CLT
UPDATE
Friday, December 19, 2003
They "can't fool all of the
people all of the time"
Most of the publicity following the release of the report has concentrated on the high cost of housing....
But there is another cause - one that has hardly been mentioned. Nearly half of those polled rate the quality of life in Massachusetts as "fair" or "poor." One-quarter of residents say they would leave the state if they had the chance. Why? The top reason was "to go somewhere with a lower cost of living or lower taxes."
That is also not a shocking revelation. After all, nearly 45 percent of those who came to the polls in the last state election voted to eliminate the state income tax entirely.
But what is more interesting, and is not getting much attention, is the demographic of those who want lower taxes. Turns out it is not just the fat cats. In fact, it is mostly the thin cats - those who presumably tend to be the beneficiaries of all the "services" that our benevolent government says is the reason for taxes and fees.
According to the poll, the highest percentage of those who want taxes cut are minorities, working mothers and those who describe themselves as working class or poor.
The Eagle-Tribune
Sunday, December 14, 2003
Tax burden felt by the poor, as well as the wealthy
By Taylor Armerding
Like his boss, the governor, Secretary of Administration and Finance Eric Kriss has proven himself a straight talker. Some don't particularly want to hear what he has to say, but he speaks the truth.
Such was the case when he told a group of municipal officials meeting in Malden earlier this week that union hegemony in Massachusetts is costing taxpayers and consumers hundreds of millions of dollars a year. He calls it a "hidden tax." ...
"Like any industrial monopoly, a labor monopoly creates a political imbalance," Kriss told the assembled mayors and other officials attending the Greater Boston Municipal Financial Summit. Worse than that, it's created a fear that's especially prevalent on Beacon Hill of bucking the unions. Witness how legislators cower whenever a crowd of firefighters or teachers gather at the Statehouse to press their demands.
Make no mistake, that timidity is costing you big time. And until lawmakers become more concerned with the voters' wrath than they are with the heat the unions are capable of generating, any change in the present, very expensive method of doing business in the Bay State is unlikely.
The Salem News
Thursday, December 18, 2003
Paying the 'hidden tax'
By Nelson Benton
Former Rutland state Rep. David C. Bunker Jr. has paid $3,080 in fines and restitution
for requesting and receiving travel allowances to the Statehouse last year when he was at
home sick....
The Ethics Commission fine may put legislators on notice that they cannot abuse per
diems, said Francis J. "Chip" Faulkner, associate director of Citizens for Limited
Taxation.
Mr. Faulkner added that the difficulty in establishing per diem violations highlights the
need to ensure that legislators who request the payments are at work in Boston when they
say they are.
"For years we've been hearing that legislators are abusing the per diems and putting in
when they're not there, and they finally did something about it. Congratulations," Mr.
Faulkner said. "I wouldn't mind them punching in to show they're there, because I have no
faith in the honor system when we're dealing with per diems."
The Worcester Telegram & Gazette
Friday, December 19, 2003
Bunker pays $3,080 for ethics violation
Ethics board fines ex-state Rep. Bunker
Citing the improving economy, political leaders on Beacon Hill are optimistic that they
won't make any cuts in state aid to cities and towns for the next fiscal year....
While Kriss and other top politicians are making no promises, their remarks are in sharp
contrast from last year. At this time last year, legislators told municipal officials
that state aid could be cut by anywhere from 10 to 15 percent....
According to the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, tax collections could jump by $700
million to $16.1 billion in the fiscal year that begins July 1.
Michael J. Widmer, president of the foundation, said yesterday that state government
still is facing $1 billion deficit in next year's state budget, largely because of
increasing costs of Medicaid and the use of some revenues in this year's budget that will
no longer be available for next year. Widmer said Beacon Hill leaders might be able to
fund state aid at the current level, but he is leery of that.
"If the gap is $1 billion, it's going to be difficult not to have some modest cut in
local aid," he said.
The Springfield Republican
Friday, December 19, 2003
Politicians see end to aid cuts
Chip Ford's CLT
Commentary
Everybody seems to see no further cuts in local aid
-- one of the hottest of hot-button issues -- in the upcoming budget
war. Everybody, that is, but Michael Widmer and his so-called
Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, of course. Everyone is sighing a
deep breath of relief, except Wet-Blanket Widmer, still stoking the
fires of "fiscal crisis" in search of another tax hike.
