Secretary of State's website,
HERE.
Once you've identified your State Representative and your
State Senator you can find their personal contact
information (address, phone number, email address) at the
state government's website:
State Representatives
State Senators
If you haven't contacted them yet please do so
immediately.
This could be over in days, win
or lose. |
In its Advances of what to expect on Beacon
Hill next week the State House News Service reported on Friday:
With a week left
for formal sessions, the House is only just now getting around to
consideration of major economic development and health care bills. Representatives are scrambling to tee those measures up for debate
early next week - the jobs bill (H 4879) is on for Monday - and the
initiatives come at a time when the state's jobless rate is the
highest in the nation and as many Americans lose access to health
insurance tied to their former employers.
Absent a full
fiscal 2021 budget or a solution to fiscal 2020 budget troubles, the
state has enough money appropriated to run the government for
another week, with another $5.5 billion interim budget filed by Gov.
Charlie Baker to get the state through August....
A pair of
long-term borrowing bills to invest in transportation (H 4547, S
2836) and information technology (H 4733, S 2819) are in separate
six-member conference committees, which could generate consensus
proposals at any time. And time is no longer on the Legislature's
side.
The Democrats who
hold super-majorities in the House and Senate have had more than 18
months to reach agreement on these major issues, most of which date
back to previous sessions, but have left major decisions -- and in
some cases the bulk of their work -- until the final days before
formal sessions expire under legislative rules on Friday, July 31.
And the major
unknowns that loom over all of the legislative priorities, as well
as other key bills that are competing for attention, are accentuated
by the biggest unknown of all: whether House Speaker Robert DeLeo
and Senate President Karen Spilka will attempt to extend formal
sessions.
Within that
question are other key questions. How long would extended sessions
last? Will the agenda be limited and what will it include? When will
the overdue state budget be tackled? And how would an extension
affect the limited leverage that governors are afforded when bills
are sent to them at the tail end of formals?
Gov. Baker is about to get another 1/12th
"interim budget" to carry the state through another month without a real
state budget — another $5.5 billion.
When he signed the first $5.5 billion
"interim budget"
I wrote:
Stop and think about
this. A $5.25 billion "interim spending bill" to
get the state through July, one month. Carried
through the fiscal year that would create a $63
billion FY2021 budget for the coming 12 months.
That exceeds even the $44.6 billion Baker proposed
in January, which itself was $1.3 billion more than
last year's $43.3 budget.
It appears the
over-spending is continuing to add up to my projected
$63 billion at this rate.
The News Service on Wednesday reported
("Legislative Leaders in Talks About Extending Session"):
With nine days
remaining in the pandemic-disrupted legislative season and several
major items still unresolved, Senate and House leaders have had some
conversations about continuing past their traditional end-of-July
deadline to continue deliberations on weighty bills.
Senate President
Karen Spilka on Wednesday outlined a list of priorities, including
the overdue fiscal 2021 budget and bills addressing climate change
and police accountability, and said the Senate would be ready to
work past July 31 if those bills are not completed. The branches
would need to agree to an extension and House Speaker Robert DeLeo
is open to "various scenarios" that involve going past July 31 if
necessary, according to his office.
Under joint
House-Senate rules, July 31 marks the end of formal legislative
sessions for the two-year term, after which lawmakers pivot into
campaign mode ahead of the summer and fall elections and continue to
meet in informal sessions for the rest of the year. Informal
sessions are usually lightly attended, and all lawmakers present
must agree to advance bills during such sessions, where recorded or
roll call votes are not allowed....
The Legislature
over the years has adhered closely to the July 31 deadline that
serves as a cutoff between policymaking and campaign seasons, and it
seems likely that if Democrats agree to take up major matters beyond
the deadline they will need to first agree on an agenda. There's
also a question of whether they would assign themselves a new
deadline to end formal sessions in 2020, or leave it open-ended.
The Legislature's
Joint Rule 12A specifies that all formal business in the second year
of a session "be concluded not later than the last day of July of
that calendar year." That rule requires a two-thirds vote from each
branch to be suspended.
Another joint
rule, Rule 26A, lays out the process of calling lawmakers back from
recess into a special session -- it requires written statements from
21 senators and 81 representatives saying there should be a special
session, and the first vote at a special session is whether such a
session is necessary.
Lawmakers could
also attempt to resolve any unfinished business in informal
sessions, but that can present obstacles as any one legislator's
objection can halt a bill's progress.
The Legislature's longstanding rule should
continue to be honored: "You don't have to go home, but you can't
stay here."
In its Weekly Roundup the State House News
Service reported:
Baker extended the
moratorium on evictions and foreclosures by two months, and filed
another one-month budget bill to keep the lights of government on
through August while he and legislative leaders wait for Congress to
decide on another COVID-19 relief package. The budget relief sought
by states to the tune of $500 billion is likely to come up when
Baker meets with Vice President Mike Pence on Nantucket on Saturday.
The two
Republicans plan to sit down to discuss the pandemic, but Baker will
be skipping the high-dollar fundraiser at the home of Putnam
Investments CEO Robert Reynolds in the afternoon.
I would have thought the
two politicians Howie Carr termed "Charlie Parker" and
"Pay-to Play Polito" would appreciate that you don't
bite the hand that feeds you —
that a little political back-scratching goes a long way.
Apparently TDS is too overwhelming for a liberal to
resist under any condition.
Question of the
Week: Just who does State Senator
Eric Lesser (D-Longmeadow)
represent?
During the debate over our amendment to
Section 5 of the Senate's Transportation Bond bill
— which would have stripped it from the overall bond bill
— Sen. Eric Lesser said:
I rise in
opposition and urge my colleagues to vote no.
I say that with
the caveat that I basically agree with everything my colleague just
talked about. We are in an unprecedented economic crisis.
It's certainly not lost on me or any of us that the burden of that
crisis has proportionally fallen on small businesses and their
employees.
But I want to
clarify what the language in the bill does. Regional ballot
initiatives has passed multiple sessions. It is a local option
legislation. Nothing changes by approving this. All the
language does is create a mechanism in state law for communities to
work together to raise revenue for regional infrastructure.
I would point out,
dozens of other states have this method for funding and supporting
regional infrastructure. The Denver Light Rail system, Austin
Metro system, transit system, funded through this method.
Let me explain the
process for getting one of these passed because it's intense and
nothing happens without a popular vote and popular buy-in to the
proposal. First communities need to form an agreement to work
together on a regional infrastructure project. They then agree
to the terms, and local communities all vote to join. Then the
project goes to a vote of every single voter in the communities in
order to vote yes or no on the proposal. Only then does the
funding happen. It is completely in control of the local
communities.
