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Marblehead, Massachusetts 01945
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“Every Tax is a Pay Cut ... A Tax Cut is a Pay Raise”
48 years as “The Voice of Massachusetts Taxpayers”
— and
their Institutional Memory — |
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CLT UPDATE
Monday, April 4, 2022
Death and Taxes in
Mass.
Jump directly
to CLT's Commentary on the News
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Most Relevant News
Excerpts
(Full news reports follow Commentary)
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They say
only death and taxes are certain, but in
Massachusetts the former doesn’t necessarily stop
the latter.
That
should change, though, according to the
Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, which issued a
brief Thursday in support of Gov. Charlie Baker’s
proposal to alter the estate tax.
“Massachusetts should change its estate state
because we currently have the highest tax burden of
any state in the nation for estates between $1-3
million,” Eileen McAnneny, foundation president,
said in an emailed statement.
Currently,
Massachusetts is one of 12 states that taxes an
estate after a person’s death.
Among the
states that do so, Massachusetts is tied with Oregon
for the lowest threshold at which an estate tax
kicks in, at $1 million.
Massachusetts also employs a so-called “cliff
effect,” whereby an estate worth just $1 less than
the threshold is free of a tax burden, while that
dollar results in substantial tax liability.
This may
not seem like it would be a problem for too many
people, but that’s not the case for anyone who owns
real estate in Massachusetts. When it comes to the
estate tax, the value of your home is included....
Baker
proposes raising the threshold to $2 million and
eliminating the cliff effect with an estate
exclusion at $2 million.
Even that
proposal, if agreed to by the legislature, would
mean Massachusetts would have the third-highest
estate tax, behind Rhode Island and Oregon.
The
Boston Herald
Thursday, March 31, 2022
Death and taxes front and
center in Massachusetts
Estate tax should be changed, says tax group
MARCH
REVENUES [Tuesday, April 5, 2022]: Department of
Revenue is due to report on tax collections for
March, which the department said tends to be "a
mid-size month for revenue collections, ranking #6
of the twelve months in nine of the last ten years."
DOR has
set the monthly benchmark at $3.43 billion and as of
March 15 had already collected $2.1 billion, up
about 23 percent from the same half-month period in
2021. Most of that increase, DOR said in its
mid-month report, came from income taxes, including
withholding, but much of the increase is due to the
recently-enacted elective pass-through entity excise
and is therefore temporary.
Through
February, fiscal 2022 tax collections have totaled
about $23.673 billion, more than $4 billion above
the same period in fiscal 2021 and more than $1.7
billion above year-to-date benchmarks.
State
House News Service
Friday, April 1, 2022
Advances - Week of April 3
Gov.
Charlie Baker on Friday signed the multi-faceted
$1.67 billion midyear spending bill that lawmakers
sent to his desk Thursday night, approving all of
the bill's spending while sending back one veto and
one amendment.
The fiscal
year 2022 supplemental budget allocates money toward
the ongoing COVID-19 response ($700 million), rate
enhancements to human service providers ($401
million), winter road repair ($100 million), rental
assistance ($100 million) and more, extends popular
pandemic-era restaurant policies for a year, and
directs state officials to divest public pension
funds from Russia-involved companies.
State
House News Service
Friday, April 1, 2022
Baker Signs $1.67 Bil
Midyear Budget
The mood
in the Legislature this week was more collegial.
The House
and Senate found common ground on a $1.67 billion
spending bill that includes money for COVID-19
relief, and extends popular pandemic accommodations
like to-go cocktails and outdoor dining as Boston
Mayor Michelle Wu tried to put out the kitchen fire
she started in the North End by proposing to charge
restaurants a $7,500 impact fee for al fresco
dining.
Lawmakers
also agreed on a strategy to divest pension funds
from Russian companies sanctioned by the United
States or incorporated in that country, and both
branches extended their remote voting protocols,
allowing at least for the remainder of this session
legislators to call in their votes.
Home
offices are the workplaces of the future, after all,
right?
A special
legislative commission co-chaired by Sen. Eric
Lesser and Rep. Josh Cutler released their report on
the "Future of Work" this week, and while it may not
have contained any shocking findings, it did
reinforce the way everyone has understood the impact
of the pandemic.
Hybrid and
remote working models, the report found...
Multiple
rounds of applause were heard outside the private
meeting before lawmakers made their way to the House
chamber to pass a $350 million road and
infrastructure maintenance bill that included $200
million for Chapter 90 and $150 million spread
across multiple other programs.
Rep.
William Straus, the co-chair of the Transportation
Committee, said the House wasn't quite ready to
reform the formula for Chapter 90 to more equitably
distribute aid to rural communities with many roads
and few people, but he said it's still a possibility
in the coming months....
STORY OF
THE WEEK: People bet on sports. They like to work
remotely. And they enjoy eating outside. That's just
the way it is.
State
House News Service
Friday, April 1, 2022
Weekly Roundup
The future
of natural gas, a core component of the existing
energy mix but one that the state needs to become
less dependent on to meet its climate goals, is
front and center for debate at a Senate hearing on
Monday. Just as gasoline remains the most common way
to power vehicles, natural gas continues to serve as
a dominant fuel.
The Senate
Global Warming and Climate Change Committee hearing
will be followed up later in the week with hearings
that examine some of the tough choices that will be
necessary to meet near-term emission reduction
requirements in 2025 and 2030 as Massachusetts
slowly implements plans to bring offshore wind
energy into the mix, and to build upon solar and
other renewable energy sources.
