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Post Office Box 1147 ●
Marblehead, Massachusetts 01945 ●
(781) 639-9709
“Every Tax is a Pay Cut ... A Tax Cut is a Pay Raise”
45 years as “The Voice of Massachusetts Taxpayers”
— and
their Institutional Memory — |
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CLT UPDATE
Monday, July 15, 2019
The Bay State's "Battered Citizen Syndrome"
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The third week of the 2020 fiscal year began
Monday with no annual spending plan in place as six
lawmakers tasked with reaching a deal have yet to find
consensus.
For the sixth straight weekday, the House
kept an informal session open Monday afternoon in case a
conference committee negotiating the budget or one working
on a distracted-driving bill has a report to submit.
Despite the fact that budget talks have now
lasted 46 days — the longest negotiation without a
resolution in at least a decade — House Assistant Minority
Leader Paul Donato said the conference committee "made a
great deal of progress" over the weekend.
State House News Service
Monday, July 15, 2019
Wait continues for budget after weekend talks
With the annual state budget now 15 days
late and negotiators acknowledging still-unresolved issues,
House Speaker Robert DeLeo indicated concern Monday that a
compromise might not be within reach this month and said the
governor should file legislation that would ensure
government continues to operate into August.
The speaker's statement on Monday came just
hours after he publicly hinted that legislative leaders may
have to consider "other options" for resolving a fiscal year
2020 budget if talks continue to drag later into July, a
month in which state spending is covered by an interim $5
billion appropriation with no exact date for when funding
will run dry.
"Based on the current status of the
negotiations, the Speaker feels it would be prudent for the
Governor to file a 1/12th budget for August to ensure the
Commonwealth's fiscal obligations are met," DeLeo
spokeswoman Catherine Williams told the News Service in a
statement.
A six-member conference committee continues
to negotiate differences in the House and Senate's $42.7
billion spending plans more than two weeks into the fiscal
year, the ninth straight year with a budget arriving late.
However, with conferees still declining to offer a timeline
when they might reach a deal, DeLeo said Monday that a
change in approach may be necessary....
Both legislative leaders and those involved
in the private negotiations declined to explain what exactly
is causing the delay. Senate President Karen Spilka, who met
with DeLeo and Gov. Charlie Baker before the group addressed
reporters Monday, said only that conferees are addressing
"complicated policy issues and other issues." ...
Massachusetts, which was the last state in
the nation to enact an annual spending plan last year, is
one of only two this year alongside Ohio that still has not
sent a final budget to the governor....
As of Monday, 46 days had passed without a resolution since
the budget was referred to conference — already the longest
negotiation in at least a decade.
State House News Service
Monday, July 15, 2019
DeLeo calls for interim August budget amid prolonged
negotiations
House Assistant Majority Leader Paul Donato
told the News Service earlier on Monday that Democratic
leadership is "hopeful we're going to get something done by
the end of this week." Asked if that prediction was
accurate, Smola laughed and said he had "no idea."
"It's a fluid thing," he said. "I think that
we are reasonably close on most things, but there are some
things that still need to be dealt with, and usually, it's
not the easy things left on the table that need to be dealt
with. It's the more complicated things. Those things are
going to take more time."
Smola did not identify specific issues, but
the two bills take divergent approaches to freezing UMass
tuition and fees, drug-pricing reforms and taxes on opioid
manufacturers and e-cigarette products.
"There's a lot to this budget, and if people
had delved into the outside sections and some of the policy
issues and big changes we're dealing with in the House and
Senate versions, they'd understand the fact that it takes a
little bit longer to get through," Smola said.
State House News Service
Monday, July 15, 2019
House GOP budget negotiator: "It's a fluid thing"
It's at times like these when the
Legislature could maybe use a chaplain.
The impasse over a fiscal 2020 budget will
extend into a third week as legislators, now in a contest
with four others for the distinction of the last state in
the country without an annual budget, have shown little
concern over potentially losing that footrace.
Senate Ways and Means Chairman Michael
Rodrigues, however, offered one of the most promising clues
yet as to what might be gumming up the works. "The devil's
in the details and a lot of the issues before us, there's a
lot of details to work that out," Rodrigues said.
That's right. The devil could be hiding
anywhere.
So maybe it's no coincidence that in the
absence of Father Rick Walsh, the former House chaplain who
decamped for New York City and the St. Paul the Apostle
parish at Lincoln Center on July 1, legislators have been
unable to secure a budget agreement.
