As always, Citizens for Limited Taxation will be watching Beacon Hill, and available to comment from 28 years of experience and historical perspective, not to mention the activism that created or responded to much of the political news over those years.
Our New Year’s resolution: to refrain from overusing the phrase, "back in the old days..."
1) But, while it’s still this year, let us point out that back in the old days,
legislative pay raises had to be voted upon and legislators could be held accountable. CLT often moved to repeal the more outrageous hikes done at the more outrageous times, ie., in the middle of the night, immediately following an election, on Halloween, etc.
Then the Legislature quietly put a constitutional amendment on the 1998 ballot to give itself an automatic pay raise every other year. However, the argument used was deceptive, giving the impression that a Yes vote would prevent legislators from voting to raise their own pay. The voters approved this on the same ballot that they approved Clean Elections.
CLT thinks that Speaker Tom Finneran should be indignant about the possibility that the voters didn’t fully understand the question, as he insists was the case with Clean
Elections.
The Legislature should put the question back on the ballot with the proper emphasis and ask the voters if they’ve changed their
minds.
2) Back in the old days, there was some democracy on Beacon Hill under the leadership of George Keverian, which helped prevent total budget meltdown in the last fiscal crisis. CLT supports
Rep. Byron Rushing’s four-point democracy plan and hopes that enough legislators will vote against Speaker Finneran on January 1st to send a clear message that
reform is needed again.
3) Speaker Finneran’s attack on Clean Elections, the charitable deduction ballot question, and CLT’s income tax rollback has already damaged initiative petition results.
A bill filed by Sen. Rosenberg would eviscerate the initiative process with another deceptive constitutional amendment like the pay raise amendment, above. If adopted, it will kill the citizens’ right to make their own laws. CLT will expose this deceptive legislative amendment early, and repeat our warnings often.
4) CLT has filed a bill to rollback the income tax rate to 5 percent in 2003. We support Governor Romney’s intent to restructure state government. So far we are very impressed with his appointments. We also hope the ridiculous
new taxes on prescription drugs and nursing home beds will be repealed, before they drive even more patients into Medicare programs.
5) 2003 will be the first year CLT’s Voluntary Tax will be in effect. It allows the 41 percent of voters who opposed Question 4 in 2000 -- just over a million who asserted that they "didn’t need or want a tax cut" -- to keep paying their income tax at the old rate of 5.85 percent through a simple check-off on state tax return forms. It’ll be interesting after the April filing deadline to see how many of them meant it: the law also requires the DOR to track how many chose the option and how much additional revenue the check-off raised.
6) Governor Swift could walk the moral high ground on her way out if she reversed her decision on
Gerald Amirault’s commutation and set an innocent man free.
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