State
House News Service
Friday, April 1, 2022
Advances - Week of April 3
Here is
one thing Republican gubernatorial candidate Chris
Doughty can brag about: He has created more jobs
than anyone else running for governor.
In fact,
he has created more jobs in his successful business
career than have all the candidates seeking to
become governor combined.
That
includes Democrats Maura Healey, the attorney
general, and state Sen. Sonia Chang-Diaz.
It also
includes fellow Republican Geoff Diehl, 52, who is
considered the frontrunner in the two-man battle for
the Republican nomination for governor.
One of the
four will succeed outgoing Republican Gov. Charlie
Baker, who after two terms is not seeking
re-election.
Of the
four, Doughty, a Wrentham father and grandfather, is
the only candidate who has not run for office
before. So, he does not talk or act like a
politician, but more like an executive who knows how
to run an entity like a business....
He said
his skill set as a hands-on executive would come in
handy if he were governor. “I know how to read and
balance a budget,” he said. “I know how to create
jobs.”
Before he
can do that, however, he must defeat Diehl, a former
state representative from Whitman, and then become
the Republican nominee.
Diehl has
a strong head start. He already has one statewide
campaign under his belt. He was defeated for the
U.S. Senate in 2018 by Democrat Elizabeth Warren.
The
conservative Diehl, in the fractured Massachusetts
Republican Party, is supported by Jim Lyons, the
party chairman, and has been endorsed by former
President Donald Trump.
While that
may not be sound like a big deal in progressive,
anti-Trump Massachusetts, Diehl’s conservative
backing will play a major role in winning the party
convention endorsement and the September primary....
While
Doughty discourages being pigeonholed, he is
considered a moderate in the fashion of Charlie
Baker.
So, the
GOP campaign between the two is shaping up as a
battle over the future of the Republican Party in
Massachusetts.
Will it
continue along the moderate/liberal path traveled by
former Govs. Bill Weld, Paul Cellucci, Mitt Romney
and Charlie Baker — and now Chris Doughty — or will
it go the way of conservative Geoff Diehl and Jim
Lyons?
The
Boston Herald
Saturday, April 2, 2022
Creating jobs high on GOP candidate
for governor Chris Doughty’s to-do list
By Peter Lucas
When Sonia
Chang-Diaz challenged Maura Healey to agree to a
series of three televised debates prior to the
Democratic state convention in June, some political
analysts dismissed the move as an attempt by a
struggling candidate to gain ground on a better
known and better financed rival.
There may
be some truth to that analysis, but Chang-Diaz puts
forward another theory -- that voters deserve to
know where the two Democratic candidates for
governor stand on the major issues of the day.
“This is
standard-issue stuff,” Chang-Diaz said of her call
for debates. “There are real differences between the
attorney general and me.”
Chang-Diaz, a state senator from Jamaica Plain,
points out that Healey herself called for monthly
primary debates when she first ran for attorney
general in 2014. And the Democratic gubernatorial
primary race in 2018 featured three debates as well.
Healey’s
campaign responded to Chang-Diaz’s challenge with a
vague promise to debate, but didn’t say when she
would debate or how many times she would debate.
Chang-Diaz’s campaign called the response a dodge.
The back
and forth exchanges were fairly standard stuff in a
race between a clear frontrunner and a challenger.
But they also underscored the cautious campaign that
Healey appears to be running....
After
nearly eight years as attorney general, Healey is a
known commodity, to some extent. We know she sued
former president Donald Trump a lot. We know she
went after the Sackler family and Purdue Pharma in
court. And we know she suggested the protests
sweeping the nation after George Floyd’s killing in
2020 might yield long-term benefits. “Yes, America
is burning. But that’s how forests grow,” she said.
Those
stances and comments reveal a lot about Healey, but
voters need more from a candidate for governor.
Commonwealth Magazine
Tuesday, March 29, 2022
Waiting for the governor's
race to get going
By Bruce Mohl
Attorney
General Maura Healey doesn't seem to be about
reliving the past.
Not when
it comes to pot. Not when it comes to gambling. And
certainly not when it comes to her 2014 campaign for
attorney general.
That was
the year the new-on-the-political scene prosecutor
defied the odds to beat an insider with a well-known
last name in her first statewide race for public
office. In that campaign, Healey backed a ballot
question that would have repealed the state's casino
legalization law.
Eight
years later Healey is seeking a new office and
another gambling issue is in the headlines.
"Sports
betting, it is the way now," Healey said this week,
an acknowledgment that the whistle on this match has
already blown in other states. It may not have been
a ringing endorsement of gambling on athletics, but
it sounded an awful lot like the answer she gave
earlier this month when asked if she regretted
opposing the legalization of marijuana.
No
regrets. Just reality.
"I just
want to make sure that everybody is able to share in
the benefits and the gains of that industry," she
said about marijuana. "And I think we still have
more work to do when it comes to the social justice
issues that were in fact driving a lot of proponents
of that law."
State
House News Service
Friday, April 1, 2022
Weekly Roundup
Lieutenant
gubernatorial candidate Eric Lesser raised over
$153,000 in March alone — bringing his campaign war
chest to over $1 million. Since announcing his
campaign in January, Lesser has raised over
$437,412, according to his campaign.
Lesser, a
liberal Democratic state senator from East
Longmeadow, has received donations from 1,188
individual donors from 145 municipalities. A total
of 70% of donors came from Massachusetts.
With $1
million in the bank, Lesser has separated himself
from the crowded pack for lieutenant governor. Even
before filing March’s totals, Lesser had almost
$900,000 in the bank. The next-closest current
candidate was state Sen. Adam Hinds, a Democrat from
Pittsfield, who has banked almost $300,000 before
his March filing.
