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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”
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CLT UPDATE
Monday, August 1, 2022
CLT's Tax Cap Saved
— $3B Tax Rebate Expected!
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“I’m sure Barbara Anderson is up there looking
down on us with a grin pumping her fist in the
heavens.”
— Chip Ford, executive
director of Citizens for Limited Taxation
In 1986, Barbara
Anderson, founder of Citizens for Limited Taxation,
working with the Mass. High Tech Council, authored a
successful ballot question that requires the state
to return money to taxpayers when state tax revenues
grow by more than wages and salaries in the same
year.
Anderson, as historians
and state government wonks may remember, was the
tax-cutting pioneer who is famous for pushing
through Proposition 2½, another successful ballot
question that limited the annual increase in
property taxes that cities and towns are allowed to
charge to 2.5 percent. While Proposition 2½ limited
tax increases at the local level, the 1986 ballot
question was intended to limit increases in state
taxes.
The only problem is
that except for one other time — in 1987 — the
growth in tax revenues has never outstripped the
growth in wages and salaries. Enter the current
year. While final tallies are yet to be certified by
state Auditor Suzanne Bump — something she will do
in September — it is clear that the amount of tax
revenue collected by the state is much higher than
this year’s increase in salaries and wages....
During a period of
historic inflation, the right thing to do is to give
taxpayers a break. Indeed, that’s something Barbara
Anderson, who died in 2016, understood 35 years ago
when she pushed for passage of the refund
referendum. As Chip Ford said, she’s probably
pumping her fist looking down on Massachusetts,
maligned for so many years as “Tax-a-chusetts.” That
moniker seems to have gone by the wayside,
thankfully, although taxes still are high in this
state.
But it would be a
fitting thing to do — perhaps in remembrance of
Barbara Anderson if not for taxpayers — to implement
this refund program approved by voters in 1986, and
put the slur “Tax-a-chusetts” to rest once and for
all.
A Salem
News editorial
Monday, August 1, 2022
Baker pulls rabbit out of hat with
1986 refund law
The sun was up and
Monday was well underway by the time the Senate
gaveled out of the two-year term's final formal
session that began shortly after 11 a.m. Sunday, a
historically long affair punctuated by deals on
major bills that have been in the works for
months....
Sen. Adam Hinds of
Pittsfield, who is not running for reelection and
was involved in his final formal session, gaveled
the marathon to a close at 10:13 a.m., drawing
applause from those still in attendance.
State
House News Service
Monday, August 1, 2022
Senate Session Summary - Sunday, July 31, 2022 to
Monday, Aug. 1, 2022
Final Formal Session Runs 23 Hours
One of the longest
House sessions in decades, perhaps one of the
longest ever, was marked by an absence of floor
speeches and yet an abundance of drama.... The
House adjourned at 10:10 a.m.
State
House News Service
Monday, August 1, 2022
House Session Summary - Sunday, July 31, 2022 to
Monday, Aug. 1, 2022
House and Senate
negotiators struck early morning agreements Monday
on sports betting and mental health access but will
keep a significant economic development bill in
conference committee as they continue to wrestle
with an existing law that could trigger nearly $3
billion in tax relief this year.
The deals on sports
betting and mental health access were announced at
about 5:15 a.m., more than five hours after the
legislative rules called for the formal sessions to
end for the year....
The Legislature's major
economic development bill, which included the House
and Senate's preferred tax relief plans, is not
emerging from its conference committee purgatory
Monday and its borrowing provisions will die on the
vine since the branches will not be able to take the
required roll call votes.
"I think members are
disappointed. You know, we're all disappointed
because we all had projects and investments in that
piece of legislation. We had investments that are
necessary for our hospitals, for our human service
workforce, for early education," Rodrigues said. "So
we're disappointed, but we want to make sure we get
it right."
The decision means the
one-time rebates of $250 to eligible individual
taxpayers and $500 to married taxpayers who filed
jointly, which lawmakers have promoted in recent
weeks, will not be issued, Rodrigues said.
He said the economic
development bill is "going to remain in conference
until we take a deeper dive and have more time to
really analyze the effects of the 62F matter that we
just learned about earlier this week." He was
referring to the 1986 law that may trigger $3
billion in tax relief.
He also said that he
doesn't "know what we would have to do to address
62F, that's why we need more time to really figure
if do we need to address 62F."
