The official result of the popular vote on the referendum, duly counted and certified, was to lower taxes to 5%, right or wrong. There wasnt an “if…then” option on the ballot. Nowhere on my ballot did it say “yeah but.” It was yes or no. There is no room in democracy for “yeah but”. The people voted, my side lost, and I we gotta suck it up. Enforcing a dumb move at the ballot box is always a better course than ignoring it. The people are not always right, but if their decision passes constitutional muster, the peoples decision should always be final.
It dawned on me the other day how outraged I was in November of 2000 at the sight of right-wing operatives trying to eradicate the voters will in Florida. They wanted their candidate to win, democracy or not. Yet at the same time, some left-wing operatives continue to eradicate the voters will here. They want their economic approach to be adopted, democracy or not.
It appalls me to see would-be “public servants” and their supporters flexing rhetoric in ways reminiscent of tinpot dictators to find a rationalization for ignoring the people. I do not want a governor who will ignore the people. Nothing good comes down that path, not in Zimbabwe, not in the Ukraine, not in Florida, not here.
I challenge readers to answer the following question. What is more important to you preserving fiscal responsibility by keeping the tax rate where it is, or preserving ballot integrity by acceding to a democratic vote with which you dont agree?
This is a yes or no question. No yeah buts.
This is about as sensical as ‘You’re either with us, or against us.’
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So little of this issue is black and white. Moreover… if Reilly were to win, follow through with the 5.0 promise, and never recant…The state would fall apart fiscally. At which point, who do you think the voting populous will blame? Themselves?
The state won’t “fall apart” — that’s fearmongering. Things will suck, but it’s not as if states with tax burdens lower than ours are on Third World levels.
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I am proud to be an extremist in defending the integrity of our liberal democratic regime. Against activists of all stripes.
So…Things will suck is what you’re looking at from this election cycle? Also, the fact that you personally believe that you wouldn’t blame us the taxpayers means that the general populous wouldn’t?
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Look, when you ask me if I want 10 or 20 dollars in my pocket, the answer is obvious. When you start to explain the reasoning behind your question in all of its complexity, one of two things happen; I listen and comprehend, therefore understanding why I must be out the cash for the better of everyone, or I don’t.
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Go ahead and be extremist. If you want to sink the state’s ability to be on the cutting edge, if potholes hold a certain beauty to you, etc…Be my guest. My point isn’t that the populous should be ignored, but that people should be properly informed of the ramifications surrounding the seemingly simple question in front of them.
I didn’t think you were supporting the ‘will of the voters’ immediate rollback candidate…Perhaps I was wrong? Perhaps you’ve become a Reilly guy? Or…
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Perhaps you’re going to tell me how Gabs plan implements the will of the voters, which was, as said above, 5.0 three years ago…?
I’ve been a Reilly guy since day one.
That is hyperbole of the highest order. We heard that when Romney was elected and, although times were unquestionably lean, we did not “fall apart fiscally.” The next .3% should be easier than the first .65%.
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The income tax rollback will cost between $500-650 million. If you honestly believe that cannot be done within the confines of a $25 billion budget and increased revenues, I respectfully disagree and, in my opinion, most November voters will too. It can be done and the majority of voters want it to be done.
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BTW, a Governor’s job is not to get re-elected, so if the voters blame Reilly he would still have respected their wishes at the first available opportunity.
After voters passed that measure, the legislature did roll back the income tax. It was at 5.9%, and I don’t recall the measure requiring that it go down to 5.0% instantly. The rollback went to 5.3% and in the meantime, the economic climate changed drastically. The legislature reacted by halting the rollback, and putting in place measures to continue it after the economy recovered and cuts were restored.
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The question and situation the voters voted on in 2000, is not replicated today. The will of the voters was respected. But the voters never said “yes, let’s continue this rollback all the way to the end even though our economy just crashed.”
Sounds like what President Obasanjo tried to pull in Nigeria last year. Can Mitt Romney stay on as governor until 2012 if the “climate” changes? Maybe on occasion he’ll dribble out some minor powers to the elected governor when we recover.