In all seriousness, though, whether it's
Lucifer, a compromise over pharmaceutical drug pricing
controls or something else entirely, Beacon Hill has become
trapped in a holding pattern as it waits for a resolution to
the budget debate in order to get on with its other
pre-August recess business...
STORY OF THE WEEK: As the pages of the calendar turned,
legislators held vigil for a budget that wouldn't come.
State House News Service
Friday, July 12, 2019
Weekly Roundup - Hope you guess my name
Democratic legislative leaders just can't
seem to get it right. While nearly every state with a July 1
fiscal year start has an annual budget in place,
Massachusetts still does not. Democrats with supermajorities
in both branches have dug in on certain issues, blowing past
their deadline and subtly reminding voters here that when it
comes to ideological divides, the one that matters most in
Massachusetts is between Democrats and other Democrats.
Democrats here have repeatedly asserted that
they'd rather get the budget right than finish it on time.
There's an interim budget in place to keep government
operating and there are no real penalties for being late.
The credit rating agency Moody's has suggested late budgets
are a sign of "governance weakness" but Beacon Hill has
largely brushed that criticism aside.
If there's any sense of embarrassment that
comes with missing the deadline, it's not evident at the
capitol where Democrats are basically viewing the situation
as business-as-usual and Republicans have largely refrained
from criticism....
TAX TALK: As the House preps for a
tax debate this year, Senate President Karen Spilka's
working group on tax policy plans to meet at the State House
on Tuesday to accept public comments. House Speaker Robert
DeLeo met with three of his chairmen this week to discuss
possible new sources of revenue to pay for transportation
system improvements.
Business group leaders are also meeting with
elected officials to discuss options. Though the debate is
picking up internally, Beacon Hill is far from taking action
to shake things up and begin to help deliver a
transportation system that's not choked by traffic and
plagued by public transit system problems....
SENATE REVENUE WORKING GROUP: The
Senate's Revenue Working Group, convened earlier this year,
hosts a public meeting to discuss possible updates to the
state's tax system. Its 21 members include lawmakers and
representatives from a range of interest groups. After the
working group completes its agenda items members will take
public comment. The meeting is open to the press and public.
(Tuesday, 2 p.m., Room 428)...
State House News Service
Friday, July 12, 2019
Advances - Week of July 14, 2019
With lawmakers in the House and Senate
gearing up to take a run at a broad transportation financing
package in the next several months, a cadre of business
groups is working on a parallel path to influence whatever
legislation eventually emerges.
Members of the Massachusetts Business
Coalition on Transportation, a statewide group of two dozen
business organizations that banded together earlier this
year, met Wednesday with House and Senate leaders to check
in with each branch and get a sense of what to expect once
legislators put pen to paper.
"It strikes me that the Senate and the House
both feel the need for legislative action in some rough
six-month window between October of '19 and March of '20. I
think they both want to act somewhere in that window and
they want the business community input," Greater Boston
Chamber President James Rooney, who co-chairs the coalition,
said Thursday. "Something's going to happen and the business
community can continue to either operate in our own group
silos and fractured nature, or we can come together to try
to influence what ultimately comes out of the legislative
bodies." ...
House Speaker Robert DeLeo has been beating
the drum to get chambers of commerce and other business
groups more involved in discussions around transportation
infrastructure and financing and has said he is open to tax
hikes or just about any other prescription to address the
state's critical transit needs.
Rooney said his group has not yet gotten to
the point of debating specific proposals, like an increase
in the state gas tax or in the user fees paid with each ride
with a service like Lyft or Uber.
"If there's something that we did achieve
consensus on, it is that anything that is proposed in the
form of revenue needs to be packaged with measurable
outcomes. I think I can say that we've agreed universally
that we don't think the right approach is just an easy
revenue-raising proposal," he said.
State House News Service
Friday, July 12, 2019
Chamber chief sizes up Hill's approach to transpo "crisis"
The Registry of Motor Vehicles has not only
been failing to review out-of-state driver violations, but
has often failed to warn other states about infractions in
Massachusetts, officials said Friday as they announced that
license suspensions stemming from a mishandled notification
backlog had nearly doubled in the course of a week.
