Make no mistake, this is just the beginning, not the
end, of difficult decisions on state spending.
A Patriot Ledger editorial
Aug. 3, 2002
Another budget saga ends
Why did the Legislature take care of state employees
and almost no one else? The answer is simple: State employees are well organized and they vote. This
cynical act by your elected "leaders" is nothing more than a method to ensure their re-elections so
they can abuse you again next year.
A Brockton Enterprise editorial
Aug. 3, 2002
Legislature's embarrassing session is over
There are many villains but few heroes in this
year's state budget battle -- and no winners, only losers. Unwilling to curb longstanding spending
abuses and eliminate traditional inefficiencies, the Legislature missed an opportunity to make lasting
structural changes in state finances. Instead, the lawmakers opted for massive tax increases, along
with an unwise strategy of nearly depleting the rainy-day fund that stood at about $2.6 billion last
year.
The Worcester Telegram & Gazette
Aug. 4, 2002
Message from Beacon Hill: Welcome to Taxachusetts
By Robert Z. Nemeth
If the Massachusetts Legislature were a publicly
held corporation such as Enron or WorldCom, its leaders would be doing the perp-walk by now.
Cooking the books? No one in the private sector has
ever done it better - and gotten away with it....
This state's "stockholders" ought to be in revolt.
A Boston Herald editorial
Aug. 4, 2002
Legislators guilty of not gettin' it done
Under cover of darkness - and well past news media
deadlines - lawmakers overturned $77 million of acting Gov. Jane M. Swift's vetoes, potentially
destabilizing the precariously balanced budget....
And in the wee-hours rush, the Senate ignored the state constitution's mandate for individual
roll calls on land-takings - instead "bundling" 17 bills into two votes to save some time....
In the postmortem, Birmingham was the first to admit
there was nothing pretty about this year's legislative finale.
"I thought the process was embarrassing," Birmingham
said.
But Birmingham - who now turns full-time to a daunting, uphill campaign trek - defended his
decision to break the rules and revert to behavior that had lobbyists joking about "the old
days."
The Boston Herald
Aug. 4, 2002
Nobody's laughing in Senate after time,
money run out
Well, for all intent this legislative year is over but for
the analysis and aftermath. "Informal" sessions will continue through the year (don't forget, each legislator gets a federal
tax deduction for each day the Legislature remains "in session"!), but sometimes "controversial" bills are passed by
a virtually empty chamber (though they're not supposed to be even brought up and it only takes one member to stop them).
Take a deep breath, prepare yourself for the fall election
season when we intend to throw as many bums out as is humanly possible, and enjoy the remainder of the summer.
That final task out of the way, we too shall follow the path of
legislators and disappear for a long-overdue summer vacation -- though unlike them, ours will last for only two weeks, not until
January. (In fact, ours started yesterday and here I am, still, but call it honest "constituent service"!)
See you when we get back, folks.
 |
|
Chip Ford |
The Patriot Ledger
Saturday, August 3, 2002
Editorial
Another budget saga ends
The Legislature just couldn't help itself. As expected,
lawmakers caved in and restored $71 million to the state budget, after leaving it to acting Gov. Jane Swift to balance
the books.
Swift had done that by being both hard-nosed and prudent.
The state's chief executive, a mother of three small children, is reported to have said of cuts to funding for full-day
kindergarten classes, "How can I kill that?" But she did. Then legislators restored the $28
million, while knowing the state cannot afford it.
They know also that the state will face a similar fiscal
situation with next year's budget. But they live for the here and now and election day, and had no difficulty postponing debt
to the future.
Also restored by lawmakers was $38 million so that state
employees would not have an increase in their share of health insurance, from the 15 percent they now pay. Unlike the
private sector, where both employers and employees see regular increases in the cost of
health insurance because health care costs continually rise, state workers remain unaffected.
It amounts to an extra raise each year, even when the state is swimming in red ink. Swift gave
lawmakers a chance to make a real-world change on this issue, but they counted the number
of state workers' votes and said, "No way."
There is some real pain in the state budget - inflicted, as
usual, on the politically powerless. But overall, the budget actually increases $1 billion over the previous year, thanks to
$1.4 billion in new taxes.
Make no mistake, this is just the beginning, not the end, of
difficult decisions on state spending.
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The Brockton Enterprise
Saturday, August 3, 2002
Editorial
Legislature's embarrassing session is over
The Legislature slunk out of town in the wee hours Thursday
morning and not a moment too soon.
This most embarrassing of legislative sessions ended on a
series of disgraceful notes as your elected officials made sure they took care of favored constituents and didn't bother
dealing with most of the other important issues they are paid to handle. We hope you remember this
on Election Day, when you are paying higher taxes to ensure that your legislators
continue to live in luxury.
The Massachusetts Legislature has one of the longest
sessions in the country, yet the same thing happens every year the budget is late and a pile of bills are left by the
wayside as members rush to meet a midnight deadline. Because of their incompetence, there was no
action on such important issues as revamping laws on child rape, creating a "safe haven"
for newborn babies, requiring tobacco companies to make fire-safe products and hundreds of
other pieces of legislation, many of which has been on the table for many months.
