Governor Baker really, really, really doesn’t want to raise taxes to fix the MBTA.
Okay, fine, Mr. Governor. So what are we going to do?
How about this? The Hollywood tax credit costs $100 million or so a year in corporate welfare.
That’s $100 million we could redirect to the T without raising anyone’s taxes.
Know what costs the MBTA $95 million a year? The Ride. It’s a critical service for seniors and the disabled, but it’s a cost the state itself should bear, especially given that The Ride costs as much as the MBTA takes in from all rider fares combined.
Freeing up $100 million a year for needed upgrades and maintance would, I’m sure, go a long way to bringing the MBTA back to where it should be. Meanwhile, directly earmarking money for The Ride would protect that vital service for our seniors and disabled in the face of an aging population.
Some will complain that if we cut the Hollywood Tax Credit, that probably means we won’t have quite as many films made in Massachusetts. I get that, but I’m pretty sure the MBTA and The Ride is vastly more important than another Adam Sandler movie made in Swampscott.
But if any elected leaders disagree, there’s literally billions in other corporate welfare tax credits that the state could look at, too. Each one of them should be considered, long and hard, as our elected leaders ask themselves, “is this tax credit more important than a functioning, reliable and well-served modern transportation system?”
I suspect the answer to hundreds of millions of those tax credits would be no.
No more excuses, Mr. Governor. Right?
But the teamsters love the money they get from the film industry.
The whole thing may have been dreamed up as an offset to the prior situation where film crews would use locations in Canada that resembled Boston to dodge teamster extortion.
And then there is the orgy of self importance that a typical film shoot brings.
http://youtu.be/Su7nBti8CUg was from last year. It was some pipe dream made for Teevee movie about an Ally McBeal clone with cancer who lives in a palatial apartment on an entry level journalist salary.
Tinsel town has the cutest notions. Cambridge did make out like a bandit. That’s the incentive. While these dolts may get a tax break, they get hosed by fat permitting fees and detail work overtime for cops.
https://flic.kr/p/naavPg
So the state may get hosed but towns and cities also get to act like a small time extortion racket.
That particular worthless film shoot had to pay Cambridge for all day use permits for a bunch of locations that they didn’t clog up for more than a few hours at each site.
I always thought that the idea of offering a tax credit was that the state would make up the money in the end by, say, creating jobs, the holders of which would pay income taxes and, in the course of spending the money they earn, sales taxes. If it doesn’t ultimately benefit the state then why bother?
people want Boston to host the Olympics.
Let’s find a rep willing to offer an amendment to repeal the tax credit and get it roll called. We need to act if we want to make it happen. My memory is a bit fuzzy but the last time we did this the amendment failed, but I think we got a roll call out of it. Any ideas? Rep Dykema, Hecht, or Provost[sic] seem willing to buck the trend. Does anyone know any other reps we can recruit?
the governor would put the money toward fixing the “T”?
The legislature repeals it. It then earmarks the money toward the T.
The Governor signs the bill.
Done.
Disagree. What would make far more sense is to move toward a funding model which places significant regional assessments upon the 60 served communities for funding “The Ride” (as well as any new funding for the MBTA).
You want to build state-wide popular and legislative support for the MBTA? Transition to a rational, community based transit funding model instead of a state-wide funding. Given the directed benefits to those served communities (reduced traffic/parking congestion, increased property values), to me this seems far more equitable.
You’re right to suggest that The Ride and all other paratransit funding in the state should be handled the same. IMO, through the state, as Rye suggested. Paratransit isn’t mass transit, it’s something else entirely.
I believe that you’re wrong to suggest that individual communities should fund their public transit infrastructure, just as you’d be wrong that individual communities should fund their roadway and highway infrastructure. We’re a Commonwealth. We all benefit when transportation infrastructure works, even when it’s not within our city or town’s boundaries. More importantly, we share a common goal of benefits for all, and have since June 15, 1780, if not earlier.
Yes, the good people of Monroe (pop 75) should help pay for the mass transit in Boston (pop 620k). Yes, the good people of Boston should help pay for the roadways in Monroe. Transportation infrastructure is a network, and it only works correctly if it works well everywhere. Our economy, our safety, and our enjoyment depends on it.
If, discernaente, we go the “equitable” route, Western Mass and other portions of the state will fail outright. They simply don’t have the tax base to pay for their roads. Or their power lines. Or their natural gas service. Or their postal service. Or, more generally, the benefits the state budget bestows on them relative to their tax revenue. Oh, you mean all that urban-to-rural subsidy should stay, you just wanted to cut the rural-to-urban mass transit subsidy? I see. Well, in that case, I suppose some communities deserve more equitable than others, and bah humbug to you sir.
It hasn’t been working for some time. As it stands, people in the western parts of the state pay MassPike tolls to pay for the Central Artery. The and south shore people who actually use the Central Artery every day? Not so much tolls. It costs less to cross the Tobin Bridge than it does to drive from Sturbridge to Rte 128 on the Pike. But that’s OK, we are a Commonwealth, and all benefit when the transportation infrastructure works, etc. But, in reality, the western parts of the state have seen significant deferments in the road and bridge maintenance, again, to pay for the Central Artery.
The reality is that the CAP debt is being carried by a combination of (i) deferred road and bridge maintenance statewide; (ii) MasspIke tolls; and (iii) starving the T. Now we want to un-starve the T, and since money is not infinite and because you people keep electing DeLeo, at the expense of the other two.
You want to invest in the T? Go like NYC does, and transfer all of those Central Artery bridges and tunnels to the MBTA for toll collection, and make those tolls similar to those in NYC. The Verrazano Bridge, administered by the MTA, has a toll of $9.00 each way.
The Big Dig tunnels should have tolls — preferably congestion tolls. The revenue from those tolls should be used to retire the Big Dig debt, so that it can be removed from the MBTA. In my view, that’s a no-brainer.
The entire state has seen significant deferments in road and bridge maintenance. I suggest that those deferments pay for a great deal more than just the Central Artery — starting with the $100M/year film tax credit discussed in the thread-starter. Those expenses have, like ALL maintenance expenses, been rising. Our taxes have not. In my view, the finger should be pointed directly at the “No new taxes” crowd.
I don’t know who “you people” is directed at. The bulk of Mr. DeLeo’s power comes from the representatives in the western part of the state (the same people paying MASS PIKE tolls again). I’m pretty sure that the handful of legislators who opposed his recent power-grab (repealing the term limits on the Speaker’s office) hail from the Boston metropolitan area, like my own Denise Provost. Mr. DeLeo’s recent grandstanding tour was to Western MA, not Somerville, Cambridge, Medford, Arlington, Belmont, etc.
Mr. Baker’s support comes from western MA, not Boston.
In reality, it is the no-tax lunacy of the MA GOP and the legislators who gave Mr. DeLeo essentially limitless power that is to blame for both the collapse of the MBTA and the restoration of tolls on western portions of the MASS Pike.
That’s reality, whatever the theory.
Tom, I am absolutely shocked that you would try to push the theory that Baker’s support comes from Western MA. Either you believe that Western MA starts at I-495, or you are blue-red colorblind.
First off, the map you linked to shows that there are 4 counties in Western MA. Three of them went for Martha Coakley, one went for Baker. Berkshire went Coakley 66% to 28%. Hampshire went for Coakley 56% to 35%. Franklin went for Coakley 57% to 34%. Hampden went for Baker 48% to 40%.
Now look at Central MA. Worcester County went for Baker by 57% to 38%.
In Eastern MA Middlesex went Coakley 50% to 45%, and Coakley won in Suffolk by 64% to 32%, but Essex and Norfolk went Baker 53% to 43%, Plymouth went Baker 57% to 38%, and Baker took Bristol in a squeaker, 50% to 45%. Barnstable went Baker 54% to 43%.
But you now have to look at the number of votes cast too. Here are the voting totals broken up by Western MA, Central MA, Eastern MA, and Southeastern MA:
Western MA: Baker: 103,905 (45%) Coakley 126,122 (55%).
Central MA: Baker: 142,607 (57%) Coakley 96,020 (38%)
Eastern MA: Baker: 738,026 (50%) Coakley 730,826 (50%)
Cape/Islands: Baker: 54,634 (54%) Coakley 45,924 (46%).
Baker won this race in Central MA – Worcester County, and by doing very well in Eastern MA where all the votes are. He pulled in 46,587 more votes than Coakley there.
Western MA went Coakley by the same percentage as the Cape/Islands, and the number of votes pales in comparison – 183,440 votes cast, with a 22,217 vote difference. In order to negate the Worcester margin, Western MA would have had to vote 75% for Coakley, 25% for Baker. That is unfathomable.
If you want to point regional fingers, point no further than Worcester County.
Or maybe you could call it our drive by county.
And Hampden is a counterpart with a big troubled city surrounded by paranoid suburbs. Berkshire and the other two western counties are fairly easy to please as they are not too expensive to support.