Sorry, Cos, but that is absolutely wrong. Question 4 called for a gradual rollback to 5.0% by 2003.
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The argument that you are making is the myth that has been perpetuated by the Legislature and anti-rollback advocates. The Legislature voted to suspend the rollback indefinitely in 2002.
A 6 rating for Cos’ factually incorrect comment and a 4 for my correction.
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Are you serious?
Clearly you didn’t bother to actually read and comprehend what I said, but I’ll answer anyway (frustrated, yes).
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” Question 4 called for a gradual rollback to 5.0% by 2003.” – exactly. I said it called for a gradual rather than immediate rollback, and that a gradual rollback began.
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“The Legislature voted to suspend the rollback indefinitely in 2002.” – exactly, I said that the economy crashed and the state reacted by stopping the gradual rollback when it was short of the final goal, but more than halfway there.
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So, your facts are right, my facts are right, my argument stands, and calling it “absolutely wrong” is on these grounds is senseless. What myth?
I apologize if the subject of my comment came across too strong. I can see how you might think so. “Wrong” was not the appropriate characterization. (What I deserve for commenting late at night.) However, I thought a major point was missed.
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You wrote, “It was at 5.9%, and I don’t recall the measure requiring that it go down to 5.0% instantly.” I think anybody who read that would think that the rollback to 5.0% had no timeline when, in fact, it most definitely did: 2003.
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Since that deadline was not met, I think it is accurate to say that the will of the voters was not met. We can argue whether the Legislature’s decision to suspend the rollback was responsible – I think it was, to an extent – but we cannot argue that the will of the voters was respected. The will of the voters was that the income tax rate would be restored to 5.0% by 2003. It was not.
Why not just do everything by referundum? The state would probably end up in a bigger mess, but hey, we would have ballot intergrity, whatever that is. And think of the money we would save in not having to pay those damn legislators. (Is “democratic vote” redundant or an oxymoron? I can’t decide.)
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You said this was a yes or no question. I think you’re right, and for Reilly it just depends on when you ask him.
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Here’s Reilly’s view just last year:
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So I’m still trying to figure out when Tom gained this newfound “respect for the integrity of the ballot”, as you put it. The only thing I can think is that he decided supporting the tax cut was the best way to get elected, so he switched his view in response to the political winds.
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I’m looking for someone who can govern. It’s why I support Patrick – he has an honest, fiscally responsible plan to grow our economy by streamlining spending, maintaining the current (reasonable) tax level, and growing the economy. And he has the leadership skills to make it happen.
but don’t you think a year is an awful long time? This flip-flop stuff is nonsense. In June, I thought the Red Sox were going to win the AL East. Now I don’t. Am I a flip-flopper?
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Like Patrick, Reilly has always said that the income tax should be rolled back. The difference of opinion is when. At the end of last year, Reilly said now. Patrick is saying. . .well. . .sometime. Now, later, or never – that is the issue.
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Don’t you think six years is even longer? In 2000, the income tax rate was 5.9%, the legislature had promised to roll it back a decade earlier but hadn’t done so, the economy was great, and state revenues were growing and growing.
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Yet you think that because voters voted for a rollback then, that means we absolutely must roll back now, six years later, when the tax rate is 5.3%, when we’re just pulling out of a recession with another on the horizon, when property have taxes skyrocketed, and when the property tax has been going down and there’s a law in place to bring it down further when our situation recovers.
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And despite all that, you want to let Reilly off the hook for apparently not being as “principled” on this as he’d like us to think, because one year is a long time?
It’s not just that he changed his mind. (Heck, I think Bush is an idiot for refusing to say that he ever made a mistake.) It’s that I don’t think Reilly is being honest and principled about why he changed his mind, and he’s acting incredulous towards his opponents when he held the exact same position as them just a year ago.
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Reilly said at the debate (paraphrasing), “You guys just don’t get it. This is what the voters decided, and you can’t go against the voters.”
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If this is really his opinion, then the economy, the state budget, and so on should have nothing to do with it. If he thinks that public officials should do exactly what the voters want, then his position should always have been that taxes should be set at 5%, and it should be done immediately.
