Speaker Robert De Leo’s budget chief, Rep. Brian Dempsey (D-Haverhill), told the News Service that a budget released in April by the House Ways and Means Committee will be balanced primarily with program cuts.
The other day, our legislative leaders in the House, namely Speaker De Leo and Chair of Ways and Means Brian Dempsey both acknowledged a budget deficit of some 2 Billion dollars and announced that they planned to closed that deficit with program cuts and not new taxes or withdrawals from the rainy day fund.
Here is the full report from the State House News Service’s Kyle Cheney. Its longer than usual, but worth reading to the end. My least favorite quote is above in italics.
And then Chairman Dempsey goes on to say,
“I think that it’s going to be a challenging budget and there’ll be cuts across the board,” he said. “You really have to focus on the spending side of the equation. That means that we’re really drilling down into every single line item to determine the appropriate dollar amount that we can afford this particular year.”
Dempsey said he is against using the state’s $1.3 billion rainy day fund “aggressively” in the upcoming fiscal year, calling the governor’s proposal to drain $400 million from the account “a healthy number.”
“I think the challenge that we have is managing expectations,” he said. “There’s a sense because our unemployment numbers are coming down. There’s a sense because our revenues in February, for instance, were pretty good, that things are better than they appear. We’ve got to be careful.”Asked about local aid to cities and towns – one of the largest most closely watched accounts – Dempsey said House and Senate leaders are considering declaring their intentions with a resolution “in the next week or two.” Cities and towns typically request that legislators indicate their intentions on local aid by mid-March to aid municipal leaders with their budget planning process.
Challenging indeed. Especially for the poor the elderly the disabled and every single city and town in the Commonwealth.
You’ve seen the tree image before, ONE Massachusetts uses it to illustrate how our Government funds and supports the important programs that keep our Commonwealth healthy and strong.
It’s part of a “Plain Talk” power point to illustrate , in part at least, how our Public Structures get funded by the taxes we all pay. To quote the notes:
“ Here is an example of how to put public structures into context. Here we see how revenue and budget decisions have positive and negative affects on the health of our entire state. Interactions of public money and services are seen in this illustration as one Massachusetts ecosystem.
Note that the leaves on this tree – services like public schools and the courts – are not there just for those citizens who choose to take advantage of them. Public structures improve our community as a whole, contributing to public safety and economic stability. Many families, for example, do not have any children in our public school system, but those schools are building a productive, educated workforce that will attract new businesses, ultimately boosting state revenues and the quality of life for all people in our state!And then the next slide shows some leaves falling off the trees … because of tax cuts. Sometimes, some of our public structures aren’t always looking so healthy. Services may be under-funded, or even cut. Like in nature, this system is in a delicate balance – with services tied to revenues coming from both individuals and corporations. ”
Interested in this presentation for your Board, Staff or Leadership who are trying to figure out how to advocate for their issue in these hard times? The Academy can come to you to make this presentation as part of a 2 hour session on Advocating for your Issue During Hard Economic Times.
You can find a sample agenda and some materials here.
Cross posted on the Massachusetts Policy and Organizing Leadership Academy
The insanity of refusing to consider new taxes and fees while the public transportation infrastructure literally rusts away — in one of the wealthiest states in one of the wealthiest nations in all the world and in all of human history — is breath-taking.
I don’t know about the other leaves on the tree, but I know that the “Public Transport” leaf is already shriveled away to nearly nothing.
I’m at the point where I suggest that NOBODY should cast ONE VOTE for any elected representative unwilling to raise taxes or fees enough to fund the commuter rail/MBTA. Whatever the political calculus is of Mr. DeLeo, he is wrong wrong wrong.
We are a state that squanders money hand-over-fist on sports, fashion, and trinkets. We have higher real-estate values, higher salaries, and more truly wealthy individuals in Massachusetts than most states in the nation. Our refusal to pay the cost of sustaining a civilized state, while squandering enormous sums on wasteful consumption, is lunacy.
We are able to pay higher taxes. We choose not to.
A few facts to remember:
1. If the Tax Expenditure Budget (you know, loop holes and giveaways) was trimmed by 10% – that is $2.2 billion and no cuts would be needed to anything.
2. If the Tax Expenditure Budget was trimmed by 20% – that would be $4.4 billion and we could begin rebuilding the commonwealth.
There has NEVER been a review of the Tax Expenditure Budget. 81% of the Tax Expenditure Budget has no sunset clauses, no clawbacks, and no requirement to report back to the legislature as to how the money was used. (Yes, you read this correctly).
For those interested, the meetings of this Commission are Public (but I am unclear how to find out when they are) and its members are:
Jay Gonzalez (Sec. of Admin and Finance, an attorney)
Suzanne Bump, Auditor
Steve Grossman, Treasurer
Jay Kaufman, Chair House Revenue Committee
Rep. Kathryn Clark
Senator Brewer, Senate Chair of Ways and Means
Rep. Dempsey, House Chair of Ways and Means
Allen Clayton Matthews, a professor
No more cuts are – or should be needed. Also, it is the politically vulnerable who are not in a position to donate to campaigns or speak out (like the Judicial Branch, the disabled, students, indigent defendants and kids in foster care) who absorb a disproportionate number of these cuts. Shameful, really.
It took Rep. Kaufman, three years to get a Commission to review, analyze, and it is to be hoped, trim the Tax Expenditure Budget.
The campaign by the DAs to destroy the independent defense bar is a case in point. Just one DA and his family gave over $85k to a slew of legislators. I know; I checked.
That’s what this says to me, as I doubt we’ll see any cuts to the tax expenditure budget — over $1.5 billion and growing by the year. I like to call the this budget the “Free Corporate Welfare Budget,” because that’s what it is.
It is simply amazing that the Globe isn’t running headlines about this on an every day basis. People are being kicked out of their homes, people are struggling to find jobs, the MBTA is short $160 million because of Big Dig debt… and the corporations are getting over $1.5 billion in free corporate welfare.
Fucking unbelievable.
looking at a $700,000 deficit in a $9 million, shoestring budget, i.e. $300,000 over foundation.
Small government is beautiful. Just ask Carla Howell.
And you would find passionate, informed intelligent people willilng to volunteer their time and take risks for change, as opposed to courtiers looking to be made barons, as it were.