Essex and Norfolk are loaded with wealthy swells although the former has fears of Lynn and Lawrence. Plymouth is a pickup truck and gun rack county with fear of Brockton and Bristol is comparable to Worcester with fear of South Coast cities that may as well belong to Providence.
Worcester is our mini midwest. I like exploring it. Lake Dennison is every bit as wonderful as Walden Pond without the crowds. Petersham is wonderfully frozen in time, a perfect rural New England town that could just as well be in Vermont.
It was probably the most pummeled by the implosion of manufacturing and only has real estate appeal in its easternmost edges that might be workable bedroom towns for metro Boston.
I group “central” and “western” MA together in discussions like this. So shoot me. Central and Eastern MA overwhelmingly supported Mr. Baker.
Bob Deleo’s support comes from that blue zone, and there’s not a hairsbreadth of distance between Mr. Baker and Mr. DeLeo when it comes to new taxes. Ms. Coakley was no more willing to talk about raising taxes than Mr. Baker or Mr. DeLeo.
My point is that CMD’s original complaint about “you people” is misguided. The tolls were increased because the state needs money, and the legislature is unwilling to tax the wealthy. That’s not the fault of those of us who lived in the Boston metro area.
Finally, raising taxes on the wealthiest 1% will affect primarily Eastern MA.
The claimed dichotomy between “west” and “east” is utterly false when it comes to this question.
It’s more sophisticated than Metro Boston and Not Metro Boston.
I *despise* being unable to edit these comments. Why is this so hard?
I meant “Central” and “Cape/Islands” overwhelmingly supported Baker. Eastern was pretty much a toss-up.
The cost per mile of highway is higher in Western MA because there are more miles. The cost per mile per capita is even higher than that because there are fewer people.
The claim that those tolls happen because “you people (presumably in the rest of the friggin state) keep electing DeLeo”. The very fact that the Western MA is blue and voted for Ms. Coakley means that Western MA is *Bob DeLeo Country*.
How many of the representatives from Berkshire, Hampshire,Franklin and Hampden joined Denise Provost in voting against Mr. DeLeo’s power grab? How many of those representatives voted for somebody other than Bob DeLeo when Mr. DeLeo was last elected Speaker?
The fact remains that Western MA is Bob DeLeo’s base. Enough with the “you people”.
Channel 22 periodically blows trumpets about DeLeo visits to Springfield.
You cannot blame the quisling Democrats for DeLeo. The ‘real’ Democrats – all 15 of them – are the only ones Tom recognizes. That’s what causes the George Bush supermajority which rules the MA legislature which makes it all his fault.
Just ask Obama.
It is a question of who is to be master
I invite everyone to peruse this link to the 2014 primary results, if you want to understand why you can’t generalize about the politics of Western Mass. Although I must say Central Mass is kind of discouragingly predictable.
In the West you have the communities around Amherst that went for Don Berwick, as well as a triangle of towns in the southwest corner of the state that went for Mark Fisher! For some unexplained reason Cheung and Conroy also did well (I think Cheung might have done lot of campaigning out there). There is also Hinsdale that must have a special relationship with Warren Tolman. So . . . definitely not a monolithic region.
In almost every state that I’ve lived in, you have The City and then you have everyone else and they all hate The City. It’s not a Massachusetts thing. It’s almost a contest between states to see who can define themselves as the proudest anti-urban hillbillies.
The southwest corner is a New York City enclave. This guy probably still has a stake in a family place in Sheffield. His parents were Auschwitz survivors. I knew him when he was in college.
The Five college towns are comparable to here, lots of smug academic critters somewhat isolated from less sterile ways of pulling a paycheck.
Pittsfield is a city that was half wrecked by a GE plant and is kind of old school blue collar liberals of the FDR form. I lived out there in the winter of 2010.
There is a kind of baronial arrangement out there of wealthy stiffs and everyone else who function as a servant class down toward Stockbridge where they still care about James Taylor.
North Adams is another small city that was blindsided by manufacturing decline. I haven’t run into these anti urban hillbilly things as the people I’ve known from the area are often eager to get to some city where they imagine a more prosperous future.
Then there is a farming economy in towns like Ashfield, (a favorite).
Heading east, the Quabbin defines a boundary with Central Mass where there is resentment of Boston intrusion over the 4 drowned towns and traces of the Shays Rebellion era but both are arguably legitimate grievances and may not correlate well to this hillbilly characterization.
And then there are more manufacturing towns as the area was noted for precision tool making before neoliberal free trade monkeys shipped the work to China.
Turning to Worcester. All and sundry have done a fine job of pointing what it is about but few venture much insight as to why?
I attended to that above.
It wants to advance itself. But it gets no respect from Boston. Resentment is an outcome. Freud and Jung were actually together at Clark in the early 20th century so the place has its own interesting legacy.
We do, after all, live in a time where a decent online connection can connect anyone, anywhere to the a planet load of things to learn and know.
Ethan Zuckerman probably still lives out in a town just north of Pittsfield.
It may be more interesting to investigate and learn from these transformations than to uphold a bunch of decaying cliches that purport to explain things.
I didn’t mean real hillbillies! Thinking more about the people in my demographer-classified “maturing suburb” who go on and on about our “rural character.” And have a 3-car garage and 5 SUVs in the family (one for each of the teenage kids) so “what’s the problem?” and “why should I pay taxes for something in Boston?”
Question on Chris’s very informative post above. Doesn’t some of the power of what we might consider the establishment wing of the MA Democratic Party derive from the sort of local knowledge Chris is talking about? Is there a way that progressives could work together to form a counterweight to this? When you have a group that is free-wheeling vs one that is hierarchical, it is easy to see why one can cede power to the other without proper organization.
The self identified progressives are so convinced of the merits of their various arguments that it galls them to actually have to sell said ideas to those they imagine to be less enlightened.
It should surprise no one when these imaginary unenlightened end up despising what they are likely to conclude are insufferable twits. The Deleocrat advantage is that they like selling and they have an easier product to move with considerably less chauvinism.
Self identified progressives need to cut the shit… right now.. if they are serious about getting out of the marginalized hole they dug themselves into.
I was mildly flabbergasted to see one regular from the western side of what is, after all, a fairly compact state in area, volunteer relative indifference to a place that is like 50 miles or so from his bailiwick.
So you have Boston progressive chauvinism that turns into Five College chauvinism and meanwhile the people who get the signal that they don’t fawking matter vote for loathsome GOP hacks and stooges just as a way of flipping the twits off.
It is an unevolved and sophomoric pecking order construct that has no place in an enlightened polity that is serious about engagement.
trying to convert the negative energy and attitude of many self described progressives toward Legislative Leadership into constructive actions that will influence their own elected officials, some self described progressives, some not, to promote positive change and progressive policies in the Legislative policy arena.
Many do a great job on the big picture stuff. Common Cause and MassVote have successfully organized a series of internal rules reforms, lobbying reforms and voter access reforms. Health Care for All and the Rise Up Coalition have advanced serious substantial reform of our health care system, increases in the minimum wage and improved family leave policies. And there is a long list of other successful smart and savvy advocacy groups who organize ordinary people directly affected by a policy problem into a lobbying campaign that presents an achievable policy solution. And they do it without publicly naming individual public officials as corrupt, or ignorant, the process a cesspool, or a hard one reform as “crumbs”. In fact they say thank you.
I was struck by a line in the 2/23 3/2 New Yorker’s Comment section that “Jon Stewart’s show was not galvanizing viewers but rather sedating them .. watching the host vent was enough social action for the day.” Not fair, too harsh, be nice I said to myself.
I hear you. I understand the theory of how your approach is supposed to work.
I suggest that the result we see today, specifically with regard to the catastrophe unfolding around public transportation, is the pudding.
The influential people have said “thank you”, and after eight years of complete domination of state government, we Democrats have created a royal mess. We have an unindicted co-conspirator as Speaker for life. We are functionally unable to even talk about raising taxes in part because of the widespread perception of corruption, and half of our population is one paycheck away from poverty while we rank among the wealthiest states in the wealthiest nation in human history.
When we tolerate wholesale and flagrant corruption, we enable it.
I simply MUST ask whether at least some of this might have had a better outcome if our most influential people had been more willing to publicly name Mr. Finneran, Mr. DiMasi, and Mr. Flaherty (all indicted and convicted of felonies) as corrupt. Would the Probation Department scandal have grown so large if more influential people had been willing to publicly call it a “cesspool” and publicly name its participants as “corrupt”?
How else should we characterize the MANY “reforms” that have left us with such a colossal mess? The data from the 2009 D’Alessandro report (and others) was clear that the MBTA has a multi-billion dollar funding problem. After the dust settled (and after Deval Patrick was publicly humiliated for courageously attempting to make a start), the legislature provided a far more modest increase, not nearly large enough to even begin to solve the problems. We’ve been seeing the results this winter.