When used around
the country, votes tend to be in favor, because built into the
proposal are multiple safeguards to ensure close community support
and connectivity to the projects.
Again, think about
all the steps that have to happen for anything to move forward.
It turns out, people actually like having good infrastructure and
they want investment in their communities. Communities by the
Connecticut border, for example, could get together to propose
funding the Valley Flyer. They don't have to, but they could
choose to.
This is about
regional empowerment and acknowledging infrastructure development
happens by regions, it's not all about top-down from Beacon Hill.
It allows local communities to take some control. It will help
small businesses. If it won't help them, I would guess they
would not vote to approve the project. I hope the amendment is
rejected.
Pay close attention to his
closing argument: "This is . . . not all
about top-down from Beacon Hill. It allows local
communities to take some control. It will help
small businesses. If it won't help them, I would
guess they would not vote to approve the project."
Just three weeks before that speech voters
in Sen. Lesser's hometown of Longmeadow defeated exactly what he is
pressuring the Senate and Legislature to impose upon them
regardless, and on us! The
Springfield Republican reported on June 26 ("Longmeadow
Town Meeting rejects Prop. 2½ cut and Route 5 rebuild"):
Longmeadow Town
Meeting voters rejected a move by the town Selectboard and the
Finance Committee to begin the process of exempting the town from
Proposition 2½ tax limitations. A request for funds to cover initial
engineering costs for a Longmeadow Street rebuild was also voted
down.
Tuesday’s outdoor
meeting on the grounds of Longmeadow High School Tuesday evening
allowed generous social distancing for the 277 registered voters who
attended.
Article 14 asked
voters to allow the town to begin home rule legislation that could
eventually exempt town government from the 2.5 percent tax cap
mandated by Proposition 2½.
Town Meeting also
rejected a proposed allocation of $100,000, part of a $400,000
preliminary engineering package on the reconstruction of Route 5,
Longmeadow Street. . . .
Green Willow Drive
resident John Friedson was concerned that the Route 5 reconstruction
was a step too far for many older residents.
‘We have seniors
here on fixed incomes. Those of us who would like to keep our houses
are getting increasingly concerned about the town’s appetite for
spending, the appetite for debt, for increasing taxes at every
possible stage and not casting a strong, judicious eye on what the
requests are for expenditures in a time of economic collapse and
pandemic,” he said. “This particular case, Route 5 is not perfect,
and yeah, we’d like to get state money. But, the last I noticed from
my checkbook I pay state taxes, too. This is not the year, this is
not the time for spending on things that are unnecessary, in my
opinion.”
Democrat State Senator Eric
P. Lesser of Longmeadow has been sneaking in his end-runs around
Proposition 2½ for
years. This is not our first fight with him over this. In
2018 he was the sponsor and one of the most rabid
advocates for the "Community Benefit Districts" —
slipped surreptitiously into the huge Economic
Development bill —
which CLT managed to get stripped out before the final
vote. On July 11,
2018 the State House News Service reported ("After
surtax fail, senator sees regional transpo taxes as
'Great Plan B'"):
"This really
elevates one of the most specific items we can do right away to get
those investments to transportation," Sen. Eric Lesser told
advocates at a Wednesday briefing on his bill (S 1551/H 1640).
He said, "We were waiting on making big revenue decisions until that
was completed. Now it's completed. We saw the answer.
It wasn't what I personally would have liked to have seen but this
is a great plan B."
Lesser's bill
would enable local communities to band together and ask their voters
to support new regional taxes to pay for local transportation
projects.
It
puzzles me just who he thinks he represents, and
why his constituents keep electing him since 2014.
If you're interested
as well you can ask him yourself
HERE.
We beat back his scheme
in 2018. Let's beat it back again in 2020!
|
 |
 |
|
Chip Ford
Executive Director |
|
|
|
Full News Reports Follow
(excerpted above) |
|
The New Boston
Post
Wednesday, July 22, 2020
On Taxes, A Tiny Fraction of Massachusetts Residents
Give More Than They Have To — Even Though They Can
By Tom Joyce
Tax day was three months later than usual in Massachusetts
because of the coronavirus pandemic, but it represented a
unique opportunity for Bay Staters.
People in Massachusetts had until July 15 to file their
state and federal income tax returns. unless they requested
an extension. In Massachusetts for calendar year 2019, that
means paying a flat 5.05 percent state tax rate on taxable
income, regardless of how much you make — unless you want to
pay more.
But relatively few capitalize on the opportunity.
Since 2002, residents have had an option on Massachusetts
state income tax forms to pay a 5.85 percent state income
tax rate. It’s your choice: pay whatever the mandatory rate
is, or pay the higher rate of 5.85 percent.
The higher option came about two years after Massachusetts
residents voted to lower the state income tax rate in 2000
from 5.85 percent to 5 percent, where it had been in the
1980s before a budget crisis near the end of then-governor
Michael Dukakis’s final term led state legislators to
increase it.
For the 2000 ballot question, about 59 percent (1,541,771)
of voters in Massachusetts voted in favor of the tax cut
while 41 percent (1,055,181) voted against it.
The 5 percent state income tax rate was supposed to take
effect in 2003. But the state Legislature instead replaced
the ballot question measure with a statute that called for a
slow, gradual decrease to 5 percent — so gradual that the
tax rate reached its destination January 1, 2020, 17 years
later.
Supporters of lower taxes weren’t happy with the end-around
of the ballot question. Legislative leaders of the time
ignored them.
Supporters of higher taxes weren’t happy with the decrease
in tax rates. State legislators created a means to
accommodate them.
The idea came from Chip Ford, who proposed in December 2000
a way to let people who support higher taxes pay more to the
state. Ford, who at the time was the director of operations
of Citizens for Limited Taxation, suggested offering
taxpayers on their income tax return each year two rates:
the old higher rate of 5.85 percent, and the new lower rate,
whatever it might be in a particular year.
In 2001, the House minority leader of the time, Fran Marini
(R-Hanson), proposed the two-option system as an amendment
to the state budget. The state House of Representatives
adopted it on May 10, 2002, according to State House News
Service.
So if a million people voted against the tax cut in 2000,
how many people still pay the old higher tax rate?
In relative terms: Not a lot.