The
Boston Herald
Friday, April 1, 2022
Lt. gov. candidate Eric Lesser brings fundraising
totals over $1 million
By Amy Sokolow |
Chip Ford's CLT
Commentary |
|
The Boston Herald reported on Thursday ("Death
and taxes front and center in Massachusetts; Estate tax should be
changed, says tax group"):
They say only death and
taxes are certain, but in Massachusetts the
former doesn’t necessarily stop the latter.
That should change, though,
according to the Massachusetts Taxpayers
Foundation, which issued a brief Thursday in
support of Gov. Charlie Baker’s proposal to
alter the estate tax.
“Massachusetts should
change its estate state because we currently
have the highest tax burden of any state in the
nation for estates between $1-3 million,” Eileen
McAnneny, foundation president, said in an
emailed statement.
Currently, Massachusetts is
one of 12 states that taxes an estate after a
person’s death.
Among the states that do
so, Massachusetts is tied with Oregon for the
lowest threshold at which an estate tax kicks
in, at $1 million.
Massachusetts also employs
a so-called “cliff effect,” whereby an estate
worth just $1 less than the threshold is free of
a tax burden, while that dollar results in
substantial tax liability.
This may not seem like it
would be a problem for too many people, but
that’s not the case for anyone who owns real
estate in Massachusetts. When it comes to the
estate tax, the value of your home is
included....
Baker proposes raising the
threshold to $2 million and eliminating the
cliff effect with an estate exclusion at $2
million.
Even that proposal, if
agreed to by the legislature, would mean
Massachusetts would have the third-highest
estate tax, behind Rhode Island and Oregon.
As it has for many years, CLT
testified in support of long-overdue estate tax reform on January 12
("CLT
Again Supports Estate Tax Revision").
On Friday the State House News Service reported ("Baker
Signs $1.67 Bil Midyear Budget"):
Gov. Charlie Baker on
Friday signed the multi-faceted $1.67 billion
midyear spending bill that lawmakers sent to his
desk Thursday night, approving all of the bill's
spending while sending back one veto and one
amendment.
The fiscal year 2022
supplemental budget allocates money toward the
ongoing COVID-19 response ($700 million), rate
enhancements to human service providers ($401
million), winter road repair ($100 million),
rental assistance ($100 million) and more,
extends popular pandemic-era restaurant policies
for a year, and directs state officials to
divest public pension funds from Russia-involved
companies.
In the CLT Update of March
21 ("Inconsistencies
and Absurdities Abound") I noted, and it's worth reminding:
.
. . Bear in mind that on July 16, 2021 Gov. Baker signed this
year's annual fiscal budget of $47.6 Billion. With just three
months to go in the remainder of this fiscal year Beacon Hill is
adding on another $1.6 Billion in "supplemental" (additional)
spending, bring the total spending for FY2022 to over $50
Billion. (How many earlier "supplemental" bills have passed
since July is anyone's guess, but
here's one from December 13 that added $1.45 Billion from
the state's revenue "surplus.")
For perspective, on January 26, Gov.
Baker filed his fiscal year 2023 budget, which begins on
July 1, for $48.5 Billion. (This was accompanied by legislation
proposing tax breaks for renters, seniors, parents and
low-income workers, and changes to how Massachusetts handles
estate and capital gains taxes.) Beacon Hill soon will exceeded
that $48.5 Billion amount already in this fiscal year by
over $1.5 Billion — and still not a word on any tax
relief for those who pay for every cent of state revenue
surplus.
While the Legislature
continues looking for new ways and excuses to increase revenue and
raise taxes to increase spending, the bonanza of riches continues to
pile up almost faster than Beacon Hill can spend the growing
windfall. In is Advances for the
coming week, the State House News
reported on Friday:
[The] Department of Revenue
is due to report on tax collections for March
... DOR has set the monthly benchmark at $3.43
billion and as of March 15 had already
collected $2.1 billion, up about 23 percent from
the same half-month period in 2021....
Through February, fiscal
2022 tax collections have totaled about $23.673
billion, more than $4 billion above the same
period in fiscal 2021 and more than $1.7
billion above year-to-date benchmarks.
You may recall that total
revenue taken from taxpayers by the state for the previous
fiscal year (FY2021) was over $5 Billion more than extracted from
them the year before
that (FY2020) — so the historic bonanza
continues unabated. Still that's not enough; they scheme and
plot to return none of the embarrassing surplus, to instead
take even more — because More
Is Never Enough (MINE) so long as even a cent remains in your
pocket.
In a relatively quiet week
on Beacon Hill, much was made of the campaigns for the next
governor. The Boston Herald's Peter Lucas, in his column
Creating jobs high on GOP candidate
for governor Chris Doughty’s to-do list, focused
on Republican gubernatorial candidate Chris Doughty, summarized the
contestants succinctly:
. . . That
includes Democrats Maura Healey, the attorney
general, and state Sen. Sonia Chang-Diaz.
It also
includes fellow Republican Geoff Diehl, 52, who is
considered the frontrunner in the two-man battle for
the Republican nomination for governor.
One of the
four will succeed outgoing Republican Gov. Charlie
Baker, who after two terms is not seeking
re-election.
Waiting for the governor's
race to get going
Weekly Roundup
I can imagine only one
thing worse, more disastrous for Massachusetts taxpayers, than Maura
Healey managing to become the state's next governor. That one
thing would be state Sen. Eric Lesser (D-Longmeadow) being elected
as Lt. Governor as her running mate.
