The Boston Globe
Friday, August 30, 2002
After cuts, legislative largesse
Budget bill favors speaker's deputies
By Rick Klein, Globe Staff and Chris Tangney, Globe Correspondent
After slashing programs for the needy, state lawmakers have
quietly moved to spend $2 million on favored courthouses - one in the district of a top lieutenant to House Speaker
Thomas M. Finneran - and on a range of other local projects, including an
ice skating rink in the district of House majority leader Salvatore F.
DiMasi.
The $52 million spending bill, which passed without debate
in informal sessions of the Legislature last week and takes care of mostly noncontroversial state obligations, provides
no direct funding for scores of courts that are likely to run a deficit this year because of
budget cuts. But it also showers hundreds of thousands of dollars on courts that are already
flush with cash, according to Charles Chieppo, spokesman for the Pioneer Institute, a
nonpartisan public policy think tank.
The Legislature approved an additional $100,000 for the
Roxbury District Court, even though it is expected to run a surplus of nearly $300,000 this year, according to a memo
produced by Samuel Zoll, chief justice of the Trial Court of the Commonwealth.
Chieppo said two other district courts that already had
sufficient funding for the year, in Gardner and in Milford, received $115,000 and $186,000, respectively, in additional
money. Milford is in the district of state Representative Marie J. Parente, one of Finneran's
floor division leaders. The Legislature provided no money for the district courts in
Springfield and Worcester, which are each expected to run a deficit this year of more than $350,000.
The appropriations came just weeks after lawmakers completed
a budget that contained hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts, including to programs that serve elderly and poor
residents. The bill, which is now on Acting Governor Jane Swift's desk, was designed to
supplement the $23.1 billion spending plan passed last month.
Swift will use her veto pen on that bill to enact a tax cut
that will benefit primarily short-term traders in the stock market, said Kevin J. Sullivan, Swift's administration and
finance secretary.
Charles Rasmussen, a Finneran spokesman, defended the
lawmakers, saying they did their best in the supplemental budget to plug gaping holes in court funding. Court officials
have indicated they need another $18 million to operate at current staffing levels; some 850 court
workers have already been laid off, and another round of job cuts is expected in the
next few days.
Lawmakers also included a $2 million trial court reserve
fund that administrators can use to fill holes wherever they arise in the court system, Rasmussen said. "The Legislature
made every effort to meet the needs of the individual courts' deficiency requests," he said.
Parente, a Milford Democrat, defended the money for the
court in her hometown as crucial to avoid further job losses. "We are not creating any new positions, and I do not have a
candidate in mind for the assistant clerk's position that needs to be filled, so there's nothing
political about this," she said.
Swift is now deciding what portions of the $52 million
spending measure to veto. She may veto $1.3 million set aside to renovate the ice rink in the North End - placed in the bill
at DiMasi's urging - but that may be difficult because the project has already begun, Sullivan
said.
"There was some cute stuff in there," Sullivan said. "We
have to cut some of these line-items. We will take some of that money down that they earmarked for the courts."
Administration sources say Swift is also leaning toward
vetoing $232,000 for the state Sentencing Commission, which is slated to close its doors this month because of an ongoing
lack of funding. She will also eliminate a $25,000 sales tax refund that the Legislature
specially approved for a paper company in Whitinsville, Sullivan said.
Swift's vetoes are extremely likely to hold up because the
Legislature's formal sessions ended July 31. That means that the opposition of just a single member of the House or Senate
can prevent a veto override from going through.
The tax cut Swift plans to enact allows the acting governor
to exact a measure of revenge on the Legislature. The opportunity arises as a result of a gimmick that legislative
leaders allowed Republicans to insert into the state budget: giving taxpayers the option of paying a
higher state income tax rate if they wanted to.
During a debate over taxing and spending, Republican leaders
mockingly inserted it, suggesting to liberal lawmakers that no one in the state would pay a tax rate of 5.85 percent
on their income - which was higher than the 5.3 percent rate in place -
voluntarily.
