Today, Governor Patrick took the difficult but necessary step to announce cuts, including potential job losses to keep the state budget fiscally balanced.
These are tough times and the Patrick-Murray leadership has been responsive; neither dodging the bullets nor delaying the pain.
How about posting some ideas to help the Administration manage the crisis until state revenues, which lag behind private sector recovery, begins to regain strength?
Please share widely!
I’ve been reading the comments on a few newspapers from the state, particularly the Globe. I think the posters have a really good plan.
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p>The state should cut taxes steeply to raise revenues and eliminate the income tax. Also eliminate the sales tax. Cutting tax rates to zero would obviously raise the most tax revenue, since everyone knows, duh, that if you raise taxes, you lower revenue and if you lower taxes, you raise revenue, so obviously lowering taxes the most will raise the most revenue.
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p>The state should also fire a whole lot of employees, but not the ones who do the work. No cops or firefighters either. Oh, and eliminate the pension payments to all state retirees — but don’t cut the pensions of retirees. And pay everyone the minimum wage too, because people making more than that are just bad people.
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p>That all will then make this state attractive to business.
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p>I hope you know I’m being sarcastic, but seriously, that appears to be what a segment of the general public seems to think.
They could start by not spending $5,000,000 to open a new charter school solely, in Secretary of Education Reveille’s own words, to stay in the good graces of “key , moderate allies like the Globe and the Boston Foundation”.
The Governor’s comments about consolidating agencies with similar economic development and investment programs is code for “let’s try one more time to take over HEFA”.
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p>Now, rational people would agree that it is a difficult time for the Commonwealth and that the Governor and minions will be robbing every piggy bank not nailed to the floor. But,the notion of robbing the piggy bank at HEFA was and remains a remarkably bad idea.
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p>As with the last botched attempt, the effort will be cloaked with misdirection. There really is no overlap of functions at all. What actually exists is real competition between HEFA and MDFA which does nothing more than keep the cost of bond financings low for the non-profit institutions served by both independent public authorities, such as hospitals, colleges, and the like. Both charge fees for their work. The signal difference is that HEFA has been able to balance its budget year after year and MDFA chronically has not. And, given MDFA’s other responsibilities in catering to the whims and needs of the Governor, the administration is looking to cover the costs of MDFA by putting “two in the hat” of HEFA. The end result of that effort would be to (a). eliminate competition for bond work between the two authorities which will allow the survivor (i.e., MDFA) to hike its fees, and (b). permit MDFA to abscond with HEFA’s fund balance of about $20 million.
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p>So…why should one care? First, the end result is to increase costs to the community of Massachusetts non-profits, both large and small. Second, the fund balance at HEFA represents money that came from those same non-profit organizations and NOT from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. If HEFA was to dissolve the funds should be returned to those non-profits, not purloined by the Governor. [Hello? AG Coakley…are you paying attention?] It should be noted that much of those funds reside in an irrevocable Trust which directs the Trustees to distribute the funds back to the non-profit entities which gave the money to HEFA in the event that HEFA no longer existed.
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p>The last time this misbegotten idea surfaced the community of non-profits prevented it from happening. They need to pay attention one more time.
You obviously know a bunch about this. Way more than me (I had to look up HEFA and MDFA). Way more than most of us I’d bet. I’m generally of the opinion that gov’t has too many overlapping agencies — often, I believe, the result of Democrats with good intentions interested in better government without undergoing the pain of merging agencies or treading on turf. So, generally speaking, I like the idea of merging agencies with redundancies… but it sounds like you claim that’s not really the issue here.
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p>Do us a favor — write up a diary on this. Be sure to give a little background, and help us with the acronyms. Links are good too. Methinks folks around here would find this interesting.
See Here
Thanks, Judy. I wonder whether I am not just a little too obsessed about this…lol
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p>I care very much about the important role that non-profits play in the state….health care alone employes roughly 9% of the workforce. It is HEFA which largely assisted in building the many noteworthy institutions of higher education and health care, not to mention places like Perkins School for the Blind, the Carpenters Union Training Center, Plimoth Plantation, etc. And, I have a deep appreciation for the need to scrounge every dollar that one can to fuel important state programs. The core issue is the fact that MDFA becomes the catch-all independent authority to carry-out many (if not most) of tje any sitting Governor’s economic development scheme (not unlike how the BRA functions for the City of Boston) and the state chronically underfunds MDFA. HEFA, on the other hand, does only one thing and it does it well – it works with non-profits to assist them with their capital programs. It has absolutely no federal or state funds. What it does have is some cash that has become a target by the folks around the Governor. Better, in my opinion, to fix MDFA than to take funds belonging to the community of non-profits.
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p>And to Stomv…this is not a situation of overlapping agencies (and they are not agencies). These are independent public authority that happen to compete against one another to do bond work…and they compete by cutting their fees. But, in the end, only one does the work and the other goes home to figure out how to better compete the next time. When it makes sense we should encourage that healthy form of competition, not eliminate it. And, last, I have a life and not enough free time to develop a separate write-up. It is also highly “grognard”, if you know what I mean, but it is these types of policy and budget issues that really drives decision makers. Things are rarely what they may appear to be on the surface when it comes to these kinds of so-called “reforms”, a highly abused word.
And to prove my point, see the page 1 story in the Globe today. Governor, if you are going to “reform” anything maybe you start with MDFA itself.
Watch out folks, when local aid gets cut, and it will be, the layoffs will be huge in the cities and towns. Police, fire, teachers will be laid off by the thousands. Patrick and his “tin ear” for governing is losing support in the western suburbs FAST…..
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p>The stimulus package bought us some time, but with revenue in free fall…. I can hear the Boston pols now “well the cities and towns can always overide Prop. 2 1/2” fat chance of that in this economy.
but they can’t do it fast enough. A Prop 2 1/2 takes time to do… the studies, the politics, and then getting it on the ballot. Aid cuts are happening mid-budget, which is much tougher.
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p>The flip side is, there’s no easy place to cut. Never is.
Eliminate the ABCC. Hack heaven anyways. Cuts can be made in education. The elderly do not need state rented buses to go gambling out of state. Stop hiring friends and neighbors at six figure salaries, Deval. You want to move away from them anyways. For staters.