You can read my views on ethics reform, here (PDF), on transportation reform here (PDF), and on pension reform here.
But, even with comprehensive reforms and cost-savings, the impact of a FY10 budget without any new revenue would be devastating to our schools, police, fire, libraries, environment, and most vulnerable citizens. Some examples of proposed cuts include:
- A 32% cut in unrestricted local aid which helps fund schools, police, firefighters, libraries, and other municipal services
- A 45% cut in the Massachusetts Rental Voucher Program which keeps many low-income families from becoming homeless
- A 76% cut in the budget for the Massachusetts Office of Travel and Tourism which includes funding for the arts and cultural councils
- A 25% cut in funding for the prevention and treatment of substance abuse
- Complete elimination of the Natural Heritage and Endangered Species program
There would be many other painful cuts in addition to those I have listed above.
Even with the sales tax increase, to balance this budget, the state still needs to cut more than $1.2 billion in spending.
None of us wants to raise taxes during a recession. But, if we decimate local aid and support for our schools, the greater damage will be to the long-term strength and vitality of the Commonwealth.
Below, if you are interested, I have included the text of my speech from the debate in the House.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
It is a privilege to stand before you, my colleagues, at this time of unprecedented economic challenges, when the need for us to come together and serve the common good has never been greater.
When I was 12 years old, my family came to America. We left South Africa, which at that time was ruled by apartheid, an oppressive system of racial segregation. Like generations of immigrants before us, my family was drawn to America by the promise of equality, dignity, and opportunity for all.
We settled in New Jersey where my sisters and I attended the local public school. We were fortunate to live in a community that valued education highly. The school system was well funded, and every child, no matter what her family’s financial circumstances, had the chance to reach her potential.
Even as a child, it was clear to me that education would open the door to opportunity in America. Regardless of my background, with hard work, I could excel just like everybody else.
After high school, I came to Massachusetts to attend college. Like thousands of students from across the country, and indeed from around the world, I was drawn here because few places offer the educational, economic, and cultural opportunities that we enjoy in the Bay State. After college and then graduate school, I stayed to raise a family and pursue my career.
The twin strands of my personal story — immigration and education — are familiar I’m sure to many of you and your families. They are also central to the story of Massachusetts.Horace Mann, one of the great champions of universal public education in the early 19th century, once said, “Having no other mines to work, Massachusetts has mined into the human intellect; and from its limitless resources, she has won more sustaining and enduring prosperity and happiness than if she had been founded on a stratification of silver and gold, reaching deeper down than geology has yet penetrated.”
Like Horace Mann, I believe that strong schools for all our children are the most important investment we can make in our future.
Unfortunately, even before we entered this severe recession, Massachusetts schools were already struggling to provide the quality of education that our children need and deserve. Since 2003, when local aid was cut, cities and towns have had to shoulder a greater share of education funding.
They have been forced to raise property taxes, cut municipal services, and institute ever increasing fees for once-standard services, such as athletics and bus transportation. Rising healthcare and special education costs have also meant cutbacks in spending on direct student instruction. On average, school districts now spend just 51% of their budgets on instruction, down from 57% in 2002.
While many of our students continue to perform at world-class levels, there are troubling signs that our schools, across districts rich and poor, are increasingly at risk. Consider just a few examples. Randolph closed two elementary schools, laid off more than 60 teachers, and eliminated almost all freshman and junior varsity sports. Newburyport eliminated a dozen teaching positions and all middle school foreign language instruction. And, in my district, Stoneham reduced art and music in the elementary schools to just half-year programs, and came close to shutting down the entire high school athletics program. Many of you, no doubt, have equally grim stories from your districts.
At the same time, we face a persistent achievement gap and stubbornly high dropout rates. In some of our cities, including Lawrence, Holyoke, Fall River, Springfield, New Bedford, and Boston, dropout rates exceed 20%. This is an enormous loss to our state, both in terms of reduced future earnings and wasted human potential, as well as increased costs for social services and our criminal justice system.
Overall, looking at total state and local spending on education, Massachusetts has slipped significantly compared to other states. In fiscal year 2005, which is the most recent data available, we ranked 29th in the share of our personal income spent on primary and secondary education, and 47th in the share of our personal income spent on public higher education.
The fiscal year 2010 budget before us, without any new revenues, will put our schools at even greater risk. Even with Chapter 70 held constant, a 32% cut in local aid will deal a body blow to all municipal services, including education. This will be exacerbated by additional budget cuts, including the special education circuit breaker, transportation reimbursement, Quinn bill, and state funding for other community programs, that will shift more of the burden onto cities and towns. We are already seeing the dire consequences, with 160 teachers in Medford receiving pink slips last week. While federal stimulus dollars will help, they will not be sufficient to stem the bleeding.