But, due to an oversight, when the provision was included as
part of the state budget, lawmakers neglected to realize its consequence for the capital gains tax. It now permits
investors with capital gains on securities held for less than a year to
pay a 5.85 percent tax rate instead of the regular 12 percent on short-term capital gains, as long as they pay 5.85
percent on all their income taxes. Legislative leaders used the supplemental budget to correct
that oversight, but Swift plans to veto their move, leaving the loophole in place.
While very few taxpayers are expected to take advantage of
the loophole - the state Department of Revenue expects a tax hit of no more than $7 million - Swift is happy to get
through a tax cut in the wake of the Legislature's $1.24 billion package of tax and fee
increases, Sullivan said.
"We view that as a good thing if you tax capital gains
less," he said.
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The Boston Herald
Thursday, August 29, 2002
Drivers hit with Registry fee hike
by Elisabeth J. Beardsley
Bay State drivers will face jacked-up license and registration fees starting in October, after lawmakers hiked the unpopular levies to help deal with a $2.5 billion state budget deficit.
Starting October 1, registration fees for passenger vehicles will rise to $36 for a two-year cycle, up from $30, the Registry of Motor Vehicles announced yesterday.
At the same time, license renewal fees will rise to $40, up from $33.75, for the five-year renewal cycle.
The plan is expected to raise $18 million annually for the state, which Registry officials said would forestall the closure of as many as seven of the agency's 32 branch offices.
"These increased fees mean the Registry will be able to maintain the service levels our customers have come to expect, despite cuts in our budget," said Registrar of Motor Vehicles Kim Hinden. "More importantly, this means we will not have to close any of our branches."
Lawmakers had slashed the Registry's budget by $2.6 million this year. The money from the new fee hikes will send $2.5 million back to the agency, with the rest going into the state's red-ink-soaked general fund, Registry officials said.
While the state's 5.2 million drivers may not like the hiked-up fees, Registry officials said branch closures would have been much worse - sparking longer lines and more headaches at what has long been one of the most often criticized state agencies.
The unpopular registration fees were actually phased out for four years under former Gov. William F. Weld, but were reinstated in 2000 to help cope with massive cost overruns at the Big Dig.
Acting Gov. Jane M. Swift in May floated a proposal for a smaller hike in the license renewal fee and the elimination of a $5 discount for people who do their paperwork electronically.
But that plan would have only raised $7 million - compared to an estimated $25 million under lawmakers' bigger fee-hike plan.
Deputy Registrar Steven Sebestyen said Swift didn't back away from her plan - just that the Legislature's bigger pot of money took precedence in the face of the massive fiscal crisis.
"The Legislature was faced with a monumental task," Sebestyen said. "I don't think it was us that was doing any backing away."
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The Boston Herald
Monday, August 26, 2002
A Boston Herald editorial
Campaign should be about state budget
A summary of how the new state budget was constructed, issued by the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation last week, makes the important point that putting together a budget next year will be almost as difficult.
That's because the state's structural deficit, the excess of spending demands over normal revenues, is, according to the foundation, about $1 billion. Others may come up with different numbers, but the gap is unquestionably large.
That gap, and what to do about it, ought to be the principal topic of discussion in the post-primary campaign for governor. We hope all the current candidates at least have some campaign staffers working on the problem, even though a primary campaign like the one the Democrats have is difficult to focus on budgets (in part because so much discussion has to be devoted to who deserves to be the candidate and who would make the best candidate). It's never too soon to prepare.
The current budget got assembled only by dint of tapping reserve funds and one-shot revenues for $844 million and suspending the scheduled income tax reductions to get another $1.14 billion, using $150 million in tobacco settlement money that was supposed to be squirreled away and cutting spending by $724 million.
All of those tactics cannot be used again. For one thing, only $831 million in reserves is left (counting unused tobacco money).
