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CLT UPDATE
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
"Per Mile Travel Tax" — Will you
have a voice?
|
The hacks at the State House are salivating at
the prospect of charging you a penny for every mile you drive your
car in Massachusetts.
This is a tax increase so monstrous that it would
make M. Stanley Dukakis blush. We’re talking $555 million — the
first year.
It’s an idea so terrible it can’t be killed. Like
a vampire, it keeps coming back to life, and the stake hasn’t been
invented that can be driven through its black heart.
The Vehicle Miles Traveled Fee, that’s what the
payroll patriots and union thugs are calling it now, in a new
transportation report full of similar euphemisms. New taxes, for
instance, are now “funding strategies” and “local financial
commitment.”...
We are talking mega-bucks here. That $555 million
in the first year would be when they’re giving motorists what they
consider a break, by charging a mere .85 cent a mile.
Drivers, it’s just your fair share. Don’t be a
slacker. It’s not enough that you already pay tolls, and the auto
excise tax, and the 6.25 percent sales tax when you buy the car, not
to mention the federal gasoline tax, and the state gasoline tax,
which reminds me, another of the new “funding strategies” reported
by the State House News Service is “indexing the state’s gas tax to
inflation.”
The Boston Herald
Sunday, June 17, 2012
Highway to Hell!
Pay-per-mile tax is latest cash grab from greedy pols
By Howie Carr
Even if the state chose not to fund the $1.3
billion Green Line Extension, several of the revenue-generating
ideas tied to that project in newly released documents will need to
be used to keep state transit authorities afloat, Transportation
Secretary Richard Davey told the News Service.
Those ideas include a new cent-per-mile tax on
vehicles, casino revenue allocated to the MBTA and tying the gas tax
to inflation.
“I’ve not heard any credible source whatsoever
saying we’re spending too much on transportation or enough on
transportation,” Davey said “So I think the conversation is
beginning, and the first step is to admit you have a problem.”
However, to Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr,
the problem is the state’s goal of expanding the Green Line through
Somerville and into Medford when the whole system is heading toward
another deficit next year.
“Why wouldn’t we consider postponing it or
avoiding it until the folks who run the MBTA say they can restore it
to solvency without extraordinary measures like tax increases,” Tarr
told the News Service. He said Davey should make clear distinctions
between “what is required versus what is desired.” ...
House Speaker Robert DeLeo has postponed
long-term fixes for the MBTA until the start of the next legislative
session, in January 2013. Meanwhile Gov. Deval Patrick’s
administration has pushed the need for an “adult conversation” about
transit funding though Patrick dismissed the revenue-generating
ideas alluded to in a recent Federal Transit Administration letter
as “hypotheticals.”
“You got to wait for my plan. We’re thinking
through what our options are,” Patrick told reporters. “We want a
fix not just for this project, not just for the T but for all of
transportation and one that’s good for 20 years or more and we’re
going to have a very engaged and serious debate in this building and
beyond about how to do that.”
Even without a firm plan in place, the
conversation has begun for some, who like Tarr, oppose the idea of
new taxes to fund the transit authority.
Hours after the News Service reported on the FTA
letter outlining transportation funding options, Restaurant and
Business Alliance President Dave Andelman – founder of The Phantom
Gourmet – released a statement opposed to the $.01 per-mile
statewide tax, saying, “Discouraging people from moving around the
state will stop the economy from moving too.”
Tarr suggested “revisiting employee
compensation,” seeking out sponsorships and improving fare
collection as routes to put the MBTA on solid financial footing. He
also said that given overall state transportation funding problems
“it really strains credibility” to consider extending the Green Line
to Medford, though he is “sympathetic” to the fact that Somerville
was promised the new transit line as environmental mitigation for
the Big Dig.
Tarr said he thought his colleagues would feel
similarly nonplussed, but Rep. Denise Provost (D-Somerville) is
looking forward to her colleagues’ efforts toward finding funding
for a backlog of repair needs at the MBTA, as well as regional
transit authorities, roads and bridges.