Workers finished processing tens of
thousands of notices from other states about Massachusetts
drivers that sat overlooked in a Quincy storage room or in
Concord archives, resulting in suspensions issued to 1,607
drivers — about 760 more than the last status update issued
one week ago.
In addition to the growing total, an ongoing
internal review determined that the RMV has not been
regularly directly notifying other states about
non-commercial driver violations and suspensions.
"There is no evidence that the RMV has (at
least not for many years) had a consistent practice of
sending out mail or electronic notification of violations or
suspension actions taken in Massachusetts to other states in
'real time,'" interim Registrar of Motor Vehicles Jamey
Tesler and Department of Transportation General Counsel
Marie Breen wrote in a Friday report.
State House News Service
Friday, July 12, 2019
Registry scandal deepens on two fronts
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Chip Ford's CLT
Commentary
Still no puff
of smoke arising over the Beacon Hill Vatican despite
the state budget being now fifteen days late with no
agreement in sight. The six most holy and sacred
committee cardinals have yet to agree on a new budget
despite pontificating over it for the past 46 days.
In the interim, House Speaker Robert DeLeo wants the
governor to submit yet another bill to further extend a
temporary 1/12 budget to cover the state's expenses
beyond July through August.
One of the
roadblocks to reaching agreement is that for too long
the Legislature has used the annual budget to bury a
multitude of individual legislator's special spending
earmarks and policy changes deep within countless
"outside sections" of the state budget. Government
policy good or bad does not belong in the state's
primary spending bill. But when special favors
and controversial policies are secreted into one "must
pass" budget bill, when the
vote comes up on the budget including any wasteful
spending and unrelated issues
attached to it — it's an
up-or-down vote to either keep the government running
(and include opposed spending and policies) or oppose the bad
spending and policies
and stall the entire state budget. In the real
world this is termed extortion.
Rep. Todd
Smola, one of two Republicans on the six-member
conference committee, noted: "There's a lot to
this budget, and if people had delved into the outside
sections and some of the policy issues and big changes
we're dealing with in the House and Senate versions,
they'd understand the fact that it takes a little bit
longer to get through."
"[O]utside
sections and some of the policy issues and big changes"
don't belong in a state budget. They ought to
stand alone and be addressed and voted on separately,
each passed or rejected on its own merits.
"Transportation Financing Package"
Remember not
long ago when the term "spending" became political
baggage? Liberals took control of the language as
is their bent and re-termed it "investments."
About the same time what the government extracted from
its citizens was called taxes, remember? That term
didn't wear well either, so what government takes from
its citizens was re-termed "revenue." Apparently
the unwashed citizenry has caught on to this. So
here comes its latest permutation: "Transportation
Financing Package."
"For the
children" has also lost it power, so the new holy cause
is "for transportation and infrastructure," along with
climate "mitigation" or "resiliency."
"Transportation Financing Package." You'll be
hearing it more and more frequently in the days ahead as
both the House Speaker and Senate President look for the
next
saleable "dire need" to justify again hiking taxes.
Current revenue and historic surpluses should be more
than sufficient to cover costs —
if state government was even a little bit prudent and
responsible. I suppose in Massachusetts that's
setting expectations much too high.
The State
House News Service's "Advances" reported the Joint
Committee on the Judiciary will hear testimony tomorrow
on more than 65 bills. One will be H-1458 from
House Minority Leader Brad Jones to prohibit eminent
domain takings for the purpose of economic development,
the very issue that led to the landmark 2005 U.S.
Supreme Court decision in Kelo vs. City of New London,
which now permits government taking of an individual's
private property for corporate benefit if it will
increase the tax base.
CLT has long
supported similar bills [see
CLT's Defense of Private Property Project], in fact filed
many of them for more than a decade, since the Kelo
decision was handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court. A
large number of states across the nation have adopted
state protections against frivolous eminent domain
takings
since
the Kelo decision. Massachusetts received
the Institute of Justice's lowest grade of "F"
— Massachusetts
legislators' support for such private property protection has gone nowhere but down. In
2005
HD-4662 had 57 co-sponsors, both Republican and
Democrat. Rep. Brad Jones' bill this year,
H-1458,
has but ten sponsors — all
Republicans.
Barbara
Anderson addressed this issue in a few of her columns
including:
"Court's
decision a cruel blow to the American dream" (June
29, 2005) and "Activist
voters are needed to reverse faulty decision" (July
7, 2005).