When the economy fully rebounds and tax revenue is
again pouring in hand over fist, Widmer will then lead the charge
against tax cuts for average taxpayers, again lobby for a bigger and
bigger state "rainy day" fund, which will lead to another
cycle of increased spending and fat-cat big-business tax breaks ...
create the next "fiscal crisis," and MTF will be back
advocating yet another tax hike on average taxpayers.
The so-called Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation has
become just so predictable.
*
*
*
I wasn't the only one to catch one of, if not the,
most important conclusions of the recent MassInc report, "MASSmigration"
-- ignored by virtually everyone else -- that "the number one
reason for wanting to move was 'to go somewhere with a lower cost of
living or lower taxes.'" (CLT
Update, Dec. 15)
Taylor Armerding of the Lawrence Eagle-Tribune
caught it as well, and also exposed it -- actually a day before I
reported it. Good job Taylor! His column ran alongside Barbara's in the
Salem News yesterday, as well. As Honest Abe Lincoln once noted,
"You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the
people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the
time."
*
*
*
Yesterday's Salem News editorial, written by Nelson
Benton, also came to the defense of Romney administration A&F chief
Eric Kriss, much as CLT
and the Boston Herald did on Wednesday. Honest Abe's wisdom is
proven once again!
*
*
*
My goodness, another (former) state rep. -- in this
most recent case David Bunker, now chief education policy analyst for the
House Ways
and Means Committee since he retired due to illness: the voters of his
district got sick of him -- has belatedly been caught abusing the
Legislature's per diem system, an abuse of taxpayers to begin with.
On Mar. 30, 2000, the Boston Herald reported ("State lawmakers move to hike their own earnings"):
"House leaders have slipped in a budget provision to boost lawmakers' earnings by up to $10,000 per year in exchange for fully funding a voter-approved campaign finance reform law."
The Telegram and Gazette reported today: "When lawmakers voted in 2000 to double their travel allowances and office expense
accounts - which had not been increased since 1974 - some criticized the benefits as a
back-door pay hike."
Some of us also loudly criticized it as a
bait-and-switch scam (see CLT Update of May 4, 2001, "Give back the extortion money!").
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul Haley
had justified the doubling of legislators' "per diem" pay and doubling legislators' district office slush
fund by claiming that the increased office expense money "would allow lawmakers to abide by the 'Clean Elections' campaign finance reform law by absorbing some of the 'constituent service' expenses they currently pay out of their campaign funds."
But then the Legislature killed the Clean Elections
Law, ultimately repealing it outright. There is and never was that
professed limit on their fund-raising prowess, but they have yet to
repeal their devious money grab at taxpayers expense.
It's now clear that the excuse was a lie, nothing
more than another backdoor pay raise, another grubby taxpayer rip-off
just as we charged back then notwithstanding legislators' denials to the
contrary. The Bacon Hill pols took good care of themselves as usual ...
at any cost.
The scam lives on, the pols still pocket up to
$10,000 in additional cash every year, and their disingenuous excuses
have been forgotten ... almost.
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Chip
Ford |
The Eagle-Tribune
Sunday, December 14, 2003
Tax burden felt by the poor, as well as the wealthy
By Taylor Armerding
It's not exactly a giant sucking sound.
But, as the recent report by the Massachusetts Institute for a New Commonwealth
(MassINC) documents, it is a sucking sound all the same - the wrong kind. Other states are sucking the middle class out of Massachusetts.
The report, titled "MASS.migration," offers no great surprise to anyone trying to make it in Massachusetts who is not either a recipient of public support or making at least a six-figure salary. If you don't fall into one of those two groups, it is increasingly impossible to afford to live here. Indeed, if it weren't for foreign immigration, the population of the state would have declined over the past 12 years, while the national population has grown by 13.2 percent.
And while, according to the report, Massachusetts is barely in the black when it comes to competing with other states for young, well-educated career climbers to work in its knowledge economy, even that narrow gain is tenuous. Witness the full-page ads in recent editions of the Boston metro papers urging biotech companies to think about moving or expanding to North Carolina.