But when Mariano spoke
about 20 minutes later, he said that taxpayers can
count on getting their share of the state's excess
revenue under Chapter 62F.
"We have 62F that's the
law of the land and it's gonna happen," he said.
"The governor has said it's the law of the land and
that's worth, he thinks, $2.5 billion but he's not
even sure, and he thinks he can get it out this
year. So I think that's an important return to the
taxpayers."
The speaker said that,
had the Legislature proceeded with its $1 billion in
tax rebates and cuts in parallel with the 62F
relief, "we were going to be spending too much
money." Gov. Charlie Baker disagrees and has said
that both relief plans were "eminently affordable"
to do in tandem.
Mariano explained why
the Legislature saw it differently than the
governor: "Because we're a bit more fiscally prudent
and we're gonna be here at the end of this year
when, if the economy makes a downturn, we're gonna
be talking about reductions in line items, potential
cuts in budgets, and maybe even if it gets bad
eventually tax increases." ...
The revelation earlier
this week that a 1986 voter law could trigger $3
billion in tax relief caught Beacon Hill off guard
and seemed to paralyze Democrats as they struggled
to decide whether to pass a $4 billion economic
development bill that includes about $1 billion in
tax relief, or backtrack and chart a new path.
State
House News Service
Monday, August 1, 2022 [7:16 AM]
Lawmakers Retreat On
Economic Development Bill
In an extraordinary
turnabout, Massachusetts lawmakers on Monday failed
to strike a deal on a hulking economic development
package that included plans for $1 billion in tax
relief, saying they had deep concerns over what the
state can afford amid a chaotic end to their
legislative session.
Democratic leaders
passed a host of other major legislation, including
bills that would legalize sports betting in
Massachusetts, expand access to mental health care,
and reshape the state’s firearms laws — all hours
after blowing past a midnight deadline to complete
their work following 19 months of lawmaking.
But as their final
marathon session stretched to 10:13 a.m. Monday — 23
hours after it began in the Senate — Democratic
leaders stalled perhaps their most high-profile
proposal, and one they had celebrated only weeks
earlier, arguing they were thrown a late-session
curveball in the form of a 1980s-era law that could
ultimately send an additional $3 billion back to
taxpayers in the coming months.
That likelihood, they
said, muddied the state’s economic picture even as
Governor Charlie Baker argued Massachusetts has more
than enough of a fiscal cushion to absorb both sets
of tax relief.
The lawmakers’ decision
scuttles, for now, a plan to ease the burden on
residents pinched by rising inflation with a mix of
one-time $250 rebates and permanent tax changes as
part of more than $4 billion in spending....
The 1986 voter-passed
law at issue seeks to limit state tax revenue growth
to the growth of total wages and salaries in the
state. Should revenue exceed that “allowable”
amount, taxpayers are then due a credit equal to the
excess amount.
With revenues from last
fiscal year far surpassing expectations, the Baker
administration last week estimated taxpayers could
be due back more than $2.9 billion under the law,
which hasn’t been triggered since 1987. In response,
House Speaker Ronald Mariano had left open the
possibility of seeking to undo, change, or suspend
the law just as it’s about to benefit potentially
millions of taxpayers. Lawmakers ultimately opted
for none of the above, for now.
“We thought it would be
the wisest choice to make sure we do this properly,”
Mariano told reporters Monday. “Getting $3 billion
dropped on you the week before you are finalizing
your year-end finances doesn’t lead to good
decision-making. We want to be fiscally prudent, and
know what we are getting into.” ...
We are kind of
perplexed,” Senator Cindy F. Friedman told reporters
shortly before midnight Sunday. “We’ve got this tax
piece, which is really serious and was laid in front
of us in a pretty short amount of time.”
Supporters of the tax
cap law, however, said lawmakers’ effort to cast its
emergence as a reason not to pursue the wider
package is a “convenient excuse,” said Chris
Anderson, president of the Massachusetts High
Technology Council, which pushed the original 1986
voter-passed law.
“It still doesn’t
undercut their ability to pursue the economic
development bill, at least major sections of it,”
Anderson said. “If they were caught by surprise,
it’s probably because they were distracted by the
billions of dollars they had a free hand to spend.”
The
Boston Globe
Monday, August 1, 2022
Sports betting, gun control, tax
relief.