The Legislature did, however, manage to override a budget
veto of acting Gov. Jane Swift that would have required state employees to pay more for their health care. Swift had vetoed
$355 million in spending because the Legislature refused to produce a balanced budget, even
after raising taxes by more than $1 billion. The Legislature overrode just a few vetoes,
but they were well-chosen. Two of them restore kindergarten program and community health
center funding, but the biggest one by far is a kiss for state employees.
This $35 million gift guarantees that thousands of state
workers pay health insurance costs that are below those of most private sector workers. At the same time, the Legislature
refused to restore funding cuts to such important programs as antismoking efforts, breast
cancer research and health care for 50,000 of the poorest residents of the state.
Why did the Legislature take care of state employees and
almost no one else? The answer is simple: State employees are well organized and they vote. This cynical act by your
elected "leaders" is nothing more than a method to ensure their re-elections so they can abuse you
again next year.
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The Worcester Telegram & Gazette
Sunday, August 4, 2002
Message from Beacon Hill: Welcome to Taxachusetts
By Robert Z. Nemeth
There are many villains but few heroes in this year's state
budget battle -- and no winners, only losers. Unwilling to curb longstanding spending abuses and eliminate traditional
inefficiencies, the Legislature missed an opportunity to make lasting structural changes in state
finances. Instead, the lawmakers opted for massive tax increases, along with an unwise
strategy of nearly depleting the rainy-day fund that stood at about $2.6 billion last year.
Gov. Jane M. Swift displayed skill and courage in vetoing
nearly $400 million in expenditures in an effort to close a $600-million budget gap. But regardless of the final outcome,
the quality of life in Massachusetts will suffer.
Given the severity of the fiscal crisis, the increases in
the state budget are inexcusable. "By tackling reforms that would normally be left untouched ... the state's leaders can
avoid some program cuts while at the same time increasing citizens' confidence that their tax dollars are
being well spent," the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation warned in June.
Among untapped savings opportunities the Foundation listed education funding reform, Quinn Bill
spending, reforming court management and personnel, curbing workers' compensation for
public safety personnel, employee health cost sharing, privatization of state services,
construction reform, elimination of retirement abuses, and more.
Instead of long-range spending cuts, the Legislature opted
for a $1.2 billion tax increase, the largest in the state's history. According to the National Conference of State
Legislatures, the $755 million increase in personal income taxes is the heftiest in the country this year. Not
only did lawmakers refuse to roll back the rate to 5 percent, as mandated by a
voter-approved referendum in 2000, but they reduced the personal exemption, did away
with deductions for charitable giving and scrapped the sliding scale on capital
gains taxes. They all but put up a sign: Welcome back to Taxachusetts!
"This is one of the stupidest things we have ever done,"
said Senate Minority Leader Brian P. Lees "I'm embarrassed to be a member of this body." So he should be.
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The Boston Herald
Sunday, August 4, 2002
A Boston Herald editorial
Legislators guilty of not gettin' it done
If the Massachusetts Legislature were a publicly held
corporation such as Enron or WorldCom, its leaders would be doing the perp-walk by now.
Cooking the books? No one in the private sector has ever
done it better - and gotten away with it.
First they took $1.2 billion out of state taxpayers' pockets
- that's $300 for each and every taxpayer out there. (Of course, that's assuming smokers don't flee to New Hampshire or
the Internet to buy their cigarettes and some whiz-kid actually manages to realize a capital gain
this year.)
Then legislators staged a major raid on the rainy day fund -
including an utterly needless and mindless $71 million extra by overridding the governor's vetoes in the wee small hours of
Thursday morning. That means next year, well, what was once a little cushion will dip below
the $300 million mark.
And that figure could melt away like ice cream on an August
afternoon. It could take as much as another $100 million for the state to extricate itself from the mess created when the
Legislature attempted to change the pharmacy-reimbursement formula for Medicaid
prescriptions. This was clearly an instance where legislators didn't let the facts get in the way
of doing what they were determined to do to realize what may turn out to be mythical
"savings."
And it's a perfect example of the shoddy way legislators did
their job this year. There may well be a case to be made for changing the reimbursement formula. Massachusetts' current
formula is more generous than that of Florida or Rhode Island. The one legislators just
passed would put it well below those states. But who has the right number? And how best to
get it? That requires some real work - work obviously no one on Beacon
Hill took the time to do.
If this isn't misfeasance, it's certainly nonfeasance on the
part of so-called lawmakers.
And while the budget was nearly a month late, at least there
was a budget, however cobbled together.
On other issues legislators couldn't even manage to do that.
Legislation to set up a governing body and financing for the Rose Kennedy Greenway was outlined by Mayor Thomas M.
Menino and Speaker Thomas M. Finneran in March. At the end of July what had emerged
was so poorly crafted and drafted that all interested parties were happy to see it shelved for
the year.