The still
unfolding and expanding scandal at the Registry of Motor
Vehicles is just the most recent to join a long list of
Massachusetts government scandals. A few of the
recent more memorable of them are:
●
Cognos scandal (2011)
●
New England Compounding Center scandal
(2012)
●
Massachusetts Crime Lab scandal (2013)
●
Massachusetts State Police Scandal (2016)
How can a
profligate state government that spends so god-awful
much and a billion dollars more every year be the site
of so many unconscionable scandals, year after year?
How can a cash cow state agency (RMV) that rakes in ten times what it costs to run be incapable of
performing its primary function of public safety?
Most
importantly, how can voters keep returning the same
enabling miscreants and incompetents to public office, election
after election?
I call it the
"Battered Citizen Syndrome" in which voters
— to paraphrase the
definition of the
Battered Woman Syndrome —
develop a learned helplessness that causes them
to believe they deserve the abuse and that they can’t
get away from it.
The "Battered
Citizen Syndrome" is the only thing that explains such
vast dysfunction without consequence in Massachusetts.
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Chip Ford
Executive Director |
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State House News
Service
Monday, July 15, 2019
Wait continues for budget after weekend talks
By Chris Lisinski
The third week of the 2020 fiscal year began
Monday with no annual spending plan in place as
six lawmakers tasked with reaching a deal have
yet to find consensus.
For the sixth straight weekday, the House kept
an informal session open Monday afternoon in
case a conference committee negotiating the
budget or one working on a distracted-driving
bill has a report to submit.
Despite the fact that budget talks have now
lasted 46 days — the longest negotiation without
a resolution in at least a decade — House
Assistant Minority Leader Paul Donato said the
conference committee "made a great deal of
progress" over the weekend.
"There's still some issues they're trying to
work out," Donato told the News Service. "They
were hopeful they were going to be able to get
something done tomorrow or yesterday, but
they're still bogged down on a couple of issues.
We're hopeful we're going to get something done
by the end of this week."
Donato said the committee has not told
leadership what those remaining issues are.
The Senate also met in an informal session
Monday, but adjourned until Tuesday after about
15 minutes.
Massachusetts remains one of only two states
alongside Ohio without an annual spending plan
sent to the governor. Payroll and government
services are being funded by a $5 billion
interim budget in the meantime.
State House News
Service
Monday, July 15, 2019
DeLeo calls for interim August budget amid
prolonged negotiations
By Chris Lisinski and Matt Murphy
With the annual state budget now 15 days late
and negotiators acknowledging still-unresolved
issues, House Speaker Robert DeLeo indicated
concern Monday that a compromise might not be
within reach this month and said the governor
should file legislation that would ensure
government continues to operate into August.
The speaker's statement on Monday came just
hours after he publicly hinted that legislative
leaders may have to consider "other options" for
resolving a fiscal year 2020 budget if talks
continue to drag later into July, a month in
which state spending is covered by an interim $5
billion appropriation with no exact date for
when funding will run dry.
"Based on the current status of the
negotiations, the Speaker feels it would be
prudent for the Governor to file a 1/12th budget
for August to ensure the Commonwealth's fiscal
obligations are met," DeLeo spokeswoman
Catherine Williams told the News Service in a
statement.
A six-member conference committee continues to
negotiate differences in the House and Senate's
$42.7 billion spending plans more than two weeks
into the fiscal year, the ninth straight year
with a budget arriving late. However, with
conferees still declining to offer a timeline
when they might reach a deal, DeLeo said Monday
that a change in approach may be necessary.
"The longer it goes, other options are going to
have to be considered the closer we get to the
end of the month," he told reporters. "But I
think that as of right now, to their credit, the
chairs and the conferees are working hard to
have it accomplished by the end of the month.
But it's something at this point, now that we're
at mid-month, we have to keep a close eye on."
Amid last year's late budget talks, DeLeo
proposed on July 9, 2018 that legislators could
separate policy proposals included in the budget
from bottom-line spending to help produce a
compromise. Asked about such an idea Monday, he
said that could be "one of the options," but he
did not identify others.
Both legislative leaders and those involved in
the private negotiations declined to explain
what exactly is causing the delay. Senate
President Karen Spilka, who met with DeLeo and
Gov. Charlie Baker before the group addressed
reporters Monday, said only that conferees are
addressing "complicated policy issues and other
issues."