We have a failed public transportation system, and our legislature is CUTTING transportation funding.
“Crumbs” sounds like the only accurate characterization to me.
All these heady ideas puff up the idea conjurers.
Look at the deluge of repetitious chest puffing and pounding that essentially animates this stream of screeches.
Monkeys are crooked… duuh.
But other monkeys will go along with them in adequate numbers to ensure a seat in Beacon Hill to the never ending dismay of the self identified progressives.
We end up with a bunch of armchair generals with no army.
One of the things I like about all these little open space groups I cite now and then is how they just go do stuff as if they are well aware of the futility of blowhard correctness politics and the complete uselessness of scolding as your basic mode of interaction.
The Deleocrats have been mightily scolded within an inch of their imagined lives by all and sundry here and it does what, exactly?
The mighty scold chorus of the sanctimonious progressives amounts to a canary fart in the raging sawmill of power politics. Particularly when it is served forth with heaping helpings of self absorbed obliviousness.
Many self-identified progressives aren’t necessarily that progressive. Lots of posts here about the MBTA, which does help poor people but helps middle-class and wealthy people too. Lots of posts about the environment, greenhouse gas, etc. Yet there has been a post about childhood homelessness sitting at the top of the recommended list for 24 hours, no comments on it, no one saying “yeah, let’s increase the income tax and build houses for the homeless – and let’s spread them out across the state so that poverty doesn’t get concentrated!”
Our online personas here don’t represent our whole selves. No way to really answer you without violating the commands of Jesus in Matthew 6.2, but rest assured that many of the people here do care and are working for social justice in many different ways.
That said, it is sometimes inordinately difficult to pry BMGers away from the topics du jour, so thanks for the admonition.
…for going the Utah route and actually providing homes, a view I personally share. If it’s on the rec list with nothing more to be said I would take that as an indication people agree.
… to be pointed at, and moving in, the right direction. It does not mean we get everything we want when we want it. That’s entitlement and is the opposite of progressivism: the very word, ‘progressive’, carries with it connotations of pushback, slog and incrementalism. Why do you think it would be different?
Also, If I lose my job because I can’t get to work, then the MBTA problems will have made me poorer. At some point, if it doesn’t get better, my boss is going to have to cut his losses and get somebody who can reliably show up. I daresay I’m not the only one in this position… and I have a really really chill boss. Somebody who works two part time jobs and relies upon the T to get to between home and both of them is in real danger of being cut from the workforce. It’s not fair. It’s not right. But don’t be naive and think it isn’t going to happen. And fixing the MBTA will do more than a conference on homeless children to keep more children, whose parent rely upon the MBTA, from becoming homeless.
I reject your attempt at a dichotomy between the MBTA and childhood homelessness. Certain problems have straightforward solutions, even if those solutions are arduous, lengthy, and complicated. Other problems are as much existential as anything else.
I tend to triage issues into those where I feel that my contribution might make a difference, those where I feel the right thing will happen anyway, and those where I feel are already lost. I don’t see how my contribution to a discussion of childhood homelessness can add anything whatsoever to the solution. The proponents and advocates seem to be to already doing the best job that can do. I don’t think they need my “attaboy” on a diary here.
Poverty, homelessness, and related issues are as old as humanity. I’m not saying they aren’t important. I am saying that even if we assume perfect government with perfect officials, perfect laws, and perfect enforcement, I suspect that we would STILL face poverty, homelessness, and similar problems. It seems to me that these are issues where we strive to minimize them, attempt to find ways to measure our progress at reducing their occurrence and severity, and strive to avoid back-sliding as officials and governments change.
The MBTA, on the other hand, is in my view a far more straightforward engineering problem (greatly exacerbated by political and social aspects). There is very little mystery involved in the current crisis. The origins of the crisis are well understood and were intentionally ignored. The consequences and implications of the crisis are similarly well understood and are being intentionally ignored.
For me, at least, that makes discussion of the MBTA crisis a far more valuable use of my time here than exchanges about childhood homelessness. I have a day job, and won’t be able to attend the event (the post is an event announcement). I agree with the post, and I think we’ve already discussed the Utah approach here (an approach I find fascinating).
I think your implication that I am somehow not “necessarily that progressive” because I don’t add a recommendation that post is both false and unnecessarily inflammatory. This comment strikes me as rather more intended to piss people off than to actually contribute to any of the issues you cite.
that this only corroborates the idea that people in Boston think that Western Mass begins at Route 128.
As telling a Freudian slip as “Metro Boston Transit Authority.”
So are you also asserting that Bob DeLeo is kept in power by those of us in Boston? There was nothing “Freudian” about it — for me, everything west of 495 (not 128) is a different world.
As stomv observes, if I can pay for your highways and your utter dependence on automobiles, then those in Western MA can help pay for public transportation. I welcome and encourage them to demand that the MBTA provide service to them.
and it does not follow from my gentle criticism of your Hub-centric view of the state, which borders on self parody.
However it is demonstrably true that Boston-area legislators are in the tank with DeLeo, not that they are alone there.
The initial claim, from CMD, was “you people keep electing DeLeo” (meaning, presumably, Eastern MA). It is certainly true that nearly ALL the Democrats in the legislature are in the tank with Mr. DeLeo. My point was that WESTERN MA is well-represented by the in-the-tank-with-DeLeo group.
Regarding my “Hub-centric” view of the state — when it comes to taxes and budgets, you’re darn right. I happily pay my taxes, I feel fortunate that I have benefited enough to have the obligation, and I would happily pay higher taxes in order to solve the problem with the MBTA. I also get almost NO benefit from the extensive and sparsely-populated highways of Central and Western MA. I freely admit that I have driven west of the Sturbridge exit (I-84) less than a half-dozen times in the 40+ years I’ve lived here. I depend on the MBTA. Funny how “I can’t use the T …” and “I depend on my car …” arguments raised by those from Western (and Central) MA apparently are supposed apply ONLY to public rail transportation and not to automobiles and highways.
I’m tired of sucking hind tit on transportation while paying front-tit transportation taxes. If that makes me “Hub-centric”, then I plead “guilty”.
but not the gander, apparently.
I find the myopic arguments about how “I’m being robbed because someone who is not me is getting something out of this” to be unconvincing no matter who is making them. The self-righteousness is especially unattractive.
But I did not call your post Hub-centric because of that, but because it failed to distinguish between two very different parts of the state. And in a way that is familiar to many residents of Western Massachusetts.
Duuh, of course it is. And it’s another nail in the bullshit pr fairy tale about how enlightened and liberal we are.
I don’t know if it is unique to here or just more monkey business. In the Lutheran culture that shaped Seattle, I didn’t see it expressed the same way.
You have a conservative inland region and a liberal coastal one. They are at odds with one another and they have the myth of California Auslanders who are coming to dilute the Lutheran purity, but that’s about it.
As I pointed out. nearly all these regions of the Commonwealth have dedicated public transit authorities… even Greenfield.. which is supposed to be worthless according to some chauvinist who lives down in the Five College Ghetto near there.
Good lord, who does Greenfield disparage… Shelburne Falls?
Eventually we may outgrow this benighted Masshole state of mind and I have met many who already do.
state can certainly cease to exist. I know we don’t deserve to enjoy the fruits of the Commonwealth because we don’t have enough population density to support public transportation, but it’s going to take us a while to set up the tolls at Rte. 495, set up our own state house, etc.
Tom, your emotions are getting beyond your reasoning. The poor Boston area’s transportation system is suffering because we dare to exist beyond Route 84? You’re falling for the divide-and-conquer idea that stems from tax revenue that was intentionally reduced. In truth, there is enough potential revenue to go around, but the tax cutters made sure it was unavailable. What we’re experience is, in Carla Howell’s words, “small government.” And small government is, in her words, beautiful.
I’ve probably been the most vocal about the East-West split, but Stomv effectively persuaded me that, at best, there’s no data to support any imbalance one way or the other. If there’s evidence, I don’t know where it is. You certainly don’t offer any. If there was a project that screwed up transportation costs in the state, it was the Big Dig, which benefited drivers in the East more than those in the West. It may have benefited citizens in other ways though, environmentally or business-wise or something. The fact is, we’re being starved and encouraged to start eating each other.
For the record, CMD was talking about the Democrats we send to the state house who then support DeLeo, not Eastern Massachusetts.
The good folks of Western Mass aren’t just the ones you can see from the Pike. Plenty of ’em don’t use the Pike very often. And, of course, there are plenty of 93 users who don’t pay tolls at all.
Neatly dividing Massholes to MBTA users or Turnpike tollpayers may make for nice rhetoric, but it doesn’t match reality by a long shot.
> But, in reality, the western parts of the state have seen significant deferments in the road and bridge maintenance, again, to pay for the Central Artery.