Here’s what Mass. lawmakers did — and didn’t — agree
to overnight. |
Chip Ford's CLT
Commentary |
COMING AS SOON AS I
CATCH A BREATH — BUT WANT TO GET OUT THE GOOD
NEWS!
|
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Chip Ford
Executive Director |
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The
Salem News
Monday, August 1, 2022
A Salem News editorial
Baker pulls rabbit out of hat with 1986 refund law
“I’m sure Barbara Anderson is up there looking down on us
with a grin pumping her fist in the heavens.”
— Chip Ford, executive director
of Citizens for Limited Taxation
In 1986, Barbara Anderson,
founder of Citizens for Limited Taxation, working with the
Mass. High Tech Council, authored a successful ballot
question that requires the state to return money to
taxpayers when state tax revenues grow by more than wages
and salaries in the same year.
Anderson, as historians and state government wonks may
remember, was the tax-cutting pioneer who is famous for
pushing through Proposition 2½, another successful ballot
question that limited the annual increase in property taxes
that cities and towns are allowed to charge to 2.5 percent.
While Proposition 2½ limited tax increases at the local
level, the 1986 ballot question was intended to limit
increases in state taxes.
The only problem is that except for one other time — in 1987
— the growth in tax revenues has never outstripped the
growth in wages and salaries. Enter the current year. While
final tallies are yet to be certified by state Auditor
Suzanne Bump — something she will do in September — it is
clear that the amount of tax revenue collected by the state
is much higher than this year’s increase in salaries and
wages.
As reported in Sunday’s edition of The Eagle-Tribune by
Statehouse reporter Christian Wade, “On Thursday, Gov.
Charlie Baker said based on the state’s robust tax
collections — which have increased by about 20% over the
past year — he expects the law to be triggered for the first
time in decades, with estimates upwards of $2.5 billion in
potential rebates to taxpayers.”
That $2.5 billion would be added to residents’ refund checks
next year. For an individual making $75,000, it would mean a
refund of around $250. That’s on top of several other refund
programs being considered by the Legislature and the
governor this year.
House and Senate negotiators are working this weekend —
right up to the Sunday midnight deadline when the
legislative session ends — on a “series of expanded tax
credits and/or rebate checks to Massachusetts residents that
could total $1 billion,” according to a report in
Commonwealth Magazine. “The package includes expanded tax
breaks for renters, seniors who own their own homes,
children, and low-income people. The package also includes
rebates of $250 to $500 for moderate income residents and a
sharp reduction in the estate tax.”
This last-minute jockeying — along with Baker’s invoking of
the 1986 refund ballot question — was likely completely
avoidable and demonstrates the unfortunate dynamic at the
Statehouse. Baker has been pushing for tax cuts for months,
filing legislation that would have reduced the gas tax for a
few months along with other measures that have been snubbed
by Democratic leadership in the House and Senate.
Statehouse Republicans, a largely ignored and powerless
minority, have been on the correct side of the issue, along
with Baker.
During a period of historic inflation, the right thing to do
is to give taxpayers a break. Indeed, that’s something
Barbara Anderson, who died in 2016, understood 35 years ago
when she pushed for passage of the refund referendum. As
Chip Ford said, she’s probably pumping her fist looking down
on Massachusetts, maligned for so many years as “Tax-a-chusetts.”
That moniker seems to have gone by the wayside, thankfully,
although taxes still are high in this state.
But it would be a fitting thing to do — perhaps in
remembrance of Barbara Anderson if not for taxpayers — to
implement this refund program approved by voters in 1986,
and put the slur “Tax-a-chusetts” to rest once and for all.
State House News
Service
Monday, August 1, 2022 [7:16 AM]
Lawmakers Retreat On Economic Development Bill
Sports Betting, Mental Health Agreements Reached During
All-Night Session
By Colin A. Young and Michael P. Norton
House and Senate negotiators struck early morning agreements
Monday on sports betting and mental health access but will
keep a significant economic development bill in conference
committee as they continue to wrestle with an existing law
that could trigger nearly $3 billion in tax relief this
year.
The deals on sports betting and mental health access were
announced at about 5:15 a.m., more than five hours after the
legislative rules called for the formal sessions to end for
the year. The deals represent victories for both House
Speaker Ronald Mariano, who has been a strong advocate for
sports betting, and Senate President Karen Spilka, who
prioritized the mental health bill.
