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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
Wednesday, June 5, 2019
Legislator: "Guess what? You can't trust us."
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Six lawmakers tasked with reconciling
differences in the House and Senate $42.8 billion annual
budget bills voted Wednesday to conduct their negotiations
in private.
The chair, vice chair and ranking minority
member of each branch's Ways and Means Committee, all
appointed to a fiscal year 2020 budget conference committee,
spoke optimistically about the work ahead of them for less
than three minutes Wednesday morning before deciding to
continue the process in closed executive session.
"Both of our budgets make strong investments
into the key sectors of the commonwealth, and I look forward
to crafting a final budget that builds off these investments
we both have made in keeping our economy strong," said Rep.
Aaron Michlewitz, the House Ways and Means chair who hosted
the committee's meeting in his office.
Michlewitz will negotiate with Sen. Michael
Rodrigues — who, like his House colleague, was newly
appointed as Ways and Means chair this session — Democratic
Rep. Denise Garlick and Sen. Cindy Friedman. Republican Rep.
Todd Smola and Sen. Viriato deMacedo, who have experience on
budget conferences, are the other conferees....
The House and Senate budgets, each approved
following multi-day debates on thousands of amendments,
proposed roughly the same level of spending in fiscal year
2020 but differ in a handful of key areas.
Conferees will need to reach consensus on
whether the final budget, which covers the fiscal year
beginning July 1, includes Senate measures mandating a
tuition and fee freeze at the University of Massachusetts
and implementing new taxes on opioid manufacturers and
vaping products favored by Gov. Charlie Baker and the
Senate....
Private budget discussions began about the
same time last year, but lawmakers did not deliver a budget
to Baker until July 18, making Massachusetts the last state
in the nation to approve an annual spending bill.
The House approved its budget (H 3801) in
April and the Senate passed its budget bill (S 2235) in May.
State House News Service
Wednesday, June 5, 2019
State budget talks move fully behind closed doors
The state budget is where the rubber meets
the road of governing. And this week the real give and take
begins between House and Senate budget negotiators not over
mere dollars and cents — $42.8 billion is the bottom line in
both versions — but about the policies that each branch has
defined as critical in the year ahead.
Behind closed doors six legislators will
exercise their powers to craft new laws, impose new taxes,
and generally set the parameters for how much progress this
state will make in the year ahead in such critical issues as
education and health care.
Oh sure, at the end of the process the
budget for the year that begins July 1 will go back to the
full House and Senate for a final vote. But make no mistake,
this is where the big decisions are being made. This is
the proverbial sausage factory — a boutique operation, but
one with the power to impact millions of lives.
A Boston Globe editorial
Wednesday, June 5, 2019
Real state budget battle about to begin
The Senate on Thursday afternoon approved an
order setting a June 7 deadline for lawmakers to file
amendments to a proposed constitutional amendment adding a
surtax on household income over $1 million.
The deadline falls five days before the June
12 Constitutional Convention - a joint meeting of the House
and Senate - where debate is anticipated over the
"millionaires tax."
The amendment, filed by Rep. Jim O'Day (H
86), was advanced this month on 156-37 vote of the two
branches, indicating the proposal is likely to win more than
enough support to move it along to the next legislative
session when it will need to be voted on again....
The earliest the proposal could reach the
ballot for voters to consider would be 2022.
Amendments must be filed with the Senate
clerk's office by 5 p.m. on Friday, June 7, under the order,
which now moves to the House.
State House News Service
Thursday, May 30, 2019
Senate sets income surtax amendment deadline
House Minority Leader Brad Jones has
signaled his intent to propose an amendment to ensure that
money raised from the wealth tax be spent in addition to
funds already directed toward education and transportation,
and not simply replace those funds.
State House News Service
Friday, May 31, 2019
Advances - Week of June 2, 2019
[T]he speaker's climate change adaptation
bill finally saw the light of day, filed this week by
Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy Committee Chairman
Thomas Golden of Lowell.
It's been a few months since DeLeo first
teased the idea of a $1 billion GreenWorks grant program in
February, and he said earlier this month he'd like to hold a
vote before the August recess.
The bill Golden put together for DeLeo would
authorize borrowing for the program outside the state's
traditional bond cap, and unlike Gov. Baker's plan it
doesn't have a source of new revenue to pay for it.
The bill filed also adds an extra $295
million for resiliency projects, including $100 million for
municipal microgrid energy systems and $125 million for
public sector electric vehicle fleets.
