Why is it that not one of the Democrats has highlighted the combined $920 million in free
cash and stabilization funds municipalities had on the books at the beginning of the fiscal
year?
The Boston Globe
Apr. 3, 2002
Democrats showing no fiscal leadership
By Scot Lehigh
Chip Ford's CLT Commentary
In yesterday's Boston Globe, correspondent Scott Helman
wrote ("The case to amend Proposition 2½..."):
"Inflation has risen 93 percent in Greater Boston from 20 years ago, according to the consumer price
index from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. But two decades' worth of Proposition
2½ has allowed communities to increase cumulative spending by just 64 percent. That means the law has forced
communities, unless they've passed overrides, to take in significantly less money than inflation
demands they pay out."
Barbara and I took exception with his facts. She called him;
I e-mailed him with facts showing him the error of his ways, then posted it in yesterday's Update and on our website
along with my
comments. We were promised a correction, and it quickly appeared in today's Boston Globe. Unfortunately, as with most
corrections, it contains insufficient context to change most reader's initial misperceptions. Thus, another myth has
been planted and will thrive to be pruned again and again.
Today's fact correction follows:
The Boston Globe
Wednesday, April 3, 2002
For the record
By Globe Staff
Clarification: An article on Proposition 2½ in yesterday's Globe West Extra should have noted that
the state law limiting annual increases in property taxes excludes additional spending that results from
increases in state aid, tax dollars from new growth, and other local revenue.
Overlooking the near-doubling of municipal spending since
1990 was hardly a minor point inadvertently overlooked in the Globe report.
Parroting a false allegation -- intentionally or otherwise -- that there is a
municipal crisis due to alleged restrictions imposed by Proposition 2½
contributes to the tax-and-spend crowd's unscrupulous campaign of
misinformation, disinformation, distortion and lies.
The good news is, all is not lost for us at the Boston
Globe. Columnist Scot Lehigh takes the time to call us for our perspective and listens, learns, then digs for himself. While
we were focused on municipal "free cash," he uncovered a separate municipal slush fund category -
in addition to "free cash": municipal stabilization funds that, combined with the
free cash, totaled almost a billion dollars statewide at the start of this fiscal year last July!
And while I'm giving credit to the Boston Globe, remember
its editorial of March 29 ["Romney's realism"]? The Globe opined:
"Barbara Anderson's entreaty that the pledge is meant only to be a deterrent to the Legislature is
laughable. She and her soldiers at Citizens for Limited Taxation work hard to destroy the careers
of politicians who won't take the pledge, and it is refreshing to see Romney decline to submit to this
barely concealed blackmail...."
Barbara contacted the Globe's op-ed editor, Marjorie Prichard, and asked for space for a column. Her
request was granted and Barbara's column on the Taxpayer Protection Pledge
was submitted yesterday. Watch the Boston Globe in the days ahead for its publication.
"Among the things the AFL-CIO wants the next governor to do
is work to freeze the voter-approved income tax cut, which has dropped the tax rate from 5.95 percent to 5.3 percent and is
scheduled to lower again to 5 percent next year," the Boston Herald today reported ("AFL-CIO lays out policy agenda
for gubernatorial candidates: Union asks that next governor freeze income tax reduction").
"Haynes said that in the current economic environment, the
state can't afford a tax cut."
What a joke! AFL-CIO union boss Robert Haynes has never
thought the "economic environment" was conducive to keeping the promise and rolling back the "temporary" tax increase ... even
when the state was rolling in cash and spending a billion additional dollars every year.
Haynes was a co-chairman of The Campaign for Massachusetts' Future, the 'No on Question 4' ballot committee.
His position was demonstrated
in the below quotes. The Permanent Campaign to Kill the Tax Rollback by Any Means continues.
"Haynes predicted that voter-education drives aimed at union members will generate enough votes to kill
the rollback."
The Boston Herald
Oct. 28, 2000
"'It's like a buck a day," said Bob Haynes, president of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO and chairman
of the Campaign for Massachusetts' Future. "You can't buy a small cup of Dunkin' Donuts coffee with
what you get back.'
"Haynes called Question 4 supporters' reliance on what legislators said in 1989 a 'big sham.'
"Haynes said those lawmakers, most of whom are no longer in office, could have passed a law at the
time that would have required the rollback at a certain point, but they didn't. He said a proposal
to include such a clause in the legislation was actually shot down that year.
"Besides, Haynes said, the same tax cuts Cellucci has been touting recently should be enough proof
that the state has cut taxes significantly in the past decade.
"'We've done an unbelievable amount of stuff (to keep) the promise of cutting taxes,' Haynes said."