"I know the chairs are working really hard,"
Spilka said. "I know (Senate) Chair (Michael)
Rodrigues has been working around the clock. My
hope is that we do get it done. We need to do
our job and get the budget done as soon as we
can. I think all focus and all energies should
be on getting the budget done so we can move
forward on so many other issues before us."
Rep. Aaron Michlewitz, the committee's House
chair, left the meeting with the governor and
other legislative leaders around 3 p.m. and
headed back to his office.
"You saw the differences between the two
budgets," he told the News Service. "There are
still some things we need to work out but we're
working on it. We worked on it all weekend,
discussing things back and forth. We're still
talking and we're going to keep talking until
this gets done and no rest until we're done."
While the branches passed budgets with similar
bottom lines, they varied on whether to freeze
UMass tuition and fees, how to enforce
drug-pricing reforms, and whether to impose new
taxes on opioid manufacturers and vaping
products. UMass President Marty Meehan's office
said Monday that a trustee meeting planned for
Tuesday in Lowell to set tuition rates for next
year had been postponed until the budget is
resolved.
Massachusetts, which was the last state in the
nation to enact an annual spending plan last
year, is one of only two this year alongside
Ohio that still has not sent a final budget to
the governor. Five states, as of July 5, did not
have budgets in place for fiscal years that
began on July 1, including Oregon, North
Carolina and New Hampshire.
As of Monday, 46 days had passed without a
resolution since the budget was referred to
conference — already the longest negotiation in
at least a decade.
Rep. Todd Smola, one of two Republicans on the
conference committee, said earlier on Monday
that despite progress in the committee's talks
he is worried that stopgap funding is dwindling
and a traditional August recess approaches.
"While we have time, that time is coming close
to running out," Smola said. "There's no doubt
about that. I think that is an issue for
everybody involved. But we want to do it right,
so it's a careful negotiation, and we're going
to keep working at it."
Like Michlewitz, Smola demurred when asked which
issues remained a sticking point for
negotiators.
"There's a lot to this budget, and if people had
delved into the outside sections and some of the
policy issues and big changes we're dealing with
in the House and Senate versions, they'd
understand the fact that it takes a little bit
longer to get through," Smola said.
Both branches held informal sessions Monday, and
adjourned until Tuesday without receiving a
report.
House Assistant Majority Leader Paul Donato told
the News Service on Monday that Democratic
leadership is "hopeful we're going to get
something done by the end of this week." Asked
if that prediction was accurate, Smola laughed
and said he had "no idea."
"It's a fluid thing," he said. "I think that we
are reasonably close on most things, but there
are some things that still need to be dealt
with, and usually, it's not the easy things left
on the table that need to be dealt with. It's
the more complicated things. Those things are
going to take more time."
State House News
Service
Monday, July 15, 2019
House GOP budget negotiator: "It's a fluid
thing"
By Chris Lisinski
A Republican lawmaker negotiating the state's
weeks-late fiscal year 2020 budget said the
conference committee is making progress, but
that he is growing concerned about timing as
stopgap funding dwindles and a traditional
August recess nears.
Rep. Todd Smola, one of two Republicans on the
six-member conference committee, said Monday
that "the clock continues to tick" as the
private budget discussions — which, at 46 days
and counting, are the longest without a
resolution in at least 10 years — continue.
"While we have time, that time is coming close
to running out," Smola said. "There's no doubt
about that. I think that is an issue for
everybody involved. But we want to do it right,
so it's a careful negotiation, and we're going
to keep working at it."
Both branches held informal sessions Monday, and
adjourned until Tuesday without receiving a
report. Conferees are still working to resolve
differences in House and Senate versions of a
$42.7 billion spending plan for the fiscal year
that began on July 1.
House Assistant Majority Leader Paul Donato told
the News Service earlier on Monday that
Democratic leadership is "hopeful we're going to
get something done by the end of this week."
Asked if that prediction was accurate, Smola
laughed and said he had "no idea."
"It's a fluid thing," he said. "I think that we
are reasonably close on most things, but there
are some things that still need to be dealt
with, and usually, it's not the easy things left
on the table that need to be dealt with. It's
the more complicated things. Those things are
going to take more time."
Smola did not identify specific issues, but the
two bills take divergent approaches to freezing
UMass tuition and fees, drug-pricing reforms and
taxes on opioid manufacturers and e-cigarette
products.