“If I were not an optimist I could not do the job
that I do,” said Provost, who has filed legislation to raise the gas
tax the past two legislative sessions and said the MBTA needs
alternative sources of revenue to stay afloat.
State House News Service
Monday, June 11, 2012
Sides staked out for "adult conversation" about transportation
funding
Do you have any idea of what is happening on
Bacon Hill? Unless you are a privileged Democrat insider, you
wouldn’t.
Right now, there is a record-setting number of
conference committees negotiating behind closed doors billions of
dollars in spending, tens of millions of dollars in new health care
bureaucracy, tougher sentencing for repeat offenders and more local
aid for municipalities.
Far from the public view, four Democrats and two
Republicans legislators are negotiating the differences between the
House and Senate versions of these various bills. However, all too
often within the secret sessions, the GOP is completely shut out,
and hence, the decisions are made by one party.
Once the bargaining is done, the legislation is
quickly passed with no further amendments and very little review by
the entire membership. Some of the bills are even pushed through
during informal sessions when most legislators are not in the
building.
While most of us are thinking about our summer
vacation, we need to keep a watchful eye on Bacon Hill. There are
important amendments that GOP members were able to pass that are
likely to be killed via secret negotiations, if we don’t keep the
pressure on conference committee members.
For example, during the House budget debate,
state Rep. Dan Webster got accepted a requirement that state
agencies confirm an applicant’s immigration status before allowing
anyone to collect welfare benefits. The Senate’s budget did not
include this unsung hero of the House’s language, so it easily could
be deleted without any public debate.
“In the wake of learning from the governor’s
office last week that the Health Safety Net Trust fund is providing
over $170 million in medical benefits for illegal aliens, it is more
critical than ever we address this problem. Those in our country
illegally should not be receiving state benefits at the expense of
law-abiding taxpayers and residents who are in need of them,”
Webster said.
The Boston Herald
Monday, June 18, 2012
Dems running amok behind closed doors
By Holly Robichaud
With long-term transportation financing fixes a
consensus top priority for the next legislative session, House
Speaker Robert DeLeo on Tuesday left the door open to new taxes or
fees as part of the solution.
And DeLeo said he and Transportation Committee
Chairman Rep. William Straus have already begun meeting with “top
business leaders” to discuss the solution, which he predicted would
be released as a bill early next year, and he said those meetings
would continue into the fall and winter.
DeLeo said he’s already received “some
interesting feedback” and has a “long list of people who want to
talk to me about transportation,” including hospitals, major
employers and educational institutions.
DeLeo, a Winthrop Democrat, has opposed new taxes
or fees since the he led an effort to hike the sales tax in 2009,
but he acknowledged during a one-hour interview on WBZ radio that
everything has to be on the table next year....
The Patrick administration, in an application to
the federal government for Green Line extension project grants,
indicated that it is looking at higher gas taxes, a mileage-based
user fee, or increased fares as options for the state’s
transportation funding needs. A 2009 transportation reform law,
billed as "reform before revenue" by some, was designed to wring
efficiency-related savings out of the transportation system but
appears to have left major funding gaps three years after its
adoption.
State House News Service
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
State Capitol Briefs
DeLeo "willing to listen" to transportation financing plans
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Chip Ford's CLT
Commentary
When I first heard about the recently proposed
penny per Vehicle Miles Traveled Tax, needed to bail-out the MBTA
and its expansionist programs, I assumed it would target "T" riders.
After all, it is only the riders who benefit from subsidized mass
transportation, certainly not us motorists. Besides, we motorists
already pay an exorbitant amount of taxes and fees from every
direction for the "privilege" of using roads and highways, the
condition of which is ignored despite the huge amount we already pay
so they will allegedly be maintained.
I realize that the MBTA has been skimming large
amounts out of those highway funds paid directly by motorists
— along with receiving a statutory
penny of the five that has been collected from the 5% sales tax
since 1999.
