Gov. Paul Cellucci called on business leaders yesterday to
rally behind his push for a state income tax rollback just hours after a new poll showed softening public support for the
plan.
"This is the most important public policy decision we have
to make this year," Cellucci told several dozen chief executives gathered at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel.
Reducing the tax to 5 percent from the current 5.85 percent
will improve the state's competitive position, he said. "In this new era, I don't think it's a good idea to be the state
that has the highest income tax in the country."
Cellucci made his remarks in the wake of a Boston Herald
poll which found 48 percent of likely voters favoring the rollback and 30 percent opposing it. Just a few weeks ago
-- before anti-rollback groups launched an advertising blitz -- the ballot measure had the support of 72
percent of the voters while 13 percent opposed it.
Massachusetts AFL-CIO chief Robert Haynes said yesterday
that the Herald data mirrored the union umbrella organization's own polling.
"(Cellucci) must have had heart palpitations when he saw the
front page of the Herald this morning," Haynes said.
The Republican governor took a swipe at union leaders
working to block the cut, saying he suspected rank-and-file members would like to see their taxes cut.
"We'll see about that I guess on Nov. 7," Haynes replied.
Haynes predicted that voter-education drives aimed at union
members will generate enough votes to kill the rollback.
Cellucci argues taxpayers are owed the rate cut, since a
legislative move to hike the rate from 5 percent more than 10 years ago, was supposed to be an emergency, temporary measure
amid a faltering state economy.
But James St. George, head of the Tax Equity Alliance of
Massachusetts, an anti-rollback group, said other tax breaks during the administrations of Cellucci and former Gov. William
F. Weld fulfilled that pledge.
A tax cut could be reasonable if it were targeted at lower-income families, St. George said.
Cellucci did not directly address the Herald poll yesterday
but said that there were "powerful forces" working against the cut.