The Salem Evening News
Oct. 21, 2000
"Governor Paul Cellucci threw down a gauntlet in his recent State of the State speech, announcing that
his top priority in 2000 will be to revisit the attempt -- rejected by voters in 1990 -- to roll the
state income tax rate back to 5 percent via a ballot initiative.
"We gladly take up that gauntlet.... We believe that when that debate has run its course, the majority of
citizens will oppose efforts to destroy our hard-won fiscal stability and unite in favor of continuing to
make the investments critical to a bright future for the Commonwealth...."
The Boston Globe
Feb. 4, 2000
Cellucci is willing to put fiscal stability on the line
By Robert J. Haynes and Steve Grossman
Remember that his union members don't really need or want a
pay raise the next time they negotiate for one: their union boss, Bob Haynes, has so decreed. Remind the rank-and-file, if
they come looking for one.
The Boston Globe
Wednesday, April 3, 2002
Democrats showing no fiscal leadership
By Scot Lehigh
Three weeks ago the Democratic gubernatorial hopefuls were
united by a shared conviction: Whoever won their party's nomination would cruise to victory over an embattled accidental
incumbent.
But that comfortable scenario has been turned upside down by
the man whose Olympian shadow loomed over Monday night's Democratic debate at the John F. Kennedy Library. To beat a
figure of Mitt Romney's stature, his eventual opponent will have to convince independent voters that he or she is
prepared to govern in lean times.
By that standard, the Democrats have little cause for
celebration.
Start with Robert Reich. The challenge for the former labor
secretary has always been whether he can put aside liberal woolgathering and demonstrate that he understands the current
fiscal reality.
So far the answer has been simple: No. Faced with a yawning
budget deficit, Reich has essentially adopted a see-no-upheaval stance. Rather than offer real belt-tightening remedies, he
prefers to focus on the progressive feast that he'll host once the fiscal famine has run its course.
Nor, despite her campaign claim to be an innovative manager
ceaselessly in search of savings, has Shannon O'Brien consistently displayed that entrepreneurial attitude when it
comes to her own turf. Witness her reaction when the Swift administration put forward a credible plan to garner as much as
$274 million by reducing the highest-in-the-nation payout rate for lottery games. (Swift's figure may be
optimistic; Michael Widmer, the president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers
Foundation, puts the plan at $150 million, but says it is worth pursuing.) O'Brien rejected it out of hand.
Give the treasurer some credit for this, however: She and
her staff have done some work on a rough deficit-battling scheme. Still, to live up to her claims of fiscal vigilance,
she needs both to flesh out that plan and to make it a central campaign thrust rather than an afterthought the details of
which are left to aides to supply.
Steven Grossman was the first to step to the campaign
chalkboard with a set of budget proposals, though overly optimistic assumptions and the absence of any cuts cast into
question his budget-balancing zeal. Still, give Grossman partial credit for pulling together a proposal - and putting it
out there for voters to judge.
No candidate in the race knows more about the state ledger
than Tom Birmingham. And, as Birmingham notes, each year he has had to reconcile his progressive accomplishments with fiscal
reality. Problem: Two out of the last three budgets have been so late they serve as virtual symbols of Beacon Hill
dysfunction.
So far this year Birmingham has displayed far more passion
for raising taxes - which he considers an emblem of his liberal commitment - than for using budgetary hard times to leverage
once-in-a-decade reforms.
Why aren't there special Senate committees scrutinizing
state spending, the way House task forces are doing? How about long-overdue reforms in the Quinn Bill, which gives hefty pay
increases to police officers for dubious college degrees at an annual public-sector cost of nearly $100 million?
It's not just Birmingham who lacks reform urgency, of
course.
What about the efficiency-mugging Pacheco Law that has
crippled privatization efforts? Is Warren Tolman the only Democratic candidate ready to take aim at the hundreds of
unneeded positions a patronage-crazed Legislature has created in the court system over the last four years?
Why is it that not one of the Democrats has highlighted the
combined $920 million in free cash and stabilization funds municipalities had on the books at the beginning of the fiscal
year? Why can't public-sector employees contribute the private-sector average toward their health care?
In sum, where is the intrepid candidate willing to undertake
a top-to-bottom review of state spending, special interests be damned?
Certainly no independent-minded voter looking for that kind
of iconoclastic champion would have been able to spot him or her on the Kennedy Library stage Monday night. If that void is
only filled when Romney gets his campaign in gear, this field of complacent status-quo Democrats may awake to discover
that the only place they'll reclaim the Corner Office is in their dreams.
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