None of us wants to raise taxes during a recession and risk further near-term damage to our economy. But, without additional revenues, these devastating cuts to local aid and education will not be averted. The immediate impact will be teachers losing their jobs, larger class sizes, diminished course offerings, and even higher fees. However, the greater damage will be to the long-term economic strength and vitality of the Commonwealth.
I urge you to support increased revenues to preserve our investment in education. To quote George Peabody, “Education is a debt due from present to future generations.” Indeed, it is the most important investment we can make to secure our future, and the future of our children and grandchildren.
Rep. Lewis, respectfully no one here is arguing that the state does not need more revenue. What I’m hearing are really two points:
1) Where the heck did this sales tax idea come from and why is that tax of all taxes the one you decided was the best option?
2) Why the heck should we trust the legislature when you show absolutely no urgency in getting proposed and passed reforms to the Governor’s desk?
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p>I think everyone here wants some sort of revenue increase so the state and local governments can continue funding much needed services. What people are questioning is whether the sales tax is the right mechanism to do so and how much of this money is going to be wasted if reforms are not enacted.
Patrick already has said that he has no philosophical opposition to tax. We all understand that we need additional revenue. Don’t take this the wrong way but I think you have missed the point here, we would like the reforms enacted.
I have to admit that I’m not an expert on the various ethics reform proposals being debated. But Rep. Lewis says above that the House has passed a reform package. Johnk says that’s not the point, we want the reforms enacted. But the House itself cannot enact reforms, it can only pass a bill and wait for the Senate etc. What else is the House supposed to do at this point regarding ethics reforms?
Status of current reform bills:
Transportation – passed by House and Senate in different versions, currently in conference committee to come up with compromise version.
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p>Pension – passed by House and Senate, in conference committee
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p>Ethics – passed by House, pending in Senate.
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p>On all three of these reform bills, the House has done, quite literally, all that it can do to pass them and move them forward. Conference committees don’t work overnight, expecially on bills as complex and drastically different as the House and Senate transportation bills. I for one trust that the conference process is moving forward and think it’s likely that the transportation and pension reform bills will be on the Governor’s desk long before the budget.
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p>So my question for the Governor and his supporters is this: What was the House supposed to do this week? Pass the budget with no new revenues since the reform bills are still pending? Frankly I don’t think anyone would have been happy with that other than those who want to shrink the role of government and the services it provides.
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p>What was the other option?
yesterday.
I believe that if this was something that was of priority it would be done. It’s not, that’s the problem. I see this a posturing not accomplishing reform.
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p>So good question to Rep. Lewis, why aren’t the reforms done?
If the legislature didn’t want to do anything on these reforms, they wouldn’t have taken up the bills in the first place.
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p>The legislative process is slooooow. We’re 4 months into the session but the first one didn’t count and the rest have been delayed because of the change of leadership in the House.
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p>The fact that the House and Senate already have two significant pieces of legislation in conference is a pretty remarkable achievement for an institution that is designed to run slowly.
but it has been months, I don’t sense the urgency. That’s what I think we need.
I care far less about he sales tax than I do about the bogus argument about the reforms. Any reforms they want to pass can be dome so quickly. The slooooowness of this is by their choice.
But JohnD gets a 6! The Sales Tax — which takes $900m out of the economy — came together in about 72 hrs. It’s taken decades to do nothing about pensions.
If your measure for “passing” is initial approval in the House, then all of the other reforms have already “passed.”
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p>By the time the sales tax hike is signed by the Gov and put into law, it’ll be July.
Widmer has been a voice of reason throughout this whole fight. Check this out: http://www.necn.com/Boston/Pol…
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p>Whatever you may think about his past positions, he is dead on here. The House and Senate have done nothing serious on these issues because they are scared shitless of the public employee unions.
I support Massachusetts. Thank you.
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p>My Representative is an R so they voted, but I have reached out to my Senator to share my feelings and see get a sense of what he supports. I would like to see reforms in place, it’s a problem, it needs to be addressed. What better opportunity than in a climate where we need to make cuts. I see the sales tax hike as a means to further push out reforms, leave it in committee as we now have the additional revenue.
If you don’t stand up to the Speaker and his buddies, who I suspect have a very different agenda from yours, we won’t get any reform at all, just more revenue for the status quo. Instead of spending money on schools, or capital improvements, or any of the thousand other useful places it could go and you detail, we’ll spend it on featherbedding, and perks for pals, and all of the other counter-productive uses that have been so exquisitely and excruciatingly detailed here and elsewhere.
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p>Now you have a Governor who is actively pushing substantive reform. You should support him. The claim that it is either “go along to get along” or armageddon seems very unpersuasive to me. It’s a paper tiger. The Powers that Be in the legislature don’t want to
derail the gravy traindestroy the state government. But they’ll definitely do everything they can to avoid substantive reform.and while I didn’t like that auto seemed to take a higher priority than mass transit or human powered transit, I do appreciate that you recognized the needs of the T, and that you support increasing the gas tax.