The Massachusetts Department of Revenue provided New Boston
Post with data on that point. For tax year 2015, it was
1,663 out of 3,783,209 filers; in 2016, it was 1,619 out of
3,642,896 filers; and in 2017, it was 1,275 out of 3,175,892
filers. That means between 0.040 and 0.044 percent of those
filing state income tax returns in the state during those
three years chose to pay more than required. That’s less
than five people out of every 10,000.
In those years, the state got $285,730, $288,013, and
$279,418 in additional revenue, respectively, because of
Marini’s amendment.
Ford, who is now the executive director of Citizens for
Limited Taxation, says the muted response to the
higher-tax-rate option is telling.
“On the 2000 ballot, 41 percent of voters insisted that they
‘didn’t need or want’ tax relief by campaigning and voting
against our ballot question to roll back the Dukakis-era
1989 ‘18-month, temporary’ income tax hike,” Ford told New
Boston Post in an email message. “In the best of worlds,
they shouldn’t be forced to take it.
“CLT quickly came up with its voluntary tax check-off on
income tax returns, a perfect resolution for all,” he added.
“Since becoming law in 2002 it has provided those defeated
and wanting to be taxed more with a second chance to win
with honor if they choose to take it. What could be more
fair and equitable? CLT’s goal when drafting our bill in
2000 was to make everyone a winner, and yeah, maybe tweak
them a little. The results since have surely exposed their
hypocrisy.”
Even pro-spending politicians have passed on the opportunity
to pay more in state income taxes. Up until 2017,
Massachusetts U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren was among those
who did not pay the higher rate, although she started paying
the higher rate around the time she was running for
re-election. Jesse Mermell, a Brookline Democrat running for
the U.S. House of Representatives in Massachusetts’s Fourth
Congressional District, has not paid the higher rate, an
analysis by New Boston Post shows.
Paul Craney of the Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance, a
right-of-center tax-and-spending watchdog, says the lack of
people choosing to pay more in income taxes should tell us
something: people don’t like paying taxes.
“Despite the heated rhetoric, what this shows you is that
taxpayers really prefer lower taxes, when given the option,”
Craney told New Boston Post by email. “Massachusetts
taxpayers are already among the most generous in the
country.”
Kurt Wise, a senior policy analyst at the left-leaning
Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center, offers a different
perspective.
He says that it’s not surprising that relatively few opt to
pay the higher tax rate, and that it’s not hypocritical for
supporters of higher tax rates to pass on paying more
voluntarily.
“Partly that’s just human nature, but it’s also an accurate
assessment of who should be paying more taxes to fund these
investments,” Wise wrote, including a link to an article.
“People see how our lopsided economy delivers most of the
benefits to a wealthy few and to large corporations – and
that’s been true for decades now. Most people have been
treading water, income-wise, since the 1980s. People also
intuitively understand that these same lucky few are not
paying their fair share in taxes, either federally or at the
state and local level.”
Wise said that people’s experiences give them an
understanding of the tax system, and that people in
Massachusetts want progressive taxation.
“Expecting legislators to support the public investments we
need, while also expecting that these investments be paid
for by high-income households and profitable corporations is
not a contradiction,” Wise said. “It’s actually exactly the
policy prescription we need if we want to build toward an
equitable, racially just, and prosperous Commonwealth.”
Ford disagrees, suggesting by email that many people who
call for tax-and-spend policies “strongly support more,
more, always more spending on them – so long as somebody
else is paying for it … expecting others to pay for their
wants and wish lists …”
The state’s flat income tax is fairer than a tiered system,
Ford said.
“Under Massachusetts’s flat tax every income is taxed at the
same rate, so everyone is paying the same percentage of
their income to the state,” Ford said. “The wealthy pay a
lot more dollars than do middle and lower-income earners;
the wealthy pay much more in taxes than do the lower-income
employed. What could be more fair?”
As for the higher-option tax check-off, Ford sees it as a
win-win for people who disagree about tax policy, saying it
accommodates the losing side in the 2000 tax cut referendum.
“Those who opposed our income tax rollback ballot question
in 2000 insisted they ‘didn’t need or want’ it,” Ford wrote.
“Now they aren’t forced to take it. We generously provided
them with what they declared they wanted. Now they can feel
like winners too.”
Ford’s idea for the voluntary tax check-off has its roots in
an earlier campaign on a different issue.
In 1986, Ford ran an organization called Freedom First,
which helped repeal the mandatory seat belt law the state
Legislature passed in October 1985. He then proposed
providing discounts on insurance premiums for those who wore
seat belts, a measure then-state representative William
Reinstein (D-Revere) sponsored. Ford called the idea “The
Buckle-Up Bonus.” It did not pass, but it gave him another
idea years later.
“The ‘carrot and the stick’ Buckle-Up Bonus Bill flashed
into my mind after we won the tax rollback ballot question
campaign,” Ford told New Boston Post in an email message.
“The voluntary tax check-off was born!”
CommonWealth
Magazine
Monday, July 20, 2020
Sharp split on need for new transpo revenues
By Shira Schoenberg
With 17 percent unemployment, a recession, and a global
pandemic, does Massachusetts need to be raising more money
right now to fix the state’s ailing transportation system?
“Clearly the Legislature needs to be thoughtful and
considerate in a time when so many folks are struggling
about raising revenue, but if we’re not making investments
in transportation then we’re not going to have that full and
vibrant economy recovery we all want,” said Chris Dempsey,
director of Transportation for Massachusetts, a
transportation advocacy group that has been leading the push
for more revenue.
But John Regan, president and CEO of the business group
Associated Industries of Massachusetts, disagrees. “With the
economy in such a state of flux, with state finances so far
in a state of confusion…adding even modest new revenue to
the equation right now is not prudent,” Regan said.
On this week’s Codcast, Dempsey and Regan both agreed that
the COVID-19 pandemic changed the way they saw the state’s
transportation needs. But they disagreed on virtually
everything else, from whether new transportation revenue is
needed to what types of revenues are worth looking at. Their
debate mirrors the one happening on Beacon Hill, with a
slight twist. On Beacon Hill, the business-friendly House in
February passed a $600 million transportation revenue bill
and the Senate, which is generally considered more liberal,
this month said it would not take it up, due to the
pandemic. The Senate passed a $17 billion transportation
bond bill, but the House says that is too large without new
revenues.
Regan said the bond bill – if the final version has anywhere
between a $14 billion and $18 billion bottom line – is a
“significant investment.” He added: “It’s not as if we’re
short shrifting the need, but we’re also trying to balance
the concerns around the impact of new taxes on businesses
and individuals in the environment that we’re in.”