The sports betting bill (H 5164) will legalize wagering on
professional and some collegiate contests, though betting on
Massachusetts colleges and universities will not be allowed
unless they are playing in a tournament like March Madness,
lead Senate conferee Sen. Michael Rodrigues said.
"The Senate bill came out with no college at all. The House
had full college and we compromised on just no in-state
college," he said. "And that's how you get things done, is
reach compromise."
Mariano told reporters as the sun was rising Monday that
Massachusetts bettors will "still be allowed to bet on just
about everything else."
"The fact that she was concerned about the comments by a few
college presidents, we thought that maybe taking that out
would speed us along and get us to a deal," the speaker
said, referring to Spilka sharing the concerns of the
presidents of every Massachusetts college or university with
Division I athletics, who were opposed to allowing betting
on their contests.
The state's slots parlor, casinos and race tracks would be
able to obtain sports betting licenses subject to a $5
million application fee and each casino would be allowed to
partner with two mobile betting platforms. Another seven
mobile betting platform licenses would be available as well.
Wagers would be taxed at a rate of 15 percent if placed in
person and 20 percent if placed via a mobile platform.
Jason Robbins, CEO of Boston-based DraftKings, said his
company is "thrilled that our home state has acted to
protect consumers, create jobs and grow revenue in the
Commonwealth."
Left on the conference committee cutting room floor was the
Senate's whistle-to-whistle ban on sports betting ads during
live sporting events. House officials said they were
concerned that the provision might be unconstitutional.
The Legislature's major economic development bill, which
included the House and Senate's preferred tax relief plans,
is not emerging from its conference committee purgatory
Monday and its borrowing provisions will die on the vine
since the branches will not be able to take the required
roll call votes.
"I think members are disappointed. You know, we're all
disappointed because we all had projects and investments in
that piece of legislation. We had investments that are
necessary for our hospitals, for our human service
workforce, for early education," Rodrigues said. "So we're
disappointed, but we want to make sure we get it right."
The decision means the one-time rebates of $250 to eligible
individual taxpayers and $500 to married taxpayers who filed
jointly, which lawmakers have promoted in recent weeks, will
not be issued, Rodrigues said.
He said the economic development bill is "going to remain in
conference until we take a deeper dive and have more time to
really analyze the effects of the 62F matter that we just
learned about earlier this week." He was referring to the
1986 law that may trigger $3 billion in tax relief.
He also said that he doesn't "know what we would have to do
to address 62F, that's why we need more time to really
figure if do we need to address 62F."
But when Mariano spoke about 20 minutes later, he said that
taxpayers can count on getting their share of the state's
excess revenue under Chapter 62F.
"We have 62F that's the law of the land and it's gonna
happen," he said. "The governor has said it's the law of the
land and that's worth, he thinks, $2.5 billion but he's not
even sure, and he thinks he can get it out this year. So I
think that's an important return to the taxpayers."
The speaker said that, had the Legislature proceeded with
its $1 billion in tax rebates and cuts in parallel with the
62F relief, "we were going to be spending too much money."
Gov. Charlie Baker disagrees and has said that both relief
plans were "eminently affordable" to do in tandem.
Mariano explained why the Legislature saw it differently
than the governor: "Because we're a bit more fiscally
prudent and we're gonna be here at the end of this year
when, if the economy makes a downturn, we're gonna be
talking about reductions in line items, potential cuts in
budgets, and maybe even if it gets bad eventually tax
increases."
Details on the mental health access compromise bill were
scant Monday morning and the bill text was not available
from the Senate clerk's office as of 6:45 a.m. The bill that
the Senate passed unanimously in November would mandate
insurance coverage for an annual mental health exam, similar
to an annual physical. The bill that the House passed
unanimously in June, according to Mariano, would
"complement" the Senate bill and "focus on a little bit of a
different area" with the goal of "creating a complete mental
health program for our citizens in the Commonwealth."
Though agreements were struck and announced just after 5
a.m., both branches still needed to take the votes necessary
to pass the compromises and send them to Gov. Charlie Baker.
The House and Senate were both active at 7 a.m. Monday.
Sessions that started at or before noon Sunday went deep
into Monday morning and were marked by long recesses. There
was no shortage of lawmakers who said they were unsure what
was happening or just sat around for hours waiting for their
colleagues to come to agreements and serve up bills for
votes.