The sales tax was subsequently hiked to 6.25% a
decade later, at least in part to make up for the revenue shifted to
the MBTA and school building assistance program, both of which come
directly out of the sales tax. (Both the MBTA and the Massachusetts
School Building Assistance Authority [MSBA] each has received 20
percent of 5% sales tax collections, leaving only 60% of sales tax
revenue for other uses
— thus the need for the 2009 sales tax increase.)
Naturally, I expected that if the "T" still
needed to fill an operating deficit —
never mind its plans to expand — the
burden would be put on the users of the service: "T" riders. That's
only common sense, or ought to be.
I should have recalled that on April 4, when the
MBTA Board voted to increase the taxpayer-subsidized fares
— last increased five years ago
— protesters stormed the State House
according to a State House News Service report ("Protesters draw law
enforcement presence to Gov's lobby"):
About 100 protesters railing against MBTA
fare hikes marched through the State House halls chanting "Banks
got bailed out, we got sold out" on Wednesday afternoon, pausing
outside Speaker Robert DeLeo's office to request that he step
outside and discuss the issue with them. About a dozen state
troopers and 10 State House rangers separated the protesters
from Gov. Deval Patrick's office, which is adjacent to DeLeo's.
After chanting for several minutes, one of the protest leaders
announced that DeLeo had agreed to meet with several of them
inside his office. A spokesman for DeLeo said later that a
three-person "delegation" from the protest met with DeLeo's
chief of staff, James Eisenberg, for about 10 minutes to discuss
transportation issues. After protesters dispersed a handful of
additional troopers exited the governor's office.
The protesters, who aligned themselves with the Occupy Wall
Street movement, have made public transportation a new rallying
cry, merging it with their calls to punish financial
institutions for their role in the country's 2008-2009 economic
collapse. Joined by officials from local labor organizations,
including the Massachusetts Nurses Association, protesters
identified public transportation as another fault line in their
now well-known argument that the "1 percent" of wealthy
Americans has pitted itself against the "99 percent."
While we who subsidize those who take from us are
too busy being productive taxpayers, the Gimme Lobby throngs are
free to create a spectacle demanding ever more from us.
As Howie Carr noted in his column, the game is
on. First it'll be a proposed penny per mile tax, then dropped to
only .85 cents per mile "for the first year." Second year, penny a
mile. Subsequent years, grab your wallets as it'll only go up.
When has a tax — any tax
— ever gone down or away without activists doing the work and
voters demanding it? Even then (think 2000 income tax rollback),
when was the last time even that worked?
Taxes only go up, always; and new taxes
are no exception.
The only hope is to kill any new tax in the crib.
"DeLeo said he’s already received 'some
interesting feedback' and has a “long list of people who want to
talk to me about transportation,” including hospitals, major
employers and educational institutions."
Do you have any doubt which side that "feedback"
will be promoting?
Will you have a voice in that discussion?
Will CLT still be here when it happens?
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Chip Ford |
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The Boston Herald
Sunday, June 17, 2012
Highway to Hell!
Pay-per-mile tax is latest cash grab from greedy pols
By Howie Carr
The hacks at the State House are salivating at the prospect of
charging you a penny for every mile you drive your car in
Massachusetts.
This is a tax increase so monstrous that it would make M. Stanley
Dukakis blush. We’re talking $555 million — the first year.
It’s an idea so terrible it can’t be killed. Like a vampire, it
keeps coming back to life, and the stake hasn’t been invented that
can be driven through its black heart.
The Vehicle Miles Traveled Fee, that’s what the payroll patriots and
union thugs are calling it now, in a new transportation report full
of similar euphemisms. New taxes, for instance, are now “funding
strategies” and “local financial commitment.”
This new bleeding of the Dreaded Private Sector is necessary to pay
for the “Green Line Extension.” It’s budgeted for $1.3 billion. By
comparison, the Big Dig was initially budgeted for $2.6 million, and
came in at $22 billion ... and counting.