But Dempsey said the bond bill is “essentially a status quo
amount” that “says we’re going to spend the same dollars on
the same things next year, three years from now, as we did
last year or three years ago….Was the system we had in
transportation last year or three years ago working for
you?”
Use of the transportation system has dropped significantly
over the last few months, as the pandemic forced businesses
to shutter and many employees who could began working from
home. Regan said with work from home policies likely to be
part of the mix for quite some time, it makes sense to be
conservative on transportation spending right now – and
lawmakers can always come back to it in another legislative
session.
“Depending on when things start to look and feel more like
normal then we can revisit whether or not the investment
levels in transportation are appropriate or not in those
circumstances,” Regan said.
Regan said burdening individuals and businesses with more
taxes is a bad idea at a time when work from home policies
“lowered the barriers for exit” from Massachusetts, since
employees can work at a Boston job from New Hampshire.
But Dempsey said the pandemic highlighted the need to make
improvements like reducing crowding on buses, which
essential workers need to take to get to work. And he
believes life will eventually return to normal.
“We’re going to cure cancer and maybe cure COVID in Kendall
Square because it’s a place where a lot of really smart
people get together and try to fix problems,” Dempsey said.
He said if telecommuting becomes the norm, Massachusetts
will have to rethink a lot of things. “In a world where no
one goes to the office, you might as well move to North
Carolina for lower housing prices and better weather,” he
said.
Despite the recession, Dempsey said his group still supports
raising the gas tax, noting that the state’s gas tax is
below the national average. Regan said his group opposes a
gas tax increase, although AIM does support the
Transportation and Climate Initiative, a regional effort
that would impose a price on transportation emissions,
effectively raising the cost of gas.
On the questions of increasing fees on Uber and Lyft rides,
Dempsey said yes and Regan said no.
On regional ballot initiatives – where individual
communities can vote to raise taxes to pay for a specific
project – Regan worried about creating “a hodgepodge of lots
of different taxing jurisdictions.” Dempsey touted the
initiatives as a way to “empower local leaders and residents
to make decisions themselves, not have every dollar go
through Beacon Hill or Washington, DC.”
State House
News Service
Friday, July 24, 2020
Interim Report Flags $3 Bil Gap in Last Year’s Budget
DOR Cautions State Still Collecting FY 2020 Revenue
By Colin A. Young
Massachusetts tax collections in the fiscal year that ended
June 30 are about $3 billion lower than what budget managers
were expecting when they crafted the $43.3 billion state
budget a year ago, according to preliminary data released
Friday by the Department of Revenue.
Revenue officials said incomplete revenue collections for
fiscal year 2020 so far total $27.276 billion, which is
$2.417 billion or 8.1 percent less than fiscal year 2019 and
$3.014 billion or 9.9 percent below the year-to-date
benchmark.
But because the tax filing deadline was moved from April 15
to July 15 and DOR is still collecting fiscal 2020 taxes,
the agency said the fiscal 2020 revenue total is expected to
be updated over the next several weeks.
"Approximately 81 percent of the year-to-date shortfall is
in non-withheld income tax, which is due in large part to
the deferral of the deadlines for personal income tax
returns and payments and the first two estimated payment
installments to July 15, 2020," Revenue Commissioner
Geoffrey Snyder said. "DOR will be releasing a full FY2020
revenue report in September because recently enacted
legislation requires the Comptroller to record income tax
payments received between July 1 and August 31 as FY20
revenue. We will continue to closely monitor these delayed
FY20 revenue collections."
The first official estimate of the fiscal year 2020 budget
gap came in DOR's preliminary report on June tax
collections, which showed tax collections of $2.493 billion
as of July 24, missing the monthly target by $761 million or
23.4 percent, and reflecting a $691 million, or 21.7
percent, decrease from last June.
Since the sudden evaporation of tax receipts began this
spring as the state forced businesses to close, consumer
spending habits changed dramatically and unemployment
skyrocketed, the Baker administration did not revise revenue
expectations for fiscal year 2020 -- which could have
triggered the governor's authority to make unilateral
spending reductions known as 9C cuts -- or announce other
specific budget-balancing plans.
The timing of the COVID-19 outbreak made it difficult to
slash spending given that it came relatively late in the
fiscal year, according to budget analysts, but the state
does have $3.5 billion stashed away in its rainy day fund
that could be needed this year and beyond.
The state is also without a plan for the fiscal year 2021
budget, which typically would be in place by now. Instead,
the state is running through July on a $5.25 billion interim
budget and Baker this week filed another one-month spending
bill that would keep the state afloat through August with an
additional $5.51 billion.
That bill (H 4869) was sent to the House Ways and Means
Committee on Wednesday. In lieu of a full-year budget,
Beacon Hill appears prepared to adopt a series of temporary
budgets, typically one month's worth of spending at a time,
until lawmakers decide to propose, debate and pass a
permanent budget.
A new round of federal relief funding that is expected to be
unveiled and debated next week in Washington, D.C., is
expected to provide some measure of clarity to state budget
writers.
In January, the Baker administration and legislative budget
managers agreed that the fiscal 2021 budget would be built
on $31.151 billion in state tax revenue. Though they have
not officially updated that expectation, there is widespread
agreement that it will not be met.
"Certainly, such a revision or adjustment is expected after
critical pieces of information become more clear in the
coming months," Snyder told House lawmakers earlier this
month.
State House
News Service
Thursday, July 23, 3030
Poll: Reopenings Uncertain for Many Still-Closed Small
Businesses
By Chris Lisinski
Only half of Massachusetts small business owners whose
operations are still closed said they are confident they
will ever reopen, indicating lingering uncertainty months
after forced shutdowns began to limit the spread of
COVID-19, according to a new poll.
A majority of the 1,868 businesses with fewer than 500
employees polled by the MassINC Polling Group have already
resumed operations to some degree, and 13 percent remain
closed.
Of those polled that are still closed, 50 percent of owners
believe their companies will reopen, 44 percent are unsure
and 4 percent have closed permanently, the poll found.
The pandemic's economic consequences continue even as
Massachusetts progresses through a plan to revive public and
business activity gradually. In June, the state had the
highest unemployment rate in the country at 17.4 percent.
Forty-four percent of businesses surveyed in the poll said
their revenue in the first half of 2020 was half or less
than during the first half of 2019, and another 20 percent
said it had dropped one-quarter to one-half.
One in five reported missing a rent payment since the start
of shutdowns, with 12 percent missing tax payments, 14
percent missing utility payments, 11 percent missing
insurance payments and 19 percent falling short on vendor or
supplier bills.