Lesser has been persistent
in his relentless assaults on CLT's Proposition 2˝
for many years, obsessed with eroding and weakening it if not
outright killing it, yet. Currently he is the primary sponsor
of S.1899
(An Act relative to regional transportation
ballot initiatives) — which was favorably reported out of The Joint
Committee on Revenue on March 10, sent on to the
Senate Committee on Ways and Means — on which, conveniently,
Sen. Lesser sits as a member.
During his previous attack on Prop 2˝ (in 2020), in the CLT Update
of July 26, 2020 ("Taxpayers
— Stand and Defend Proposition 2˝") I asked the question:
Question of the Week:
Just
who does State Senator Eric Lesser (D-Longmeadow) represent?
Just
three weeks before his debate speech on the Senate floor advancing
his (at that time) latest assault on Prop 2˝,
Lesser's own Longmeadow neighbors and constituents at Town Meeting
rejected the town Selectboard's and Finance Committee's proposal
to begin the process of exempting Longmeadow from Proposition 2˝ tax
limits. Regardless, he chased his obsession.
State Senator Eric Lesser — now candidate for Lt. Governor —
obviously represents his own ambitions and nothing else.
On Friday The
Boston Herald's Amy Sokolow reported ("Lt. gov. candidate Eric Lesser brings fundraising
totals over $1 million"):
Lieutenant
gubernatorial candidate Eric Lesser raised over
$153,000 in March alone — bringing his campaign war
chest to over $1 million. Since announcing his
campaign in January, Lesser has raised over
$437,412, according to his campaign.
Lesser, a
liberal Democratic state senator from East
Longmeadow, has received donations from 1,188
individual donors from 145 municipalities. A total
of 70% of donors came from Massachusetts.
With $1
million in the bank, Lesser has separated himself
from the crowded pack for lieutenant governor. Even
before filing March’s totals, Lesser had almost
$900,000 in the bank. The next-closest current
candidate was state Sen. Adam Hinds, a Democrat from
Pittsfield, who has banked almost $300,000 before
his March filing.
Maura Healey becoming the
next governor is a thought almost too nauseating to contemplate, but
in Massachusetts, just when you think things can't possibly get any
worse, Bay State politics proves you wrong again. In
Massachusetts, things for now can still get worse, and they usually
do. But if Lesser and Healey are defeated then he will be
effectively banished from elected office in Massachusetts
— at least for a while — so hope
remains.
The
opening sentence of The Boston Herald story on
reforming the Massachusetts
estate tax ("They say only death and taxes are
certain, but in Massachusetts the former doesn’t
necessarily stop the latter.") reminded me of the
Salem News editorial cartoon a few days after
Barbara Anderson passed away —
it's hard to believe it'll be six years ago come
Friday at 2:40 p.m.
The Salem News
Editorial Cartoon by Christopher Smigliano
Wednesday, April 13, 2016
Barbara fought for Bay
State taxpayers with everything she had for over three decades of
her life right
up to her end, leaving nothing on the table when she was taken from
us. You might remember her final Salem News column ("Fighting
pirates with the Lost Boys"), published posthumously a few days
after she was gone, or the multitude of
tributes that came in from across the country. (If you're
wondering, no, Gov. Charlie Baker has not yet granted Barbara her
dying wish that he keep his promise — her plea
made in the final two sentences of the last paragraph Barbara
wrote before her death. His promise remains broken and he has only nine months
remaining to keep it.)
If you think of it come
Friday I hope you'll remember all she did with her life for so many.
Assuredly I will. She is the reason why I'm still doing this.
It Doesn't
Need To Be "The Massachusetts Way"
Recall that the
Legislature temporarily "froze" CLT's successful 2000 ballot
question to roll back the "temporary" income tax hike of 1989, just
two years after it was approved by the voters. In 2002 the
income tax rate stood at 5.3 percent, down from 5.75 percent when
CLT and voters ordered it be rolled back. The Legislature
substituted "economic triggers" back then that took eighteen more
years to finally get the income tax rate back down to 5 percent
— just two years ago, in 2020.
That's twenty years after the voters' mandate to drop the
income tax by less than one percentage point (from 5.75 to 5
percent).
Last week the Kentucky
General Assembly passed a bill to cut its state income tax by a
full percentage point, from 5 percent to 4 percent.
The (Louisville, KY) Courier
Journal reported on Thursday ("Lowering Kentucky's income tax," by
Morgan Watkins and Joe Sonka):
[Excerpt]:
The Kentucky
General Assembly gave final passage to more than 100 bills in a
lawmaking blitz across two long days this week, with the
Republican supermajority working to veto-proof as much
legislation as possible before [Democrat] Gov. Andy Beshear's
veto period began Thursday.
The GOP-dominated
legislature can likely override any vetoes issued by Beshear
when they return for the final two days of the 2022 session
April 13-14, but will not be able to override a veto of any bill
passed in those final two days....
Republicans quickly
passed an amended version of House Bill 8 to lower the
individual income tax rate from 5% to 4% and end the state sales
tax exemption for more than a dozen services.
[Majority Floor
Leader Damon Thayer, R-Georgetown, praised HB 8 as fulfilling
Republicans' longstanding goal of "moving away from taxes on
production and moving to taxes on consumption."]
The tax reform bill
now creates a more complex process of incrementally decreasing
the individual income tax rate by .5% until it is eventually
eliminated, with decreases requiring a sufficient fiscal year
surplus and the state's rainy day fund amounting to at least 10%
of general fund revenue for that year.