Legislators at around midnight moved one bill out of a
House-Senate conference committee, agreeing on a slate of
cannabis reforms to bring more equity to that sector,
regulate host community agreements, and clear a path for
cities and towns to authorize cafes where people can use
marijuana.
Earlier in the day, the branches returned a climate policy
and clean energy bill to Gov. Charlie Baker, adopting some
amendments he recommended but leaving others out. Democrats
said they hoped the changes would win Baker's signature on
their bill, which a veto would kill since lawmakers waited
until formal sessions were ending for the two-year session
to settle on a plan and would not have a chance to override
the governor.
Other bills sent to Baker's desk would authorize $11.3
billion in new infrastructure spending, crack down on the
taking or transmission of images of crime victims by first
responders, and extend the laws enabling wagering on
simulcast horse and dog races.
The revelation earlier this week that a 1986 voter law could
trigger $3 billion in tax relief caught Beacon Hill off
guard and seemed to paralyze Democrats as they struggled to
decide whether to pass a $4 billion economic development
bill that includes about $1 billion in tax relief, or
backtrack and chart a new path.
The Legislature last month sent Baker an overdue $52.7
billion annual budget which raises state spending by about
10 percent and Baker signed off on nearly all of it, and
said he believes the state can afford both the Chapter 62F
tax relief under the 1986 law and the spending and tax
relief in the economic development bill.
Also early Monday, the Senate adopted a proposal to expand
the dangerousness law governing which defendants can be
detained before their trial. The House on Saturday rejected
a dangerousness law amendment recommended by Gov. Baker. The
narrower Senate amendment was attached to a state budget
initiative designed to make phone calls free between
prisoners and their families, a measure that's now in
jeopardy due to the differences between the branches over
the pre-trial detention proposal.
Informal sessions are likely to continue in the House and
Senate through early January, giving lawmakers the
opportunity to keep moving bills as long as there's
unanimous consent among legislators present. Rodrigues said
a pared down economic development might move during informal
sessions and Mariano said he hoped the Legislature would
"pick away" at it throughout informal sessions.
The Boston
Globe
Monday, August 1, 2022
Sports betting, gun control, tax relief.
Here’s what Mass. lawmakers did — and didn’t — agree to
overnight.
By Matt Stout and Samantha J. Gross
In an extraordinary turnabout, Massachusetts lawmakers on
Monday failed to strike a deal on a hulking economic
development package that included plans for $1 billion in
tax relief, saying they had deep concerns over what the
state can afford amid a chaotic end to their legislative
session.
Democratic leaders passed a host of other major legislation,
including bills that would legalize sports betting in
Massachusetts, expand access to mental health care, and
reshape the state’s firearms laws — all hours after blowing
past a midnight deadline to complete their work following 19
months of lawmaking.
But as their final marathon session stretched to 10:13 a.m.
Monday — 23 hours after it began in the Senate — Democratic
leaders stalled perhaps their most high-profile proposal,
and one they had celebrated only weeks earlier, arguing they
were thrown a late-session curveball in the form of a
1980s-era law that could ultimately send an additional $3
billion back to taxpayers in the coming months.
That likelihood, they said, muddied the state’s economic
picture even as Governor Charlie Baker argued Massachusetts
has more than enough of a fiscal cushion to absorb both sets
of tax relief.
The lawmakers’ decision scuttles, for now, a plan to ease
the burden on residents pinched by rising inflation with a
mix of one-time $250 rebates and permanent tax changes as
part of more than $4 billion in spending.
“The fiscally responsible thing to do is to hit pause right
now on all of this spending,” state Senator Michael J.
Rodrigues, the Senate’s budget chairman, told reporters
early Monday. “We’re disappointed, but we want to make sure
we get it right. We are committed to getting some real,
long-term permanent tax relief done.”
Rodrigues said lawmakers could seek to move the tax package
in one of the informal sessions that will dot the
legislative calendar between now and January, as well as
other spending initiatives that were supposed to help prop
up housing production, financially strained hospitals, and
the state’s unemployment trust fund, among a slew of other
things in the bill they failed to move to Baker Monday.