State House News Service
Friday, May 31, 2019
Weekly Roundup
By Matt Murphy
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Chip Ford's CLT
Commentary
"Behind
closed doors six legislators will exercise their
powers to craft new laws, impose new taxes, and
generally set the parameters for how much
progress this state will make in the year ahead
in such critical issues as education and health
care.
"Oh sure,
at the end of the process the budget for the
year that begins July 1 will go back to the full
House and Senate for a final vote. But make no
mistake, this is where the big decisions are
being made. This is the proverbial
sausage factory — a boutique operation, but one
with the power to impact millions of lives."
― Boston
Globe editorial, June 5, 2019
The Bacon Hill budget sausage has begun
to be ground and stuffed, by a mere six sausage-masters.
Their goal now is to reconcile the differences between
the House and Senate versions, to find "compromise"
acceptable to both chambers. Whatever they settle
upon will be returned to the House and the Senate for
the usual up-or-down, take-it-or-leave-it vote
which, if past is prologue, will be unanimously approved
pro forma and sent on to Gov. Baker.
Both the House version and the Senate
version propose to spend $42.8 billion in the next
fiscal year beginning on July 1. It will be
interesting to see how the joint conference committee
agrees to compromise. Will it produce another
typical Bacon Hill compromise that jacks up spending
even higher than either chamber endorsed in order to
satisfy both? Don't be surprised to see the final
sausage product with a price tag well over $42.8
billion.
Friday is the Senate-imposed deadline
for legislators to file amendments to the seventh
proposed graduated income tax constitutional amendment.
The proposed constitutional amendment is expected to be
debated (and likely to pass overwhelmingly) next
Wednesday, June 12 at the next Constitutional
Convention, a joint session of all members of both the
House and Senate. This will be the next step
toward getting it onto the 2022 ballot for voters to
decide, again.
This proposed graduated income tax
constitutional amendment expects to generate some $2
Billion in additional revenue for the state. That
revenue is allegedly to be dedicated strictly to
spending on only education and transportation.
House Minority Leader Brad Jones
(R-North Andover) is looking to file an amendment to the
proposal that would ensure that all funds raised from
this tax increase will be spent as advertised, not in
place of funds already being spent on education and
transportation – not simply
reallocating and redirection current spending on education and
transportation to be squandered on other multi-billion
dollar boondoggles.
It seems that this should breeze
through the Constitutional Convention unopposed, if
legislators aren't subjecting voters to a
bait-and-switch scam, or are not simply lying to squeeze
more hard-earned money out of taxpayers. (Geez,
how could I possibly become so cynical?!?)
But Rep. Jones tried this challenge of his
colleagues in the Legislature three years ago, and at that
time it was shot down in flames.
From the CLT Update of May 23, 2016 ("Reactions
to the first vote on 6th Grad Tax assault"), three years
ago:
Massachusetts lawmakers took five recorded votes
Wednesday during a Constitutional Convention where
they advanced to the 2017-2018 session a proposal to
add a 4 percent surtax on household incomes above $1
million. Massachusetts currently has a flat 5.1
percent income tax rate....
The
measure needed 50 votes to advance, while amendments
required three-quarters of lawmakers voting to be
adopted. . . .
[Amendment] 4. On a Rep. Brad Jones amendment aimed
at guaranteeing that the estimated $1.9 billion that
would be generated by the surtax not supplant
existing education and transportation spending, and
be in addition to that spending: 54-138.
State
House News Service
Wednesday, May 18, 2016
After five recorded votes, surtax on millionaires
advanced to 2017-18 session
QUOTE
OF THE WEEK: "Guess what? You can't trust us." -
House Minority Leader Brad Jones on whether voters
should believe that revenue from a "millionaire's
tax" would be used to augment, rather than supplant,
current spending on transportation and education.
State
House News Service
Friday, May 20, 2016
Weekly Roundup - Whetting the appetite
It's so great that after 45 years CLT
remains "the institutional memory" for taxpayers!
Note that House Speaker Robert DeLeo's
$1 billion GreenWorks "climate change mitigation" grant program has
finally been introduced as a bill. Already it has
been expanded by an additional $295 million for "resiliency projects."
The State House News reported:
"The bill [Committee Chairman Thomas Golden of
Lowell] put together for DeLeo would authorize
borrowing for the program outside the state's
traditional bond cap, and unlike Gov. Baker's
plan it doesn't have a source of new revenue to
pay for it."
The state would be authorized to borrow
another billion-plus bucks to fund this latest
boondoggle.
Who do
you suppose will repay that loan, with interest?
Still they insist the state has a
revenue problem, not a spending problem.