A fiscal note for
HB 8 projected it would decrease tax revenue by nearly $1.1
billion over the biennium — roughly $300 million less than the
original bill — with Democrats and opponents calling it a
giveaway to the wealthy and a missed opportunity to make
historic investments in education.
A proposal included
in Senate Bill 194, which would have given nearly $1.1 billion
of rebates to tax filers by this summer, was left on the cutting
room floor this session.
Kentucky and Massachusetts
have a similar challenge: Both are bordered by a state with no
income tax whatsoever. Massachusetts has New Hampshire to its
north to compete with; Kentucky has Tennessee to its south (just
thirty miles from me).
I don't expect it will
take Kentucky twenty years — two entire
decades — to entirely eliminate its state
income tax, which it took Massachusetts to reduce its own by
considerably less than one
percent.
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Chip Ford
Executive Director |
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The Boston
Herald
Thursday, March 31, 2022
Death and taxes front and center in Massachusetts
Estate tax should be changed, says tax group
By Matthew Medsger
They say only death and taxes are certain, but in
Massachusetts the former doesn’t necessarily stop the
latter.
That should change, though, according to the Massachusetts
Taxpayers Foundation, which issued a brief Thursday in
support of Gov. Charlie Baker’s proposal to alter the estate
tax.
“Massachusetts should change its estate state because we
currently have the highest tax burden of any state in the
nation for estates between $1-3 million,” Eileen McAnneny,
foundation president, said in an emailed statement.
Currently, Massachusetts is one of 12 states that taxes an
estate after a person’s death.
Among the states that do so, Massachusetts is tied with
Oregon for the lowest threshold at which an estate tax kicks
in, at $1 million.
Massachusetts also employs a so-called “cliff effect,”
whereby an estate worth just $1 less than the threshold is
free of a tax burden, while that dollar results in
substantial tax liability.
This may not seem like it would be a problem for too many
people, but that’s not the case for anyone who owns real
estate in Massachusetts. When it comes to the estate tax,
the value of your home is included.
Considering then, the foundation says, that the current
median value of a single-family home in working class
Somerville is nearly $900,000, it wouldn’t take much more
than a small 401(k) account to put a working family into tax
liability.
“The current tax regime punishes people for working hard,
saving and acquiring wealth,” McAnneny said.
Baker proposes raising the threshold to $2 million and
eliminating the cliff effect with an estate exclusion at $2
million.
Even that proposal, if agreed to by the legislature, would
mean Massachusetts would have the third-highest estate tax,
behind Rhode Island and Oregon. Baker’s estate tax proposal
carries a price tag of $231 million in lost tax revenue, his
administration said.
Baker previously indicated that our economy cannot retain
people through retirement if the rate is not changed to be
competitive. McAnneny agrees.
“Changing our estate tax would make Massachusetts less of an
outlier, more competitive and help to retain people nearing
retirement, small business owners and others that are
adversely impacted,” she said.
State House News
Service
Friday, April 1, 2022
Advances - Week of April 3
The future of natural gas, a core component of the existing
energy mix but one that the state needs to become less
dependent on to meet its climate goals, is front and center
for debate at a Senate hearing on Monday. Just as gasoline
remains the most common way to power vehicles, natural gas
continues to serve as a dominant fuel.
The Senate Global Warming and Climate Change Committee
hearing will be followed up later in the week with hearings
that examine some of the tough choices that will be
necessary to meet near-term emission reduction requirements
in 2025 and 2030 as Massachusetts slowly implements plans to
bring offshore wind energy into the mix, and to build upon
solar and other renewable energy sources.
Another sector that state officials are trying to build out
comes into focus on Thursday, when the Senate is set to act
on legislation to facilitate cannabis cafes and enable more
people affected by the War on Drugs to become entrepreneurs
in the growing legal marijuana market. The rare legislative
push on the marijuana front has a friend in the House too
where Speaker Ron Mariano has given voice to the need to act
on a similar bill.
Gov. Charlie Baker also has decisions to make on an
important bill that landed on his desk Thursday night, a
$1.67 billion midyear budget that includes measures
important to the restaurant industry and divestment efforts
designed to weaken the Russian economy while that country
continues its invasion of Ukraine.
— KEY BILLS LOCKED UP IN
CONFERENCE:
Candidates running for district and county offices have just
more than one month left to collect and submit signatures
for their nomination papers, but while election season
churns along, it's still not clear what tools will be
available to voters this fall with a major reform bill tied
up in closed-door talks.
Legislative leaders tapped a six-lawmaker conference
committee on Feb. 3 to resolve differences between House and
Senate bills (H 4359 / S 2545), both of which would restore
and make permanent mail-in voting and expanded early voting
options that proved popular and successful during the
pandemic. The Senate legislation would also allow
prospective voters to register and cast a ballot in a single
trip to the polls on Election Day or during an early voting
period, while the House bill instead orders Secretary of
State William Galvin to study that reform and its costs -- a
step Galvin says is unnecessary.
Pressure to reach a consensus and finalize the legislation
was lower in the winter but has been growing amid the spring
local election season. Some cities and towns have already
conducted their local races in recent weeks using
pre-pandemic voting models, and many others are set to do
the same over the next month-plus. Conferees tasked with
voting reforms are Reps. Michael Moran, Dan Ryan and Shawn
Dooley and Sens. Barry Finegold, Cynthia Creem and Ryan
Fattman.