"There's a lot to this budget, and if people had
delved into the outside sections and some of the
policy issues and big changes we're dealing with
in the House and Senate versions, they'd
understand the fact that it takes a little bit
longer to get through," Smola said.
A $5 billion interim budget signed in June will
cover about a month's worth of government
operations, avoiding a shutdown as talks stretch
well beyond the July 1 start of the fiscal year.
Ohio is the only other state in the country
besides Massachusetts where an annual spending
plan has not yet been sent to the governor. Five
states, as of July 5, did not have budgets in
place for fiscal years that began on July 1,
including Oregon, North Carolina and New
Hampshire.
State House News
Service
Friday, July 12, 2019
Weekly Roundup - Hope you guess my name
Recap and analysis of the week in state
government
By Matt Murphy
It's at times like these when the Legislature
could maybe use a chaplain.
The impasse over a fiscal 2020 budget will
extend into a third week as legislators, now in
a contest with four others for the distinction
of the last state in the country without an
annual budget, have shown little concern over
potentially losing that footrace.
Senate Ways and Means Chairman Michael Rodrigues,
however, offered one of the most promising clues
yet as to what might be gumming up the works.
"The devil's in the details and a lot of the
issues before us, there's a lot of details to
work that out," Rodrigues said.
That's right. The devil could be hiding
anywhere.
So maybe it's no coincidence that in the absence
of Father Rick Walsh, the former House chaplain
who decamped for New York City and the St. Paul
the Apostle parish at Lincoln Center on July 1,
legislators have been unable to secure a budget
agreement.
In all seriousness, though, whether it's
Lucifer, a compromise over pharmaceutical drug
pricing controls or something else entirely,
Beacon Hill has become trapped in a holding
pattern as it waits for a resolution to the
budget debate in order to get on with its other
pre-August recess business.
As the days came and went and no final
compromise was reached, Rodrigues mustered the
most forceful statement made by any Democrat
when he declared, "I want it done," disregarding
how, as one of the lead negotiators, getting it
done was wholly within his power.
That was Tuesday, at a point when many lobbyists
were beginning to wonder if Secretary of State
William Galvin's new online reporting system was
also being haunted by evil spirits. The lobbying
profession tends not to generate much sympathy,
but they were still pulling their hair out over
Galvin's new online system that lobbyists and
their clients use to report expenditures,
campaign contributions and legislative
interests.
It was, according to multiple people who had
tried to use it, a nightmare to work with,
despite the intention of it being a more
transparent, user friendly process. As the
Monday deadline to file approached, the system
was still plagued with crashes and saving
failures that had some in a panic and cursing
out loud.
In the meantime, rumors of an imminent education
reform bill floated through the halls, while the
speaker's climate change bill inched closer to
his desired July vote.
House Bonding Chairman Antonio Cabral hosted a
second hearing on the GreenWorks legislation,
which proposes to borrow $1 billion over 20
years, outside of the state's debt limit, and
spend it over 10 years to help the state adapt
to climate change. Gov. Charlie Baker has filed
a competing bill with the Senate that would
raise real estate transfer taxes to pump the
same amount of money into climate adaptation.
Climate activists, at the hearing, seized on the
apparent momentum to encourage legislators to do
both -- borrow and tax -- to fight climate
change impacts, while Senate President Karen
Spilka remains a wildcard on what approach she
would prefer....
Speaking of ground, House Speaker Robert DeLeo
and Spilka found common ground this week when it
came to the RMV, concluding that the situation
surrounding thousands of unreviewed out-of-state
driving violations warrants some legislative
inquiry.
Joint Committee on Transportation co-chairs Rep.
William Straus and Sen. Joe Boncore announced
that they would hold an oversight hearing on
July 22 to explore what happened at the
registry, adding new sets of eyes to those from
Grant Thornton, the auditing firm hired by the
Baker administration that began its 60-day
investigation this week.
That decision was backed up with Friday
afternoon's revelation that the RMV's spelunking
expedition through boxes of years-old notices
from other states had resulted, when all was
said and done, in 1,607 drivers being suspended
who should have been taken off the road sooner.
DeLeo and Spilka were also busy mapping out the
post-recess agenda, hosting separate meetings
with business leaders including former Lt. Gov.
