The good news:
Patrick signed the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.
He wants to dismantle the rogue “quasi-public” Authorities and return their operations to fully public government entities. (I wish he’d also eliminate the urban renewal authorities, especially the Boston Redevelopment Authority, the greatest rogue of all.) That’s not a “power grab” – it’s putting responsibility back where there is accountability. The Authorities were always a shell game of money and accountability, and have revealed themselves as major threats to democratic government. Re: the Turnpike Authority, we should dismantle the whole bureaucracy and stop inefficient toll collecting, and impose a universal gas tax. It’s a more widely and fairly distributed payment for highway infrastructure, and, perhaps more important, spreads the disincentive for automobile use.
He is talking about major investments in public transportation.
There must be others, and I’m sure other observers will fill these in.
The bad news:
A corporately-sponsored inaugural festival was a bad start. We’ll probably never know what that investment yielded for those generous contributors.
Disturbing too was the prompt announcement by A&F Sec. Leslie Kirwan, just after she was hired, that – oops, the $700,000,000 savings in waste, fraud and abuse promised for various service programs would not materialize. Patrick has ordered all the departments to look for budget savings, but as far as I know, there has been no review of the vast “business-incentive” give-away programs, in Executive offices, handing hundreds of millions of dollars a year in public land deals and tax breaks to developers and other corporations who are far from needy and who, as Deval acknowledged in a newspaper story, do not make their decisions to stay or go based on such public gifts. This money sink is the ideal place to get the resources we need for public services. It’s also good economics not to distort the private markets with public subsidies.
Patrick is proposing a tax on convicts, sort of a “user fee” for those who land in the so-called justice system. I’m shocked, actually. He knows that the poor and black/brown are disproportionately represented among the prison population, often caught in the so-called “war on drugs,” which was largely engineered to catch them. They can’t afford lawyers to exonerate them, even when they are wrongfully convicted. Many can’t even afford to phone their families. This is the last group of people I’d want to charge for the public service they’re using. The “tough on crime” campaign contest is over. We won. Let’s rather look for ways to reduce the number of convicts by rescuing their communities.
Patrick is considering casino gambling as a revenue stream. This would be another tax on the poor; the kind of people who lose the rent money gambling are exactly the people we need money to help. Again, very disappointing. I was shaking my head at the recent Boston Globe story – our electeds are worried that lottery receipts are down. Not enough gambling losses by our debt-ridden, one-paycheck-from-destitution, economically insecure populace! Let’s do state-run drugs and prostitution; I hear the demand for those is more reliable, and therefore better for our public schools to rely on for financial support….
Patrick speaks of authorizing local-option taxes (meals, parking, etc.) to relieve the residential property tax squeeze. But the two are not related (except where Prop 2 1/2 overrides are being voted; not in Boston, for example). Property taxes are set every year based on the increase Prop 2 1/2 allows, not on budget needs. Increased local aid, more gambling money, meals taxes — none of these will have any impact on property tax; they just bring in more money for officials to spend.
He appointed an ombudsman for speedy development permitting, which could be good if historic preservation and environmental protection are respected. But the permitting ombudsman, Greg Bialeckli, is a real-estate lawyer, which indicates a certain mind-set and creates a conflict of interest even if he drops his own practice during his state term; he’ll be expediting the projects of his colleagues and past/future clients. The big developers already have their “ombudsmen” – lobbyists, clever lawyers, big campaign donors. Who will represent the communities, our historic legacy, and our rapidly deteriorating environment? A planning professional would have been a better choice.
Patrick’s over-all economic development adviser was going to be Dan Bosley, who supported the Chapter 40T bill (filed again this session) that would allow big developers to create their own privatized public municipalities, complete with eminent domain powers over other private owners.
Our government has been giving away the store in the name of “economic development.”
The economic development concept doesn’t seem to have been revolutionized — yet. We need something different, and I hope Patrick will create it: an Economic Justice Commission, to provide a moral compass for economic development policy. The role of government is to level the playing field and help the disadvantaged, not to subsidize the rich and powerful and justify it with the “jobs, taxes” mantra. This administration could distinguish itself, and set a precedent, by establishing an EJ policy board, to be sure that public resources are helping to spread prosperity, not concentrate wealth. In the end, that’s what will best support economic vitality and distribute it justly.
nopolitician says
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I don’t agree with this. The only world where municipal revenue and property taxes aren’t related are those where people assume that governments will spend whatever is given to them.
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The facts don’t support this. You can check the State DOR website. It is possible to see that many communities do not spend all that is made available to them.
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The total amount that a community can tax is known as the Levy Limit. The total amount that a community taxes is known as the Tax Levy. Here are the differences between the two — in other words, money left on the table, tax money that could have been collected by local communities, but wasn’t:
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2000 191,003,008
2001 204,942,607
2002 198,135,816
2003 181,270,865
2004 174,301,619
2005 172,376,515
2006 197,284,897
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You’ll notice that when the state froze aid, communities left less on the table, but when the state unfroze aid, communities left more on the table. That seems to make sense to me.
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Proposition 2.5 is by no means fair. It is only consistent. There is no relationship between a community’s expenses and the amount it can raise via taxes; there was no relationship between its expenses and the “starting position” in taxes that each community was at in 1980 when the 2.5% annual increase cap went into effect. The number $25/1000 is completely arbitrary, and if property values fall by 50%, a number of communities will have to lay off employees and reduce taxes even though their expenses will not have changed.
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Likewise, there is no relationship between a community’s expenses and the amount it could raise via local option taxes either, but you need to break out of the meme that government cannot be trusted. We are government. As long as our elections are fair, government decisions represent the will of the people.
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Granted, not every community operates at the pinnacle of efficiency, but neither does every business. Both communities and businesses operate in a marketplace. Proposition 2.5 changed the underlying game of the marketplace; instead of people searching for the lowest taxes, people are now searching for the best services. Communities who can’t offer good services are just becoming economically segregated.
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I’m always a little amazed that Proposition 2.5 was implemented as a state-wide law. Why weren’t communities allowed to vote for it on a town-by-town basis?
heartlanddem says
The pros and cons of the additional fees to inmates have been vigorously argued on this blog. However, your statements require a wee bit of scrutiny.
Under the Constitution, 6th Amendment, we the taxpayers provide representation to defendents [http://en.wikipedia….].
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Damn, that’s a crack back to Pluto. But, hey keep the tally going.