Another conference committee -- Reps. Joseph Wagner, Paul
McMurtry and David DeCoste and Sens. Michael Rush, John
Velis and Bruce Tarr -- is negotiating a soldiers' home
reform bill two years after the deadly COVID-19 outbreak at
the Holyoke Soldiers' Home (H 4441 / S 2761).
A separate conference committee technically remains on the
books to finalize a package of joint legislative rules for
the 2021-2022 session, but that panel appears effectively
dead with no compromise offered more than a year after it
started its work and two members, former Rep. Claire Cronin
and former Sen. Joseph Boncore, now resigned.
The number of conference committees will likely grow this
spring once the House and Senate complete their work on the
annual state budget and whenever the House tackles a mental
health bill and the Senate advances a climate bill. - Chris
Lisinski
[ . . . ]
Tuesday, April 5, 2022
MARCH REVENUES: Department of Revenue is due to report on
tax collections for March, which the department said tends
to be "a mid-size month for revenue collections, ranking #6
of the twelve months in nine of the last ten years."
DOR has set the monthly benchmark at $3.43 billion and as of
March 15 had already collected $2.1 billion, up about 23
percent from the same half-month period in 2021. Most of
that increase, DOR said in its mid-month report, came from
income taxes, including withholding, but much of the
increase is due to the recently-enacted elective
pass-through entity excise and is therefore temporary.
Through February, fiscal 2022 tax collections have totaled
about $23.673 billion, more than $4 billion above the same
period in fiscal 2021 and more than $1.7 billion above
year-to-date benchmarks.
[ . . . ]
Thursday, April 7, 2022
CLEAN ENERGY AND CLIMATE PLAN -- DAY ONE: Executive Office
of Energy and Environmental Affairs hosts a public hearing
on its Clean Energy and Climate Plan proposals for 2025 and
2030, including economy-wide emissions limits, emissions
sublimits for specific sectors, and policies to achieve the
emissions limits, sublimits, and other goals.
The hearing will focus specifically on the electric power,
transportation and non-energy sectors. The hearing will
begin with a presentation from the administration followed
by a period of public comment.
The administration's interim plan for 2030 and its 2050
Decarbonization Roadmap, both released at the end of 2020,
laid out possible pathways towards the 2050 net-zero target
as the administration set a new goal of reducing greenhouse
gas emissions by 45 percent from 1990 levels by 2030 (the
2021 climate roadmap law later set a requirement for a 50
percent reduction by 2030).
The 2025 and 2030 emission limits, sublimits and plans must
be finalized by July 1 per the climate roadmap law. In the
fall, the administration said it planned in March 2022 to
present and gather feedback on "proposed emissions limits
and sublimits for 2025 and 2030; proposed goals for reducing
emissions from and increasing carbon sequestration on
natural and working lands (NWL) [and] proposed policy
portfolio that aim to achieve these emission limits,
sublimits, and NWL goals." Following the hearing, written
feedback on the proposals will be accepted at gwsa@mass.gov
until April 30.
Friday, April 8, 2022
CLEAN ENERGY AND CLIMATE PLAN -- DAY TWO:
State House News
Service
Friday, April 1, 2022
Baker Signs $1.67 Bil Midyear Budget
By Colin A. Young
Gov. Charlie Baker on Friday signed the multi-faceted $1.67
billion midyear spending bill that lawmakers sent to his
desk Thursday night, approving all of the bill's spending
while sending back one veto and one amendment.
The fiscal year 2022 supplemental budget allocates money
toward the ongoing COVID-19 response ($700 million), rate
enhancements to human service providers ($401 million),
winter road repair ($100 million), rental assistance ($100
million) and more, extends popular pandemic-era restaurant
policies for a year, and directs state officials to divest
public pension funds from Russia-involved companies.
Baker vetoed one section of the bill, which he said would
"prevent the Department of Early Education and Care (EEC)
from entering into any contracts exceeding one year in
length between March 1, 2022 and June 30, 2023." Baker said
he was vetoing the "restriction" because it "impermissibly
interferes with executive decision making, as well as the
efficient delivery of essential childcare services"
The governor also sent back with an amendment a section of
the bill that allocates supplemental early intervention
staffing recovery payments "disproportionately in favor of
large providers at the expense of smaller providers." Baker
said he supports the funding but the distribution formula
the section established "can and should be improved."
Though he signed the section "to indicate support for the
intent of the appropriation," Baker told lawmakers in a
letter that he wants to work with them to "effectuate a
technical fix to an item authorizing spending for refugee
resettlement." The bill includes $10 million for Ukrainian
refugee and immigrant resettlement efforts.
State House News
Service
Friday, April 1, 2022
Weekly Roundup - This Is The Way
Recap and analysis of the week in state government
By Matt Murphy
Attorney General Maura Healey doesn't seem to be about
reliving the past.
Not when it comes to pot. Not when it comes to gambling. And
certainly not when it comes to her 2014 campaign for
attorney general.
That was the year the new-on-the-political scene prosecutor
defied the odds to beat an insider with a well-known last
name in her first statewide race for public office. In that
campaign, Healey backed a ballot question that would have
repealed the state's casino legalization law.
Eight years later Healey is seeking a new office and another
gambling issue is in the headlines.
"Sports betting, it is the way now," Healey said this week,
an acknowledgment that the whistle on this match has already
blown in other states. It may not have been a ringing
endorsement of gambling on athletics, but it sounded an
awful lot like the answer she gave earlier this month when
asked if she regretted opposing the legalization of
marijuana.
No regrets. Just reality.