Tim Murray and former Economic Development
Secretary Jay Ash, to discuss transportation
financing.
The speaker has been adamant that he wants to
have a revenue debate in the fall, and he wants
the employer community to be a partner in the
solution to improving traffic congestion and
public transit.
Participants walked away from the meetings less
certain of Spilka's timeline....
The cellphone driving ban bill went into
conference two weeks later than the budget, but
at this point who knows which will get finished
first. The week ended with Beacon Hill looking
ahead to Monday and the potential that a new
week brings.
STORY OF THE WEEK: As the pages of the calendar
turned, legislators held vigil for a budget that
wouldn't come.
SONG OF THE WEEK: There has been an abundance of
sympathy from their colleagues for the
tardiness of the state budget, but at some point
negotiators may begin to feel the pressure dial
up.
State House News
Service
Friday, July 12, 2019
Chamber chief sizes up Hill's approach to
transpo "crisis"
By Colin A. Young
With lawmakers in the House and Senate gearing
up to take a run at a broad transportation
financing package in the next several months, a
cadre of business groups is working on a
parallel path to influence whatever legislation
eventually emerges.
Members of the Massachusetts Business Coalition
on Transportation, a statewide group of two
dozen business organizations that banded
together earlier this year, met Wednesday with
House and Senate leaders to check in with each
branch and get a sense of what to expect once
legislators put pen to paper.
"It strikes me that the Senate and the House
both feel the need for legislative action in
some rough six-month window between October of
'19 and March of '20. I think they both want to
act somewhere in that window and they want the
business community input," Greater Boston
Chamber President James Rooney, who co-chairs
the coalition, said Thursday. "Something's going
to happen and the business community can
continue to either operate in our own group
silos and fractured nature, or we can come
together to try to influence what ultimately
comes out of the legislative bodies."
Business groups have increasingly decried the
Boston area's public transportation woes as a
hindrance to economic growth. Traffic and
congestion on the roads make for long and
frustrating commutes by car, and the
unpredictable nature of public transportation
frequently makes workers late to their jobs.
Rooney said the coalition began its work by
grasping the scope of transportation and
mobility issues in Massachusetts and the unique
issues that affect specific regions. Though the
MBTA is the lifeblood of the Greater Boston
area, it isn't that important to people on Cape
Cod or in the Berkshires, he said. Likewise, the
Cape and Berkshires rely on regional transit
authorities, which aren't as critical a
component in Boston.
Business leaders have heard presentations from A
Better City -- which in February released a
report detailing an $8.4 billion shortfall in
revenues needed to ensure state roads, bridges
and MBTA infrastructure are in a state of good
repair over the next 10 years -- and the
Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, Rooney said.
They've also met a few times with Transportation
Secretary Stephanie Pollack, who "shared [the
administration's] view of the funding
situation," Rooney said.
With months of work behind it, Rooney said the
business coalition has "gotten to a point of
shared understanding," but is still working
towards "a point of shared priorities and
solutions."
"The general proposition is that we want a
transportation system that is statewide, that is
reliable and effective whatever that means in
different regions of the state, and that
supports the existing economy and the growth of
the economy throughout the commonwealth, and a
transportation system that not only in and of
itself supports the movement of people and goods
but also enables us to make progress on key
public policy issues including climate, housing,
economic inequities," Rooney said. "There's a
whole host of public policy issues that depend
on a reliable transportation system."
House Speaker Robert DeLeo has been beating the
drum to get chambers of commerce and other
business groups more involved in discussions
around transportation infrastructure and
financing and has said he is open to tax hikes
or just about any other prescription to address
the state's critical transit needs.
Rooney said his group has not yet gotten to the
point of debating specific proposals, like an
increase in the state gas tax or in the user
fees paid with each ride with a service like
Lyft or Uber.
"If there's something that we did achieve
consensus on, it is that anything that is
proposed in the form of revenue needs to be
packaged with measurable outcomes. I think I can
say that we've agreed universally that we don't
think the right approach is just an easy
revenue-raising proposal," he said.
Asked what kind of measurable outcomes he would
like to see in any eventual bill, Rooney said it
is important that the people who will be
required to pay more to fund transportation be
able to see actual improvements in service. He
described a "three-R approach: revenue with
results and reforms."
