Democratic Treasurer’s candidate Deb Goldberg will hit the airways tomorrow with her first TV ad (the first in this race I believe).
Disclaimer – My Union has endorsed and is working for Deb Goldberg to be our next Treasurer.
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Reality-based commentary on politics.
And very sweet. I love that she doesn’t hit us over the head with her amazing education.
Not super-memorable, but nice. I’m with Deb.
it introduces us to the candidate and leaves the viewer with a positive feeling.
Can the Treasurer do anything about wage inequality? Or improving financial literacy? I will say , it got me intrigued about her programs, just not sure how viable they are for her office.
Past Treasurers have run day long seminars targeting women, young people and seniors with financial planning and literacy programs. Granted this often requires corporate sponsors who are interested in selling their “product” but the Office can provide the basic support around financial literacy. Deb Goldberg has discussed presentations for my Union’s apprenticeship classes offering young women and men, some earning regular paychecks for the first time, the basics of financial planning and budgeting.
Wage inequality presents a tougher job. The Treasurer’s Office does control the School Building Fund and can recommend pension investment possibilities. Clearly they could make policy priorities known to corporate leaders around wage inequity.
Finally, like any statewide elected official, the Treasurer has a bully pulpit to talk policy and issues. Deb Goldberg has been outfront on opposing legislation that cut unemployment benefits, supported increasing the minimum wage with indexing, opposed lifting the cap on charter schools, and been vocal in her support of collective bargaining. All this is outside the scope of the constitutional office she seeks but speaks to her policy leanings.
Steve Grossman used the same office to aggressively promote the Lottery.
I’d like to know where Ms. Goldberg stands on the casino gambling question, and I like her opinion about whether or not she sees a conflict between the state’s current reliance on Lottery revenue and the “opportunity” she so eloquently advocates in this spot.
I’ll refer you to David’s post of May 27th:
http://vps28478.inmotionhosting.com/~bluema24/2014/05/all-democratic-candidates-for-treasurer-would-vote-to-repeal-the-casino-law/
Deb Goldberg will vote to repeal the casino law.
As for the lottery issue – I can’t speak to that but I’m sure her campaign will.
…it would be fiduciary malpractice for the Treasurer NOT to promote it.
I’m not sure that Mr. Grossman has a fiduciary obligation to, for example, pursue creating an online version of the Lottery. The treasurer also has the ability to promote programs to aid families of those who suffer from a compulsive gambling disorder. The treasurer has the ability to publish data and make recommendations about where lottery revenue is collected and where it is disbursed.
We’ve had this discussion before. I suggest that ANY holder of a state-wide constitution office has a great many options for acting on their personal values beyond the specific constraints on and explicit jurisdiction of their office. The AG has no jurisdiction over the content broadcast on WEEI. The AG was nevertheless quite able effectively address her unhappiness about a specific broadcast and broadcaster.
In my view, there is large distance between what Mr. Grossman (or the winner of the current election) is required to do by law and what Mr. Grossman actually did.
We collect taxes on cigarettes, but nobody is arguing it’s somebody’s fiduciary duty to promote the consumption of cancer sticks.
Apples and golden apples, I’d say. Without actually googling, I think I can safely say the state gets 10 or 20 times from the lottery what it gets from cigarettes.
Also, historically, the Treasurer has promoted the lottery, from Bob Crane on down. I agree that Grossman has overdone it (I don’t want online tickets, or $30 scratch tickets), but he’s well within the historical role of the Treasurer.
I’d like to hear from the current candidates for Treasurer about their attitudes towards the Lottery.
Mr. Grossman is the past. The current candidates are the future.
A piano of safe could well fall from the sky and squish you.
Cigarette revenue in Massachusetts approached $1B in 2013.
Massachusetts lottery posts $971 million in profits in 2014.
I had no idea, and I am truly blown away. (Bow.) Seriously.
We should eliminate the lottery immediately.
…but we outright sell lottery tickets to benefit the state.
As I mentioned above, they both bring in just shy of $1,000,000,000 a year for MA. In terms of revenue, they’re almost identical.
… To what extent is the lottery a mechanism of tax avoidance? (on the revenue side…) If it is, to any extent, who does it ‘benefit’? The CommonWealth? Hardly. It’s more of a benefit to passive-aggressive politicians who want the revenue but are too cowardly to straight up ask for it in the form of taxes. The fact that it is sited within the purview of the Office of Treasurer and Receiver General, which ought to be about straight record-keeping, is indication enough that there’s a doggle attached to that boon…
The Lottery is mostly about PEOPLE who want services and don’t want to pay for them — and demand that their politicians plunder the poor rather than raise their taxes.
The lottery isn’t on the ballot, any sane Treasurer candidate would tell you that they will support it since it’s the current law and their office can’t suddenly stop running it. This is a debate irrelevant to this position. The kind of ‘products’ Grossman has pursued and the promotion could be curtailed, that area is germane. But outright repeal is a fantasy for now.
We are discussing the race for Treasurer. Running the Lottery is both an important duty of that office and large, even signature, issue for the current office holder.