But the decision to not move on the economic development
bill nevertheless marked a stark — and, for longtime State
House observers, stunning — reversal for legislation that
overwhelmingly passed both chambers in recent weeks and was
touted by legislative leaders as a once-in-a-generation bid
to help taxpayers.
Baker’s announcement last week that the state’s
record-setting revenues are poised to trigger a nearly
40-year-old tax cap law upended negotiations over the $1
billion tax relief proposal that lawmakers spent months
developing.
The 1986 voter-passed law at issue seeks to limit state tax
revenue growth to the growth of total wages and salaries in
the state. Should revenue exceed that “allowable” amount,
taxpayers are then due a credit equal to the excess amount.
With revenues from last fiscal year far surpassing
expectations, the Baker administration last week estimated
taxpayers could be due back more than $2.9 billion under the
law, which hasn’t been triggered since 1987. In response,
House Speaker Ronald Mariano had left open the possibility
of seeking to undo, change, or suspend the law just as it’s
about to benefit potentially millions of taxpayers.
Lawmakers ultimately opted for none of the above, for now.
“We thought it would be the wisest choice to make sure we do
this properly,” Mariano told reporters Monday. “Getting $3
billion dropped on you the week before you are finalizing
your year-end finances doesn’t lead to good decision-making.
We want to be fiscally prudent, and know what we are getting
into.”
Aides to Baker did not immediately respond to a request for
comment Monday morning.
Lawmakers’ constituents face rapidly rising inflation, and
economic worries have topped residents’ list of concerns.
Aiming to help, the House and Senate tucked similar tax
relief packages into hulking economic development
legislation, including proposals to increase a tax deduction
for renters, hike the Earned Income Tax Credit, and lift the
state’s child and dependent tax credits. The economic
development bill itself would spend more than $4 billion,
including pulling money from an expected budget surplus and
unspent federal stimulus funds.
But that package remained locked in negotiations into early
Monday before legislators announced they could not reach an
agreement before formal lawmaking ended.
“We are kind of perplexed,” Senator Cindy F. Friedman told
reporters shortly before midnight Sunday. “We’ve got this
tax piece, which is really serious and was laid in front of
us in a pretty short amount of time.”
Supporters of the tax cap law, however, said lawmakers’
effort to cast its emergence as a reason not to pursue the
wider package is a “convenient excuse,” said Chris Anderson,
president of the Massachusetts High Technology Council,
which pushed the original 1986 voter-passed law.
“It still doesn’t undercut their ability to pursue the
economic development bill, at least major sections of it,”
Anderson said. “If they were caught by surprise, it’s
probably because they were distracted by the billions of
dollars they had a free hand to spend.”
Lawmakers didn’t leave everything on the table.
Among the bills that they reached agreements on in the early
hours of Monday morning and later shipped to Baker was a
long-awaited package to legalize sports betting and bolster
mental health care in the state.
The gaming legislation allows betting on professional and
collegiate sports, but excludes betting on colleges in
Massachusetts, a significant compromise between the House
and the Senate’s differing philosophical views. The bill
does, however, allow for betting on in-state colleges if
they are competing in national tournaments, Rodrigues said.
It also includes some of the Senate’s proposed guardrails,
like banning the use of credit cards to place bets.
If signed into law by Baker, who has expressed his support
for sports betting in the past, Massachusetts will join 30
states and Washington, D.C., in allowing for the
increasingly popular type of gambling, according to the
American Gaming Association.
Ever since the Supreme Court in 2018 struck down a federal
law that banned sports betting, the concept has been a
priority of Mariano, the House speaker, who said a year ago
that a sports betting bill without the ability to bet on
college games “probably would be” a deal-breaker for him.
Last week, Senate President Karen E. Spilka told WBUR’s
“Radio Boston” that Mariano should soften his “all or
nothing” stance.
“We thought by taking [Massachusetts college sports] out, it
would speed things along,” Mariano told reporters of the
compromise bill early Monday morning.
The sweeping mental health bill also is headed to Baker’s
desk. The legislation, among other things, would mandate
insurance coverage for an annual mental health wellness exam
and ensure compliance with the state’s mental health parity
laws.
A late-session crunch is typical on Beacon Hill. Lawmakers’
self-imposed deadlines often prove the last antidote to
legislative logjams, forcing compromise, horse-trading, or
in some cases, the death of major bills. But not in at least
a generation has the Legislature entertained such major tax
relief plans, let alone in the session’s waning hours.