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However, just last year he took the opposite viewpoint. So it appears that his stand isn’t principled with respect to the “will of the voters”. There are only two other options:
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1) He thinks our economy is so strong now that we can afford to lower the income tax rate. I would strongly disagree with this statement – people and jobs are leaving the state. And this is not much different from what was happening one year ago.
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2) He changed his opinion solely because he thinks it will win him votes in the election.
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I don’t see another alternative.
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One other thing that gets lost in all this…what about people who’ve moved to Massachusetts since 2000 (like me)? The set of voters in 2000 is not the same as it is now. Why should we be forced to do what people who don’t even live here anymore said six years ago?
I do wish that Reilly had stuck with the correct position all along. That said, he’s still the only one who is ready to accept the will of the voters in the primary. Over the past week, that has really come to be essential for me.
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As for the part about people who moved in, you should be “forced to do” what the voters say because that is the law. One could say that you knew (or should have known) what you were getting into when you moved here. I just moved into another town in SE Mass, and I don’t get to complain about property tax rates that were set at town meetings held before I arrived.
I may be ignorant here, but if it were really the law then the tax rate would be 5% right now.
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In any case, my point was not based on the legality of the initiative, but rather that people seem to be making a moral argument here about “listening to the voters”. That moral argument is predicated on the assumption that current Massachusetts voters want income taxes to be reduced, with all the repurcussions that come with it. That assumption is not necessarily true, since the voters have changed and times have changed over the past 6 years.
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Anyways, we will see on Tuesday what the voters want now.
A law without an enforcement mechanism is not much of a law. There is no enforcement mechanism on the referedunm law (which leads some people to confuse it with a plebiscite, which it is not). Nobody goes to jail, nobody gets fined, if referendum results are ignored. There’s no teeth in it.
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Well, here we’re getting to the argument that since the Legislature has not carried out its constitutional duty, they get a free pass. Elsewhere in this discussion people push for some idea of a “waiting period” after a referendum to essentially see if people really want the question to become law.
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It is essential to assume that what voters said on a ballot is true. Legally, a referendum result is second only to a judicial ruling as a “trump” in deciding competing legalities, and nothing — no economic statistics, no opinion polling, no “this guy behind me at the bank said” — beats it. The 2000 referendum result can only be legally overriden by a more recent referendum result. Of course, since the people were “wrong” we’re getting all these rationalizations for going outside the law.
Just kidding… kind of.
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You switched candidates for, in my opinion, the right reasons. A principled stand on an important issue to you.
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I may not agree with your choice, but I respect the thought you put into it.
You’re the second person to imply that I’ve switched candidates. Maybe it’s because I don’t slobber all over myself at the mention of one candidate, and throw a fit at the mention of the other two.
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I’ve been with Tom Reilly from the beginning. My enthusiasm has waxed and waned, but for 18 months now, on any given day I would have voted for him — as I will do this Tuesday.
Bases on your posting, comments and ratings I thought you were in Gabs camp.
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So I take back the traitor comment, you just have bad judgement 😉
I voted for Bill Clinton in 1996. Where is he? I wanted him in the White House. I still want him in the White House!
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I moved to Massachusetts in 1989. We had a liberal Democrat in the corner office. That’s what I wanted. What happened to that? After all that time and effort to move here, I think I am entitled to have the progressive government I thought I was getting when I moved here.
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Things change. In 2000, there was a surplus. Promises were made attached to the rollback, including “no programs or services will be hurt with this rollback.”
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The surplus is gone. Local aid has been cut. Even towns with successful overrides can’t maintain the services they provided in 2000.
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These ballot initiatives are falling victim to people with large bankrolls and slick PR skills. Complex issues are boiled down to a bumper sticker, then placed before the voters. Government by referendum is a copout, which lets legislators off the hook for their decisions.
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In a representative democracy, we elect people to make the decisions in the context of the complexities of the real world. We can hold them accountable if they fail in that mission. It’s a little more work, but that’s the way to keep our democracy strong.