This boondoggle is the Big Dig for the 21st century, although it may
be eclipsed eventually by the even more preposterous proposal of
commuter rail to New Bedford and Fall River, those two bustling
Bristol metropolises. It’ll help the South Coast’s self-esteem, you
understand. They won’t feel neglected by the rest of the state. It’s
the same specious argument the hacks made when they bought that
bust-out law school in Dartmouth as a place to park more
unemployable lawyers in six-figure do-nothing jobs behind which come
the six-figure pensions and the free medical care for life.
But of course these new white elephants have only the barest
connection to transportation. It’s really about more money to keep
the hackerama humming, by paying off contractors and pinky-ring
unions who will then kick back to the pols who are stealing the
money from the taxpayers.
And the projects will take approximately forever. Remember the state
motto: “Don’t Kill the Job.”
We are talking mega-bucks here. That $555 million in the first year
would be when they’re giving motorists what they consider a break,
by charging a mere .85 cent a mile.
Drivers, it’s just your fair share. Don’t be a slacker. It’s not
enough that you already pay tolls, and the auto excise tax, and the
6.25 percent sales tax when you buy the car, not to mention the
federal gasoline tax, and the state gasoline tax, which reminds me,
another of the new “funding strategies” reported by the State House
News Service is “indexing the state’s gas tax to inflation.”
Would it likewise be “indexed” to deflation? Nah. But if something
is indexed to inflation, does that not tend to cause more inflation?
That’s OK, though, because it means more revenues for the state, and
... for the children.
Remember when Bill Weld was governor and it cost nothing to renew
your car registration? Which seemed only fair because, with the new
technologies, the process costs next to nothing. First the hacks
brought back the registration fee, because their relatives and
cronies and cash contributors needed jobs, as opposed to work. Now
they want to jack up the fees another $10. We have to do something
about the MBTA deficit, they claim, which is another way of saying,
paying for the bloated pensions of all the coatholders who retired
with full pensions at age 43 after putting in an arduous 23 years of
“public service.”
Think about this penny-a-mile tax. The leeches say the average
motorist drives 14,800 miles a year, so it’ll “only” cost $148
extra. Of course, if anyone ever suggested increasing medical
co-pays for MBTA retirees by $148 a year, that would set off a
firestorm. That would be economic fascism.
Suppose you own a trucking company in Massachusetts. Or you employ a
fleet of salespeople who spend the week driving from one appointment
to the next. If you have to expand, do you think you’d be more
inclined to look in Massachusetts or New Hampshire, where the
Vehicle Miles Traveled Fee is “only” zero?
It used to be relatively easy to turn back the odometer on a car.
With the new electronic systems, it’s surely more difficult, but
something tells me that if there’s $555 million on the table, new
technologies will be developed. And sooner rather than later.
And I also suspect that a lot more people will be registering their
vehicles in New Hampshire. As if they aren’t already.
Of course, the tax-crazed governor dismisses these proposed new
taxes as “hypotheticals.” Trial balloons is more like it. I can
already envision the compromise. OK, OK, we won’t hit you with .85
cents the first year. It’ll only be a half-cent ... because we’re
Democrats and we care about working people, that is as long as they
don’t work.
Thank you sir, may I have another!
State House News Service
Monday, June 11, 2012
Sides staked out for "adult conversation" about transportation
funding
By Andy Metzger
Even if the state chose not to fund the $1.3 billion Green Line
Extension, several of the revenue-generating ideas tied to that
project in newly released documents will need to be used to keep
state transit authorities afloat, Transportation Secretary Richard
Davey told the News Service.
Those ideas include a new cent-per-mile tax on vehicles, casino
revenue allocated to the MBTA and tying the gas tax to inflation.
“I’ve not heard any credible source whatsoever saying we’re spending
too much on transportation or enough on transportation,” Davey said
“So I think the conversation is beginning, and the first step is to
admit you have a problem.”
However, to Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr, the problem is the
state’s goal of expanding the Green Line through Somerville and into
Medford when the whole system is heading toward another deficit next
year.
“Why wouldn’t we consider postponing it or avoiding it until the
folks who run the MBTA say they can restore it to solvency without
extraordinary measures like tax increases,” Tarr told the News
Service. He said Davey should make clear distinctions between “what
is required versus what is desired.”