The discussion the eventual candidates will owe the voters will not have to descend to the level of every last line item, and should not. Whoever becomes governor will not want to be, and should not be, tied down by too many campaign promises. But he or she should not be a blank slate, and some promises are appropriate. Voters should not be asked to buy a pig in a poke.
The voters deserve to hear the reasoning behind every policy proposal. If a candidate believes taxes should be raised again - something we'd oppose - voters deserve to hear why higher income taxes are better than an increase in the sales tax, or vice versa if that's the candidate's preference. These explanations must be more than nine-second sound-bites.
If further spending cuts are in order - and they are - voters ought to hear why the particular activity as opposed to others should be reduced. The cuts made for this year's budget have precious little economic rationale, given some of the sacred cows that escaped scrutiny.
Such a campaign is not easy. Candidates will be tempted to bid for votes with promises to protect this or that program. But it will mean that the voters for once will be treated like grownups.
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The Boston Globe
Sunday, August 25, 2002
Parole Board's budget draws fire
Funding has risen as caseload has dropped
By Ralph Ranalli
Globe Staff
The number of paroled convicts under state supervision has dropped nearly 30 percent since 1990, even as the budget for the program rose by 10 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars, state records show. As a result, Massachusetts' parole officers are now among the best paid in the nation, while handling some of the lightest caseloads.
After years of Republican governors stacking the Parole Board with tough-minded former prosecutors and ex-police officers loathe to set criminals free early, records show that the number of parolees being supervised by the state dropped from more than 5,200 in 1990 to about 3,700 last year.
That has caused some fiscal watchdogs to ask why the state parole budget has grown from $9.6 million in 1990 to a peak of $14.4 million in 2001 - a 50 percent increase. Adjusted for inflation, the actual increase was about 10 percent over that period, at a time when the parole department's workload decreased by more than 30 percent, records show.
Massachusetts Taxpayers Association executive director Michael Widmer called the numbers an illustration of a "time-honored tradition" of government spending: Budgets tend to increase during fiscal good times, regardless of whether the increase is justified.
"A 50 percent increase over 11 years might be reasonable if the caseload were expanding, but with the caseload declining, that difference is striking and disturbing," Widmer said. "This shows the unfortunate tendency of state government to grant year-to-year increases even when common sense argues against it."
A Boston Bar Association study released last week charged that a decade of get-tough policies has made gaining parole the hardest it has been in Massachusetts since the 1930s. The result, the report charged, was a 100 percent increase in the number of male prisoners being released directly from maximum-security prisons to the street without any supervision or control after they had completed the full term of their sentences.
The study also found that the tougher policies had another effect: reducing the workload of the state's estimated 60 parole officers. In 1990, the study found, each parole officer was responsible for 72 parolees, but by last year that number had dropped to 42.
Timothy App, the Parole Board's executive director, said budget cuts and a hiring freeze have caused the caseload to increase again this year to about 48 parolees per officer, but he acknowledged that even that figure was significantly less than the national average of 68 cases per officer. The board's budget for the current fiscal year was cut by $735,000, about 5 percent, due to the state fiscal crisis, officials said.
App defended the current caseload numbers as "a good thing."
"You have to ask what the frequency of contact with parolees is going to be with higher caseloads," App said. "I wouldn't want the number to go much above 50. And with 68, you are not going to be that involved."
The budget increases of the 1990s were driven mostly by salary increases negotiated with the parole officer's union, App said, since salaries account for 80 percent of the Parole Board's budget. Operating costs account for 9 percent, he said. The balance of the budget covers the cost of leasing nine offices across the state.
App said starting pay for parole officers has risen 55 percent over the last decade, from $28,624 in 1992 to $44,356 today.
Since most of the state's parole staff has been on the job for a decade or more, however, the average salary for officers is nearly $64,000, he said.
