Blue Mass Group

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I saw this over at MassBackwards. Is the translation by HubPolitics accurate, and if so, what is your opinion of this behavior?  To their credit, it looks like Patrick and Murray are a bit uncomfortable.

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  1. That Kerry Healey has the same position.

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    From the Globe…

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    Healey has offered no specific plans for property tax relief, but has proposed initiatives that could save municipalities hundreds of millions of dollars, potentially lessening pressure to increase property taxes. If underperforming local pension boards joined the state’s giant $43 billion pension fund, improved returns would also generate “more than $200 million in savings to cities and towns to cut property taxes.” Allowing municipalites to join the state’s Group Insurance Commission would result in “likely millions of dollars in annual cost savings” by increasing the state’s buying power for employee health insurance coverage, her website states.

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    My take on his plan…

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    Cuts in local aid have led to rising property taxes. So Deval is proposing the (one?) thing a Governor can do to lower property taxes, which is to help restore local aid. If local governments refuse to then cut taxes he can either try to pass legislation to target it or WE can voice our opinion to our local officials.

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    It’s not a perfect plan, but it is a plan and it seems to me a lot like what Kerry Healey has said on the subject.

    • Patrick’s has said “quid pro quo” in terms of giving more in local aid for a reduction in property tax.  PP has already posted a comment on how that could hurt the communities on the Cape (and others I am sure).

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      Healey’s proposal on the other hand, is not an increase in local aid.  It simply frees up cash at the local level.  Any community could benefit from it, and none would be hurt because of their demographic.  If a certain community is actually doing better than the state under their pension or health programs, then they wouldn’t take the option.

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      I like local control of tax dollars.  I think Healey’s plan is better.  It’s one of the reasons I’m voting for her.

      • Isn’t that money targeted to cover the tax rollback? Is it also earmarked to relieve property taxes as well? Is it enough to do both?

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        • From pensions and insurance savings would be at the municipal level, not the state.  It has nothing to do with the rollback.

          • It seems that Healey is also suggesting that this saved money is the reason why the rollback wouldn’t hurt cities and towns. If that is the case then it doesn’t seem enough to cover local aid cuts due to the rollback and to fund property tax cuts as well.

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            • Kerry Healey is not suggesting that the savings from pensions/insurance reforms are needed to offset some imagined “hurt” to cities in towns.  You are misinformed or perhaps you just misunderstood.  She has been very clear that the rollback will help the cities and towns, not hurt them.  It certainly won’t result in a cut in local aid.  The cuts she’s seeking are in the pork projects added by the (D) controlled legislature.

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              The rollback, as is the case with most tax relief, stimulates the economy.  The money gets back into the system and results in economic growth.  That growth is what will yield increased receipts and fund both state and local programs.

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              • But I would like to.

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                Here are the numbers:

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                * Income tax cut = $675 million
                * Gas Tax Cut = $187 (maybe a little less now)
                * Lost Toll moneys = $114

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                So 960+ million less money in the budget and no pain by no one because the economy will grow enough and Healey will limit pork barrel spending?

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                Is the economy not already booming according the current administration? Are we (MA) not already outpacing US economic growth numbers? And given all that are we not budgeted to run a deficit next year?

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                I would really like to understand the specific of how these numbers work.

  2. yes, the translation was accurate — my Spanish isn’t great, but it’s good enough to understand what he said.  Totally idiotic thing for Barrios to have done.  A complaint has been filed against him, and possibly for good reason.

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    Re property tax, AFAIK the specific linkage of some percentage of increased local aid to reducing property taxes is newer than the proposals on his site, which have been there for months and which I don’t think have changed at all.  On percentages, and on other requirements, I don’t know.  Why don’t you email the campaign?

  3. for dweir (and yes I did reply to your earlier post), so go ahead, vote for Healey already – we both know that’s what your are going to do on Tuesday, so go ahead and do it, in fact, why don’t you vote for her early?  I’ll think of you Tuesday night during the celebration at the Hynes as the majority of voters will be voting Patrick…

    • You replied, but you didn’t provide answers.  You also said:

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      During the past 4 years local aid got massively cut, pressuring towns and cities to raise property taxes – that’s not fiction it’s fact.

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      I don’t know what data you are basing that on.  I am looking at the spreadsheet titled “Average Single Family Tax Bills and Values — State Totals FY1990 – FY2006” that can be found on the DOR/DLS website.  It shows that the average tax bill has risen at a fairly steady rate of 5% annually (and this includes the last four years).

  4. Any proposal to link increased aid to decreases in the property tax is based on a fundamentally flawed assumption — that each community is having all of its needs met.

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    I live in Springfield. Maybe you’ve heard of us — ranked the “most dangerous city in Massachusetts, #18 in the nation” for about the fifth straight year. It seems a little unfair for the state to say to Springfield, “sorry, we’d give you more aid if you lower your property taxes, but not so that you can hire more cops. But Wellesley residents, on the other hand, gets more aid, because they don’t have any needs to spend it on and will give it back to their residents.”

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    When this state gets to a demographically-based local aid formula, a formula based on need rather than simple property value or even wealth, then that plan might work. But until then, there are a myriad of inequities associated with telling people how to spend their money.

    • Any proposal to link increased aid to decreases in the property tax is based on a fundamentally flawed assumption

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      That’s what I think, too!!  It’s an incentive for the communities that can to cut their taxes.  Hence my surprise to hear Deval link the two:

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      In debate 3:

      ROONEY: But you have to admit there is no guarantee that the cities and towns are going to put that money back toward property relief.

      PATRICK: Then they won’t get the money. That’s what I’m talking about conditioning the restoration of the traditional local aid. That’s got to be the quid pro quo. Not if we do it just dollar for dollar, we don’t anything. We don’t deal with all the unmet needs at the local level, but we do have to do it, it seems to me, a portion of what is returned in exchange for a promise both as they enjoy better planning and that we get direct property tax relief.