You say:
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Net state aid returned to the towns in 2000 was $3,767,751,765.
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Net state aid budgeted to the towns in 2007 is $4,024,957,060.
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I’m happy to provide individual town statistics too! Just ask. That’s an average of .15% increase per year. Add to that the 2.5% levy cap and on average the increase in revenue is 2.65%.
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Now, look at inflation.
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2000 – 3.38
2001 – 2.83
2002 – 1.59
2003 – 2.27
2004 – 2.68
2005 – 3.39
2006 – 3.50 (concensus)
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An average rate of inflation of 2.69%, remarkably close to the actual increase. Add in the hundreds of Prop 2.5 overrides since 2000 and I can confortably conclude that local aid to Massachusetts towns has not been cut, even adjusting for inflation.
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The inflation data you cite seem to be based on the CPI, but this understates inflation in the public sector generally and in Massachetts cities and towns in particular.
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(There are significant state and federal mandates, for one thing, also health-care is a much greater part of the municipal-governemtn bundle of goods that are indexed.)
Exactly! It’s the single issue. The elephant in the room.
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The most important issue in this election year is the cost that is outpacing inflation: IT’S THE ENTITLEMENTS, STUPID.
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Yet, not one Democratic candidate has, so far, addressed the issue. Keller mentioned it as a question in the debate, and they scattered.
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The health insurance plus retiree benefits grow unchecked at double digit inflation rates and the contribution rate exceeds that of the private sector.
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Towns and the State cut elsewhere, rather than confront Unions and employees with the necessary solutions:
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Adding percentages? If I get half my income from job A and half from job B, and they both give me a 5% raise, my total raise is 5%. It’s not 10%.
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You can’t ADD the percentages of state aid and levy increases.
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If the state aid goes up by 0.15% and the total property taxes go up by 2.5%, the total increase in money for cities and towns is LESS than 2.5%. (How much less depends on the relative percentages of town budgets they make up, and I don’t know what those are).
You asked me to pick a town. I pick Arlington. Tell me how Arlington is better off than in 2001. And I only pick Arlington because I am familiar with Arlington’s finances as a Town Meeting Member. If you really want a challenge, explain how wonderful life is in Winthrop.
Arlington is a town with a current budget in excess of $100,000,000. It’s in the middle of renovating its schools and I think it’s finished 5 of the 7 middle school, funded by bonds plus state assistance (state assistance at least in 2003, 04 and 05. Maybe earlier too, I didn’t check.)
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The Town provides pension and health insurance to retirees in accordance with Chapter 32 on a PAY-AS-YOU-CO basis. (That’s all caps for you folks who claim there are no pay as you go pensions in Massachusetts)
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In 2004, expenditures were $103,504,681; in 2007 the budget is $105,518,046. No overrides are currently being sought.
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Implicit in Arlington’s budget are assumptions that health care costs and pension costs will not exceed 7% and 4% respectively. (Memo to Arlington: good luck. You’re dreamin’)
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But whoa! Riddle me this. If Prop 2.5 limits levies to 2.5% and you give 7% and 4% to two particular line items, where does the extra money come from? a) hope for more local aid b) 2.5 override. c) Stop the 7% and the 4%. d) cut other line items. There is no e).
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Let’s look at history:
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2003-2007. First, education aid (excluding construction funding) looks level. You may dispute this, but with the detail of data available to me it’s difficult to extract the contruction aid from the total education aid. But, it appears to be level for that period of time at amounts approaching $6 million.
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General government aid is actually up. It was $8.786,758 in 2004 and is $9,945,063 in 2007.
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So why the pain!? The biggest part of government is salaries. The biggest variable salary cost is health care insurance, then pension, then retiree health insurance.
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Until the politicians address entitlements, there is no solution in sight short of continued property tax and income tax increases.
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The reason they don’t address entitlements is the same reason Washington doesn’t address Medicare and SS–third rail stuff.
Especially since you ignored my posting about your math being wrong when you claimed that local budgets have kept up with inflation. (See above if you missed it.)