That may be, but there’s a hell of a lot more road in Western Mass than the Pike. All those state roads and local roads? Those are paid for in no small part out of state general funds, and the gas tax receipts are insufficient to cover the costs and the gas tax receipts in Western Mass are much smaller, proportionally, than the state money spent on Western Mass roads.
I have no problem with higher tolls in the Boston metro region. I have no problem with congestion tolling — higher tolls during rush hour. What I do have a problem with is this idea that Boston metro should pay for it’s transit, but Western Mass (et al) shouldn’t have to pay for their roads. It’s an unfair double standard.
I’ve run the whole thing and lived at the other end of it for 10 years.
this statement:
We live in a Commonwealth. I think we all believe in the commonweal. I’ve engaged, or tried to engage, in East-West divisiveness. If there is some inequity, it might be worth arguing about, but I’d like to see the evidence. But why shouldn’t Natick pay for my roads? Why shouldn’t I pay for theirs? Why shouldn’t I pay for the Turnpike and the T? Why should I be concerned only with myself or my region? Once we start dividing ourselves up by interests, we’ll have a hard time stopping.
Are you aware that MBTA communities are already subject to substantial mandatory assessments?
In any case the last thing I want in a regional transit agency is a bunch of local systems knit together.
I do not want the fate of the transit network dependent on the fiscal health of 100+ cities and towns, some of which will not be all that well run. Or on their prejudices, politics, grievances, or nutjob constituencies.
I want regional planning in a regional network.
…are less than 1/5th the current state funding (10% vs 54%).
This is quite unbalanced. For example, the NYC MTA only receives about 8% of it’s budget from state originated funding opposed to regional taxes (38%). I’m saying it would be far more equitable if the MBTA started moving more toward regional funding than further burdening non-MBTA served portions of the state.
Is that what you actually mean?
What a spectacularly bad idea, not just for T communities but for the whole state.
Hey, I have an idea, let’s fund highways through the property tax too! Not.
…from the availability of the MBTA. I think it’s a great idea (and it’s a very common model for funding urban transit).
FWIW, the state funding of highways is minuscule per-passenger mile or per-user-trip relative to mass transit (particularly net of highway user revenues: fuel tax, vehicle sales/excise tax, and federal funds). I’m all in favor of high fuel taxes dedicated to roads! I just wish the users of the MBTA would be more supportive of higher fares and region assessments given they’re reaping the benefits.
that increases in property values do not lead to increases in revenue? By state law?
You know also that property values fluctuate? Would be an incredibly poor source of revenue for something like a transit system?
The most charitable gloss I can put on all this is (1) Somebody’s getting rich (2) It ain’t me, so (3) tax the other guy.
Property tax a poor way to do that.
Increased property values don’t increase revenue. If the value of my property is reassessed upwards wouldn’t I pay more tax on it the next time the bill is due? In fact I thought the way some towns got around prop 2.5 was to reassess property before they have to so values would go up and therefore the revenue from it.
Should be a ? at the end of the first sentence above.
The total revenue collected by a community can grow only by 2.5% per year plus the amount collected on new growth. When properties are re-assessed in a community, some will go up compared to the median, and others will go down. The owners of the first category will pay more and the owners in the second category will pay less. Property value appreciation does not increase tax revenues collected by a municipality.
The net amount collected per year can only grow by up to 2.5%, plus new growth, unless a community overrides Prop 2.5.
It’s not possible for something to cause basically all the property in a community to increase in value? I thought 2.5 was a cap on how much a town could increase the rate by, so if I pay $10 per $1000 one year they can’t raise it to more than $10.25/$1000 the next, but if my property value jumped the amount I pay in real dollars would as well even if the rate per se didn’t change.
its a 0.025-sum game, annually.
Also “new growth,” that is new development, is outside the levy limit and adds to the tax revenue for the municipality.
And if your community had different rates for different types of property changing the rate for one would also change it for the others
Aside from that, zero-sum if you like, or revenue-neutral from the community’s perspective. Your tax bill will fluctuate based on its relative valuation, but for every dollar up there is a down someplace else in your city or town.
It always surprises me how many thoughtful people do not understand this. I guess it is not very intuitive.
That is why the local revenue systems need to be looked at – there is no way to increase revenue beyond the 2.5% rate, so what do communities do instead? They try and control expenses by selecting their “customers”. That basically means keeping out anyone who would use above-average services, such as poor people and large families who would live in dense housing.
This causes the price of housing to exceed what many people can pay, and is causing our state to lose population as people can’t afford to live in the communities they want to live in, and don’t want to live in the communities they can afford.
… this is true, up to the absolute limit of 2.5% of all property.
Consider the simplified case where a town has only two properties. One property is assessed at $1 million and the other is assessed at $500K. This is a total property of $1.5 million. The 2.5% absolute limit forbids (absent an override) the town from collecting any more than $37,500 in taxes on the two properties..
HOWEVER…
As you point out, if (for whatever reason) the town collected only $10,000 in taxes on the two properties last year, they cannot zoom up to the absolute limit of $37,500 all in one go, as that would represent an increase of several hundred percent…! Rather the law limits increases to 2.5% so the most the town can get out of the two properties this year is $10,250. They could increase next year by another 2.5% and take some $10,506.25. They can keep doing this each year until they get to $37,500 (or whatever the re-assessment is by that time, several decades in the future…) Or they can override to get at the protected value of those properties… but any override on the year on year change, I believe, would only go to the $37,500 limit and to get over that limit would require an entirely different override vote.
Your first sentence references the levy ceiling and is accurate. The 2.5% levy ceiling was very important when Prop 2.5 was first implemented as many communities were above the ceiling. They were forced to cut taxes. Newton was a classic example.
With the rapid growth in assessed property values, most communities are falling further from their local levy ceilings, so the levy ceiling is not part of much reality-based municipal finance planning. There are a few exceptions to the levy ceiling that are handled under the rubric of “special exclusions” but since there are few, if any communities, at their levy ceilings these are not worth examining here (muni finance wonks can check out debt exclusions for water & sewer projects, homeowner assistance programs for septic repairs, removal of underground storage tanks and lead paint abatement but this is almost entirely in the realm of the theoretical).
Since communities are largely moving away from the levy ceilings the nature of an override makes most of the comments after your “However” point inaccurate. If a community is at its levy ceiling, an override is not permitted. If a community is under its levy ceiling but at its levy limit, an override will allow the collection of total property tax revenues to be
base + 2.5% + growth + override amount
Debt exclusions follow the same rules, except a tax increase for a debt exclusion expires at the end of a fixed term, at which point taxes return to the pre-debt exclusion vote level.
You might pay more under some circumstances, but if so someone else in your municipality would pay less. The appreciation of your property might have tax implications for you personally but would be a wash for your locality.
No, that does not happen. And reassessment is required by law every 3 years, not to boost revenue but for tax fairness.
…so much as it is the value of YOUR property in relation to the others in your community. Many times I have seen the tax rate and assessment of my house go up only to see my bill go down.
Somebody may have built a 6 bedroom house as opposed to my two bedroom. A new development may have been built which spreads the tax levy thinner over all the pre-existing properties.
And remember – the 2.5 hike is consensus also. If a town has an agreed-upon need they can increase by more than the automatic 2.5 increase and we often do because we are careful in our budgeting overall.
For example, in my town, every year we take all free cash and apply it to the tax rate, artificially lowering it before raising and approptiating for the upcoming fiscal year. When we do it, it’s only pennies off the rate but it becomes a form of zero based budgeting. It makes a difference over time – the town across the river is almost identical in size, population, etc. But their tax rate is literally twice as high.
There are some serious flaws with Proposition 2.5, flaws that may not be evident in all communities. Most communities in this state are not built out. This allows them to increase their budgets by more than 2.5% each year. Remember, it’s not about the profitability, it’s about the cash flow. They keep one step ahead of things by slow but constant expansion.
Not all communities have this luxury. Want to build a house in Springfield? No one does because the property values are lower than the cost of construction. Even during the housing boom, the most expensive construction we would see were small houses in the $200k range. As all you Proposition 2.5 aficionados know, $200k is an “unprofitable” housing unit because the total amount of property taxes will be far lower than the increased services.
The other flaw with Proposition 2.5 is that it penalizes affordable communities. Springfield is at the Proposition 2.5 ceiling for the 3rd or 4th straight year. Why? Not because of “reckless spending” – that has nothing to do with it. Part of it is due to a tornado that knocked out millions in taxable property. Another part is the housing collapse. It is a huge flaw in the law that a drop in property values requires a tax cut. The price of fuel or electricity doesn’t drop when property values drop. Employees can’t be asked to take a pay cut because property values dropped. The 2.5% ceiling is unnecessary especially given the 2.5% levy limit.