"It is a good wage," App said. "I have a seasoned staff, and that's what drives our budget."
According to statistics compiled by the Criminal Justice Institute Inc., a Connecticut-based firm that compiles statistics on crime and corrections issues, Massachusetts parole officers appear to be among the best paid in the nation.
In 1999, the latest year for which national statistics are available, the average pay for parole and probation officers nationally was $36,510 - 43 percent less than the current salary for their Massachusetts counterparts.
App defended the agency, saying that while there was some underutilization of resources when he and current board chairman Michael Pomerol took over in December 2001, the frequency of checks on parolees has increased dramatically and new, intensive parole programs for high-risk parolees have been launched. "We're doing good things," he said.
App and James Borghesani, Acting Governor Jane Swift's press secretary, declined to comment on the hefty pay increases given to probation officers during the 1990s, saying they were the product of previous administrations.
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The Boston Herald
Thursday, August 15, 2002
A Boston Herald editorial
The trough feeders abuse taxpayers
There is feeding at the trough and then there's really wallowing in it. Two employees in the office of Auditor Joe DeNucci are wallowing. And you, the taxpayers, are paying for their obscene feast.
Herald reporter Ellen J. Silberman documented the financial good fortune of DeNucci's right-hand guy, Robert A. Powilatis, who at age 58 opted to take early retirement and collect a pension of $81,000 a year plus medical insurance for life. Then, however, DeNucci rehired the obviously indispensable Powilatis as a "consultant." His first contract gave him $21,000 for three months work; a second is worth $35,000 through the end of the year. That means he'll collect as much as $144,000 this year - or $29,000 more than his previous $115,000 a year salary.
Is this a great country or what?
Another of the obviously indispensable is Stephen Cohen, who was assistant director of state audits at $71,000 a year until his retirement. Now he collects a $40,000-a-year pension and was given a $37,000 consulting contract on top of that.
That the state auditor's office is supposed to serve as a fiscal watchdog only adds to the irony of this double-dipping affront to the taxpayers. And the fact that state law prohibits retirees who want to return to the state payroll from making more in retirement than they did as full-time employees leaves the auditor with some serious explaining to do.
The early retirement law, of course, was supposed to save money by providing incentives to get some workers off the payroll. And we wonder why taxpayers are often cynical about their government, which seems to play by rules it keeps inventing.
The State Retirement Board, headed by Treasurer Shannon O'Brien, should be riding herd over all this, but depends on self-reporting to do so. (Apparently the board and the treasurer are unaware of the wonderful world of computer technology which should allow such cross-matching. What works for welfare recipients ought to work for state retirees, no?)
The problem is, of course, that DeNucci, O'Brien and members of the retirement board are all part of the same raised-at-the-trough system - a system that has come to have no respect for the people who pay the bills.
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The Boston Herald
Friday, August 16, 2002
A Boston Herald editorial
The Senate as deadbeat
The Massachusetts Senate may be many things, but who knew it was among the state's worst deadbeats? Yep, the sorry fact is that while most state agencies - with some prodding from the state controller's office - pride themselves on getting most of their bills paid on time, the Senate has fallen way behind the curve.
Of 157 state agencies, 132 (including the House and the governor's office) are able to pay at least 80 percent of their bills on time. The Senate was dead last on that list of 157 and well below the 60 percent on-time level for the fiscal year that ended June 30.
Ah, but it gets worse. In the last quarter of fiscal 2002 Senate Business Manager Leverett Wing took vacation time and compensatory time off to work as an unpaid deputy campaign manager for Senate President Tom Birmingham in his Democratic primary race for governor. During that same period the Senate managed to get only 15 percent of its bills paid on time.
The downside, of course, is that those who sell the Senate everything from stationery and paper clips to office furniture and sandwiches for those late-night caucuses might think twice about doing so in the future.
The Birmingham era may be drawing to a close in the Massachusetts Senate, but the bills will obviously linger on.
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