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p>So — what is your office doing to actually increase the gas tax? Heck, even if you applied the 6.25% to the gas tax it’d be a 12 cent increase based on today’s prices, and that would be a heck of a start.
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p>Additionally, what is your office doing to actually reduce the debt burden the Lege placed on the T a few years ago? The T can’t be sustainable if 25% of its costs are debt services. What are you doing to get some of that debt off of the T’s books (or dedicating a revenue stream to pay off some of their bonds since it seems the T’s bond rating is better than the Commonwealth’s)?
i talked to a friend of mine in the state house yesterday (who happens to work for Rep Lewis) and he said that gasoline will be sales-taxable under this version. I haven’t read it yet myself, so i don’t know if there were any other changes to what the sales tax applies to, but that’s what i was told.
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p>i estimated that is would apply pre-tax, so currently it would be 10 cents, and would be 15 when gas prices level out again.
No, gasoline does not count in the sales tax.
I must have misheard you yesterday, sorry to misquote you like that.
I appreciate the openness.
and now get back to work and restore some of the cuts which are much more regressive than the sales tax increase.
One thing I wanted to follow up on: you said you supported pension and transportation reform. Where do you stand on applying pension reform to existing employees? Gov. Patrick would institute the reforms for both new and existing employees, whereas I am fairly certain the House bill only applies to new employees. Although this is a start, it is not enough and will perpetuate the problems of the current system for another 30 years. Saying this is the most sweeping pension reform to pass the State House in fifteen years is damming with faint praise.
I don’t agree we need additional revenues. We need reduced costs. Not benefits, costs. Costs incurred to deliver those benefits.
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p>I spoke with a struggling art gallery owner today. Considering her business is way down, her comment on increasing the sales tax to 6.25% rang a bell: “Great. Just what I need.”
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p>Does no one at BMG think it unwise to increase ANY tax in the middle of a recession?
Can you outline — back of the napkin stuff — what “reduced costs” we need? Please make sure that those reduced costs come to somewhere near a billion dollars so that it truly is a replacement for the revenue that is claimed as necessary.
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p>As for your comment to not increase taxes during a recession, I’d tend to agree with you, however the way I’d approach it would be to raise taxes when we are in the boom part of a boom-bust cycle and store the money away for a rainy day, to be used in order to avoid increased taxes during a recession. Are you on board with that?
We do not live and breathe the state budget nor does the government want us to be able to.
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p>I do agree with your suggestion of “storing” excessive funds during boom times to be used during “down” times. But are you serious? Do you really believe there is ANYONE in government that wouldn’t and simply couldn’t spend anything they get their hands on? These guys thrive on 2 things… getting reelected and spending money (to help them get reelected). Great idea but would go nowhere with these bozos!
… difficult to ask a ‘regular citizen’ where to cut costs. But if that’s true, then it should be just as difficult for a ‘regular citizen’ to assert that costs need to be cut. You have to know something about the costs in order to credibly assert that they are too high.
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p>I don’t necessarily disagree that there are costs that should be cut, but the relative weight anyone can put behind that assertion is proportional to what they know about the issue.
My point is the the government has a budget which is very difficult to read. My own town’s annual budget is incredibly cryptic and I swear done in a way so the average person cannot decipher it.
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p>But just because they do this and average people have a hard time reading them doesn’t mean we don;t have the ability to see waste and comment on it.
http://www.eot.state.ma.us/dow…
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p>$2.5 billion over 20 years — around $125 million per year. Will it balance the budget on its own? No. But it’s a pretty substantial chunk of the “new revenue” from the sales tax hike.
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p>And that’s just transportation.
That’s a great start, and I don’t see anything hugely controversial there — reform the MBTA benefits (pensions), civilian flagmen etc.
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p>I have to believe that some of those savings are back-loaded (such as pension reforms), and the value of $125 million in 20 years isn’t the same as $125 million today. But we have to start somewhere.
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p>So why isn’t this being acted on? Who is holding it up?
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p>I don’t know if it would necessarily be “easy” to come up with 9 more such proposals to total $1 billion per year though, but this is what we have to do to move past the people who just assert that there are billions in waste without ever showing even 1/10 that amount. Too often we extrapolate indiscriminately — claiming that a $50k patronage hire somehow proves an infinite amount of waste. Even with this example, $125m in savings still does not “prove” another $875 million in annual waste.
Who is holding this up? Let me think — http://www.carmensunion589.org/
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p>I agree there needs to be more revenue. There isn’t enough “fat” to cut to come anywhere near balancing the budget at reasonable levels of services. What I do think, however, is that we should use this opportunity to streamline some of the bullshit that right-thinking people (be they progressives, conservatives, etc.) have been pointing to for years to no avail — pensions, health benefits, giveaways like flagmen and the Quinn Bill.
