Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Experienced activists protecting programs AND searching for additional revenues

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Have you signed up for the October 22 Insider Budget Briefing with Peter Enrich Law Professor at Northeastern University and former general counsel to the Massachusetts Executive Office for Administration and Finance, for a close look at our Tax Expenditure Budget (sometimes called the “Loopholes”), and what it means for our state's fiscal health.?

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  1. I have been told that “State Dept of Public Safety is facing ten per cent layoffs. The Superintendent of the State police has notified the governor of his intention to depart as soon as practicable.  Loose translation: the ball is unravelling.

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    p>It’s not like no one was given sufficient warning.  

  2. I have followed Ms. Meredith for decades and have been an outspoken valid critic of hers.  Ms. Meredith is no advocate for those who are vulnerable in our society.  Ms.  Meredith is a paid lobbyist who has made a comfortable career of selling her services to for profit and non profit entities for years masquerading as a so called advocate.

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    p>I credit Ms. Meredith as a main architect for the dismantling the state delivery system that has created the gigantic Human Services Industrial Establishment selling services to the beleaguered Massachusetts Taxpayer.

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    p>The vendors. providers, and consultants operate with little or no oversight or accountability. Inefficiency, waste, and management prevail.

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    p>Concern, Care, and Compassion surely is not the practice of so many in that establishment with Madeoff Executive Salaries, perks, and exploitation while the true angels of mercy who provide the direct care services always seem exploited.

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    p>Ms.  Meredith and her allies should address waste, fraud, and abuse of monies spent by the leaders of the establishment she belongs to be redirected to the desperately needed services of our citizens.

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    p>I challenge to be corrected.

    • I worked for the Exec Office of Human Services in the summer of 1985 — 24 years ago — and there were two people EOHS feared: Jack Bachman and Judy Meredith.

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      p>Today, Judy is STILL out there fighting.

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      p>So I don’t find your criticism valid at all.

  4. Heard this story first thing this morning on WBUR

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    BOSTON – With state revenue down more than expected this year, programs for children and the needy may be on the chopping block again.

    “These are very, very significant challenges, things that we’ve never seen in state government before,” said JudyAnn Bigby, the state’s health and human services secretary.

    Advocates for dozens of human services groups gathered Tuesday to hear Bigby’s assessment of a worsening state budget situation…………….

  5. Another story about the impact of past 9C cuts via WBUR this morning.

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    BOSTON – Brockton District Court has one of the highest number of cases involving mental health in Massachusetts. That includes cases where someone asks a judge to involuntarily commit a loved one for substance abuse treatment. It’s called having someone “sectioned” or “sectioned 35,” – named after the state law that allows civil commitments for those who won’t get treatment on their own.

    It happens as often as eight times a day in Brockton, when the judge must ask a state psychologist for an emergency recommendation.

    One option for judges is to send a person into treatment for 30 days. For the men and women not considered too dangerous to themselves or others, the court can send them to a Department of Public Health facility or to private treatment.

    But for men whose loved ones ask the court to civilly commit them in a secure facility, there is only one place to go: the Massachusetts Alcohol and Substance Abuse Center, or MASAC, in Bridgewater………………..

    “It’s kinda like a prison setting, but you adjust to it,” Gonzalez said. “There’s hundreds of people just like yourself there, living the same lifestyle. Ages range from 18 years old to 76 years old. I was sectioned with a guy who was an eye surgeon. You can kinda see what’s gonna happen if you – if I kept living the lifestyle I was living, I would either end up going to prison for a long time or I would end up dead.”

    That’s what worries state Sen. Steven Tolman:

    “We’re losing citizens of Massachusetts at a rate of 42-1 as to what we’re losing at war on our streets from heroin and Oxycontin,” said Tolman, who chairs the state commission on heroin and Oxycontin. He’s among those scheduled to testify Thursday when the Legislature’s mental health and substance abuse committee holds a hearing on MASAC’s proposed closure.

    “We do not have the proper infrastructure to treat this level of addiction and one of the key components is MASAC,” Tolman said. “Yet, somehow, somebody in this administration in their infinite wisdom thinks we should close it. Frankly its an outrage.”

  6. Before people rally around you and the Human Services Industrial Establishment Bosses who hire you, there is some questions that must be asked?

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    p>Could you list for the past 10 years your lobbying, education, seminar fees and income you have received from clients non-profit, not for profit, and for profit entities that you plied agendas and what for?  This should be known in order to verify your motivation and determine if you are to possibly be consideed an advocate for those in need or another professional profiteer for the Human Services Industrial Establishment that has not met the needs of those who require services and are the most vulnerable in our society?

    • You’re the one lobbing personal attacks, so you go first.  What experiences and agendas motivate you to have such a problem with Ms. Meredith?

  7. It’s a great subject line and it was a great blog in a couple of months ago, if we do say so ourselves.

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    p>Challenging Times Call for Thoughtful Measures

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    For centuries, our state and local governments have been responsible to our communities for the creation and upkeep of our public structures. This has made us a competitive state, across our region and our nation.

    Now, the combined effects of an era of tax cuts in Massachusetts and a suffering federal fiscal climate are limiting our ability to fulfill those responsibilities, and to ensure a healthy, vibrant state to all who live here.

    This challenging time calls for wise and thoughtful measures. Our Governor, Legislature, and local governments have a difficult set of decisions to make in order to support our public structures. Just this weekend, a state sales tax increase went into effect, and a new set of revenue reforms – both increases and cuts – are already being discussed for the fall.

    It is time that we, as a community, have some serious conversations about we value in our communities and how we should pay for it as ONE Massachusetts. If you have ideas about our best options as a state, and are interested in having a statewide discussion, please contact ONE Massachusetts today!

  8. INCREASING TAXES.  I hope you do not want the same sort of fiscal spiral now being experienced in CA, NY, and NJ.

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    p>For the foreseeable future, I’d say for the next decade, at least, plan on PERMANENT tax receipt deficits.  Looming anti-growth legislation (financial services, banking, autos) will flatten incomes.  Raising taxes as the solution to this new revenue reality no longer will work.

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    p>This state has a bloated workforce, inefficiencies, and waste you could cut, economize, and outsource enough of it to free up funds for programs.

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    p>Example A: eliminating the tolls on the Mass Pike and replacing it with a gas tax.  It costs the Pike 47 cents — labor, perks, “general & admin” — just to collect $1.00 in tolls.  It costs virtually zero to collect additional gas tax at the pump.  Without increasing taxes, you could generate an additional $200 million.

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    p>Judith, why don’t you suggest this?

    • It costs the Pike 47 cents — labor, perks, “general & admin” — just to collect $1.00 in tolls.

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      p>Another way to put this is that the Pike’s 47 cent investment yields $1.00, a roughly 212% return. I’m trying to imagine the joy on my boss’s face if I walked in tomorrow and told him I discovered an investment we could make that would return 212%.

    • I hope plain talk about the need for taxes to repair and reform the public structures we value — like restucturing the financing of our transportation system isn’t read as double speak.

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      p>I’m no expert how to do that on the turnpike, but it was apparent to me through all the talk last spring that the real solution lies in lots more money, which could be raised through the gas tax.

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      p>You had lots of company proposing that solution.  

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