The poll, conducted from June 23 to July 13 and released
Thursday, also found clear impacts on workers. Forty-six
percent of the small businesses surveyed reported having at
least one employee laid off or actively on furlough, while
54 percent said no employees were currently in either of
those categories.
CommonWealth
Magazine
Tuesday, July 21, 2020
Legislature’s regular timetable may not be viable this year
By Bruce Mohl - CommonWealth Editor
The time needed to process legislation on Beacon Hill is
running short – or is it?
The typical end date for the legislative session is July 31,
a week from Friday. Normally lawmakers end the session and
head home to their districts to run for reelection.
But this year may be different. Between the massive health
and budgetary impacts of COVID-19 and the push for police
reform prompted by the killing of George Floyd in
Minneapolis, the Legislature’s regular timetable may no
longer be viable.
No state budget for the current fiscal year has been filed
yet, and even crafting a budget may be impossible until
state tax revenue numbers for July are released and Congress
decides whether or not to pass another stimulus bill that
would funnel additional money to states. Only once the state
and federal revenue picture becomes clearer can budget
writers begin to draw up a real spending plan – and that may
not happen until August.
There’s also a host of other legislation awaiting action.
The Senate has passed three health care bills dealing with
prescription drugs, mental health, and telehealth – and none
of them have passed the House yet. The House and Senate are
at odds on transportation funding and no action has been
taken yet on climate change legislation, which was once a
top priority on Beacon Hill.
With police reform consuming all the oxygen on Beacon Hill
this week, the health care, transportation, and climate
change bills – and many others, as well – are waiting for a
chance to see some action.
The end of the legislative session on July 31 doesn’t mean
the House and Senate stop meeting. It just means that
lawmakers meet informally, where they typically handle only
minor, noncontroversial pieces of legislation and any
individual lawmaker can block a bill from moving forward by
raising an objection. It’s not ideal for passing complicated
pieces of legislation.
House Speaker Robert DeLeo in early April said he was open
to meeting beyond July 31, presumably in regular formal
sessions, if by that date the Legislature had not finished
the budget, a climate change bill, or a transportation
financing package. "I'll put health care in that category as
well,” he told the State House News Service.
DeLeo said then that nothing had been decided but he was
leaning toward continuing the session. "I'd hate to change
our rules, but I think this may be one of those times,"
DeLeo said.
Senate President Karen Spilka has been more circumspect,
telling State House News on Monday that she would make no
predictions about extending the legislation session beyond
July 31.
Many lawmakers eager to see their bills move forward are
speculating about the options to meet longer this year.
Details are scarce, but the joint rules of the House and
Senate allow for special sessions to be called if they have
the support of a majority of the House and Senate members.
Some lawmakers have speculated that a special session could
be held in August, while others have suggested gathering
after the election in early November and meeting through the
end of the year. Normally, lawmakers are reluctant to meet
in lame-duck sessions, but one lawmaker said it wasn’t that
big of a deal, pointing out that two-thirds of incumbent
state lawmakers are facing no challenge in either the
primary or the general election this year.
State House
News Service
Tuesday, July 21, 2020
Lawmakers May Break for Election Cycle Without Annual Budget
Most State Have Passed Budgets, But Mass. Taking Interim
Approach
By Michael P. Norton and Matt Murphy
In one of the clearest signs yet that Beacon Hill may fade
into a summer recess without even debating the overdue
annual state budget, Gov. Charlie Baker on Tuesday filed
another one-month spending bill to keep state government
funded through August with an additional $5.51 billion.
Baker in January filed a $44.6 billion fiscal 2021 budget
that soon thereafter became obsolete due to a tax revenue
collapse sparked by government-forced shutdowns of
businesses and commerce during and after the peak COVID-19
surge.
The Baker administration and Democratic legislative leaders
since then have not announced any steps to address fiscal
2020 budget woes and the House blew by April and July
deadlines without producing an annual spending plan for
fiscal 2021 or outlining a new budget timeline.
Budget writers have been waiting to see what the state's
finances look like after state officials delayed the April
15 tax filing deadline to July 15, which jumbled the
ordinary flow of revenues and made tricky forecasting even
more dicey. The federal government has delivered large
amounts of aid to the states, but with many states still
facing unprecedented budget holes talks remain active in
Washington about additional aid to individuals, businesses
and states.
Without any full-year, post-pandemic budgets on the table,
it appears certain that this year's budget deliberations
will extend beyond the July 31 end of formal sessions,
although legislative leaders refuse to give voice to plans
for a fall budget debate, which would blend into the
election season.
Asked Tuesday if lawmakers planned to pass a fiscal 2021
annual budget by July 31, or if not then when, Senate budget
chief Michael Rodrigues said he would be "happy" to answer
questions about the budget "some other time."
Both branches are in session this week with an opportunity
to adopt an interim budget for August, which seems
inevitable given that the alternative would be for state
government to shut down. When coupled with July's $5.25
billion interim budget, the two interim budgets total $10.76
billion in spending, but Baker administration officials say
spending levels can fluctuate significantly during the
fiscal year and the summer budgets include some larger
expenditures.
Budget clarity could be coming soon to one important budget
constituency - the 351 cities and towns that deliver
essential services at the local level.
The governor indicated Tuesday that in the "coming weeks" he
and Democratic leaders in the House and Senate would be
finalizing a full-year projection for local aid and Chapter
70 school funding from the state to provide "important
clarity" for municipal leaders.
Local aid levels have been held level for July and August,
but municipal officials don't know what to expect for the
final 10 months of fiscal 2021.
"We also look forward to continuing the important work
already underway with you on a full-year local aid and
chapter 70 announcement that will be guided by additional
information expected from the federal government in the
coming weeks," Baker wrote in a filing letter that
accompanied his interim budget bill.
"An agreement between both branches and the Administration
on a baseline full-year projection will provide important
clarity to local officials budget for Fiscal Year 2020," the
governor said.
Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center President
Marie-Frances Rivera said Beacon Hill needs the "moral
courage" to raise taxes, as the Legislature has in previous
recessions, and to ask for more revenues from the state's
"richest neighbors and most profitable corporations." She
called the alternatives of receiving massive amounts of
federal aid or making steep state budget cuts a "false
choice."
"With two weeks before the close of formal session, our
state's elected leaders have still not announced plans to
unveil an overdue Fiscal Year (FY) 2021 budget. Meanwhile,
people across the state - especially our Black, Indigenous,
and People of Color (BIPOC) communities - are still
suffering," Rivera said in a statement Thursday. "These
ongoing delays and uncertainty in funding levels for
critical supports such as early education, public schools,
care for elders and people with disabilities, public health
facilities and others are causing panic in communities
across the Commonwealth."