While joint legislative rules require formal lawmaking to
conclude by midnight, on Beacon Hill lawmakers can — and
often do — suspend their own rules.
Besides barreling toward making major changes to state law
in the dead of night, lawmakers’ tardiness also gave the
upper hand to Baker, a lame-duck Republican governor who
isn’t seeking reelection this fall. Baker is allowed 10 days
to act on any legislation that reaches his desk, meaning he
can veto a bill and the Legislature will have little ability
to act beyond calling a special session, a rarity on Beacon
Hill.
Baker was in the State House at around 9 p.m. Sunday and was
in “regular communication” with legislative leadership on
major bills still being negotiated, including the economic
development bill, spokeswoman Sarah Finlaw said.
Shortly before 5 a.m., lawmakers said they reached a deal on
language that would retool the state’s firearms laws in the
wake of a Supreme Court decision expanding gun rights across
the country.
The agreement would broaden who is prohibited from getting a
license to carry to anyone who has a temporary or permanent
harassment prevention order against them, as well as require
police to conduct a “personal interview” of anyone seeking a
license to carry, according to legislative officials.
The language would also bar police from imposing
restrictions on licenses, something Massachusetts officials
said the high court case, known as New York State Rifle &
Pistol Association v. Bruen, demanded. The decision
overturned a New York law — similar to one in Massachusetts
— that required applicants to prove a special need to get a
license to carry a firearm in public.
Lawmakers, however, discarded a more far-reaching House
proposal that would have required gun owners to renew their
licenses twice as often.
“This is consistent with what the chambers aimed to do,
which was a narrow response to Bruen, to start and a promise
of a lot more to come on gun control,” state Representative
Michael S. Day, the House judiciary chairman, told reporters
early Monday.
Hours earlier, the chambers sent to Baker an $11.3 billion
infrastructure and transportation borrowing bill that also
includes a slew of policy, including regulations on
so-called e-bikes and $275 million in funding to extend
passenger rail service from Boston to the western part of
the state.
Cut from the final version, however, was a Senate-passed
provision that would have required the MBTA to produce a
plan for a low-income fare program. A coalition of transit
advocates called the decision “deeply disappointing.”
Lawmakers also delivered a response to a series of
amendments Baker sought on a sweeping climate and energy
bill, shipping it back to him Sunday night.
They agreed to several of Baker’s proposed changes, notably
one to eliminate the “price cap” on offshore wind projects —
a mechanism that requires each new project to offer power at
a lower price than the one brought online before it. Some
have worried that the cap has discouraged bids, and while
lawmakers had initially left it intact, they ultimately
capitulated to Baker’s push to kill it.
“Removing the price cap has been a top priority for the
governor, and we share his view that it will allow our
future procurements to give us more value per dollar,”
Representative Jeffrey N. Roy, the House’s lead negotiator,
said from the chamber floor.
Legislative leaders, however, rejected other changes,
including Baker’s bid to inject $750 million of federal
American Rescue Plan Act funding into the legislation.
Legislators in the overwhelmingly Democratic House and
Senate also accepted changes Baker made to a bill that would
reshape oversight of the state’s two soldiers’ homes,
including elevating the Department of Veterans Services to a
Cabinet-level executive office that reports directly to the
governor.
In a letter to lawmakers, Baker said he supports the
changes, but asked that deadlines for setting up new offices
be pushed back four months until March — when Baker’s
successor, not him, will be in office.
And early Monday, lawmakers sent Baker a compromise package
of reforms to the state’s marijuana industry that cracked
down on steep local fees charged to marijuana operators and
steered a significant chunk of the state excise tax on
recreational pot sales into a fund for disenfranchised
cannabis entrepreneurs.
Advocates, cannabis businesses, and progressive lawmakers
had spent years lobbying for the reforms, arguing they are
straightforward fixes to well-documented problems with the
original legalization law, passed by voters in 2016 and
rewritten by the Legislature in 2017.
Among those issues: an onerous municipal approval process
that has been implicated in two federal corruption
investigations, and a lack of institutional financing that
has allowed larger corporations backed by wealthy private
investors to dominate the space at the expense of smaller,
locally owned businesses with more diverse ownership.
— Dan Adams of the Globe
staff and Globe correspondent Simon Levien contributed to
this report. |
NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this
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