But beyond those obvious flaws, the biggest flaw is the economic segregation that Proposition 2.5 promotes. Sure, people don’t want poor people living near them, but Proposition 2.5 makes it necessary to keep them out of your community because everyone is acutely aware at “revenue” versus “expenses” of various types of housing. Look at what has happened – poor people live in some places, rich people live in other places. That is horrendously damaging because a poor community can’t just pay its employees less than what the market dictates, it must pay wages to its employees that many of its residents will never see. The equalizing state aid has lagged for decades, and even the existence of this aid makes people treat poor communities like welfare recipients, feeling as though they should dictate what those communities can or can’t do because “they’re paying for them”.
Sure we theoretically CAN override, but people hate raising their own taxes. The town I grew up in closed its library for six months, slashed school subjects, closed fire stations, etc. rather than shell out a few bucks more in taxes. We have been a bit more successful with debt exclusions because they are ad hoc and sunset, but we shouldn’t have to beg people for money on an ad hoc basis. If I had my way Boards of Selectmen an City Councils, heck even elected School Committees, would have the same plenary authority to raise taxes as they see fit as Congress and state legislatures do, subject of course to the same potential wrath of the voters at the next election.
Words fail me. That’s a recipe for disaster, if there ever was one.
but also not beyond the pale.
Local governments work that way (well, not the Selectmen part) in other states.
*I think maybe Christopher meant to say Town Meetings, not Boards of Selectmen. TM = legislative appropriating body, coresponding to City Council; Selectmen = executive body, corresponding to Mayor.
…but it’s still closer to a popular vote than I’d like, at least in open town meeting communities, though my town’s Meeting has been more amenable to taxes than the ballot. I see no reason that Selectmen shouldn’t be considered the equivalent to Councils. Both are bodies of relative few members elected by the people to conduct the community’s business. It is the Town Manager (which I think should be elected but I digress) that is closer to a Mayor.
Town Manager is hired by the Selectmen.
Selectmen = executive branch.
Town Meeting already sets the tax rate & revenues when it appropriates the budget.
I don’t much like your proposal to radically upend town government by giving towns a second legislature, but apart from that: the current arrangement is the law.
…and I AM arguing that someone with as much authority and responsibilty as a Manager SHOULD be elected rather than hired.
Elect my political representatives but hire my professional staff.
The latter are accountable to the former.
Hire police chief, town counsel, DPW Director, town manager, etc.
Elect mayor, city council, Town Meeting reps etc.
The CEOs of towns and cities should be elected on the same principle and logic that we elect Governors and Presidents. If it makes you feel better we can call them all mayors; some states have town mayors. Civil servants and staff should of course be hired.
If so, go ahead and try to change your form of government. I’ll bet you’ll learn a lot from the attempt.
However, managers are not the CEOs of towns, and mayors are not managers. Those are two different job descriptions and two different skill sets.
Also, the best-run communities in the state, as a class (and with some specific exceptions), are the towns large enough to hire professional managers. You really should take heed of that versus some abstract one-size-fits-all idea about how local government ought to be organized.
Even ran unsuccessfully for Moderator. It is one of the four largest communities to still use Open Town Meeting (and the other three are also all in the Merrimack Valley – I don’t know if there is a reason for that coincidence.) Every once in awhile it is suggested we alter our form of government, but too many people have a stake in how things are and nothing has ever come of it. I believe that 6000+ populations have the option of Representative Town Meeting and 12000+ have the option of becoming a city. (Then, of course there is the “city which wishes to be known as the Town of…”) designation. Philosophically at least, I think my favorite of the available forms of local government in MA is Plan A city, but I can see pros and cons for a variety of methods.
It makes me NUTS when I see claims that there is a CEO anywhere in our democratic form of government with its separation of powers. There is an executive branch with its various forms of leadership but there is no CEO. There is a legislative branch with its various forms of leadership but it has no CEO. Argh, moan, grrrr, crying at the stupidity…
I strongly suspect that Christopher use the term “CEO” as a generic synonym for “leader” or “executive”. I also strongly suspect that he has only the most limited experience in working with actual CEOs (good and bad) in actual companies. I intend this in an observational, rather than critical way. It is quite hard for ANYBODY under the age of about 30, and for most people under 40, to get any serious insight into what actually happens in a board room.
In my view, anybody who has spent any serious time inside the executive suite of a corporation would be thankfully well-aware of the difference between a CEO and virtually any civilian role in US government — federal, state, or local.
The lie that running a government “like a business” would be anything but a disaster is generally promulgated by those who dislike government. This same lie provides the quicksand upon which the various “privatization” proposals are built.
Government may not announce a “new direction” and fire half the work force on a whim. Government may not agree to sell off the entity’s assets, abrogate its contracts, and screw its suppliers, customers, and employees in exchange for boatloads of cash paid to the executive team.
A government official is not obligated by law to break the law if the financial reward of doing so outweighs the penalties paid if convicted.
Government’s first and foremost obligation is to the voters. A CEO’s first and foremost obligation is to the shareholders. There is a WORLD of difference.
…which is how the state constitution designates the Governor, but otherwise I think you are basically correct that I did not intend to imply the same outlook, attitudes, and goals of a corporate CEO should apply to an executive in a government context.
As long a body is elected it passes the taxation with representation test.
So, an elected historical commission should have the power to tax? Cemetery commission? Board of public health? Precinct caucus?
This is a caricature of tax-happy that I would expect to hear about, pejoratively, from Barbara Anderson.
I could also see limiting that power to selectmen. Sure, if you have one of those towns that elects things like cemetary and historical commissions and such bodies make the determination that projects under their purview need additional funds, why not raise it from their constituents? The possibility of being voted out for doing so should be check enough.
In my experience and in my town Prop. 2.5 is what has been the disaster. It has shackled us in all sorts of ways and for me the most obvious negative effect was on the school system. As a student in said system I felt the pinch directly. Schools were closed, classes were too big or cut, fees were imposed, etc. Countless times I thought if only the School Committee could raise taxes and be done with it we would have the money to educate our kids.
> For example, in my town, every year we take all free cash and apply it to the tax rate, artificially lowering it before raising and appropriating for the upcoming fiscal year.
Why not buy down pension and OPEB obligations? If your town is like most IN MA, those obligations are in the tens of millions of dollars. Why not pay it down a bit?
Fun fact – before the state abolished the Barnstable County pension and treasurer we were the only one in the state in the black. My town’s obligations are at about 80% up to date. Not perfect but comfortable and on schedule.
Years ago while working in Cambridge I ran for selectman. My boss asked if I would quit if I won, and I told him I needed more than a $1,500 stipend. He told me Cambridge paid @ $20,000 for the same part time job along with expenses and an office allowance.
We have the same kinds of municipal salaries – DPW, Planner, Animal Control, etc. but the urban areas layer a whole additional type of expense on top. Of COURSE your pension obligations are more! But just like applying free cash to the tax rate, by the miracle of compound interest over time, it makes a difference in eventual obligation.
And before you tell me about the demands of dealing with a larger number of constituents deserving compensation – it’s harder to hide from angry neighbors in a small town. And I bet if you eliminated the salary, not one selectman would step down due to lack of salary. And if they did there’d be a dozen running to take his place.
Firstly, I’m not a Cambridgidarianite or whatever they call themselves. My community pays its selectmen fewer dollars than the selectmen feel/are obligated to donate to local charities. It ain’t paying the elected officials that drive’s my town’s obligations (which, BTW, exceed $100M for pensions and $100M for OPEBs). Further, it’s the time obligation (in excess of 20 hrs/week) and the process of running for election that drives good people away from seeking the office, not the wages (which, at $2k or $20k would be insignificant relative to the opportunity cost).
Secondly, what does 80% up to date mean? What is the outstanding liability for pensions in your community? OPEBs? Are you “on schedule” to have both fully funded by 2035? Some time sooner? Are these using reasonable expectations for future pension return rates, or overly-optimistic?
Thirdly, the combination of a more complex and diverse set of infrastructure that urban areas require and higher costs of living necessitate higher salaries across the board, from the teachers aide to the DPW Commissioner.
Fourthly, the BOS in my community can’t hide either. There’s about the same level of civic engagement as a percentage, and a hell of a lot more populace to try and dodge. That, and in my town you’d have to dodge constituents both in the grocery store and on the sidewalks and subways, making it that much harder to pull down the hat brim to stay anonymous.
But frankly, none of those issues really help inform why some communities have high or low pension and OPEB obligations. Really, the question is: did the good citizens in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s fully fund? The answer is no, they did not — they weren’t paying full freight, instead obligating future generations to pay for some of their goodies. Today, we have to pay our own way plus pay back old debts incurred by an earlier generation. The extent to which that earlier generation or two procured civil servants without fully funding them determines most of the community’s pension and OPEB obligations today.