"I just want to make sure that everybody is able to share in
the benefits and the gains of that industry," she said about
marijuana. "And I think we still have more work to do when
it comes to the social justice issues that were in fact
driving a lot of proponents of that law."
Incidentally, Senate leaders this week signaled their intent
to take up marijuana industry equity next week. But more on
that another time.
Sen. Sonia Chang-Diaz, Healey's rival for the Democratic
nomination for governor, told the News Service last week she
was "open" to sports betting, but stressed that "specifics
will matter." That's been Senate President Karen Spilka's
mantra as well, insisting on Monday that despite majority
support in her chamber for legislation she is seeking
"consensus" on the details before calling for a vote.
Chang-Diaz also spent this week trying to remind Healey
about her 2014 campaign challenge to primary opponent Warren
Tolman that they debate once a month until the September
primary. That didn't happen, and it doesn't appear
Chang-Diaz will get her wish for three pre-convention
debates either.
The shoe is on the other foot this year with Healey not
seeking, or needing, the exposure that would come from
multiple debates, while that's exactly what Chang-Diaz
wants. Healey said she would agree to two televised debates
between the June 4 convention and the Sept. 6 primary,
prompting Chang-Diaz to call her arrogant.
The mood in the Legislature this
week was more collegial.
The House and Senate found common ground on a $1.67 billion
spending bill that includes money for COVID-19 relief, and
extends popular pandemic accommodations like to-go cocktails
and outdoor dining as Boston Mayor Michelle Wu tried to put
out the kitchen fire she started in the North End by
proposing to charge restaurants a $7,500 impact fee for al
fresco dining.
Lawmakers also agreed on a strategy to divest pension funds
from Russian companies sanctioned by the United States or
incorporated in that country, and both branches extended
their remote voting protocols, allowing at least for the
remainder of this session legislators to call in their
votes.
Home offices are the workplaces of the future, after all,
right?
A special legislative commission co-chaired by Sen. Eric
Lesser and Rep. Josh Cutler released their report on the
"Future of Work" this week, and while it may not have
contained any shocking findings, it did reinforce the way
everyone has understood the impact of the pandemic.
Hybrid and remote working models, the report found, are here
to stay with ramifications for commercial real estate and
downtowns and requiring a renewed commitment to workforce
training and ensuring supports like child care and elder
care are affordable and accessible to families.
Hybrid participation is how the Legislature continues to
operate these days, but House Democrats were positively
giddy about another step toward normalcy when they caucused
together in-person for the first time in two years.
Multiple rounds of applause were heard outside the private
meeting before lawmakers made their way to the House chamber
to pass a $350 million road and infrastructure maintenance
bill that included $200 million for Chapter 90 and $150
million spread across multiple other programs.
Rep. William Straus, the co-chair of the Transportation
Committee, said the House wasn't quite ready to reform the
formula for Chapter 90 to more equitably distribute aid to
rural communities with many roads and few people, but he
said it's still a possibility in the coming months.
Rep. Thomas Golden will likely be on the receiving, rather
than the giving, end of Chapter 90 by that time as Golden
was offered the position of Lowell city manager on Wednesday
and is expected to soon depart Beacon Hill.
Gov. Charlie Baker's longtime chief of staff Kristen Lepore
is also leaving the State House, but for where she wasn't
ready to say. Lepore is just Baker's second chief of staff
in more than seven years, and has held down the job since
the summer of 2017 when she moved over from being secretary
of administration and finance.
When she departs on April 15, Baker's senior advisor and
steady sounding board Tim Buckley will take over to steer
the ship for the remaining nine months. Among Buckley's
tasks will be to try to get the governor's pre-trial
detention bill through the Legislature on the
administration's third attempt.
Baker and Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito were in Worcester this week
to again hear from survivors of abuse about the fear they
experienced knowing their abusers were free on bail during
the duration of a case, or would face no criminal
repercussions when they cut off their court-ordered GPS
tracking device.
The amplification of these survivor stories has been the
strategy Baker and his team have been using to build public
pressure on Democrats to consider his bill, which sits
before the Judiciary Committee and faces a deadline of April
15 for the panel to make a recommendation.
The Legislature and the Committee on Financial Services has
longer than that - probably until around early July - to
make a call on whether to intervene and try to pass a bill
that would negate the need for app-based transportation
companies like Uber and Lyft to take their employment case
to the voters in November.
These tech companies are seeking legal permission to
classify their drivers as independent contractors in
exchange for some wage and benefit guarantees, while
opponents believe drivers should be treated as full-time
employees.
If the committee's hearing on this issue this week showed
anything, it's that the two sides are far apart and digging
in deeper.
STORY OF THE WEEK: People bet on sports. They like to work
remotely. And they enjoy eating outside. That's just the way
it is ...
The Boston
Herald
Saturday, April 2, 2022
Creating jobs high on GOP candidate for governor Chris
Doughty’s to-do list
By Peter Lucas
Here is one thing Republican gubernatorial candidate Chris
Doughty can brag about: He has created more jobs than anyone
else running for governor.
In fact, he has created more jobs in his successful business
career than have all the candidates seeking to become
governor combined.
That includes Democrats Maura Healey, the attorney general,
and state Sen. Sonia Chang-Diaz.
It also includes fellow Republican Geoff Diehl, 52, who is
considered the frontrunner in the two-man battle for the
Republican nomination for governor.
One of the four will succeed outgoing Republican Gov.
Charlie Baker, who after two terms is not seeking
re-election.
Of the four, Doughty, a Wrentham father and grandfather, is
the only candidate who has not run for office before. So, he
does not talk or act like a politician, but more like an
executive who knows how to run an entity like a business.