Those ads are also aimed at those who work for those companies - people who tend to be unmarried and highly mobile. The only roots they really want to grow are in their bank accounts, not the soil of any particular state. They get a better offer and they're gone.
Of course, the obvious question to ask about all this is: Why is the middle class fleeing?
Most of the publicity following the release of the report has concentrated on the high cost of housing. At first blush, that would seem to make no sense. If the population is barely increasing, why do we need so much more housing? The short answer is that "households" tend to have fewer people than in past decades, hence even a static population demands more housing units.
And high-cost housing is indeed a cause for middle-class flight - one that has been known and discussed and analyzed ad nauseam for decades, without much improvement. That is because nobody but those trying to buy it really want affordable housing. Proof of that is more restrictive local zoning codes and the watering down of the state's affordable-housing law, ensuring an even tighter and more expensive supply of one of life's basic necessities.
But there is another cause - one that has hardly been mentioned. Nearly half of those polled rate the quality of life in Massachusetts as "fair" or "poor." One-quarter of residents say they would leave the state if they had the chance. Why? The top reason was "to go somewhere with a lower cost of living or lower taxes."
That is also not a shocking revelation. After all, nearly 45 percent of those who came to the polls in the last state election voted to eliminate the state income tax entirely.
But what is more interesting, and is not getting much attention, is the demographic of those who want lower taxes. Turns out it is not just the fat cats. In fact, it is mostly the thin cats - those who presumably tend to be the beneficiaries of all the "services" that our benevolent government says is the reason for taxes and fees.
According to the poll, the highest percentage of those who want taxes cut are minorities, working mothers and those who describe themselves as working class or poor.
Perhaps they know something our political leaders don't. Perhaps they know instinctively what more than one economic analyst has concluded: that raising taxes on "the rich" actually hurts the working people those rich folks tend to employ.
The rich, who are generally pretty smart people, figure out a way to increase their income enough to cover that increased tax liability and still maintain their lifestyle. They tend to do that by cutting expenses in their businesses, sometimes by simply cutting their work force. So, while they pay higher taxes, the workers get laid off. Not much of a trade.
Massachusetts political leaders keep telling taxpayers there is no free lunch. They have it backward. Nobody who does their taxes each spring is under the delusion that anything, least of all lunch, is free. It is government that is deluded, thinking that it is "free" to dip ever more deeply into the wallets of its citizens, to provide themselves and others on the public payroll with automatic pay increases, more expansive benefits and outrageous pensions.
It is clear their delusion may be hitting reality. The people with those thinner wallets are fleeing. That moderate sucking sound you hear may get even louder if everybody ignores it.
Taylor Armerding is associate editorial page editor of The Eagle-Tribune.
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The Salem News
Thursday, December 18, 2003
Paying the 'hidden tax'
By Nelson Benton
Like his boss, the governor, Secretary of Administration and Finance Eric Kriss has proven himself a straight talker. Some don't particularly want to hear what he has to say, but he speaks the truth.
Such was the case when he told a group of municipal officials meeting in Malden earlier this week that union hegemony in Massachusetts is costing taxpayers and consumers hundreds of millions of dollars a year. He calls it a "hidden tax."
The problem is particularly pervasive in the public sector. Many legislators, particularly within the Democratic Party, see labor's support as critical to their ability to remain in office. And in better times, the cost of sweetheart deals could easily be absorbed within federal, state and municipal budgets.
Government coffers were long regarded as a bottomless well - and, sadly, still are to some extent. Witness the rush recently to lure public employees into early retirement as a means of reducing the work force - as if the money to pay 10, 20 or even more years in extra pension costs will somehow fall from a tree.
Hardly. According to a recent Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation report, "Under law changes adopted in the 2004 budget, the commonwealth's annual funding obligation for employee pensions in 2005 and beyond must be met by transfers from tax revenues that will reduce the amount available for appropriation in the budget. The necessary transfers are expected to be as much as $700 million more than the 2004 appropriation."
That's $700 million which won't be available for local aid, highway maintenance and other state services.
