The clumsy way state government has approached this crisis speaks to a broken culture on Beacon Hill. Lawmakers avoid “tough” votes as if they were not elected to make decisions. Many spend entire careers in the Legislature without making more than a handful of difficult decisions. But this is a time when avoiding decisions is impossible.
Patrick has taken a pounding lately. But he deserves some credit for at least being willing to utter the dirty word, “taxes.” The man has not exactly been bold – a candy tax? – but he has broached the subject. Lawmakers continue to run away at the mere mention of taxes.
There are no easy choices in a recession. But what's worrisome is that no one is making any choices. Cutting local aid to pieces isn't a fiscal strategy, and neither is resurrecting casinos. These are desperation tactics that put off decision-making for another day.
Actually, I disagree a bit — I think Patrick has consistently been courageous about raising new revenues: local options, telephone poles, etc. (I like the candy tax idea: Is candy food or “food”?)
But it's not like there's even a legitimate difference of opinion
on how to close the budget gap while maintaining services. Somehow, in today's environment, it's easy for state reps to stand up there and look tough with long faces while they dole out the “reality” to localities and poor and vulnerable people. Life is relatively sweet up there in the lege's Cone of Silence.
And meanwhile, there's been no courage on the spending side: The Senate chickened out on the Carmen's health plan. On pensions, the House chickened out. On taxes, everyone's a damn coward. Hey, if everyone's a coward, no one's a coward.
But even cowardice won't make anyone happy. And that's why we are where we are.
Update: Powerful statements from mayors Lisa Wong of Fitchburg (Hello Fitchburg!); Kim Driscoll of Salem; and Mike Sullivan of Holyoke. Sullivan also refers to cultural change — wouldn't it be cool if this became the next catchphrase/meme? How about a legislative “culture of responsibility”?
sheesh, so many different, easy, no-cost-to-the-state-budget things we could do.
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p>Universal state gov’t/local gov’t GIC would save so much freaking money. The unions may lose out a little on the insurance side, but surely there’s some quid pro quos we can throw them to make it fair.
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p>Local town option taxes are even more of a no brainer. It’s just an option! State Government’s gotta stop being so freaking paternalistic and let towns govern themselves, especially when the state throws on so many unfunded mandates and costs to towns. If the state refuses to fund all of them, they need to at least give towns the options of finding ways to fund programs. Period. Heck, this should be even more of a no-brainer because, if state legislators hate making the ‘tough decisions,’ this is just passing the buck! At this point, many towns would love to have the buck if state government continues to refuse to take responsibility.
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p>There are lots of other things — telephone poles, energy policies that would force efficiencies that would actually save money, yada, yada, yada… but if the state just passed universal GIC for all state/town employees and gave cities and towns local tax options, 90% of the budget problems would go away — even if we threw town employees a few bones for switching to GIC.
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p>Why isn’t the Governor, Speaker and Senate President calling on all the state’s major unions to come together with state government to hash out some sort of fair way to make that change — one that would save towns money and save union jobs? There has got to be common ground here, if some of these risk-adverse people would just freaking think outside of the box for a second.
for lacking political courage when they are listening to and responding to an overwhelming majority of their constituents who are motivated to call in and say they can’t afford to pay any more taxes.
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p>No, I’m not talking about the 1500 people who came up on teabag day, although we must take it seriously. My colleague Harmony did have a little fun with some tea baggers in Finagles asking them if they knew they had been on government property and used government subsidized transportation systems to get to Boston Common (and make a big mess by the way).
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p>As far as I can learn from legislative staffers, the calls and letters that have been coming into the State House are not “organized form letters” but spontaneous reactions of folks who have been reading and listening to and experiencing the various meltdowns in government programs like T and rail delays and long lines at the unemployment offices, food pantries as well as the turnpike.They are frustrated and angry at the recent exposes of waste fraud and corruptions.