Asked why he was running, Doughty said, “I want to give back
to a country that has blessed me.” He also wants to create
jobs in Massachusetts along the way, which is something he
knows about.
Doughty, before taking a leave, was president of Capstan
Atlantic, a metal gear manufacturing company he began as a
start-up. It makes parts for cars, trucks and washing
machines, among other things. It now employs 700 skilled
workers at two facilities, one of which is in Wrentham. Half
of the workers are immigrants.
Doughty, who is fluent in Spanish, having spent two years in
Argentina as [a] youthful Mormon missionary, said he is
familiar with the views and needs of workers, having worked
beside them for years.
He is a graduate of Brigham Young University and received a
master’s degree from Harvard Business School. In 2016 the
Massachusetts Economic Council awarded Capstan its gold
medal for growth and economic expansion.
Doughty said he has turned down several lucrative offers of
tax breaks from other states wanting him to relocate.
He said his skill set as a hands-on executive would come in
handy if he were governor. “I know how to read and balance a
budget,” he said. “I know how to create jobs.”
Before he can do that, however, he must defeat Diehl, a
former state representative from Whitman, and then become
the Republican nominee.
Diehl has a strong head start. He already has one statewide
campaign under his belt. He was defeated for the U.S. Senate
in 2018 by Democrat Elizabeth Warren.
The conservative Diehl, in the fractured Massachusetts
Republican Party, is supported by Jim Lyons, the party
chairman, and has been endorsed by former President Donald
Trump.
While that may not be sound like a big deal in progressive,
anti-Trump Massachusetts, Diehl’s conservative backing will
play a major role in winning the party convention
endorsement and the September primary.
Doughty must get 15% of the convention delegate vote to
appear on the September primary ballot, which, for a person
who has not even been to a convention, is a tall order.
He said he was confident he can do it. And toward that end
he has come up with $500,000 of his own money to seed his
campaign.
While Doughty discourages being pigeonholed, he is
considered a moderate in the fashion of Charlie Baker.
So, the GOP campaign between the two is shaping up as a
battle over the future of the Republican Party in
Massachusetts.
Will it continue along the moderate/liberal path traveled by
former Govs. Bill Weld, Paul Cellucci, Mitt Romney and
Charlie Baker — and now Chris Doughty — or will it go the
way of conservative Geoff Diehl and Jim Lyons?
“I am not beholden to any political machine,” Doughty said.
“I don’t come from that world. I come from the
entrepreneurial world, where we take complex problems and
solve them.”
The governor is the state’s chief executive officer. Doughty
said, “The CEO’s job is creating jobs. We need a to elect a
governor who is compatible with creating jobs.”
“I’ll shake things up.”
— Peter Lucas is a veteran
Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.
Commonwealth Magazine
Tuesday, March 29, 2022
Waiting for the governor's race to get going
By Bruce Mohl, CommonWealth editor
When Sonia Chang-Diaz challenged Maura Healey to agree to a
series of three televised debates prior to the Democratic
state convention in June, some political analysts dismissed
the move as an attempt by a struggling candidate to gain
ground on a better known and better financed rival.
There may be some truth to that analysis, but Chang-Diaz
puts forward another theory -- that voters deserve to know
where the two Democratic candidates for governor stand on
the major issues of the day.
“This is standard-issue stuff,” Chang-Diaz said of her call
for debates. “There are real differences between the
attorney general and me.”
Chang-Diaz, a state senator from Jamaica Plain, points out
that Healey herself called for monthly primary debates when
she first ran for attorney general in 2014. And the
Democratic gubernatorial primary race in 2018 featured three
debates as well.
Healey’s campaign responded to Chang-Diaz’s challenge with a
vague promise to debate, but didn’t say when she would
debate or how many times she would debate. Chang-Diaz’s
campaign called the response a dodge.
The back and forth exchanges were fairly standard stuff in a
race between a clear frontrunner and a challenger. But they
also underscored the cautious campaign that Healey appears
to be running.
Chang-Diaz is fond of pointing out that she jumped into the
race for governor before Gov. Charlie Baker made his
decision not to seek reelection, while Healey waited until
the popular Republican governor bowed out before declaring
her candidacy.
Chang-Diaz’s candidacy is all about introducing herself to
voters, but Healey is acting as if everybody already knows
where she stands. A recent Boston Globe story noted Healey’s
campaign is “long on advantages” and “short on specifics.”
After nearly eight years as attorney general, Healey is a
known commodity, to some extent. We know she sued former
president Donald Trump a lot. We know she went after the
Sackler family and Purdue Pharma in court. And we know she
suggested the protests sweeping the nation after George
Floyd’s killing in 2020 might yield long-term benefits.
“Yes, America is burning. But that’s how forests grow,” she
said.
Those stances and comments reveal a lot about Healey, but
voters need more from a candidate for governor. A governor
deals with a multitude of issues, from education funding to
public transportation, from prisons to the State Police,
from public health to climate change. Sorting out where
candidates stand is what campaigns are all about.
Chang-Diaz’s campaign website has the standard issues page,
where you can read about the candidate’s stances on
education, climate change, racial justice, housing, economic
justice, health care, transportation, policing, gender
equality, LGBTQ+ rights, and voting rights.
Healey’s campaign website, by contrast, includes the video
announcing her candidacy for governor and sections devoted
to fundraising and recruiting supporters. With a little over
two months to go until the Democratic state convention in
Worcester, there is no tab yet for issues on Healey’s
campaign website.
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