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Chip Ford
Executive Director |
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State House News
Service
Wednesday, June 5, 2019
State budget talks move fully behind closed
doors
By Chris Lisinski
Six lawmakers tasked with reconciling
differences in the House and Senate $42.8
billion annual budget bills voted Wednesday to
conduct their negotiations in private.
The chair, vice chair and ranking minority
member of each branch's Ways and Means
Committee, all appointed to a fiscal year 2020
budget conference committee, spoke
optimistically about the work ahead of them for
less than three minutes Wednesday morning before
deciding to continue the process in closed
executive session.
"Both of our budgets make strong investments
into the key sectors of the commonwealth, and I
look forward to crafting a final budget that
builds off these investments we both have made
in keeping our economy strong," said Rep. Aaron
Michlewitz, the House Ways and Means chair who
hosted the committee's meeting in his office.
Michlewitz will negotiate with Sen. Michael
Rodrigues — who, like his House colleague, was
newly appointed as Ways and Means chair this
session — Democratic Rep. Denise Garlick and
Sen. Cindy Friedman. Republican Rep. Todd Smola
and Sen. Viriato deMacedo, who have experience
on budget conferences, are the other conferees.
Although this will be the first budget
conference committee in the Michlewitz-Rodrigues
era, the chairs noted that they do have a
history of working together: last year, they led
a conference committee that reached a compromise
on legislation regulating and taxing short-term
rentals on platforms such as Airbnb.
"We had a great working relationship last
session on short-term rentals, a bill that both
you and I are very proud of," Michlewitz told
Rodrigues at the start of Wednesday's meeting.
"That experience demonstrates our ability to
work together to make responsible choices and
preserve the commonwealth's strong fiscal
conditions. I believe we will once again meet
these challenges and keep Massachusetts moving
forward."
The House and Senate budgets, each approved
following multi-day debates on thousands of
amendments, proposed roughly the same level of
spending in fiscal year 2020 but differ in a
handful of key areas.
Conferees will need to reach consensus on
whether the final budget, which covers the
fiscal year beginning July 1, includes Senate
measures mandating a tuition and fee freeze at
the University of Massachusetts and implementing
new taxes on opioid manufacturers and vaping
products favored by Gov. Charlie Baker and the
Senate.
The branches took different approaches to
education funding, too. The Senate approved
about $50 million more in Chapter 70 aid
increases than the House did, while the House
budget implements reforms on charter school
reimbursement and sets up a separate trust fund
to help defray the costs of educating low-income
students.
Another key gap between the two budgets is the
approach to drug-pricing reforms. Senators
backed a plan that grants greater authority to
officials to demand information from drug
companies and implement consequences, allowing
the attorney general to become involved in
certain cases. The House's version, though, cut
out some of enforcement potential through a
budget amendment backed by pharmaceutical
companies.
"We're looking forward to working closely and
collaboratively and hard with you all to get
this, which is the first budget for (Michlewitz)
and I, done in a very timely manner, and I'm
confident we will," Rodrigues said. "I'm
confident that our teams are going to get this
done."
Private budget discussions began about the same
time last year, but lawmakers did not deliver a
budget to Baker until July 18, making
Massachusetts the last state in the nation to
approve an annual spending bill.
The House approved its budget (H 3801) in April
and the Senate passed its budget bill (S 2235)
in May.
The Boston Globe
Wednesday, June 5, 2019
A Boston Globe editorial
Real state budget battle about to begin
The state budget is where the rubber meets the
road of governing. And this week the real give
and take begins between House and Senate budget
negotiators not over mere dollars and cents —
$42.8 billion is the bottom line in both
versions — but about the policies that each
branch has defined as critical in the year
ahead.
Behind closed doors six legislators will
exercise their powers to craft new laws, impose
new taxes, and generally set the parameters for
how much progress this state will make in the
year ahead in such critical issues as education
and health care.
Oh sure, at the end of the process the budget
for the year that begins July 1 will go back to
the full House and Senate for a final vote. But
make no mistake, this is where the big decisions
are being made. This is the proverbial
sausage factory — a boutique operation, but one
with the power to impact millions of lives.
Amid the thousands of budget line items and
dozens of so-called outside sections — budget
riders on policy issues — some stand out as
being as critically important as they are
contentious.
Prescription drug policies: Here we would urge
the Senate side to stick to its well-crafted
effort to rein in the prices of a relative
handful of high-end drugs that threaten to drive
up the cost of the state’s Medicaid program,
which already consumes about 40 percent of the
entire state budget.