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p>So am I. But I am grateful that it has been exposed and now I want to work to fix it and that takes money, so as far as I am concerned it is both Reform And Revenue. We’ve gone through these kinds of fiscal crises before in Massachusetts and we know how to do it.
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p>Meanwhile our legislators need a lot more (small p) political support from their constituents before they can be comfortable voting for new taxes.
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p>Hence ONE Mass’ attempt to start up a Virtual Rally and Stop the Cuts Coalitions work to set up regional media events in Boston, Springfield, New Bedford, Brockton, Cape Cod, Worcester, Lynn and Merrimack Valley (contact Harris Gruman, SEIU State Council
Office: 617-316-0443, Harris.Gruman@seiu.org or Carl Nilsson
Neighbor to Neighbor Massachusetts 617 723-6866 carl@n2nma.org for information on regional rallies)
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p>Meanwhile I think it would be great if every BMG reader called your own legislative delegation and tell her/him to get ready to debate the various tax amendments on Monday the 27th and bring home a balanced adequate tax package that begins to address the structural deficit and begins to stabilize some of the public structures we depend on to keep our communities healthy.
Judy, we need reform BEFORE revenue. Otherwise, we will NEVER get reform.
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p>The politicians know how to handle a reduction in revenues. They simply cut our services, starting with the most urgent (the Ferguson Industries for the Blind (cost: $867K a year) was one of the first victims, shock and awe to teach us who’s boss; but those corporate loopholes (cost: $500M a year), well, couldn’t quite get that done, despite campaign promises), until we beg them to tax us more. Then they can increase taxes with plenty of political cover for their next election campaign (“Read my lips, you made me do it”). And they can fearlessly continue with their surreptitious waste, fraud, abuse, cronyism, nepotism, and general theft of our public resources. Every day, we learn about both cruel cuts for services and new hiring and pension scandals that are only the tiniest tip of the pigs-at-the-public-trough iceberg, and tax and land deals that ravage our treasury. It has NOT all been exposed; there is unimaginably more. Have they, after all, no decency? Apparently not. And why should they? There are seldom consequences for abuse of the public trust.
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p>Why can’t WE threaten THEM, for a change? Why doesn’t OneMass mobilize our stricken citizens to demand clawbacks of pols’ shameless State House and City Hall boondoggles, rather than training folks to beg for more taxation? Taxes are not free money; these people will end up paying most of the new taxes, and user fees and higher rates and all the rest. This is just wrong, and I am frustrated that progressives are going along with this instead of demanding fair and honest services. Where’s the reform branch of the progressive movement?
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p>I have spent a lot of time following the money around here, and although I’m not an economics expert, I believe that much, if not all, of the money for necessary services at this time is there, available to our elected officials. They know it, too. But they won’t redirect it to those services from predatory pensions, no-job jobs, corporate welfare, no-bid contracts, health benefit inefficiencies, and other throw-aways until we yell “T’ROW DA BUMS OUT” — AND WE DO. That’s shock and awe for citizens to deliver; we shouldn’t waste a crisis, either.
and have achieved so much on behalf of open government. ONE Mass have been proud to follow your lead along with Mass PIRG and Common Cause in advocating for more transparency.
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p>I know you wish, along with many, many others here, that there was enough money hidden in dark corners all around the city and state budgets to accomplish most of the necessary work that has to be done to repair and reform the various public structures that educate our children, repair our roads and bridges, keep our water and air clean, protect our public safety ,our public health and our public spaces. But I don’t think there is.
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p>Even if we took away all the pensions from every retired public employee who maximized his or her service as a library trustee or a town clerk, identified all the persons holding no show jobs, and then charged $1,000 fee to watch the offenders being publicly humiliated.
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p>There is not enough money in the current budgets or in any prospective fees to do the job that needs to be done to keep our public transportation systems from going bankrupt, to keep our social services systems able to support distressed families new to foreclosures and unemployment, to keep our public health agencies able to respond to epidemics of disease and our public safety officials able to respond to natural and man made disasters, and keep local community based health centers and youth programs carrying out after school and evening youth development programs that direct kids into productive activity instead of crime.
