Senate leaders will seek to pay for new spending on
education and health care by hiking court fees, tapping reserve funds, and using more of the state's share of a settlement with
tobacco companies, Senate Ways and Means Chairman Mark C. Montigny said yesterday.
The Ways and Means budget, scheduled to be released
tomorrow, will also include a $1.1 billion package of tax hikes - including a freeze of the voter-approved income tax rollback
and an increase in the tax on capital gains - identical to that passed by the House last month.
Montigny declined to say how much the Senate will look to
spend in total, but with senators committed to spending more on K-12 education and health care priorities, they're likely to
tack at least $100 million onto the $22.9 billion spending plan for next fiscal year that passed
the House.
"In the end, we were trying to keep the tightest bottom line
that we could but still meet the needs of the most vulnerable," said Montigny, a New Bedford Democrat.
With the state facing a $2 billion budget gap next year,
Montigny said that hundreds of millions of dollars in spending will be cut, and he stressed that the Senate will differ from
the House about which areas to cut. And despite hints from Senate leaders to the contrary, the
Senate will agree with the House that a Swift administration proposal to limit Lottery
payouts should not be pursued - at least not yet.
"We were able to resist using it in this budget, but I think
it's only a matter of time before we seriously discuss at least some change in the program," Montigny said.
Last week, Senate leaders announced that they'll propose to
spend $110 million more than the House approved for K-12 education. Today, they'll unveil their health care proposals,
and senators are not expected to embrace a House-backed move to eliminate Medicaid
coverage for 30,000 long-term unemployed residents.
The final budget is to be debated and approved in the Senate
next week, and House and Senate negotiators will then work out their differences before sending the spending plan to
Acting Governor Jane Swift.
Fiscal 2003 begins July 1, though state leaders rarely
succeed in completing their budget work on time.
One area of disagreement between will come in some of the
revenue sources the Senate is seeking to lean on. Although the House voted to spend just half of the $300 million annual
tobacco settlement payment in the next fiscal year, Senate leaders will recommend spending
closer to 80 percent. Montigny said his budget will also propose spending an extra $25
million from a welfare caseload mitigation fund and will seek about $75
million in additional federal assistance. Senate leaders expect to generate about $10 million a year by increasing
legal fees, including costs related to filing lawsuits.
Senate Republican leader Brian P. Lees said Democratic
lawmakers have gone too far in their push to raise taxes and fees this year. He said he'll seek to slow the budget debate a
bit next week by forcing individual votes on as many taxes as possible.
"No one could have ever predicted the size and scope of the
taxes and fees that Democratic leaders want to shove down the throats of taxpayers," said Lees, of East Longmeadow. "I
can't believe that they've gone to this level and are still talking about more."
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The MetroWest Daily News
Wednesday, June 5, 2002
Editorial
The Senate's opportunities
The House has had its crack at drafting a coherent state
budget for this especially difficult year. Now it's the Senate's turn, and there is hope in many quarters that the
Senate can do better.
One of those quarters is the Mass. Taxpayers Foundation, a
non-partisan, business-oriented think tank widely respected for its long history of clear-eyed examination of state finances.
While the MTF credits the House for making the tough decision to raise taxes by $1 billion, it
regrets that the House missed an opportunity to put into place some spending reforms.
Among its targets:
* The Quinn Bill: This law gives automatic 10 to 25 percent
salary increases to police officers who earn college and graduate degrees, which sounds fine except for the abuses,
exposed repeatedly in the media, of "matchbook" diplomas and other gimmicks through which some
police officers convert fly-by-night educational credentials to lucrative raises. The
state covers half the salary increases, with municipalities required to pay the rest. The Quinn Bill is
expected to cost the state more than $41 million next year, with cities and
towns due to pay a similar amount.
-
Police details: Massachusetts is the only state that requires
police officers, as opposed to civilian flaggers, on all road construction sites, a perk for police that costs state and
local government and private companies $100 million a year.
-
Early pension scams. A much-abused provision in the state
pension law gives a generous early pension to state employees who "involuntarily" leave their posts. A reward for being
fired is inappropriate in any case, but recent reports indicate the
early pension is being used as a going-away present to employees who have left state service voluntarily.
-
The education aid formula: The inequity in the formula for
distributing Chapter 70 education aid has been a bone of contention in Framingham and some other MetroWest communities
for years. While the House didn't cut Chapter 70 funding, it froze the aid allotment to each
district, making long-outdated numbers even less responsive to current needs. Adequate
funding would cost $90 million, MTF estimates, which could easily be
recaptured by reforming the formula to make it more fair.
The Senate, which debates the budget next week, has a
history of approaching the budget on its own terms. In the past, that has meant finding a way to spend more money than the
House, and Senate leaders have indicated they'll be more generous this year when it comes
to education and health care. But governing in lean times also requires creativity and
courage in cutting spending. That's the leadership we hope to see from the Senate.
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