The Eagle-Tribune
Lawrence, Mass.
Saturday, November 17, 2001
Editorial
Lawmakers just do not understand
OUR VIEW
Legislators toying with the idea of "delaying" a tax break are playing with
fire
It's getting to be almost as frustrating as telling a bratty
child, "for the 10th time, get your hand out of the cookie jar!"
Once again, the Massachusetts Legislature has tried to find
a way to pry a long-promised income tax cut away from voters. Wisely, it backed off -- but only when it became clear to
both House Speaker Thomas M. Finneran and Senate President Thomas J. Birmingham that
they couldn't get enough lawmakers to sign onto their misguided plan.
The fight over the income tax cut has a long and bitter
history. Lawmakers approved a "temporary" tax increase to 6.25 percent over a decade ago, when the state was out of
money and big cuts had to be made to make ends meet. They promised they
would bring the rate back down to 5 percent once the economy turned around.
The economy turned around all right, but the Legislature
didn't. There was always an excuse for why the promise couldn't be kept, including the ultimate insult to taxpayers -- some
lawmakers insisted there never was any promise.
Well, in a couple years the rate will finally return to 5percent, no thanks to the Legislature. In
1998, fed-up taxpayers overwhelmingly approved a ballot question to gradually bring the
rate back to 5 percent.
But lawmakers started warning that things had changed since
voters approved the tax cut, and dire cuts might have to be made. Some wanted to "delay" the tax cut, presumably until
the economy "turned around." That sounds familiar.
But there's nothing lawmakers fear more than a wrathful
voting public, and wisely, it appears that most were unwilling to see just how deep that wrath can go. Only two local
lawmakers, state Reps. Jose L. Santiago, D-Lawrence, and David M. Nangle, D-Lowell -- think voters
don't deserve the tax cut now. State Rep. Paul E. Tirone, D-Amesbury, wanted to delay the
tax break too, but changed his mind when he said he discovered it would only be worth
$200 million to the state. He supported it when he thought it would keep $500 million for the
state -- and out of the hands of taxpayers.
These three lawmakers apparently just don't get it.
They forgot the state hoarded well over $1 billion in taxes
into a so-called "rainy day" account to protect us against an economy in trouble. They forgot raising taxes in recession
has been shown, time and time again, to be bad economic policy. And they forgot that when
it comes to keeping tax-related promises, voters know the Legislature can't be trusted.
The Boston Globe
Sunday, November 18, 2001
Swift backs off on budget cuts
New plan would restore education and health funds
By Anthony Flint
Globe Staff
Acting Governor Jane Swift, continuing to craft her own
$22.5 billion budget proposal despite the near certainty it will be ignored by the state Legislature, will eliminate cuts
in local aid and education and scale back cuts in health care when she unveils the package
tomorrow.
Stephen Crosby, secretary of administration and finance,
said yesterday that spending in health and human services will be reduced by roughly $61 million rather than the $99 million
originally contemplated.
"In the governor's judgment, the [original] cuts were
draconian," Crosby said. As a result, funding was restored in Department of Public Health programs in AIDS prevention,
smoking cessation, substance abuse, fighting breast cancer, family health, and in the administration of
Medicaid.
And while Swift had contemplated paring local aid by between
$100 million and $150 million, she is now dropping that idea as well, Crosby said. Under Swift's proposal, cities
and towns will get the approximately $7 billion in local aid they were
counting on, he said. More than half of that goes for education.
"The governor was uncomfortable with that [cut] from the
beginning," Crosby said, though reductions in local aid are possible in the future.
Swift had been lobbied by both public health advocates and
municipal officials after talking about the draft cuts during the last week.
Crosby said the administration was still targeting a total
of $700 million in savings to help make up an anticipated $1.35 billion deficit, but he declined to say what other areas had
been cut now that local aid and health funding had been restored.
The governor's budget -- her second, since her first was
ignored by the state Legislature and was assembled before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in any case -- is seen as mostly a
symbolic effort to prod Beacon Hill lawmakers to come up with their own spending plan.
Massachusetts is the only state in the nation without a budget.
State Senator Mark Montigny, chairman of the Senate's Ways
and Means Committee, said that the Legislature will produce a budget by Wednesday, just before Thanksgiving, and the
last day of the session.
That spending package will include $650 million in cuts that
will "not be pretty," Montigny said, though lawmakers are following the credo to "manage tightly and lead
compassionately."
Referring to the Swift administration's adjustments, he
said, "A week ago, we would have taken this information and used it constructively, but now it's irrelevant. The decisions
have already been made." But he added: "I'm happy they realize these programs affect real
people."
Under the broad outline released by Senate President Thomas
Birmingham and House Speaker Thomas Finneran last Thursday, the deficit would be made up with $650 million in
cuts and roughly $700 million from cash reserves. The package could be
contingent on freezing the income-tax rollback voters approved a year ago.
Swift would make up the gap with $700 million in cuts,
roughly $500 million from reserves, and $200 million from the nationwide tobacco settlement. She would not freeze the tax
rollback, but would seek additional savings through early retirement of state employees.
The Boston Herald
Sunday, November 18, 2001
Lawmakers quick to reject Swift proposal for budget
by Elisabeth J. Beardsley
House Speaker Thomas Finneran yesterday bluntly blew off acting
Gov. Jane Swift's threat to take matters into her own hands over the 141-day state budget stalemate.