As of July 8, 42 states have enacted a full-year budget for
fiscal 2021, including 17 states that previously enacted a
two-year budget, according to the National Association of
State Budget Officers.
Budget writers here have focused their attention on
documented revenue volatility, but spending levels are
another area of uncertainty.
The state received $2.7 billion in COVID-19 relief funds
under the CARES Act and the Baker administration has been
doling out that money. There are strings attached as the
federal funds can only cover expenditures that had not been
budgeted as of March 27, 2020 when the CARES Act was
enacted. The money may not supplant state or municipal
spending, and also may only cover expenditures incurred on
or after March 1, 2020, and up to December 30, 2020.
However, the governor this spring did not officially lower
the state's shattered fiscal 2020 revenue estimate in the
face of falling revenues and detailed information was not
available Tuesday about how state spending has stacked up
against the $43.3 billion fiscal 2020 budget Baker signed in
July 2019.
The revenue collapse is clearer. Over the first 11 months of
fiscal 2020, state tax collections totaled $24.782 billion.
That is $1.726 billion, or 6.5 percent, less than the same
fiscal year-to-date period in 2019, and $2.253 billion, or
8.3 percent. less than the benchmarks used to formulate
spending plans.
The U.S. Senate returned this week from a two-week recess,
and state officials are watching closely in anticipation of
Republican leadership in the Senate offering a
counter-proposal to the $3 trillion relief bill already
passed by the U.S. House.
State officials have had enough cash on hand since the
pandemic struck in mid-March to keep up with bill payments,
including large monthly local aid payments, but state
Treasury officials confirmed to the News Service in late
June that they were drawing down $500 million from a $1.75
billion line of credit established with a group of
commercial banks to help manage cash flow, if necessary.
The move, according to First Deputy Treasurer James
MacDonald, was made to help the state prepare to manage the
deferral of tax revenue associated with moving the tax
filing deadline to July 15 and to "be ready for July."
The deferred revenue means the state is still collecting
taxes that will be applied to last fiscal year, keeping
fiscal 2020 books open longer and lending to an unusual
degree of overlap between the two fiscal years.
The Department of Revenue plans to offer a preliminary
update on June state tax revenues this month, but does not
expect a full June revenue report until September due to the
deferral of the personal income tax return deadline and
payment due dates.
In a letter to legislators Monday, Revenue Commissioner
Geoffrey Snyder said tax revenues collected in the first
half of July included a "material amount" of the deferred
payments on personal income tax and corporate excise
payments, and excluded some postponed sales, meals and room
occupancy taxes. Snyder reported that total tax collections
for the month-to-date period were $2.133 billion, up $1.338
billion or 168 percent versus the same period in July 2019.
By contrast, total tax collections for the first half of
June were $1.207 billion, down $609 million or 33.5 percent
versus the same period in June 2019.
Amidst the crisis, Baker and the Legisalature have so far
resisted calls to draw from $3.5 billion in reserves to
address spending needs.
— Chris Van Buskirk
contributed reporting
State House
News Service
Wednesday, July 22, 2020
Legislative Leaders in Talks About Extending Session
Votes on Major Bills Could Spill Into Election Season
By Katie Lannan
With nine days remaining in the pandemic-disrupted
legislative season and several major items still unresolved,
Senate and House leaders have had some conversations about
continuing past their traditional end-of-July deadline to
continue deliberations on weighty bills.
Senate President Karen Spilka on Wednesday outlined a list
of priorities, including the overdue fiscal 2021 budget and
bills addressing climate change and police accountability,
and said the Senate would be ready to work past July 31 if
those bills are not completed. The branches would need to
agree to an extension and House Speaker Robert DeLeo is open
to "various scenarios" that involve going past July 31 if
necessary, according to his office.
"There's no reason why we can't get most of this done by
July 31, but if we need to work through these extraordinary
circumstances and work past July 31, we will," Spilka told
the News Service. She said she's had "initial discussions"
with the House about the timeline.
Under joint House-Senate rules, July 31 marks the end of
formal legislative sessions for the two-year term, after
which lawmakers pivot into campaign mode ahead of the summer
and fall elections and continue to meet in informal sessions
for the rest of the year. Informal sessions are usually
lightly attended, and all lawmakers present must agree to
advance bills during such sessions, where recorded or roll
call votes are not allowed.
In the second year of most terms, late July is marked by a
frenzy of activity as lawmakers work to wrap up major bills
and send them to the governor before the deadline. This
year, the pace has been thrown off-course by the COVID-19
crisis that took over much of state government's focus,
required the adoption of remote voting methods for
legislative sessions, and sparked a collapse in state
revenues.
"The Senate remains laser-focused on addressing the state
budget, the COVID response and economic recovery. The big
things -- racial justice, clearly, we have health care that
we're still hoping to get done, climate change legislation
that sets a 2050 net-zero target," Spilka said. "Despite
many curveballs that have been thrown our way this session,
we firmly believe that we have acted and gotten our work
done."
Spilka said the Senate sought to avoid an end-of-session
bottleneck by spreading out its agenda and passing health
care bills in November, February and June, and a climate
bill in January that included carbon pricing language. The
House last July passed a $1 billion bill, dubbed GreenWorks,
to finance climate change infrastructure and resiliency
grants, and while DeLeo, Spilka and Gov. Charlie Baker all
back a goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, that
target has not been formalized in law.
The House plans to take up a health care bill this week and
on Wednesday began debate on racial justice and police
reform. National unrest over police killings of Black
Americans thrust the issue of law enforcement accountability
onto the legislative agenda, and the Senate passed its own
bill last week.
Lawmakers have not yet presented a full spending plan for
the fiscal year that began July 1, and budget-writers are
waiting to have a better sense of both what the state
collected in tax payments by the later July 15 filing
deadline and what they can expect for any additional federal
aid.
"If we do not have a full-year budget by the end of July, we
will need to come back to get a budget done, and that
timeline is going to be driven by understanding and knowing
what the federal action is," Spilka said.
The Legislature over the years has adhered closely to the
July 31 deadline that serves as a cutoff between
policymaking and campaign seasons, and it seems likely that
if Democrats agree to take up major matters beyond the
deadline they will need to first agree on an agenda. There's
also a question of whether they would assign themselves a
new deadline to end formal sessions in 2020, or leave it
open-ended.
"Given the COVID-19 emergency, Speaker DeLeo remains open to
various scenarios involving going past 7/31, if necessary,
and is in discussions with the Senate President and members
on them," a DeLeo spokesperson said in a statement to the
News Service.