I’m mostly interested in the “secondly” — trying to get a feel of what things look like in other communities with respect to pension and OPEB. I get the sense that my town is actually doing better than most from a budgetary perspective — a rational plan to pay down the obligation in an appropriate period of time. I’d add that my community often (perhaps not always) applies one time cash to the pension and/or OPEB obligation rather than give the taxpayers back pennies, dimes, or dollars.
…I believe a native or resident of Cambridge is a Cantabridgian.
…I can find on line is FY 13 and that has us at 73% funded. But S&P upgraded our GO bond rating to AA+ from AAA last week and the letter cited pension funding so I am comfortable with saying 80%.
As I said earlier the county fund was in the black when the state took it over so we never were as far behind as other municipalities.
We choose to preserve the tax rate as our pension obligations are under control. We are also 90% + residential so lower property tax is a priority.
And not sure why I thought you were a Cantab but congrats. My late daughter owned property (her home)in Somerville and her bills were astounding.
are low income, if fees are increased, that just means they won’t be able to use it anymore. Is that good for the riders? The MBTA? Small businesses? The environment? Your commute? No.
Then jacking up subway costs (currently $76) or bus/subway range, which range from $115 to $168, could price further people out — or could be a big force in nudging people toward driving. You could lease a brand new Honda Civic and keep it on the road for not that much more than $168 a month.
The more people who use the T, the fewer people who are on the roads in cars, the quicker your traffic and the better our environment.
Fares will and should go up overtime, but at some level approaching inflation.
Plus, let’s talk about the commuter rail for a second. Have you seen how expensive it is to use the commuter rail? It costs as much as $362 a month.
Our highways and roads are subsidized with billions and billions of dollars a year — no forward funding schemes, no demands that drivers pay their fair share. We should provide public transit with at least as much support as our highways, if not more — because more money going to public transit means fewer cars on the road and better service for all.
Most recent available data:
MBTA annual passenger miles: 1.8 B
MBTA annual passenger trips: 0.37 B
state support/mile: 0.44
state support/trip: 2.16
MA annual road vehicle miles: 56 B
MA annual road vehicle trips: 34 B
state spending/mile: 0.05
state spending/trip: 0.08
Road miles traveled / MBTA passenger mile: 31x
Road tips / MBTA passenger trip: 92x
Note: the sheer scale of the road system dwarfs the MBTA
If we deduct state revenues attributable to user revenue (fuel tax, vehicle sales/excise tax) and federal highway trust revenue, the state general fund support is actually closer to 0.02/mile or 0.04/trip. Due to road vehicle load factors (passengers/vehicle) these figures would be a bit lower per-passenger mile or trip.
That all said, mass transit is obviously valuable in the urban core and should receive support. Don’t kid yourself that road users aren’t paying a fair share compared to mass transit.
Furthermore, much of the state is either not served by the MBTA and has little opportunity to share in positive externalizes of mass transit availability (reduced auto expenses, real estate values, lower congestion, etc). Keep that in mind while continually thirsting to additionally subsidize urban core transit at the expense of others.
I, frankly, don’t believe it. I’d like to see the sources, please.
I want to know what is and is not included in the spending and usage data. I want to see how the data is distributed geographically. I’d like to see what portion of the costs of each are “externalized”.
It is far too easy to draw dreadfully incorrect conclusions from summary data like this.
MBTA data from:
http://www.mbta.com/uploadedfiles/About_the_T/Financials/fy2015.pdf
http://www.mbta.com/uploadedfiles/About_the_T/Financials/Stats%20Presentation%209-7-11.pdf
State level highway data from:
http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2012/sf2.cfm
I’d love to see a geographic breakdowns on state road spending. On the DOT web page GIS data of this type is mentioned, but there’s no public access that I could find. State Ch90 funding for non-state roads is budgeted in aggregate for 300M. The per-town breakdown is in the cherry sheets. Keep in mind Ch90 funding formulas are quite re-distributive so many towns don’t see much.
As far as externalized costs, the MBTA primarily runs on fossil fuel based energy. Yes, energy per passenger mile is somewhat less for the MBTA (varies widely based on mode, I think estimated aggregate CO2/mile is about 1/2 that of light duty vehicle) This certainly has some value. But what’s your point? Are we talking about state funding or are we talking about public policy? If we’re going to talk public policy, My argument would be the state has proportionally failed the non-MBTA portions of the state even further than the Boston core by not providing a working alternative to road use (or economic development investment in general).
Perhaps you also intended to cite the index page for the federal highway statistics. I confirmed your numbers, though I think you intended “state spending/vehicle-mile” of $0.05.
There is some other relevant information there. According to Highway Statistics Series, there are 76.4 K lane-miles of highway in MA. I wanted to dig deeper, but the fhwa.dot.gov site apparently locked up while composing this comment.
By externalized costs, I mean (in addition to externalized fossil-fuel costs) things like impacts on local real estate values, impacts on the environment, impact on local businesses and so on. Regarding energy, rail is compellingly more energy-efficient than highway travel on a per-vehicle basis because of the physics involved. In addition, freight travel by rail is constrained by the capacity of our rail system. Increasing the capacity of the freight rail system benefits everybody by removing trucks from the highway. Shifting freight tonnage from highways to rail increases the energy efficiency per ton-mile by replacing high-energy trucks with low-energy rail.
Adding both freight and rail capacity in Massachusetts benefits all of us by dramatically reducing maintenance costs of highways. Wear and tear, per ton-mile, is dramatically lower for rail than for highways.
Finally, I enthusiastically agree with you that the state is failing the non-MBTA portions of the state by not providing a working alternative to road use — for both passenger and freight transportation.
We all benefit from reduced auto use in the form of
* reduced carbon emissions
* reduced “traditional” air pollutant emissions (SO2, NOx, PM2.5, PM10, etc.)
* reduced dependency on foreign oil
* reduced balance of trade deficit
* reduced socialized health care costs due to motor vehicle accidents (far more costly per trip/mile/etc. than the significantly less frequent transit accidents)
* increase in economic activity in Boston Metro, which generates taxes shared throughout the Commonwealth
( increase in economic activity in Boston Metro, which reduces needed service expenditures (welfare, other social services) paid for by everyone in the Commonwealth
Just as I benefit from a state forest in Central Mass to which I’ll likely never visit, folks outside of Boston benefit from the MBTA even their only use is an occasional ride from Riverside to Kenmore or Alewife to Park Street Station.
The entire state does benefit from the MBTA, but some communities benefit more than others. We can haggle over the exact amounts, but Somerville is getting a ton more benefit out of the MBTA than North Adams, particularly in the form of higher property values.
Speaking from the part of Massachusetts that often seems forgotten, it would be more palatable to accept the “we’re in this together” argument if that perspective was taken more often, not just when income taxes are used to support the Metro Boston Transit Authority. The people voting to lower the income tax, and thus make aid to communities further from Boston harder to achieve, are generally benefiting more from the MBTA.
North Adams, to cite your example, is on track for $10.5M in state funds this year.
Also: It’s not the “metro Boston” Transit Authority, because it extends far beyond metropolitan Boston. It is telling that you think of it that way, though
For what it is worth, most of us here in the east also feel that the T is a foreign power exacting a cruel and unfair price from a captive population.
Various equities–east-west, urban-rural–are always pertinent and always ongoing discussions.
By any standard the idea of funding regional projects with statewide benefits through local property taxes (which are, by the way, capped) is inequitable and unfair.
Oops. Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority. In fairness, when I think of the MBTA, I think of the Green, Red, Orange, Silver, and Blue Lines, though I recognize that it supports commuter rail to a number of other places (and I was surprised to see just how many communities have a commuter rail stop).
I guess that what I’m saying is that if the MBTA decides to plop a line into Uxbridge, and this makes life for the residents of Uxbridge a lot easier, gives them access to better employment, and if this makes Uxbridge a more desirable and prosperous community, then wouldn’t it make sense for Uxbridge to pay a bit towards those expenses, more than North Adams would pay?
Boston generates a lot of wealth in this state, and because of that, most of the communities surrounding it are pretty wealthy. Naturally, when there is an MBTA expansion project, it goes into communities that are above average in wealth. I read that there is a green line extension project into Medford. Surely that is going to help Medford quite a bit. Medford has a median household income of $73,493, which is more than the state average of $65,339, and more than double the median household income of North Adams ($35,739).
I know that people in Medford don’t feel particularly wealthy (especially compared to people in Winchester), but it doesn’t feel right to say that the MBTA should exact the same proportion of money from North Adams residents than it does from Medford residents to pay for the Green Line extension.
Who says the T should “exact the same proportion” from everyone? Are we even having the same conversation? I do not follow at all.
You’ve made a number of blanket statements about wealth versus poverty, and also about how people in Boston support tax cuts while the virtuous residents of Berkshire County do not. Which I doubt.
Also consider that (1) Boston is not a wealthy city, although there may be wealthy people in it and (2) even well-off communities have poor people.