"We're not going to give any consideration to a seven-month
budget from the governor," Finneran said. "We have our own budget."
After a week of issuing ultimatums, Swift warned she would
forge ahead tomorrow with her own budget, after being dissatisfied with a two-page outline lawmakers whisked together
late Thursday night.
With a temporary, one-month budget slated to run dry next
week, Swift plans to file an interim budget containing huge spending cuts she says are needed to close a $1.4 billion
deficit.
The Swift budget would be good for seven months, which would
carry the state through the rest of the fiscal year.
But Finneran told the Herald that legislative leaders are
making plenty of progress in budget negotiations, and don't need -- or want -- a gubernatorial intervention.
That position is one of the few things on which House and
Senate leaders seem to agree these days. Senate Ways and Means Chairman Mark Montigny (D-New Bedford) accused
Swift of "press release budgeting" and said that by the time Swift releases her
plan, the legislative negotiations will be done.
"It's a desperate media ploy," Montigny said. "It's a
completely irrelevant waste of staff time and ink."
The Swift administration scoffed -- a bit incredulously --
at the snub. That sort of behavior is exactly why the administration doesn't believe lawmakers' claims that they're
anywhere close to a budget deal, said Swift spokesman James Borghesani.
"If they want to turn up their noses at our budget, then it
would be an intellectually dishonest exercise for them to say, 'No, we're not going to do yours, but we can't do ours,
either,'" Borghesani said.
With the Legislature's end-of-session deadline bearing down
on Wednesday, in tandem with the Thanksgiving holiday, pressure to finish the budget is reaching fever pitch -- despite a
ghosttown feeling at the State House yesterday.
The lights were on in the offices of the House and Senate
Ways and Means committees, where Montigny and House Ways and Means Chairman John Rogers hunkered down with
about 50 staffers, combing through every line item as they worked to slash $650 million off
the bottom line.
Both branches hope to finish the budget and ram it through
on an up-or-down roll call vote in time for the Wednesday session-ender.
The sudden mad rush, after nearly five months of inertia, is
inciting anger among rank-and-file lawmakers. Many have holiday plans with family, and some may already be gone on vacation
by Wednesday.
Senate Minority Leader Brian Lees (R-East Longmeadow) glumly
reported having to skip a Thanksgiving trip to Florida with his wife, so he could cool his heels on budget-watch. His
wife went anyway.
"Backing it right up to Thanksgiving is just despicable,"
Lees said. "Just to throw it out there and willy-nilly vote on it isn't a good thing."
Meanwhile, the administration confirmed a Wednesday Herald
report that it will spare cities and towns a $150 million cut to local aid, in exchange for local officials' vows to tighten
their belts next year.
The MetroWest Daily News
Sunday, November 18, 2001
Editorial
State leaders should pay for budget fiasco
Acting Governor Jane Swift has hinted -- but not promised --
that her $135,000 salary will be cut by 3 percent under a plan to make up a projected $1.4 billion state budget deficit. It's
a symbolic move that wouldn't be a huge sacrifice. It would mean $4,050 fewer dollars in
Swift's pocket -- but she'd still make $131,950 this fiscal year.
The budget Swift promises to release Monday is a symbolic
move as well. The only budget that will be brought up for a vote in the Legislature is the one House Speaker Tom Finneran
and Senate President Tom Birmingham have been dawdling over for nearly five months.
They announced agreement on the "outline" of a budget late Thursday. The details, they
promised, will be worked out over the weekend. Legislators are unlikely to get
much chance to see the actual budget, let alone debate it, before they are asked to approve it.
If the Legislature's leaders meet their goal, the budget
will be on Swift's desk on Wednesday, the last day of the legislative session. Massachusetts is now the only state in the
nation without a budget. This is the longest the Bay State has gone without a budget since 1965.
Based on this performance, Swift isn't the only politician
who deserves a pay cut. Finneran and Birmingham ought to return part of their paychecks as well.
Among the "details" that remained to be worked out over the
weekend is the line-item covering the Clean Elections Law. This $10 million in new spending (the Legislature must
also vote to release $23 million set aside in previous years) is hardly a
budget-buster. But given Finneran's determination to kill the voter-approved campaign finance reforms, many
assumed this expenditure was a key to the House-Senate impasse.
Finneran's stance on Clean Elections has been clear for
years. He hates the proposal, which would provide public money to candidates who agree to spending limits, and has repeatedly
tried to stop it. Birmingham's position is more opaque. Not wishing to be portrayed as
anti-reform, he included Clean Elections funding in the Senate budget. But he has no intention
of using public money in his campaign for governor, and some suspect he welcomed the
budget delays that have made life difficult for several opposing candidates who had planned
to run under Clean Elections rules.
If Clean Elections doesn't survive the weekend negotiations,
it will be a discouraging sign of Birmingham's capitulation to
Finneran. It should also inspire another cut, in the stipends awarded to all members of the House and Senate. These stipends,
which are supposed to cover office expenses but are neither restricted nor monitored, were doubled last year from
$300 to $600 a month. They were doubled on the justification that Clean
Elections rules would limit the campaign contributions members used to support constituent services. But if
Clean Elections goes, so should the stipends.
This year's state budget process has been a fiasco. That all
but a handful of legislators have had nothing to do with it doesn't absolve them of responsibility; after all, they elected
Finneran and Birmingham. If pay was based on performance, all of Massachusetts' elected
office-holders would deserve a cut in pay.