Last week, DeLeo said the House "plans to address bills
relating to police reform, healthcare, climate, economic
development and budgetary matters in the coming weeks and
looks forward to Senate action on transportation revenue,
Greenworks, DCF and other items."
Spilka said she's hoping the House sends the Senate bills on
economic development and housing. She also listed a pair of
borrowing bills dealing with transportation and information
technology as items the two branches need to complete.
The House and Senate passed different versions of each bond
bill, and the IT bond bill is before a conference committee
that first met Tuesday.
The Legislature's Joint Rule 12A specifies that all formal
business in the second year of a session "be concluded not
later than the last day of July of that calendar year." That
rule requires a two-thirds vote from each branch to be
suspended.
Another joint rule, Rule 26A, lays out the process of
calling lawmakers back from recess into a special session --
it requires written statements from 21 senators and 81
representatives saying there should be a special session,
and the first vote at a special session is whether such a
session is necessary.
Lawmakers could also attempt to resolve any unfinished
business in informal sessions, but that can present
obstacles as any one legislator's objection can halt a
bill's progress.
State House
News Service
Friday, July 24, 2020
Weekly Roundup - House of the Setting Sun
Recap and analysis of the week in state government
By Matt Murphy
An invigorating blend of beer, gambling and... the police.
What could go wrong?
Well, thankfully nothing went too sideways this week on
Beacon Hill. But if you were wondering whether legislative
leaders could bring the two-year session in for a smooth
landing before the end of the month, the evergreen answer
became obvious.
Don't bet on it. At least not yet.
It turns out there's still time for a lawmaker to add
betting on the Legislature to a sports wagering proposal
that House leaders baked into a massive jobs bill released
Friday. Could be fun, right?
But seriously, the money-making sports wagering proposal
hadn't been on the lips of too many legislators in recent
months when it suddenly found its way into an end-of-session
economic development bill.
The sport betting proposal was released on Opening Day of
the baseball season, when Gov. Charlie Baker was planning to
be at Fenway Park on Friday night to help throw out the
first pitch of the Red Sox opening tilt against the nine
(but really 10) from Baltimore. Earlier in the week, Red Sox
counsel and former Robert Travaglini top advisor David
Friedman testified that sports betting was "low-hanging
fruit" worth as much as $50 million a year to the state and
advertising revenue for the team.
And with the Department of Revenue reporting that June tax
collections missed budgeted benchmarks by $761 million, some
lawmakers are probably thinking the state could use a few
million extra dollars right about now.
That same bill released by House Ways and Means on Friday
also included the governor's long-sought zoning reforms,
which he says will make it more likely that needed housing
development will occur in Massachusetts.
But before there can be a vote on that bill, the House needs
to finish with the deliberations over its sweeping version
of police reform that would create a brand new commission to
oversee the licensing of police officers and the enforcement
of new standards that would ban chokeholds and limit the use
of tear gas and no-knock warrants.
The debate over policing was on its third day on Friday, and
Rep. Paul Tucker, a former Salem police chief, had promised
at the start a vote "with the sun shining."
It was a not so subtle dig at the Senate, where legislators
finished debate in one session, but that session ended after
4 o'clock in the morning. His snarky comment was also made
Wednesday, when the sun set without a vote. It rose and set
again on Thursday. Still no vote.
House lawmakers, however, were using that time to work
through some complex and emotional issues, none more so than
the use of no-knock warrants. The no-knock execution of a
warrant in Louisville, Kentucky has been blamed, in part,
for the shooting death by police of Breonna Taylor.
And though House leaders had proposed to limit their use in
Massachusetts, Rep. Liz Miranda strengthened that provision
by making sure a no-knock warrant could not be issued if
police had reason to believe minors or seniors were in the
home.
Rep. Timothy Whelan, a retired state trooper from Cape Cod,
said a no-knock warrant had probably saved his life while on
the job, but Miranda's amendment passed on a rare close vote
of 83-76.
The duration of the House's debate highlights just how
sensitive the issue of police reform has become, and how
challenging it could be to get a bill done by July 31 that
Gov. Charlie Baker would be willing to sign -- assuming
Democrats don't move to extend formal sessions beyond next
Friday.
It appears a virtual certainty that some accommodation
outside the House and Senate's rules will need to be made to
get a budget complete for fiscal 2021. But there's hope
among leaders that other priorities can be tied up with a
bow before next Friday.
The Senate made quick and unanimous work of a compromise
struck over the weekend to end a 10-year feud between craft
brewers and beer distributors over the rights of brewers to
sever their ties to a distributor if they're unhappy with
how their brand is being marketed.
The House also released legislation to enshrine some of the
gains made during the pandemic in promoting the use of
telehealth in what could be that branch's response to the
Senate's health care trilogy this session, that also
included prescription drug cost controls and mental health
reform.
While there is still a bill pending, Baker extended the
moratorium on evictions and foreclosures by two months, and
filed another one-month budget bill to keep the lights of
government on through August while he and legislative
leaders wait for Congress to decide on another COVID-19
relief package. The budget relief sought by states to the
tune of $500 billion is likely to come up when Baker meets
with Vice President Mike Pence on Nantucket on Saturday.
The two Republicans plan to sit down to discuss the
pandemic, but Baker will be skipping the high-dollar
fundraiser at the home of Putnam Investments CEO Robert
Reynolds in the afternoon.
A full-year budget for Massachusetts won't be ready by the
end of the month, but Baker said in the "coming weeks" he
and the Democrats in control of the House and Senate should
be ready to announce an agreement on local aid for the year
that will enable City Halls and school districts to finally
plan their spending for the rest of the fiscal year.
Schools have until the end of next week to submit their
reopening plans and many are struggling with the idea of
returning students in-person to the classroom and questions
about how to do that safely.
Boston Mayor Marty Walsh said he favors a "blended" approach
that would mix in-person teaching with remote learning, and
that may be necessary after the Department of Elementary and
Secondary Education released new busing guidelines that call
for students to wear masks, keep windows open and sit one
child per bench, which would greatly reduce the capacity of
buses.
On the topic of social distancing, Baker also said that if
people can't behave themselves this weekend or in the future
and stop crowding on beaches, the state will have to start
enforcing capacity limits.
"That's not something we want to do," Baker said, noting
towel-to-towel crowds during last weekend's heat wave in
places like M Street beach in South Boston. "We want people
to simply use their heads and be responsible."