The Federal Transit Administration requires the MBTA to have a
strong financial footing to receive New Starts funding, which would
make up 42 percent of the Green Line project’s cost. Davey said he
hopes federal funding will eventually make up half the $1.3 billion
project.
Earlier this year, the MBTA engaged in a wrenching public process of
31 sometimes boisterous and confrontational public meetings before
raising fares to cover most of a roughly $160 million deficit. Fare
hikes averaging 23 percent will take effect on July 1.
The MBTA still faces an immediate budget gap and lawmakers are
poised to advance a bill providing some funding to regional transit
authorities while delivering the bulk of $51 million in surplus
vehicle inspection fees to the T.
The House plans to take up a T bailout bill Wednesday; the Senate
will take up the proposal soon after, Senate Transportation Chairman
Thomas McGee told the News Service. If the $51 million plan does not
go through, the MBTA will recommend bridging the budget gap with
service cuts not additional fare hikes, according to Davey.
House Speaker Robert DeLeo has postponed long-term fixes for the
MBTA until the start of the next legislative session, in January
2013. Meanwhile Gov. Deval Patrick’s administration has pushed the
need for an “adult conversation” about transit funding though
Patrick dismissed the revenue-generating ideas alluded to in a
recent Federal Transit Administration letter as “hypotheticals.”
“You got to wait for my plan. We’re thinking through what our
options are,” Patrick told reporters. “We want a fix not just for
this project, not just for the T but for all of transportation and
one that’s good for 20 years or more and we’re going to have a very
engaged and serious debate in this building and beyond about how to
do that.”
Even without a firm plan in place, the conversation has begun for
some, who like Tarr, oppose the idea of new taxes to fund the
transit authority.
Hours after the News Service reported on the FTA letter outlining
transportation funding options, Restaurant and Business Alliance
President Dave Andelman – founder of The Phantom Gourmet – released
a statement opposed to the $.01 per-mile statewide tax, saying,
“Discouraging people from moving around the state will stop the
economy from moving too.”
Tarr suggested “revisiting employee compensation,” seeking out
sponsorships and improving fare collection as routes to put the MBTA
on solid financial footing. He also said that given overall state
transportation funding problems “it really strains credibility” to
consider extending the Green Line to Medford, though he is
“sympathetic” to the fact that Somerville was promised the new
transit line as environmental mitigation for the Big Dig.
Tarr said he thought his colleagues would feel similarly nonplussed,
but Rep. Denise Provost (D-Somerville) is looking forward to her
colleagues’ efforts toward finding funding for a backlog of repair
needs at the MBTA, as well as regional transit authorities, roads
and bridges.
“If I were not an optimist I could not do the job that I do,” said
Provost, who has filed legislation to raise the gas tax the past two
legislative sessions and said the MBTA needs alternative sources of
revenue to stay afloat.
“Even if there was not an application for federal funding for the
Green Line Extension, which I think will bring money and jobs into
the Commonwealth, it would still be necessary to bring our
transportation system into a state of good repair,” Provost said.
Both proponents and opponents of the Green Line Extension agree that
the state does not currently have the money to afford the project.
“We cannot pay for the current system that we have today and we
certainly can’t pay for expanding service going forward,” said
Davey, though he said the state would follow a court order to
complete the project. “By law we have to do it, so it’s going to go
forward,” Davey said.
The Boston Herald
Monday, June 18, 2012
Dems running amok behind closed doors
By Holly Robichaud
Do you have any idea of what is happening on Bacon Hill? Unless you
are a privileged Democrat insider, you wouldn’t.
Right now, there is a record-setting number of conference committees
negotiating behind closed doors billions of dollars in spending,
tens of millions of dollars in new health care bureaucracy, tougher
sentencing for repeat offenders and more local aid for
municipalities.
Far from the public view, four Democrats and two Republicans
legislators are negotiating the differences between the House and
Senate versions of these various bills. However, all too often
within the secret sessions, the GOP is completely shut out, and
hence, the decisions are made by one party.
