Citizens for Limited Taxation & Government
"The Commonwealth Activist Network"
18 Tremont Street #608 * Boston, MA 02108
Phone: (617) 248-0022 * E-Mail: cltg@cltg.org
Visit our web-page at: http://cltg.org
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*** CLT&G Alert! ***
Tuesday, May 20, 1997

Whew, what a day for us "watchdogs"! Barbara’s on the phone with her sources digging up the behind-the-scenes legislative stratagems; I’m banging out letters-to-the-editors, faxing and e-mailing them out; memos are being run up to the State House by Chip Faulkner; these e-mail messages are going out to you folks; the TVs are tuned to the Senate debate; and They’re spending the surplus as fast as is humanly possible up on Beacon Hill!

Today, before even getting to the FY ‘98 budget, our Senate is voting on a *supplemental* budget for FY ‘97 -- this year— trying to spend the money that’s left over before they have to give it back.

The following memo to each of our 40 Senators is on its way up the Hill as I send this out:

Chip Ford
Co-director


To: Members of the Massachusetts Senate
May 20, 1997
Re: Supplemental Budget

We notice that you are paying off the fiscal recovery bonds.

We assume this means that we have fiscally recovered from the Dukakis/Legislative fiscal crisis of the last decade. There-fore, you should no longer need the income tax increase that was used for those bonds, and the additional tax burden with which the taxpayers have been burdened in this decade should be removed from their shoulders.

We also notice that you have more surplus money than can fit into the stabilization fund, even with its cap raised, and are now desperately trying to spend the money rather than give it back as you promised when the stabilization fund was created in 1986. The required increase in the personal exemption is a special benefit for middle-class families. Instead of giving it to them, you are trying to use up the surplus by putting it in a supplemental budget, even though you apparently don’t plan to spend the money until FY’98. Cute.

You do not seem inclined to keep the legislative promise:

that when the stabilization fund is filled, you will return this surplus money to the taxpayers. You have increased the stabilization fund, so that the taxpayers’ money is held by the state instead of returned. Now you are planning to spend the rest of the surplus before it appears to overflow the stabilization fund and requires a tax cut.

We will look at the bright side. This surplus, along with the extra dollars in the stabilization fund, and the money that will no longer be necessary to service the bonds, gives a nice base for returning the income tax rate from the present 5.95 percent to the pre-Dukakis 5 percent. We hope that you will support our bill, filed by Senator Hedlund, to phase down that rate to 5 percent by 1999.

Please note that we are asking you to do the right thing for the taxpayers at every step in the appropriation process. We do not want to do a petition drive for this unless we have to: the job of returning the income tax rate to 5 percent is yours, and the credit should be yours. We hope you will do the job, and take the credit, and begin to restore public confidence in its state legislature.