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 ***
Saturday, March 7, 1998
Greetings activists and supporters:
Never in a million years did I ever expect to hear the Secretary of State’s office use as a defense
against our challenge that their $3 million-per-year taxpayer-funded Central Voter Registry database
was useless and that they were inept at maintaining it!
We taxpayers will provide the Secretary of State’s office with $2,958,538 this year alone (Budget Line
Item 0521-0001) to maintain and operate its CVR computer database system -- 100 percent of which
comes from the state Local Aid Fund—and its representatives now tell the court it is of no use in
certifying registered voters . . . that only voter registration cards and city and town registrars are
capable of determining who is and who is not qualified to vote!
From our experience, we certainly knew there were problems with the system. But it was Secretary Bill
Galvin who promoted it so heavily—when he thought it was useful. Based on it he has even announced
the winners and losers to the media before petitions were even collected back from the city and town
clerks and the signatures had been counted!
Since December, we’ve invested hundreds if not thousands of hours into using this database, a copy of
which we were finally able to wrest from his office after much stalling. Using it we’ve been able to
identify some 2,000 registered voters who should have been certified, but who weren’t.
The teachers union can’t have that, now can it?
So Galvin’s office now insists before the court that its CVR database, the central registry of voters
statewide, is
merely computer storage space.
Is it me, or doesn’t three million dollars a year seem like an awful lot of our taxpayer money to be
spending on useless "storage space"? You can’t have it both ways!
Once we get on the ballot, when the campaigning starts and we hear "so where will you cut?"—we now
have our first, and ready-made, response . . . thanks to the Secretary of Darkness!
Chip Ford—
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Advances - March 6, 1998
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE
Week of March 9, 1998
BALLOT QUESTIONS....Monday is the court-ordered deadline for Citizens for Limited Taxation &
Government to turn in the list of 2,000 signatures the group believes were improperly excluded by town
clerks during the signature certification process. CLT&G, which is pushing for an income tax rollback,
was knocked off the November ballot when the state Ballot Law Commission invalidated 437 signatures
in January. But CLT&G took Secretary of State William Galvin to court, arguing that at least 2,000
signatures were not properly counted by local town clerks. On the other side is the Massachusetts
Teachers Association, which argues that town clerks and the ballot commission didn’t invalidate enough
signatures. Technical motions have been filed for the past several weeks and no action is expected until
late April, giving Galvin’s office time to review the contested signatures, which are contained on the
statewide voter registry. CLT&G says it should be a simple matter to check contested signatures with
the electronic database, but Galvin’s office disagrees. According to Jack McCarthy, Galvin’s chief of
staff, the burden of proof lies with CLT&G, not on Galvin’s office, which oversees but does not verify
local officials’ work. Since Galvin’s office merely provides computer space for local town clerks to store
their electronic records, only the individual officials can testify about the validity of signatures,
McCarthy said. Last week, MTA and its ally, the Tax Equity Alliance for Massachusetts, may have
won a partial victory, when the judge in the case ruled what constitutes a valid signature. According to
the judge, all that’s necessary to settle the debate is to compare signatures and addresses - as they
appear on the petition - to the voting lists, said TEAM’s Jim St. George. That potentially means that
someone who signed "#7 Oak St." when they actually live at "#7 Oak Rd." could not be counted. And
that might also exclude people who have moved across town, but not updated their voter registration; a
number of CLT&G’s challenges are based on the assumption that those signatures should be included.
On Friday, CLT&G and MTA/TEAM will have to swap their lists of contested signatures, and will
begin the painstaking process of checking out each one individually. When the dust settles, CLT&G
needs to have added only 356 signatures to re-qualify for the ballot.
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And in case you looked but couldn’t find a word about the Finneran "tax cut" being fast-tracked out of
the Taxation Committee yesterday anywhere in the mainstream media this morning, don’t feel
defeated. I couldn’t find anything either, so I got the following report from the same source as above,
this morning’s State House News Service Advances.
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STATE HOUSE, BOSTON........It’s an election year and the state’s economy is booming. Financial
watchdogs predict another huge budget surplus when this fiscal year ends June 30 - perhaps as much as
$800 million. That means that the biggest quandary facing elected officials is just how big a tax cut they
should award the voters they are courting. Pending proposals range from the $443 million income tax
break put forward by Senate President Thomas Birmingham to acting Gov. Paul Cellucci’s bid to drop
the tax on earned and unearned income by $1.58 billion; Cellucci’s proposal is mirrored by a tax-cut
ballot question, which would go straight to the voters in November. Last week House leaders weighed
in with their own plan. It would return $500 million to taxpayers by way of a more modest income tax
break than Cellucci wants, increase exemptions for the elderly and disabled and tinker with the capital
gains tax. Like Birmingham, House Speaker Thomas Finneran (D-Mattapan) said his bill would contain
a clause rendering it null and void if voters approve the $1.58 billion rollback in November. The House
leadership’s bill was endorsed last Friday by the Taxation Committee and moved to the House Ways
and Means Committee. It is expected to surface from that panel by mid-week and may even hit the
House floor. Differing House and Senate versions of tax-cutting legislation will likely end up in the
same conference committee that will eventually craft the final version of the fiscal 1999 state budget in
June. Next year’s spending level is contingent on how much money the commonwealth expects on hand.
If floor debate does come this week, expect plenty of amendments and fighting about the capital gains
rate, which would be raised to 5.7 percent on anyone making a capital gain after holding an asset more
than 18 months. The capital gains rate now ranges from 5 percent down to zero on assets held longer
than a year, and Republicans and some Democrats will want to have their say about whether the state
should execute an about-face now.
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You can e-mail A Promise to Keep: 5% at --> cltg@cltg.org
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