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Your claim seems to be that the main factor in local budgets being squeezed is the fast growth of entitlements. But you are refusing to admit (and making up new mathematics in your denial) that budgets are not keeping up with inflation. So, even if entitlements grew at the same rate as inflation the towns would be squeezed.
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So what does that mean? It means that while it is correct that entitlements are expensive, you are missing the point entirely — the cities and towns have less money than they did in 2000 (and isn’t that how this all started?).
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Actually, you probably aren’t “missing” the point at all. Typical Republican tactics — make up numbers to imply that the big picture is fine, and follow up by saying “well if there is a problem it’s because of some wacko liberal idea… like giving government employees healthcare.”
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You want to cut taxes, fine. But the reality is that the cities and towns need help, and if we cut taxes they’re only going to end up in worse shape. Neither your obsession with entitlements nor your creative mathematics changes that.
And you’re right. I was too fast and loose with the numbers. I have no problem at all admitting the math error. I type these entries pretty quick; it was mathemathically incorrect to add two pecentages; my bad; good catch. I can conclude that costs are up, but I can’t conclude they’ve kept up with inflation.
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BTW, I’m not a Republican. Even if, you paint with too broad a brush.
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Allow me to ‘bullet’ some facts, I think, upon reflecton or research, we’ll agree:
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Now points that you may disagree with:
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And last the points we’ll probably disagree:
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You could “fix” the entitlement problem and cities and towns are still being squeezed. They have LESS money than they had before.
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If you really want to make your case, figure this out for starters:
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1) What is the real difference between the 2000 and 2007 total budgets. I don’t care where it comes from, just what’s the total? That way we don’t have to worry about the percentage problem or any theory of what the growth could have been, or total overrides… just what are the actual numbers?
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2) What is the total dollar amount of the increase in entitlement costs ABOVE inflation between 2000 and 2007?
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If you want to say that entitlements are THE problem, they damn well better be THE most significant part of the shortfall.
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To give an exagerated example, if entitlement growth was 10% per year but only accounted for 0.5% of the total budgets, it would be hard to make the argument that they are causing the problem. That’s why we need real numbers, not percentages.
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I can’t imagine entitlements are the MOST significant part of the shortfall, but I’m not going to do the research. But if you want to make your case, then you need to prove that.
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No theory, just real dollar amounts.
You conducted a mighty fine analysis, sir, except that I do have some problems with your numbers. First, I have a real problem with the FY04 baseline year you have chosen for much of your analysis. Your baseline year comes after the large cuts in the first year of the Romney administration. If you look at this with a baseline of FY02 or FY03, you can clearly see that we have not recovered from the local aid cuts four years ago. (NOTE: For all you Silbert voters who are tilitng at windmills and who don’t think that Local Aid is an important issue, remember that when you dial 911 you don’t get the Center for Women and Enterprise.)
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Arlington has just finished rebuilding the fifth of seven elementary schools in our capital plan, based on two successful debt exclusion votes. Thank you for noting the fiscal responsibility of Arlington, a community with a rather liberal voting record, by mentioning our pay-as-you-go pension funding.
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You mention the assumptions of a 7% health care cost. Last year, Arlington passed a $6 million override with the understanding that the town would not go for another operating override for five years. We all know that if health costs go up more than 7%, we need to cut elsewhere in the budget. It’s a large dose of reality. The town successfully negotiated increases in employee contributions for health insurance in 2004, starting with the teachers union.
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Funny thing about liberals. When you believe in government as a force for good, you tend to spend carefully. It’s the people who don’t believe in government, who wantto prove its broken, who can be counted on to squander tax money because it doesn’t matter and it proves their point.
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HERE’S THE DATA:
You obviously know the Cherry Sheet has changed, and has added/dropped categories between FY03 and FY07. To avoid comparing apples to prunes, I want to focus on numbers that appear consistently throughout the period.