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p>I do go on, don’t I? Not as articulate as you, but just as passionate.
Judy, you know that I share your values about government’s responsibility to the public, the social compact, etc. I’m the first to protest government abdication and the privatization that’s been legitimized to cover it. My “leftier than thou” credentials are in order.
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p>But this is about the way that government works. We really can’t support two governments, the private corruption club and the public service provider.
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p>We have no idea what is stashed in those dark corners of the State House and City Hall. We don’t. That’s why transparency must be the first reform. We need to implement the Total Transparency Project, as Boston mayoral candidate (and my co-plaintiff on our Open Meeting Law suit against the City Council) Kevin McCrea calls it.
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p>Sure, a library clerk gambit sounds trivial, but take a no-job job+benefits for Marian Walsh at a quarter million a year, a third of a million dollar pension for what’s-his-name, five hundred million in corporate loopholes that even local businesses testified against, hundreds of millions in tax breaks, land discounts and tax-exempt bonds for corporations and developers who admit they don’t sway important business decisions (which Deval knows) — pretty soon we’re talking real money. (And whatever became of Deval’s Marian-moment vow to scour the payrolls of all the quasi’s? He doesn’t even get his business-incentive machine to produce the statutorily required annual report on what these quasi’s are doing, what it costs us and who is benefiting.)
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p>Neither the Governor nor the Legislature is doing what needs to be done for disclosure of public information. The outcome of Deval’s Public Integrity Task Force (which met in secret LOL) will be a very weak and narrow set of remedies. The legislature is tip-toeing around timid gestures of reform. When Rep. Jennifer Callahan filed her bill to put the Legislature under the Open Meeting and Public Record Laws (which it imposes on other bodies), I asked three Reps I consider very honest and progressive if they’d vote for it. One said no, because it has a snowball’s chance in hell of passing so why waste political capital. The second reiterated a fervent belief in ethics and accountability, but informed me that “sometimes you just have to get things done.” The third opined that secrecy is so ingrained that this law would just drive the skullduggery further underground.
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p>There’s obviously a lot to hide, and it’s all about money. We just don’t know. We need to know. Our economy would not have reached this state of catastrophe if we’d had full transparency all along; aren’t you amazed that so much could have been hidden? After all, how many bad mortgages could there be, right?
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p>The pols are putting a merciless squeeze on the most needed services so that decent people will rush in to pay whatever ransom will save the vulnerable victims. They know that once they get their new taxes, their dark corners of graft and corruption and willful negligence will remain safe; they will even be hailed as heroes, saving the halt and the lame in the nick of time. This is the sad fact.
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p>I’d feel better paying more taxes if I knew we really had to. Taxes are the price of civilization, but the citizens have to be confident that that’s what they’re buying. That’s part of the social compact too.
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…of a central source where a list of communities.school districts who joined the GIC can be found (and a list of those that voted it down)? Gee, that would be a victory in transparency!
http://www.mapc.org/regional_p…
is that state law requires the cities and towns to negotiate health insurance with the unions. When the state went to GIC….there was no negotiating – that was it. The impose a burden on the municipalities that they don’t impose on themselves. Every time this issue comes up, the unions clamor at the state house, and the legislature folds like a house of cards. I think they’re afraid of the local unions because of the concentration of voters in the towns they represent, as opposed to the the state workers-voters who are dispersed across the state and can’t really touch them.
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p>I’ve watched those negotiations at the local level, and the unions want big concessions on wages and other perks. It’s not likely to happen in our life time unless the state allows the municipalities to move their health plans to GIC without negotiating.
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at the local level, but the unions clamoring at the state house and the legislature folding is unfair, if not factually incorrect.
by a state rep. There’s “no appetite” to remove the requirement to bargain because of union disapproval. If you know otherwise, than please state it.
He has consistently supported Patrick’s boldest initiatives and I applaud his call to our representatives.
Let’s hope someone is listening.