"That, thematically, is pretty strong in the
business community. I think people are willing
to endure the problems and perhaps even the
sacrifices of shutting down lines so they can be
worked on or shutting down portions of the
roadway if they know that it's going to be
better in the end," Rooney said. "We feel like
any solution that comes from the Legislature or
elected officials should be consistent with that
kind of thinking."
Former Transportation Secretary Rich Davey
echoed Rooney's thoughts in a Boston Globe op-ed
Thursday, in which he wrote that the Legislature
should "be sure to put forth a plan based on
both revenue and reform."
"There is no doubt the transportation system
needs more revenue; however, there are
opportunities to spend better the revenue we do
have," Davey, now a partner at Boston Consulting
Group, wrote.
As the roughly six-month window in which Rooney
said he thinks the Legislature wants to act
approaches, the business groups plan to stay in
touch with both of the branches and the
governor's administration to provide input.
Though DeLeo has said he will seek a vote on a
bill this calendar year, the timeline for action
in the Senate is less clear.
"If I had to pick a word describing each of
them: the administration is deliberate, the
Senate seems to want to be collaborative and the
speaker's office has embraced a bold approach.
He's clearly been very vocal and public about a
piece of legislation this fall that includes
funding, so he's been the most bold in terms of
a response to the current situation that --
myself included -- many of us have labeled a
crisis," Rooney said. "I think there's positive
elements to each of the approaches."
State House News
Service
Friday, July 12, 2019
Registry scandal deepens on two fronts
By Chris Lisinski
The Registry of Motor Vehicles has not only been
failing to review out-of-state driver
violations, but has often failed to warn other
states about infractions in Massachusetts,
officials said Friday as they announced that
license suspensions stemming from a mishandled
notification backlog had nearly doubled in the
course of a week.
Workers finished processing tens of thousands of
notices from other states about Massachusetts
drivers that sat overlooked in a Quincy storage
room or in Concord archives, resulting in
suspensions issued to 1,607 drivers — about 760
more than the last status update issued one week
ago.
In addition to the growing total, an ongoing
internal review determined that the RMV has not
been regularly directly notifying other states
about non-commercial driver violations and
suspensions.
"There is no evidence that the RMV has (at least
not for many years) had a consistent practice of
sending out mail or electronic notification of
violations or suspension actions taken in
Massachusetts to other states in 'real time,' "
interim Registrar of Motor Vehicles Jamey Tesler
and Department of Transportation General Counsel
Marie Breen wrote in a Friday report.
The registry will begin mailing notifications to
other states whenever a suspension occurs in
Massachusetts. Under the current infrastructure,
officials said, there is no easy way to send
digital alerts to other states for
non-commercial drivers.
RMV staff have also begun comparing driving
records of all 5.2 million Massachusetts
license-holders with the National Driver
Registry, a digital database that tracks
violations, to find any other incidents that may
have been overlooked. No updates were available
on the progress of that effort Friday, but
Transportation Secretary Stephanie Pollack last
week called it an "unprecedented" project.
Grant Thornton, a national auditing firm,
started a full outside review of the RMV's
practices, which state officials called for as
it became clear that the registry had failed for
more than a year to process notifications that
should have prompted action. MassDOT staff have
also met with the state inspector general's
office and the federal Department of
Transportation's inspector general.
Former Registrar Erin Deveney resigned last
month after officials acknowledged they should
have suspended the commercial license of
Volodymyr Zhukovskyy, a West Springfield driver
who was arrested in Connecticut on OUI charges
and later allegedly caused a crash in New
Hampshire that killed seven.
Massachusetts officials missed both electronic
and written alerts from Connecticut about
Zhukovskyy's arrest, and in the course of
investigating that incident, they found that RMV
workers had not processed paper out-of-state
notices since March 2018.
Tens of thousands of the alerts accumulated in
mail bins at the registry's Quincy headquarters,
and officials also lacked confidence that
notifications dating back to 2011 found in boxes
in the RMV's Concord archives had all been
processed.
All of the backlog has now been resolved,
according to Friday's memo, and new procedures
are in place to ensure new correspondence is
properly addressed as it comes in. The RMV plans
to hire a deputy registrar tasked with
overseeing safety and to propose legislation
that would require more in-depth driving and
background checks for those who seek commercial
licenses.
As the scandal unfolded, lawmakers on the Joint
Committee on Transportation scheduled a July 22
oversight hearing to probe "management, notice
and record-keeping issues" at the RMV.
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