It is in the top 10 tier.
Number 5 by median and number 4 by per capita.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_income#States_ranked_by_per_capita_income
We may have slid down to 6 in median. But still, we are wonderfully craven and grasping, a regular piker pit.
Wealth distribution. Because our mainstream media and politicians won’t talk about it, few people appreciate it. It isn’t intuitive, and violates “common sense” (which is exceedingly uncommon).
Wealth distribution tends to follow a “power law” — it tends towards a straight line when viewed on a log/log scale. That means that there are TEN times as many people making $10,000 per year as there are making $100,000 per year.
In practical terms, it means that you (chris-rich) are correct, as are the participants you are responding to.
Massachusetts IS among the wealthiest states. Because of the power-law distribution of that wealth, that means that MOST of the people in MA are near the bottom of that distribution, while a handful of people are in the TOP.
Unless somebody works with numbers every day (or is “informed” by the mainstream media with the same intensity that we were “informed” about “Boston Strong” or whatever team is currently in whatever playoff season is underway), it is VERY HARD to appreciate just how many families whose net worth is under $50,000 per year are implied by just one individual whose net worth is, say, $500 M (not a particularly large number by MA standards).
Massachusetts IS among the wealthiest states in the nation. Because of the power-law distribution of wealth, that MEANS that we have a great many people at our below the poverty line.
We know there isn’t a lot of wealth concentration out in Franklin County.
A small number are hogging like crazy while most are struggling. That is what is so weird about marketing this place as some liberal bastion. It is lip gloss.
You have a reasonably small number of oligarchs and their upper tier courtiers sandbagging like crazy about paying for anything while spending a few decades rigging the system to make sure their wealth confiscation is as airtight as possible.
It’s probably another reason the rest of the state loathes this area. If they just came out and owned their avarice, I wouldn’t have to put so much effort into despising them.
And it all happened on a neoliberal watch as far as Democrats can be included. It’s not like income inequality is a thing they rush to embrace as a winning thing to oppose.
If the state pays for the T with money it collects from income tax, then it exacts the same proportion from everyone in this state to do so. If I make $40k and live in North Adams, I pay 5.1% of my income in taxes (and sales tax) and some percentage of that goes to the T, exactly the same as someone making $40k in Cambridge. Yet the person in Cambridge gets tremendously more utility from the T than I get.
I’m not arguing that the entire state shouldn’t support the T in some way – it should. However it would make sense for the communities that see more of a direct benefit from the T to support it more. I dug into the MBTA revenue breakdown deeper, and this is how it breaks down:
Fares: $569.2m
Advertising: $13m
Parking: $15.7m
Local Assessments: $157.1m
Dedicated Sales Tax: $799.3m
State Contract Aid: $160m
Other State aid: $118.1m
Other Income: $17.5m
Of those sources, 58% of them are coming from every resident of the state, 30% are coming from people who use the service, and 8.4% are coming from communities who benefit from the T. Is that a fair balance? It is hard to tell because we don’t know how much of the $1 billion in general state revenue comes from the area served by the T, but it is at least worth looking at.
Do you honestly not see how this cuts both ways? How a $40k household in Cambridge pays exactly the same amount into the general fund as a $40k household in Amherst?
And yet it derives so much less benefit from the Pioneer Valley Transit Authority. Or Amherst High School. Or…
This might be a point of departure for an honest assessment of regional equity in state spending. (Which would surely take into account the fact that the Cambridge household has a higher cost of living than the Amherst one.) By itself it tells us nothing useful.
There is not, and never will be, a one-to-one dollar-for-dollar correspondence between taxes and services for every single state expenditure. And you probably would not like it if there were.
We need to stop assuming that the only two directions people want to go are to and from Boston. What about lines connecting Springfield to Worcester, Pittsfield, North Adams, or if we can take it across state lines even Albany and Hartford? Also regional transit authorities should be better integrated, possibly becoming a single agency, with each one having routes that overlap and/or connect with those of its neighbors.
I’m a big fan of both
(1) getting more not-Boston-to-not-Boston rail working within the Commonwealth. Sure, Salem to New Bedford should go through Boston, but Springfield to Worcester? You bet! Now, to some extent, Amtrak does this, but we could do better both by
(a) improving the tracks so that the travel time decreases and reliability increases, and
(b) offering more daily trips.
(2) Merging transit agencies. We should do that, no question. I think that every non-MBTA jurisdiction is terrified though — they’ll get short shrift if they’re merged with MBTA. I’m not sure how to assuage those concerns, but they are real and valid.
BTW — keep in mind that mass transit requires mass. When communities don’t have density, they don’t have demand, and that makes it really cost ineffective to offer mass transit. I’d love to see the state take the following tact: you want more mass transit in your community? Figure out how to increase density of non-drivers within 1/3 mile of the transit stop. Upzone residential and commercial in appropriate places, for example. Because this is key — mass transit requires mass.
They just don’t use rail. Which is fine by me as I just want to get somewhere.
Charlie Card integration is nearly complete and it is all scaled to demand.
Here’s the basic system list.
http://www.massdot.state.ma.us/transit/RegionalTransitAuthorities.aspx
If the right-of-way is in place, DMU can be very cost-effective for serving links between communities that lack the passenger volume to justify full-blown commuter rail. A DMU car carries (roughly) about as many people as a bus, and can move them faster while using far less energy than a bus.
IF the DMU units are reliable enough. We old-timers remember the very similar RDC cars that were, frankly, a disaster.
I used to ride them all the time. It was what you took out of Reading and other B and M places in the 50s through 70s.
I loved em as a kid, but then I’m not too fussy. There’s a few hulks out near the highway in the North Station yard that made a great photo subject.
Here’s the Mass DOT pdf for the entire enchilada of rail runs, active and abandoned.
http://www.massdot.state.ma.us/Portals/17/docs/MapCatalog/Maps/Railroads-Statewide.pdf
If they work, they’ll be great. The claim is that the reliability issues that plagued the Buddliners have been solved.
Here’s the new improved version:
Europe and Japan commonly uses em.
I belong to three rail fan communities at Google plus. I’m just a novice and don’t bother to learn abbreviations and other rail jargon.
The UK has these in abundance.
to count, not communities, but people served. The other question to ask, is the MBTA receiving money for The Ride or is it part of their costs? The agency running the program isn’t necessarily the agency funding the program. When I was on our Housing Authority, we administered a few things for the state that had nothing to do with our housing or our authority.
Our Council on Aging, for example, oversees the services The Ride is talking about. We did have PVTA buses come through our town, but that will stop. We had one person occasionally using the bus. I’m sure we receive some funding from this because we spend about $80,000 on our COA and that includes salaries.
What are tax expenditures?
The state publishes a tax expenditure budget every year– very helpful document that shows the loss of revenue and the law authorizing it. And there are a lot of them, some good some silly, each with their own lobbyist. Besides the film credit (hint find it in corporate excise) my favorite is the sales tax exclusion for the sale of Bob Kraft’s cardboard boxes. Good luck finding that in the list of exemptions for exemptions. .
I’m having way too much fun digging into this.
Overall tax expenditures for FY2014 – $13.456 BILLION dollars.
Admittedly lumps in basically all of the tax credits & exemptions most of us enjoy (deduction for employer provided health care, rent & mortgage interest deductions, dependent tax credits, etc), but you can find lots of things that are interesting.
Ones I find fascinating:
* $1.573 Billion in sales tax exemptions on certain items (food, clothing, medical, etc)
* $480 Million in sales tax exemptions to tax free organizations (This includes all of our fabulously well endowed private universities)
* $937 Million in capital gains not taxed at death
It just keeps going…
It alleviates the inherent pinch on people that only have enough money for such things.
Some sales tax items that seem questionable to me:
* newspapers
* comic books and magazines
* gun safes and trigger locks
* aprons
* costumes (admittedly, sometimes hard to make distinction from clothing)
* gum and candy at a grocery store/pharmacy
* gum and candy sold through a vending machine (a lunch counter, snack bar, or diner would require the collection of tax, but not a vending machine)
* gasoline, electricity, or any other fuel
* religious books
* booze
I’m all for sales tax exemptions principally in line with christopher’s thoughts. Groceries, moderately priced clothing, medicine. I’d even expand some exemptions to include OTC medication, and certain reproductive pharmacy goods (e.g. condoms, pregnancy tests).
P.S. Yes, I know the people have “spoken” on a number of taxes, including tax on booze and gasoline. Doesn’t mean I’m not entitled to my opinion.
I had a bunch of friends in the 80s who were video/film people and were involved with BFVF (the Boston Film Video Foundation).
They paid rent getting film crew pick up work, what there was of it then. But word was that Boston was a location of last resort because of the teamster squeeze. It really drove up costs. So they’d use Toronto as an alternate site for stuff like St. Elsewhere.