The Senate would give the state’s Health Policy
Commission authority to demand information from
drug companies that have failed to reach a
negotiated price with the state secretary of
health and human services.
“If after review of records or documents the
commission determines that a drug manufacturer’s
pricing of a drug may be unreasonable or
excessive, the commission shall hold a public
hearing,” the Senate language says.
Manufacturers would be required to appear,
testify under oath and would face penalties for
knowingly obstructing the commission’s efforts.
Ultimately the case could be referred to the
attorney general under the state’s consumer
protection law. Net savings to the state are
estimated at $28 million.
In other words, this provision has teeth —
unlike the House version which was redrafted at
the behest of MassBio, the chief lobbying group
for the industry here.
Massachusetts is already far behind in drug
regulatory and disclosure efforts long underway
in neighboring Connecticut, Vermont and New
York. To do nothing this year is to fall even
farther behind.
New excise taxes: Here again the Senate budget
tackles two critical issues the House choose to
ignore. The Senate would impose a 75 percent
excise tax on vaping materials — or as the
budget calls them “electronic nicotine delivery
systems.” This isn’t simply a revenue raiser,
although it would raise an estimated $24 million
a year. The real need is to make the product
more expensive to an increasingly youthful
cohort of vapers attracted by its bargain price
and its flavored products (an aspect of the
problem not tackled in the Senate budget).
The Senate also included a 15 percent excise tax
on the gross receipts from sales of prescription
opioids, the revenue from which — estimated at
$14 million a year — would go into the state’s
Substance Use Disorder Prevention and Treatment
Fund.
UMass tuition freeze: Both the House and the
Senate have agreed on the bottom line
appropriation for the five-campus University of
Massachusetts system. The Senate, however,
frustrated with the university system’s regular
tuition hikes, opted for the blunt instrument of
a one-year freeze on undergraduate tuition and
fees.
UMass President Marty Meehan argues that will
lead to cuts in the short term and cost more in
the long run. What might be a logical
alternative is a suggestion in a recent Pioneer
Institute report on university spending — an
audit of capital and operating budgets by the
state comptroller’s office. After all, where’s
the harm in that?
The budget dollars of line items are relatively
easy to negotiate — splitting the difference has
always been a tried and true tool. Policy issues
represent a higher degree of difficulty, but in
the cases mentioned above are clearly worth the
effort — and the fight.
State House News
Service
Thursday, May 30, 2019
Senate sets income surtax amendment deadline
By Matt Murphy
The Senate on Thursday afternoon approved an
order setting a June 7 deadline for lawmakers to
file amendments to a proposed constitutional
amendment adding a surtax on household income
over $1 million.
The deadline falls five days before the June 12
Constitutional Convention - a joint meeting of
the House and Senate - where debate is
anticipated over the "millionaires tax."
The amendment, filed by Rep. Jim O'Day (H 86),
was advanced this month on 156-37 vote of the
two branches, indicating the proposal is likely
to win more than enough support to move it along
to the next legislative session when it will
need to be voted on again.
The amendment would change the state
constitution to allow for a 4 percent surtax to
be assessed on income over $1 million, and for
the estimated $2 billion in new revenue to be
spent on education and transportation.
The earliest the proposal could reach the ballot
for voters to consider would be 2022.
Amendments must be filed with the Senate clerk's
office by 5 p.m. on Friday, June 7, under the
order, which now moves to the House.
State House News
Service
Friday, May 31, 2019
Advances - Week of June 2, 2019
Friday, June 7, 2019
INCOME SURTAX AMENDMENT DEADLINE: Lawmakers have
until 5 p.m. to file amendments to a proposed
constitutional amendment implementing a 4
percent surtax on household income earned over
$1 million under an order approved by the Senate
and likely to be approved by the House. The
deadline falls five days before both branches
are set to meet together in a June 12
Constitutional Convention, when they plan to
debate the amendment, often referred to as the
"millionaires tax" or "Fair Share Amendment."
If the amendment receives full support this
session -- a likely outcome given that lawmakers
voted 156-37 in May to advance the measure -- it
will need to be approved again in the next
two-year legislative session before it could
appear on a ballot for approval from voters.
House Minority Leader Brad Jones [R] has
signaled his intent to propose an amendment to
ensure that money raised from the wealth tax be
spent in addition to funds already directed
toward education and transportation, and not
simply replace those funds. (Friday, 5 p.m.)
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Citizens for Limited Taxation ▪
PO Box 1147 ▪ Marblehead, MA 01945
▪ (781) 639-9709
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