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 Update ***
Tuesday, February 24, 1998
Greetings activists!
Yesterday’s CLT&G News Advisory created quite a stir, but it didn’t come about all of a sudden. Barbara, Chip Faulkner and I had been kicking it around for as long as the media and some Republican opponents had been unfairly and inaccurately kicking around Joe Malone over his radio ad. CLT&G will continue to remain neutral in the Republican primary contest—both Governor Cellucci and Treasurer Malone have been and are good friends of the taxpayers and either will make a good governor -- but there’s a time when one must speak up in the name of justice.
Yesterday was one of those times.
It came down to just telling the truth as the state’s preeminent citizen-taxpayers organization: Simply replaying the facts, letting them speak for themselves. There’s far too much spinning in politics, and sometimes the truth is a casualty. That was the situation as we saw it, and after the ravaging Malone took in the Sunday papers, we just couldn’t stand by as helpless spectators any longer.
I must admit though that Sen. Minorty Leader Brian Lee’s (R-East Longmeadow) closing statement—his excuse for their tax increase—in the following Boston Globe report did leave me sputtering, "Wh..wh.. *what* party does he represent?" But then I remembered: "Silent Brian" represents the *Beacon Hill* Party, where any and all spending is good even at the expense of tax cuts and it’s *their* money, not ours—but read it in his own words.
Chip Ford—
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The Boston Globe
Tuesday, February 24, 1998
Metro / Region
CAMPAIGN 98
Tax fighter comes to the defense of Malone
Anderson says he’s right about increase
By Scot Lehigh
Globe Staff
In the bitter Republican battle over taxes and truth, state Treasurer Joseph D. Malone won an
important ally yesterday when the state’s leading tax-cut activist came to his defense.
Provoked by a letter of rebuke that former governor William F. Weld and other Republican leaders sent to Malone, Barbara Anderson, co-director of Citizens for Limited Taxation & Government, insisted that the treasurer was accurate in saying income taxes had increased under the Republican administration, Anderson said that by agreeing last year to raise the stabilization fund threshold that must be met before an automatic tax cut kicks in, the Weld/Cellucci administration had effectively raised taxes.
"It wasn’t a rate increase, but it was a tax increase," insisted Anderson. "Joe Malone is absolutely right about this."
Both candidates have courted Anderson, so much so that when she dropped her tax-cutting petitions with the attorney general last fall, both Malone and Acting Governor Paul Cellucci escorted her there.
Her agreement yesterday could prove an important boost to Malone, whose gubernatorial campaign radio ad charging Cellucci with increasing taxes has been roundly criticized as such a stretch that it distorts the truth.
Anderson, who has led the effort to cut taxes in Massachusetts for nearly two decades, said that she remains neutral in the GOP gubernatorial primary, but that she decided she had to come to Malone’s defense after last week’s blistering letter scolding Malone.
That letter, written by Weld, Senate Republican Leader Brian P. Lees of East Longmeadow, House Republican Leader David M. Peters of Charlton, and former House Republican leader Steven D. Pierce, accused Malone of engaging in a "below-the-belt negative attack" on Cellucci - and, by doing so, hurting Republican legislators as they seek reelection.
"This is because of that letter," said Anderson, who said Malone did not ask her to intercede in the dispute. "Some people are calling Joe Malone a liar, and he is not a liar."
Yesterday, the Malone campaign reveled in the corroboration from the fiercely independent-minded Anderson.
"No one is more credible on the issue of taxes than Barbara Anderson," said Mike Armini, campaign spokesman for Malone.
The Cellucci campaign, aware of Anderson’s importance with tax opponents, was somewhat restrained in its response.
"I have to say, respectfully, that Barbara Anderson is just plain wrong," said campaign manager Rob Gray. "We have cut taxes 21 times and it is well-known that Governor Cellucci would like a large income tax cut."
At issue in the campaign debate is whether governmental actions that mean taxpayers receive less of a tax break than they have in years past - or might have with more aggressive public parsimony - can properly be described as increasing taxes. Both Anderson and Malone say yes, though they focus on somewhat different issues in making their claims.
Anderson says income taxes can be said to have increased because, in 1997, the administration and the Legislature raised the amount of money that had to accumulate in the state’s rainy-day fund before the excess goes for tax reduction. That fund, created in 1986, was once capped at 5 percent of state tax revenues. In 1997, with revenues swelling, the law was changed to make it 5 percent of all state revenues, a broader category that includes fees, lottery receipts, and federal reimbursements.
That change came after the Weld/Cellucci administration agreed with legislative leaders that the rainy-day fund should be enlarged to give the state more of a safety margin in case of economic bad times.
But the change, done to bring the fund more in line with those of other states, meant less money was devoted to tax reduction last year than otherwise would have been.
At the time, Malone did not take a position on enlarging the rainy-day fund, spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom acknowledged yesterday. But last August he did call for putting much of the state’s $800 million surplus into the fund so that the cap would be exceeded and the excess would go for tax reduction.
In his radio ad, Malone says taxes have gone up because the administration and state lawmakers devoted less to the tax-reduction fund in 1997 than in 1996. Further, Malone says that if Cellucci had dedicated more of last year’s surplus to the rainy-day fund, more money would have spilled into the tax-reduction fund, lowering taxes more.
But Lees, the Senate Republican leader, yesterday disputed Anderson’s reasoning, saying that by her logic, any move to increase spending on any program could be called raising taxes, since it spends dollars that could otherwise be used for tax reduction.
"You could say the same about increased education funding and increased local aid," Lees said.
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Yes, Senator Lees—you surely could! You just don’t get it, do you? Let me try to put it in terms that perhaps even *you* can understand: IT’S *OUR* HARD-EARNED MONEY!
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You can e-mail CLT&G at --> cltg@cltg.org
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