The remedy seems to have been to give the industry juicy write offs and we see a lot more activity.
But a lot of the crew people come in from fairly far away as I noticed when I did that photo essay. And, (for those who haven’t had their neighborhood selected as a location), it is really cumbersome and you should NEVER let them use your home, if a location manager takes a shine to it.
The Inman square shoot used all of the Hampshire block from the Cambridge st intersection back to Prospect just to park the convoy of equipment trucks.
The scene involved an adjoining block of Cambridge Street so that was seized up in a different way. And this wasn’t even for a major budget film.
They were paying Cambridge significant fees that are by the day per location. This could be deduced by the signage left by the city indicating no parking for the entire day.The average time spent at locations might be 2 hours and they had several location.
I don’t have a problem with that, but it is a kind of backhanded transfer of revenue to municipalities, who presumably have their various permit rate structures for such windfalls.
I see the sales tax exclusion for manufacturing discussed as a tax break – it isn’t – if the product is used in Massachusetts – it’s taxed – if it used in another location – it’s taxed at that location.
Pretty much the rule is – anything that touches a product is exempt – and it’s the correct one – if you want to have any sort of manufacturing base in Massachusetts.
Massachusetts put these in place as other states did, as each state gave up huge revenues in the hope for a pittance from Hollywood. Now states are doing the math and are abandoning this subsidy — we should follow suit.
The Great Massachusetts giveaway called “The Tax Expenditure Budget”
I don’t mean to post this to discourage folk from mount a campaign to raise a few hundred million by repealing a menu of sales tax exemptions that benefit perfectly stable profit and non profit corporations and even professional consulting services like (gulp) lobbyists to stabilize our public transportation, public education, public safety, public works that serve the well being of the public.
All we need is a powerful, respected public figure to motivate us all to organize our neighbors and friend into a grassroots campaign to build public support for not even new taxes, but closing tax loopholes.
just one funny excerpt from the 1910 post. I think it was a joke.
ut. But…(0+ / 0-) View voters
I need my airplane to get from my late summer home in the Berkshires to my early autumn home on the Cape! It’s not a luxury. It’s a necessity just like food and clothing! And if you got rid of the exemption you’d put my pilot and my three personal flight attendants out of work.
1) I do not believe Bluemassgroup existed in 1910. If it did, it was truly groundbreaking.
2) I was surprised to see my name linked to such a discussion, as I usually stay out of those. In fact, I was not involved.
and I confused you with another person who commented. So sorry.
80% of this thread is about corporate welfare or tax breaks in general. That is too broad a topic for any action to occur. We need to stay focused on the film tax credit because its benefit to the state is almost negligible given how it works, and it is expensive to boot. It is a luxury that we cannot afford.
Let’s keep the perspective of the base absurdity (base in several senses). The T’s huge debt and forward-funding mandate was a huge legislative blunder.
They based that (on Weld/Baker concept) that the never-ending growth spiral of MA sales tax revenue would pay the T’s way. It was wrong. It didn’t work. It doesn’t work. It won’t work.
Had it worked, it would have been an extremely convenient way to encourage good maintenance and management, while relieving the commonwealth of new expenditures. When it didn’t work, the right answer was not to hide the huge problem.
The legislature with the governor needs to start by fessing up, admitting error, and correcting this multi-billion blunder that has swamped the T with debt service.
Let’s get with the program, Chuck. The legislators for many years have also hidden behind no-new-taxes to get re-elected. That’s illogical and puerile. start by fixing the obvious issue, says I.
One of the dumbest hazards to alert thinking was the childlike faith that home values always rise. To be fair, the Case-Shiller Index was kind of obscure in the early 1990s and a bad ideological fit.
So the entire assumption was half Bakered from the get go.
The idea that the Film Tax Credit costs the Commonwealth is based on the faulty assumption that films would be produced here absent the tax credit. The Commonwealth is forbearing tax revenue that they wouldn’t be receiving anyways.
Do you honestly believe that if the tax credit went away, that there would still be enough film industry production here to generate $100 million?
Abolishing the Film Tax Credit is the liberal side of the goo-goo coin while abolishing the Pacheco Law is on the conservative side of the same coin. There’s no reality in the claims that it will save money or generate revenue.
http://www.mpaa.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Economic-Impacts-of-the-Massachusetts-Film-Tax-Incentive-Program-.pdf
Some of it seems contrived when you read the fine print and it was commissioned by the industry so there is probably some self serving in the mix.
There is a claim of a 10x multiplier that isn’t fully broken down.
The charts on job growth comparisons may be a bit specious as the years used are coincide with the recession.
Seriously, any avenue for state to generate tax revenue from filming in Massachusetts has been blocked off.
Studios
-Don’t have to hire a single Massachusetts employee for their production. Not one. So we’re not collecting basically any income taxes on their employees.
-They’re completely exempt from paying any state sales taxes, the sales taxes you and I have to pay — and the vast majority of which goes toward our transportation infrastructure that studios are incredibly dependent on. (Any movie production will have about a 100 or more trucks, trailers and other assorted, giant vehicles — to say nothing of the fact that they’ll take up entire streets, blocking them off from traffic, sometimes for days at a time.)
-And for all this, we hand them 25% of the entire cost of the production in Massachusetts, including any acting and directing contracts worth millions per ‘star’ — like Tom Cruise’s $20+ million for his movie here.
We’re not “generating” $100 million. We’re losing $100+ million. We’re flushing that $100+ million down the toilet.
Nor is that money going into the coffers of small businesses, since the production companies often bring their own caterers, etc., in for the production. In fact, filming is incredibly disruptive to local businesses, many of which choose to just shut down during filming to reduce their operating losses.
And we’re certainly not generating jobs — every job that’s “created” (and I use that word loosely) from this tax credit has a $108k cost per job — and, remember, those jobs aren’t Massachusetts jobs. Most of those jobs are people shipped into Massachusetts — people who already had jobs with the studio before the production flew in.
I fully concede less movies will be made here if the tax credit is cut. But even if there are less, there’s enough interest in Massachusetts as a whole and our locations in particular that we’ll still have plenty of movies.
We always have. In fact, here’s a long list of high profile movies filmed in part or almost entirely in Massachusetts in the 15 or so years before the tax credit existed.
Hocus Pocus
Little Woman
The Crucible
Amistad
A Civil Action
The Boondock Saints
The Cider House Rules
Mona Lisa Smile
Mystic River
Fever Pitch
and of course Good Will Hunting.
I’m not 100% sure if The Departed and Gone Baby Gone were filmed soon enough to get the credit, but they’re both about on the cusp. I think they missed it, though.
There are plenty of other less famous movies and productions, as well.
So I completely reject the notion that we won’t get anymore good movies made in Massachusetts.
I’d also be happy to see the state reform the law to come up with some compromise — so sales taxes aren’t exempt and we aren’t paying for any salaries over $1 million. I’ll take some kind of pragmatism over the continuation of this complete and utter stupidity that we can’t afford.
But something’s got to give. Our transportation infrastructure is far, far more important than any movie made in Massachusetts — or even all of them.
…doesn’t anyone who works here have to pay income tax, including the highly paid actors, or are they exempt too? Again I ask what’s the point? Maybe a certain Governor who wants to run the state like a business can make a smart business decision that will actually allow the state to make money. Isn’t that what businesses do?
and at some theoretical level, it makes sense. Would, say, someone pay income taxes to the state of New York if they had to go to a business conference in Manhattan?
Going “on location” is basically like the Hollywood version of an out-of-town business meeting.
If some member of the movie crew was hired in California, by a Californian studio, and was shipped out to Massachusetts… they’re not going to pay Massachusetts income taxes.
…but I thought I recalled a conversation on BMG a few months back about how professional athletes had to pay taxes to any state in which they play games, so I thought this would be comparable.
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/20/as-states-lock-in-to-movie-stars-taxes-california-tries-to-cope/?_r=0
At one time, I seem to recall this being the case (early eighties?) for NYC. I have vague recollections of having to jump through hoops to avoid paying NYC income taxes on consulting income I earned while doing contract programming in the financial district.
I believe, based on various CPA sites like this, that NYC does not now attempt to tax short-term earnings such as for contract programming or making movies (emphasis mine):
For what it’s worth, during my contracting years I encountered this a great deal. The laws of each state do vary, though. I was incorporated (first as a chapter S and then as an LLC), and these were corp-to-corp billings, so that I was always PAID by a Massachusetts corporate entity. My tax guy told me that for most states (including NY), that was sufficient to exempt me from state tax obligations. My client billed my agency and I then I billed my agency. For NY purposes, my tax guy told me that my client viewed my agency as just another vendor, and my agency viewed me the same way.
I think you meant your agency billed your client and you billed your agency. Why would client and vendor both bill the agency?
I billed my agency, my agency billed the client, the client paid my agency, and my agency (eventually 🙁 ) paid me.