Once the bargaining is done, the legislation is quickly passed with
no further amendments and very little review by the entire
membership. Some of the bills are even pushed through during
informal sessions when most legislators are not in the building.
While most of us are thinking about our summer vacation, we need to
keep a watchful eye on Bacon Hill. There are important amendments
that GOP members were able to pass that are likely to be killed via
secret negotiations, if we don’t keep the pressure on conference
committee members.
For example, during the House budget debate, state Rep. Dan Webster
got accepted a requirement that state agencies confirm an
applicant’s immigration status before allowing anyone to collect
welfare benefits. The Senate’s budget did not include this unsung
hero of the House’s language, so it easily could be deleted without
any public debate.
“In the wake of learning from the governor’s office last week that
the Health Safety Net Trust fund is providing over $170 million in
medical benefits for illegal aliens, it is more critical than ever
we address this problem. Those in our country illegally should not
be receiving state benefits at the expense of law-abiding taxpayers
and residents who are in need of them,” Webster said.
Another reliable fiscal watchdog, state Sen. Bob Hedlund, is hoping
that his amendment on allowing the inspector general to hire a third
party to conduct an audit of all 40B housing projects is kept in the
final budget. Five years ago, the IG found from a cost certification
audit of 40B developers that many of them owed millions to host
municipalities because of a manipulation of profit caps.
If passed, Hedlund’s amendment will result in more millions being
returned to communities impacted by 40B.
Without true transparency and balance in the Legislature, just four
Democratic conference committee members determine the fate of
billions of dollars. That’s not democracy.
State House News Service
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
State Capitol Briefs
DeLeo "willing to listen" to transportation financing plans
By Matt Murphy
With long-term transportation financing fixes a consensus top
priority for the next legislative session, House Speaker Robert
DeLeo on Tuesday left the door open to new taxes or fees as part of
the solution.
And DeLeo said he and Transportation Committee Chairman Rep. William
Straus have already begun meeting with “top business leaders” to
discuss the solution, which he predicted would be released as a bill
early next year, and he said those meetings would continue into the
fall and winter.
DeLeo said he’s already received “some interesting feedback” and has
a “long list of people who want to talk to me about transportation,”
including hospitals, major employers and educational institutions.
DeLeo, a Winthrop Democrat, has opposed new taxes or fees since the
he led an effort to hike the sales tax in 2009, but he acknowledged
during a one-hour interview on WBZ radio that everything has to be
on the table next year.
“As you can tell by the budget we just passed, I’m not interested in
any new taxes, no new fees. I just have great concerns with the
economy being still somewhat fragile that any talk about any new
taxes could disrupt much off the progress we’ve made, especially
here in Massachusetts,” DeLeo said, before offering the caveat that
he is “willing to listen” if business leaders, T riders or other
interest groups have ideas about a long-terming financing solutions
for the multi-billion dollar backlog of unfunded improvements to the
state's roads, rails and bridges.
“I’m open to all reasonable solutions, but before we talk about any
additional revenues, in terms of whatever they may be, taxes, fares,
or fees, what I’d like to first of all talk about efficiencies,”
DeLeo said. The speaker pointed to a short-term study included in
the recent MBTA bailout package approved by the House that would set
up the state to transfer operations of commuter ferries to the
Massachusetts Port Authority.
“That may be further savings or cut out the need for any new talk
for any new fees or taxes or charge you per mile or whatever it may
be,” DeLeo said.
The Patrick administration, in an application to the federal
government for Green Line extension project grants, indicated that
it is looking at higher gas taxes, a mileage-based user fee, or
increased fares as options for the state’s transportation funding
needs. A 2009 transportation reform law, billed as "reform before
revenue" by some, was designed to wring efficiency-related savings
out of the transportation system but appears to have left major
funding gaps three years after its adoption.
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material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior
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Citizens for Limited Taxation ▪
PO Box 1147 ▪ Marblehead, MA 01945
▪ 508-915-3665
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