Then there's the so-called "prevailing wage" law which forces those doing business with governmental entities to pay employees much more than they would if doing the same work for a private concern. Changing those laws, Kriss says, could save the state $200 million a year.
Backing up that assertion is a recent Beacon Hill Institute study which, according to the Associated Press, found that "the cost of school building construction since 1995 was $60 million higher than it would have been" without these requirements.
And as Kriss also points out, these extra costs are not limited to the private sector. Utility customers are indirectly billed for the hundreds of thousands of dollars in police detail costs their electricity, gas, phone and cable TV providers are subject to under the arcane laws that require the presence of a uniformed officer - paid at the overtime rate with a minimum number of hours guaranteed - virtually every time they climb a pole or lift a manhole cover. Most anyplace else, these jobs can employ a flagman working at straight time.
"Like any industrial monopoly, a labor monopoly creates a political imbalance," Kriss told the assembled mayors and other officials attending the Greater Boston Municipal Financial Summit. Worse than that, it's created a fear that's especially prevalent on Beacon Hill of bucking the unions. Witness how legislators cower whenever a crowd of firefighters or teachers gather at the Statehouse to press their demands.
Make no mistake, that timidity is costing you big time. And until lawmakers become more concerned with the voters' wrath than they are with the heat the unions are capable of generating, any change in the present, very expensive method of doing business in the Bay State is unlikely.
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The Worcester Telegram & Gazette
Friday, December 19, 2003
Bunker pays $3,080 for ethics violation
Ethics board fines ex-state Rep. Bunker
By Shaun Sutner, Staff writer
Former Rutland state Rep. David C. Bunker Jr. has paid $3,080 in fines and restitution
for requesting and receiving travel allowances to the Statehouse last year when he was at
home sick.
The settlement is the first penalty imposed by the state Ethics Commission for violating
the state conflict-of-interest law by obtaining unwarranted per diem payments.
The 32-year-old Democrat, now chief education policy analyst for the powerful House Ways
and Means Committee, was ill with mononucleosis in 2002 during his unsuccessful
re-election campaign when he requested the per diems.
Mr. Bunker, one of three Democratic lawmakers unseated by Republicans in November's
election, was defeated by Rep. Lewis C. Evangelidis, R-Holden, after serving in
2001-2002.
On Dec. 9, he signed a disposition agreement with the commission acknowledging that he
put in for 30 per diem payments of $36 each from mid-July to mid-September 2002 when he
was only at the Statehouse infrequently.
Besides forfeiting the travel payments, he paid a $2,000 fine, the maximum for a single
offense.
Mr. Bunker, who did not maintain accurate records of his schedule, according to the
commission, had said he traveled to the Statehouse three or four days a week during that
period.
"The law allows legislators to receive per diems for days when they are present at the
Statehouse," Peter Sturges, executive director of the Ethics Commission, said in a
statement announcing the agreement yesterday.
"Requesting and accepting unearned per diems does double harm to the Commonwealth: Scarce
public funds are misdirected and public confidence in the integrity of government is
undermined," he continued.
Per diems have long been controversial on Beacon Hill. Critics of the Legislature see
them as excessive perks that are poorly monitored and often abused.
When lawmakers voted in 2000 to double their travel allowances and office expense
accounts - which had not been increased since 1974 - some criticized the benefits as a
back-door pay hike.
The payments are based on the distance a legislator must travel to Boston; those who live
farthest away are eligible for up to $100 a day.
There is no requirement that lawmakers, who earn a base salary of $53,381, prove they are
at the Statehouse to collect the per diem pay.
The Ethics Commission fine may put legislators on notice that they cannot abuse per
diems, said Francis J. "Chip" Faulkner, associate director of Citizens for Limited
Taxation.
Mr. Faulkner added that the difficulty in establishing per diem violations highlights the
need to ensure that legislators who request the payments are at work in Boston when they
say they are.
"For years we've been hearing that legislators are abusing the per diems and putting in
when they're not there, and they finally did something about it. Congratulations," Mr.
Faulkner said. "I wouldn't mind them punching in to show they're there, because I have no
faith in the honor system when we're dealing with per diems."