Here’s the cherry sheets
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1. Chapter 70
FY02: $6,003,471
FY03: $6,003,471
FY04: $4,802,777
FY05: $4,802,777
FY06: $5,019,277
FY07: $5,592,670
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2. School Transportation
FY02: $123,422
FY03: $118,334
FY04: $0
FY05: $0
FY06: $0
FY07: $0
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3. School Lunch
FY02: $17,131
FY03: $18,746
FY04: $20,785
FY05: $19,124
FY06: $19,267
FY07: $18,403
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4. Lottery
FY02: $4,509,629
FY03: $4,509,629
FY04: $3,833,185
FY05: $3,833,185
FY06: $4,242,362
FY07: $4,884,315
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5. Additional Assistance
FY02: $5,652,310
FY03: $5,284,441
FY04: $4,491,775
FY05: $4,491,775
FY06: $4,491,775
FY07: $4,491,775
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6. Police Career Incentives
FY02: $246,338
FY03: $252,513
FY04: $257,500
FY05: $265,353
FY06: $287,087
FY07: $306,039
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7. Veterans’ Benefits
FY02: $108,833
FY03: $50,028
FY04: $44,187
FY05: $40,051
FY06: $94,978
FY07: $73,655
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8. Exemptions: Veterans
FY02: $61,275
FY03: $68,203
FY04: $56,838
FY05: $56,963
FY06: $54,438
FY07: $57,925
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9. Exemptions: Elderly
FY02: $61,950
FY03: $61,382
FY04: $55,367
FY05: $60,742
FY06: $64,758
FY07: $74,296
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10. Public LIbraries
FY02: $62,096
FY03: $49,999
FY04: $47,906
FY05: $53,764
FY06: $56,743
FY07: $57,058
I chose 2004 as the baseline because of the complication of pulling out construction funds. Also, I didn’t want to have to post so many f*** numbers!
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We can do the similar analysis for any Town, and with probably some weird, outlying exceptions, it’s going to be the same thing:
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So, is the solution to continue funding the Town’s budget primarily from Property tax (at least the Town gets to keep it all!) ? Or, should there be a move to rely on income tax and hope Boston sends some of the money back to the Town in state aid? YMMV.
Your response to my initial post took me to task for saying:
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Your response:
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And your challenge:
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I asked for Arlington, and you gave me data starting in 2004, AFTER the local aid cuts.
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Of course you can prove that the cut in local aid didn’t exist if your baseline year is the year the cuts were made.
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You have some important points. You do nothing to advance them if you are in denial about the impact of those drastic local aid cuts.
I like the Quixote reference.
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Here’s the problem: sure we can increase local aid, but how do we pay for it? Tim admitted in the debate this afternoon that he wants to “close loopholes” and eliminate the Governor’s advance staff (!?!) to find the money to pay for increases in local aid. Please.
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You know as well as I do that it takes fiscally prudent policies but also politically palatable policies, to get to the point where we can increase local aid. Timmy simply will not be allowed, politically, to steal money from one program and give it to Cities and Towns, it’s just not politically realistic.
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What is realistic is implementing a jobs and economic growth plan that results in more people being employed, more people paying income taxes, and thus having more revenue to work with. It’ll be a complicated process getting there, but the explanation really is that simple.
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I’m all for increasing local aid, I just don’t want it to be done at the expense of another important program and I want more than just platitudes about “closing loopholes” to explain how we get there. (I know, I know, Murray has a jobs plan too. As I said in my debate wrap up post, these are two solid candidates who would have run a fabulous race had there not been the 2.7 million dollar gorilla sitting in the corner.)
Gary, you show two data points for state aid to cities and towns, 2000 and 2007. You then show that, on an inflation-adjusted basis, 2007 aid roughly equals 2000 aid.
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But what happened in between? Did the two curves (aid and inflation) gently ascend together? Or did the aid curve take a dive that led to many teacher layoffs, delayed road maintenance, property tax hikes, etc.?
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If my income today is, in real dollars, the same as it was seven years ago, it doesn’t necessarily mean I’m as well off now as I was then — it depends on what happened in between.
Gary’s math was wrong. Read my post above. The 2007 aid isn’t CLOSE to the 2000 aid.