And because money bills are the only things the Legislature
seems capable of passing, things like the Transportation Bond bill are loaded up with extraneous legislation. This one
includes a move to expand the Massachusetts Turnpike board of directors (which seems like a
perfectly splendid idea). But it also includes a truly hideous proposal to allow clammers to
continue to dig along the shoreline at Logan International Airport, without what should be a
security perimeter. (Let's see, rights of some 75 clammers vs. security for an airport
that serves hundreds of thousands of passengers. Why are we not surprised legislators sided with
the clam diggers?)
This state's "stockholders" ought to be in revolt.
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The Boston Herald
Sunday, August 4, 2002
Nobody's laughing in Senate after time, money run out
Perspective/by Elisabeth J. Beardsley
You knew things were ugly at the tail-end of the budget
marathon when Senate President Thomas F. Birmingham cracked a joke, and senators didn't cough up so much as a
perfunctory chuckle for their boss.
It was past 2 a.m., and for two frantic hours lawmakers had
been working in violation of their own rules requiring formal sittings for the biennial session to end promptly at midnight
July 31.
Under cover of darkness - and well past news media deadlines
- lawmakers overturned $77 million of acting Gov. Jane M. Swift's vetoes, potentially destabilizing the precariously
balanced budget.
They also repeatedly flashed the state's credit card -
piling up $1.62 billion in newly bonded projects that'll play well on the campaign trail but may draw frowns from financial
overseers.
And in the wee-hours rush, the Senate ignored the state
constitution's mandate for individual roll calls on land-takings - instead "bundling" 17 bills into two votes to
save some time.
After furious Republicans raised a ruckus - engaging
Birmingham in a visibly heated exchange on the floor - the Senate president pulled the plug on the session and joked that
senators were no doubt waiting with baited breath for his "90-minute valedictory speech."
The silence was deafening from the 39 rank-and-file senators
who had dutifully worked to prop up Birmingham's faltering gubernatorial campaign, sitting in quiet frustration as their
leader's political ambitions colored the chamber's every policy decision.
In the postmortem, Birmingham was the first to admit there
was nothing pretty about this year's legislative finale.
"I thought the process was embarrassing," Birmingham said.
But Birmingham - who now turns full-time to a daunting,
uphill campaign trek - defended his decision to break the rules and revert to behavior that had lobbyists joking about "the old
days."
Birmingham pointed the finger at the House, which did, in
fact, dawdle all throughout the final day, starting on the first veto override with only 49 minutes left before the
midnight deadline.
"The House spent way too much time running the clock and
that pushed us into overtime," Birmingham said. "It was more important that we override the vetoes than to turn into
pumpkins at midnight."
That Senate hankering for higher spending - fiscal crisis
aside - is a well-known fact and prompted defensive alliances between Republican Swift and conservative Speaker Thomas
M. Finneran.
The House delay that so infuriated Birmingham was no
accident, but rather a collusion between Swift and Finneran - a way to triangulate the Senate and make Swift's
budget-balancing cuts stick.
"The Senate basically was somewhat handicapped," said
Swift's administration and finance secretary, Kevin Sullivan. "We wanted to make sure that we would work with the House to
be able to, as best we could, assist them to hold back the groundswell of override votes."
None of this bodes particularly well for Birmingham, who is
running for governor on his State House record with barely more than six weeks to pull his poll numbers out of the dumps.
The "good news," according to University of Massachusetts
analyst Lou DiNatale, is that the budget - messy and overspent though it may be - is off the floor and out of Birmingham's
hair only a month late, which is nowhere near as bad as last year's five-month debacle.
The life-and-death political question now is how the ugly
budget and its $1 billion in painful cuts will sit with Birmingham's base: organized labor and other heavily Democratic
special interests.
"You're not sure if those interests he fought for are going
to be angry for not delivering, or energized by the cuts," DiNatale said.
As he still struggles with a deep insider image, Birmingham's best hopes lie in rapid union
response on Election Day and low turnout in the Sept. 17 Democratic primary,
DiNatale said. "Believe me, Birmingham is praying for rain," he said.
But Birmingham was hardly the only one with political chits
at stake in this latest budget fray.
Finneran, who nearly lost control of a dissatisfied House
after last year's budget mess, appears to have reconsolidated his power and emerged stronger - for now.
House budget debate unfolded this year almost entirely
behind closed doors - an annoying scenario for observers, but one that pleased rank-and-file members who thought they had a
new voice in the process.
But Finneran, who pounded the fiscal-crisis drum harder than
any other politician, capitulated in the end to Senate demands and committed the very sins he'd warned against: overspending
and gobbling up most of the state's "rainy day" reserve funds.
"I would probably give him a B+ for raising the awareness
and talking about the problem," said Assistant House Republican Leader Bradley H. Jones (R-North Reading). "I'd say we
ended up getting a D+ on addressing the problem."
Swift, as a lame duck, never had a lot to lose, which
allowed her to play the heavy and impose the politically unpopular but fiscally necessary cuts that lawmakers couldn't
bring themselves to make.
"I think the governor came out of this looking good and
feeling strong," Sullivan said. "The fact is, she had a captive audience."
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