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      In debate 4:

      I think the notion that savings would necessarily go to reducing the property tax is not established. You’re going to have to condition that in the same way that I’m talking about conditioning a portion of a return of local aid. That’s the only way we’re going to get the pressure off of the property tax, not pressure, not avoiding the increases in property tax, but really reducing it. To me, to do this, at least to get direct and prompt property tax relief is by enhancing the senior circuit breaker program, the senior exemption program including moderate and low income homeowners in this. These two programs today are $40 million we can raise those $100 million and get direct relief to people today.

       

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      The linking to the senior or low income circuit breaker is tricky too.  Different demographics in a community could hurt one group at the benefit of another.  And if it works like the current circuit breaker, it’s a delay of taxes, not an exemption.  At some point, the bill comes due.  Unless he’s thinking of something different like a graduated property tax based on income?

  5. October 19, 2006

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    Patrick, Mihos need a lesson

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    Two of our gubernatorial candidates, Deval Patrick and Christy Mihos, have floated plans for the state to help with property tax rates. Both of them appear to have missed some classes in grade school based upon their suggestions.

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    It’s also hard to avoid the suspicion that they decided to talk about this because of polling data that says people are concerned about property taxes, which are not a state responsibility.

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    Mihos, the Independent, needs a math class. His Proposition 1 would mandate that 40 percent of state revenues go to local aid for cities and towns (he doesn’t say if this includes Chapter 90 road, Chapter 70 education and Lottery money, but he implies it does not). In the state budget of the last few years, programs like Prescription Advantage, Mass. Health, food stamp reimbursement and so on – that is, entitlement spending, which the state is obligated to pay if you meet certain criteria – was about 48 percent of the budget.

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    If Mihos’ Proposition 1 goes into effect, that would leave about 12 percent of the budget for all the rest of state government – roads, bridges, state police, state colleges, crime labs, jails, courts, and so on. It doesn’t add up.

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    Patrick, the Democrat, apparently never took civics at tony Milton Academy.

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    Localities make their own priorities in spending, and set their own tax rates. If the city of Cambridge chooses to lay off police officers, while paying their nine councilors and two full-time employees more than $969,000 for doing the same job as our selectmen, who get $1,000 – why should we subsidize that bad choice with our tax dollars? I don’t even want to subsidize some of the mismanagement and bad financial decisions made by other towns on Cape, let alone in Worcester. Refusing to lower the income tax to give property tax aid does exactly that. The state has no voice in how local aid money is spent, and how a town manages itself, and giving cash relief from our taxes perpetuates mismanagement.

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    How would Patrick’s property tax plan benefit Cape Cod? We’ve already had experience with Boston distributing money for the benefit of communities. The 1993 education aid formula redirects tax money from affluent communities, which ”don’t need it”, to more deserving ones. Lottery money is not distributed according to where tickets are sold, but according to the ‘need’-based education formula. Chapter 90 gasoline tax money for roads is distributed according to a formula that follows 50 percent miles of public, not private, roads; 25 percent population; and 25 percent jobs in the community. So, a single city block in Boston dwarfs an entire community on Cape Cod for jobs, and pulls funding there.

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    When Patrick talks about helping communities cope with property taxes, is he talking about Dennis, with a combined rate of $4.20 per $1,000 valuation, or Framingham, with a residential rate of $11.34, and a commercial rate of $29? Yet Arlington, Cambridge, Lawrence, Lowell, and other communities inside Route 128, likely to be on the short list for ‘help,’ already receive state aid and services that dwarf those given to the Cape and Berkshires. We already pay the debt service for the MWRA to keep their water bills down, we subsidize the MBTA to give them train service, we subsidize things like $500,000 – more than Eastham received in local aid – for Boston to do ”dialoging” about race. Just how much more are we expected to be helping them out? If you think they’ll help us out when we need it, look no further than the FAIR plan rates for your answer.

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    When Patrick talks about helping communities with property tax bills – he isn’t taking about you, or even to you. So let’s honor the will of the voters, and lower the income tax rate to 5 percent – and we’ll pay our own bills. I’ll chip in to buy Patrick a civics textbook. Christy’s on his own.

    • The state establishes (a)what cities and towns must do (and very often, how they must do it!), defines (b)what local governments can tax (and how) to pay for it, and then, since tax revenues are capped so that (a) vastly exceeds (b), appropriates aid to cities and towns.

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      The level and distribution of that aid determined whether local services fail or succeed. Consequently, that appropriation by the state Legislature on the budget submitted by the Governor is probably the single most important issue that faces the Commonwealth each year!

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      You are entitled to say, Life would be better if only state aid (and the property tax) were less, but you know what, lots of voters seem to disagree.

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      And contrary to the implication that Patrick is somehow opportunistically “taking advantage” of this issue: he is the first leader at the state level to touch this thing in sixteen years. And it is because he took it up that it is now center stage it belongs.

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      Honestly, Peter, whatever you post here I hope you realize what a missed opportunity this was for your party. For sixteen years–sixteen years!–my party was, alas, happy to let the cities and towns struggle in vain with service cuts and tax hikes that are unfair and upopular. Not Invented Here was the attitude on Beacon Hill. It is inexcusible and begging for responsible opposition.

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      Your party could have provided that. Instead, Patrick has. That, really, is the story if this election.

  6. The DOR reset the benchmark collections upward for the year from $18.93 billion to $19.132 billion. 

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    That means, barring a downturn (not unlikely) in Q4_2006 or Q1_2007 the new Govenor will take great credit for a surplus. Under either regime it’ll likely mean increased local aid in FY 2008.

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