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p>If the legislature passes the revenue portion first, any impetus for the reforms will dissappear.
On a $32 billion budget, 10% savings are impossible?
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p>I beg to differ. Operationally and financially, $3 or $4 billion of cost reductions, WITHOUT BENEFIT REDUCTIONS, is eminently achievable, but politically impossible.
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p>Still, here are my quick, back-of-the-envelope recommendations. If you’re so inclined keep reading. If you’re a progressive, liberal BMGer, move along. Nothing to see here:
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p>Layoff or furlow 20% of all state employees. That’ll balance the budget, even including the extra unemployment outlays. Many firms laid off 20% of their workforce, and are still doing the work. Why not state government?
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p>Let me modify my 20% number. Ever been inside the Transportation Building visiting the MBTA or the MTA? I have. A ONE THIRD staff reduction is possible, with no appreciable effect on operations. I’m not just being a mean-spirited bastard, either. I know this is possible.
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p>Here’s another idea. How about no more defined-benefit pensions? Why not switch to a defined-contribution plan, like I have? IBM converted 15 years ago, why not the Commonwealth? I can’t find anywhere how much the annual pension drag is, but I bet that’s good for $1 billion per year. And over time, the savings grow as the forward pension liability shrinks!
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p>Same thing with health benefits.
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p>Consider this idea: if you want the state to help fund your town’s new school, then here are the 3 plans you can pick from: elementary, middle, and high school. No more $200 million Newton North projects (that’s $500 a square foot) except on your town’s dime. The state’s school building program (what, $750 million?) could go a lot farther, or be cut.
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p>Get rid of the state’s sub-contractor bid laws, and save 50% on all construction projects. I don’t have a clue what $ amount that is, but it ain’t peanuts.
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p>Here’s something we can do tomorrow: Replace the tolls with a gas tax. If the published reports about the COST to collect Mass Turnpike tolls is correct — I read only 29 cents of every MTA toll dollar falls to the bottom line — then raise the cheap-to-collect gas tax enough to replace the 29 cents and abolish the MTA. Shouldn’t that save around $200 million annually? (That’s $300 million times 71% savings.) That’s just in annual operating costs! Over time, no more pensions or retiree health coverage = hundreds of millions more in savings. And it’s environmentally better, too. No more long lines at the tolls. How many fewer tons of pollutants is that?
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p>Of course, all of this is politically impossible. Instead, we have activist protesting in the State House to RAISE or taxes. The inmates are running the asylum.
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p>You can not decrease staffing by 1/3 and not reduce service, safety, revenue, or some combination of the three. It can’t be done.
that the difference between a 5% sales tax and a 6.5% sales tax will be a defining factor in decisions about art purchases?
Rep. Lewis, I agree with everything you’ve said. My one question is what if the sales tax does perform as expected?
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p>In 2000, the legislature pulled out of transportation funding and gave the MBTA one cent of the five cent sales tax. The expectation was that this and this alone would provide the system with all the funding they could use. And while I believe there is serious reform needed (and started) to get the authority back in good order, the funding is not performing like it was projected. In fact, this year will be the 4th year over year decline of the sales tax.
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p>So again, I respectfully ask, what do we do if it does not provide the $900 Million in new revenue we expected?
Rep. Lewis I am sure you are committed to bringing the best possible solutions to the fore. I was pleased to see you elected to the House.
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p>Not to rehash the many eloquent, pithy and passionate posts on this topic, BUT the incumbents in the legislature accomplished exactly nothing on reforms in the prior session or before. The fact that they all collected pay checks from August 1, 2008 through the first month of this session and sat on their collective thumbs is unacceptable.
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p>The slow process of legislation is bandied about when it is convenient. There are fast tracks when the leadership decides to move which was great for Equal Marriage (amending a civil right), but no so great for taxation without policy and prudence.
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p>The palpable ire exists because people are really scared and desperate. This does not seem to be connecting with the legislature as evidenced by both sins of commission and omission. That defines acts of oppression from the elected to the electorate and it is serious.
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p>Best wishes.
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p>
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p>-Otway,Thomas
I assure you, everyone read your post – some ponder, some punt, and some will sling mucky or sharp comments back – but then political life isn’t for the thin skinned, or those unable to consider multiple view points.
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p>Welcome! Surely you choose interesting times to become a full time legislator – glad you are on the Hill working and learning.
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p>The day I stop learning – is the day I will quit as an attorney, an advocate, and self-proclaimed maverick of last resort [and I won’t let that Alaskan huntress hijack the word Maverick, nor McCaine, either. I like that word, thank you very much].