Mr. Bunker, who now lives in Somerville, did not respond to requests for comment.
The commission began an inquiry into the possible ethics law violation on Nov. 12, a year
after he was defeated for re-election.
Ethics investigations are prompted by complaints from individuals, referrals by state
agencies, media reports and the commission's own initiatives.
Before being elected to represent the 1st Worcester House district, Mr. Bunker was a top
aide to former Holden state Rep. Harold M. Lane Jr., who was co-chairman of the
Legislature's Education Committee in the 1990s.
Mr. Bunker won a special election in 2000 to succeed Mr. Lane, then held onto the seat in
a regular election later that year, both times defeating Holden Republican Mark S.
Ferguson.
The February 2000 special election was decided by a recount in which Mr. Bunker beat Mr.
Ferguson by 13 votes.
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The Springfield Republican
Friday, December 19, 2003
Politicians see end to aid cuts
By Dan Ring, Staff writer
Citing the improving economy, political leaders on Beacon Hill are optimistic that they won't make any cuts in state aid to cities and towns for the next fiscal year.
After reducing state aid accounts each of the past three years, legislators said they are aiming to keep state aid at the current level in the state budget for the fiscal year starting next July 1. That could help avoid the municipal job cuts, fee hikes and service reductions that occurred in many communities across the state following this year's $332 million cut in state aid. Senate President Robert E. Travaglini, D-Boston, said top legislators still are attempting to project tax collections for the next fiscal year, but it's his goal to maintain aid at the current amount of $4.8 billion.
"It would be my desire to fund it at its present levels," Travaglini said in an interview. "It's clearly my desire that that would be the result of our review."
Travaglini said he especially wants to avoid any further reductions in $3.1 billion in Chapter 70 general education aid. The aid was slashed by $100 million in the current fiscal year, marking the first cut since the state's education law was approved in 1993.
"We've come to the conclusion that we can't make any more cuts in that area without significantly altering the way we educate our children," the Senate president said.
Travaglini's optimism is another sign that state government is emerging from the fiscal crisis of the past three years. Because of the downturn in the economy and the stock market, state tax collections fell dramatically, prompting legislators to reduce jobs and services and increase taxes.
The administration of Gov. W. Mitt Romney also is signaling that it wants to keep state aid at the current number. At the end of next month, Romney will take the wraps off his version of the state's $22.3 billion budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1.
Speaking to an organization of mayors from metropolitan Boston, Eric A. Kriss, secretary of administration and finance, said Monday he was hopeful "that we won't see reductions" in state aid for the upcoming fiscal year. Kriss said it's "good news" that the economy is getting better and that tax collections could rise by 4 percent in the next fiscal year.
While Kriss and other top politicians are making no promises, their remarks are in sharp contrast from last year. At this time last year, legislators told municipal officials that state aid could be cut by anywhere from 10 to 15 percent.
Geoffrey C. Beckwith, executive director of the Massachusetts Municipal Association, said yesterday he is hopeful cities and towns will receive no further cuts in state aid.
Beckwith said "level funded" aid could still mean cuts in local services because of inflation in areas such as health care costs.
In the state budget for the fiscal year that started July 1, total aid was cut by 6.5 percent from the $5.1 billion approved in the prior fiscal year.
In January, cities and towns were hit hard when Romney made an emergency cut of $114 million in state aid shortly after he took office.
Senate Minority Leader Brian P. Lees, R-East Longmeadow, said yesterday he is advising municipal officials that they might receive no further reductions in state aid.
"I'm optimistic that local aid will be level funded, both Chapter 70 and the rest of it," Lees said. "We're going to work hard to make sure that happens."
According to the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, tax collections could jump by $700 million to $16.1 billion in the fiscal year that begins July 1.
Michael J. Widmer, president of the foundation, said yesterday that state government still is facing $1 billion deficit in next year's state budget, largely because of increasing costs of Medicaid and the use of some revenues in this year's budget that will no longer be available for next year. Widmer said Beacon Hill leaders might be able to fund state aid at the current level, but he is leery of that.
"If the gap is $1 billion, it's going to be difficult not to have some modest cut in local aid," he said.
Material from the Statehouse News Service was used in this report.
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