Baker said Massachusetts residents, for the most part,
continue to do well to control the spread of the
coronavirus, but the same can not be said for other parts of
the country. That was the reason Baker gave on Friday for
reversing course and issuing a mandatory quarantine order
for people traveling into Massachusetts from most other
states, where infection and positive test rates are
climbing.
Unless you come from Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode
Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey or Hawaii,
visitors must now quarantine for 14 days upon arrival or
show proof of a negative COVID-19 test within the previous
72 hours. Failure to comply can result in fines of $500 a
day.
The travel restrictions would apply to college students due
to begin arriving next month from around the country on
campuses that are offering in-person instruction this fall.
In light of and despite of the pandemic, the University of
Massachusetts Board of Trustees went along with President
Marty Meehan's recommendation this week to freeze tuition
for not just the system's 48,000 in-state undergraduates
spread across four campuses, but 9,500 graduate students as
well.
This step was taken even though the university said it is
facing a $264 million budget gap blown wide open by the
COVD-19 pandemic, and implementing cuts that the
Massachusetts Teachers Association called "destructive" and
vowed to fight.
Needless to say, it was a long week, and next week could be
longer, But at least Gov. Baker signed a cocktails to-go law
this week enabling restaurants to put some spirit into their
take-out.
Cheers.
STORY OF THE WEEK: A different process, but moving toward a
similar result as House takes policing debate into third
day, and possibly beyond.
State House
News Service
Friday, July 24, 2020
Advances - Week of July 26, 2020
With a week left for formal sessions, the House is only just
now getting around to consideration of major economic
development and health care bills. Representatives are
scrambling to tee those measures up for debate early next
week - the jobs bill (H 4879) is on for Monday - and the
initiatives come at a time when the state's jobless rate is
the highest in the nation and as many Americans lose access
to health insurance tied to their former employers.
Absent a full fiscal 2021 budget or a solution to fiscal
2020 budget troubles, the state has enough money
appropriated to run the government for another week, with
another $5.5 billion interim budget filed by Gov. Charlie
Baker to get the state through August.
State leaders across the country continue to hope that
Congress and the White House will agree on a fiscal
lifeline. Members of the state's Congressional delegation
are warning of catastrophic impacts if expanded unemployment
benefits set to lapse July 31 are not extended, a topic that
could come up when Baker meets with Vice President Mike
Pence on Saturday on Nantucket.
"Without income from unemployment benefits, landlords and
banks will see a wave of defaults on rent and mortgages,
American businesses will see a sharp drop in demand for
goods and services, and market fears will likely do further
damage to savings and retirement funds," Sen. Elizabeth
Warren and Congressman Richard Neal wrote in a letter Friday
to President Donald Trump, who was slow to advocate for
mask-wearing but is doing so now as COVID-19 caseloads take
off around the nation.
Local school officials across Massachusetts face a Friday
deadline to make some difficult decisions about how and
whether to reopen in just over a month. Lawmakers are
rushing to get a complex policing reform bill (S 2820, H
4860) to Gov. Charlie Baker. House and Senate Democrats for
months have shown no indication that they're making any
progress toward an agreement on differing approaches to
climate change. Baker's long-sought housing production
proposal (H 4879) appears to be getting some momentum in the
House, where legalized sports betting is also poised to
finally advance.
A pair of long-term borrowing bills to invest in
transportation (H 4547, S 2836) and information technology
(H 4733, S 2819) are in separate six-member conference
committees, which could generate consensus proposals at any
time. And time is no longer on the Legislature's side.
The Democrats who hold super-majorities in the House and
Senate have had more than 18 months to reach agreement on
these major issues, most of which date back to previous
sessions, but have left major decisions -- and in some cases
the bulk of their work -- until the final days before formal
sessions expire under legislative rules on Friday, July 31.
And the major unknowns that loom over all of the legislative
priorities, as well as other key bills that are competing
for attention, are accentuated by the biggest unknown of
all: whether House Speaker Robert DeLeo and Senate President
Karen Spilka will attempt to extend formal sessions.
Within that question are other key questions. How long would
extended sessions last? Will the agenda be limited and what
will it include? When will the overdue state budget be
tackled? And how would an extension affect the limited
leverage that governors are afforded when bills are sent to
them at the tail end of formals?
Lawmakers over the years have strictly adhered to the formal
session cutoff, which firmly separates major lawmaking from
election season, but they haven't had to deal with a
pandemic in previous years. One thing appears clear in all
the murkiness: legislators will need to pass an annual
budget in the coming months and that will require them to
come back at some point for formal sessions.
Odds and Ends
... The House is newly in receipt of a Senate-approved bill
(S 2841) enabling craft brewers, under certain conditions,
to remove themselves from deals with their distributors
... Advocates are stepping up their late-session push for a
bill making undocumented immigrants eligible for driver's
licenses. While the bill has failed to advance in either
branch, advocates are targeting Gov. Baker, who opposes it,
by setting up symbolic immigrant detention cages outside his
Swampscott home
... The week ahead will serve as another major test of the
relationship between DeLeo and Spilka, who has now been at
the helm in the Senate for two years. Intraparty squabbles
and infighting among the two branches loom as probably a
greater obstacle to smooth operations on Beacon Hill than
the traditional Democrat-Republican partisanship
... On Aug. 17, which is just over three weeks away, Supreme
Judicial Court Justice Barbara Lenk is set to retire from
the bench, and it's up to Gov. Baker to choose a nominee to
fill her seat.
School Reopening Plan Deadline
Massachusetts school districts are required to submit a
preliminary reopening plan summary to the Department of
Elementary and Secondary Education by Friday. It's the first
of two steps involved in the reopening plans -- more
comprehensive documents must be finalized, submitted to DESE
and released to the public by Monday, Aug. 10.
The preliminary plans, according to the department, must
include a "brief description" of each of the three models
districts have been asked to prepare -- entirely in-person,
entirely remote, and a hybrid -- along with the results of
the district's feasibility study on in-person learning and
"preliminary thinking about which of the three reopening
models it may use to open the school year this fall."
As local officials make their decisions, they'll be weighing
a host of factors, including the risks of COVID-19
transmission and risks of continued isolation for students;
the needs of teachers who are in high-risk groups, live with
someone who is, or otherwise have concerns about returning;
and what new safety measures their budgets can accommodate.
The education department's plan submission page says its
reopening approach "is built on a thorough review of current
medical and scientific literature and was developed after
extensive consultation with medical professionals from
Massachusetts General Hospital, the Massachusetts COVID-19
Command Center's Medical Advisory Board, and others."
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