A PROMISE TO KEEP: 5%
A Ballot Committee of
Citizens for Limited Taxation & Government
PO Box 408 * Peabody, MA 01960
Phone:(617) 248-0022 * E-Mail: cltg@cltg.org
Visit our web-page at: http://cltg.org
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*** Promise Update ***
Monday, February 2, 1998

Greetings members and contributors:

How much does it cost to run a statewide ballot question petition drive?

All ballot committees had to file their finance reports with the state Office of Campaign and Political Finance by last Tuesday, January 20th. The following State House News Service report indicates that once again, of all the committees that had the resources to complete their effort, our CLT&G/Promise committee raised the least—but still it took $40,000 even doing it "on the cheap."

That was only half as much as the next closest financially competitive committee, Free the Pike, which raised $80,000.

Promise is still paying off some debt from the petition drive—and the bills that are mounting due to the additional expense of the recent teachers union challenge before the state Ballot Law Committee and now our challenge in Suffolk Superior Court. Thanks to those of you who have already responded to our Promise mailing of a few weeks ago with a contribution. It’s keeping us in the ballgame and the challenge going.

Chip Ford—
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Ballot Committees Report Fund-Raising Totals
State House News Service

Supporters of a referendum campaign to cut the tax rate on unearned income have demonstrated a legal way to fund a ballot campaign—to the tune of $140,000 -- without revealing who is providing the money.

The Committee for Tax Fairness spent $140,000 in five months to place an initiative lowering the state’s unearned-income tax rate on the November ballot. But unlike other petition initiatives, CTF did not file an itemized donor list with the Office of Campaign and Political Finance showing how it gathered 86,000 signatures.

The money for the signature gathering and other CTF operations came from the non-profit Committee for Fair and Simple Taxation, formed last spring to lobby Beacon Hill legislators on the rollback.

Committee for Fair and Simple Taxation campaign coordinator Jennifer Peck said the big donation from the non-profit isn’t an attempt to circumvent campaign-finance laws—it simply reflects the shift in strategy from lobbying to ballot campaigning, which have different sets of disclosure laws.

Office of Campaign and Political Finance officials said it is legal for a non-profit to give money to a ballot committee, as long as the non-profit raised the money for issue advocacy and not specifically for a ballot campaign.

Three other ballot-campaign initiatives—abolishing Massachusetts Turnpike tolls, public funding for elections, and rolling back the state income tax—filed their donor records on Tuesday.

The Free the Pike campaign, which wants to remove tolls on the Massachusetts Turnpike, spent about $80,000 putting its question on the ballot. Most of that money came from the Watertown-based biotechnology instrumentation firm MJ Research, and its president, John Finney, who gave a total of $76,000.

The Committee for Limited Taxation & Government [I don’t know where the SHNS got *that* name; *Citizens* for Limited Taxation & Government’s ballot committee is named *A Promise to Keep: 5%* and our report was so filed—Chip] spent about $40,000 on its ballot campaign to lower the state income tax to 5 percent from 5.95 percent.

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You can e-mail A Promise to Keep: 5% at --> cltg@cltg.org
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