I think a debate about the Lottery is central to this discussion.
If one candidate would like to rein in the Lottery, and another would like to continue expanding it, my vote is going to the former.
I get not expanding-I get not having $30 scratches, online purchases, credit or debit card purchases, and ads to lure younger players. All things Grossman has pushed that his successor shouldn’t. But I don’t see how you can rein it in beyond that, the law is on the books and isn’t going away.
If that is how you bad you’re vote than you are asking to be lied to.
* Make licensing for Keno operation more difficult — for example, don’t allow a business that has a license for alcohol consumption on premises to also offer Keno.
* Spend less money on ads or buy more expensive ads because you require that the ad agency and the media be Mass-HQ’d.
* Phase out scratch-offs that cost more than minimum wage
* Phase out scratch-offs that cross-merchandise with sports teams, board games, or other brands that are appealing to kids
* Eliminate lottery vending machines in places where minors have physical access (everything from the airport to the racetrack)
How’s that to start?
Simply saying that they want to revert those things you mentioned is enough for me — even better are the things stomv mentioned below.
I’m really not asking elected officials to do the impossible. I’m instead looking to see whether a candidate sees themselves as a fox or a chicken (when the role is to guard the coop).
It seemed in your earlier post that you were making opposition to the lottery itself a litmus test, and I am sorry for misunderstanding it as such.
We may get revenue from cigarette taxes, but it’s not part of the Treasurer’s job to push absolutely everything that generates revenue. It is most definitely the Treasurer’s job to run the lottery:
beacuse of the indent structure. The comment about cigarette taxes was in response to the claim that it would be fiduciary malpractice for the Treasurer NOT to promote the lottery.
My point was that merely generating revenue does not make something worthy of promotion. Your quote doesn’t suggest promotion either, I’d add.
But I did follow it. I think it would, in fact, be fiduciary malpractice for the Treasurer not to promote the lottery. The Treasurer is required by law to administer the lottery. I don’t see how one chairs the state lottery commission without promoting the lottery, at least to some extent. The same obligation does not exist with respect to other sources of state revenue.
Whether the lottery is worthy of promotion by any official of the state is a different question, one settled (at least for now) in 1971.
I think this does a great job of introducing a candidate for a relatively low-profile office, educating viewers a bit about what the TRG can do. Deb would bring a progressive record and very impressive credentials to this office. She’s also just as kind in person as she comes across in the ad. I met her long before she was running because she’s an activist like many of us, and I’ve always appreciated how sincere and friendly she is, regardless of whether her name is on the ballot. I’ll be proud to vote for her in the primary.
…she’d bring back that supermarket broom
Where does she stand on the Treasurer accepting political cash from industries the Treasurer’s office regulates?
Does Deb Goldberg have any qualifications to be Treasurer?
Tom Conroy is far and away the most qualified candidate to be our next State Treasurer. He has two economics-related graduate degrees. He has worked in financial services to support companies that create new jobs. In the State Legislature, he has written laws that helped improve our state’s credit rating, saving taxpayers tens of millions of dollars. He wrote a cost/benefit analysis of the original casino proposal, showing that it would not deliver its promised benefits.
Tom has the strong principles that we at BMG are seeking from elected officials. I have heard him numerous times eloquently deplore the inequality of wealth and the extent of poverty; he has not simply spoken out; he has been an effective leader in the Legislature. For example, he recently led the charge to pass a higher minimum wage law in Massachusetts.
Tom is not a lifelong politician. Prior to his election to the Legislature in 2006, he worked for 16 years in finance. Before that, he managed refugee programs in Thailand and Haiti. Before that he was an aide to Senators Gary Hart and Barbara Mikulski, ultimately serving as her foreign policy and national security assistant. There he worked for an alternative to Reagan’s military buildup.
Tom Conroy is an experienced, trustworthy public servant and expert in finance, but is also a truly principled leader. I have been privileged to have Tom as my state representative.
The way I remember it, the legislature did nothing for six years until myself and a lot of other people collected over 140,000 signatures for a ballot question on the minimum wage.
Then the Senate passed a very good bill on November 19. The House, with Tom Conroy as committee chair, didn’t pass that bill. Instead the House waited four and a half months before passing a far inferior bill (no indexing to inflation, only a dollar raise for tipped workers who’ve been paid $2.63 an hour since 1999) in April. April! Didn’t stop Tom from sending a fundraising email bragging about the crappy House minimum wage bill about an hour after it passed.
In the meantime Tom threw a snitfit because he’d missed the deadline for bills coming out of committee and the Senate – which had passed its superior bill before Thanksgiving – didn’t feel like voting him an extension. Just a bump on the road. The bills finally go off to conference committee, where (as Charley posted on here in June) the final product was a disappointment. Still not indexed to inflation, still only a measly dollar raise for tipped workers, but the $11 number (which will be worth barely $10.50 in real terms by the time it takes effect) pulled the rug out from under the ballot question. A ballot question that could have boosted Democratic turnout for a tough governor’s race. Really, the worst of all conference committee outcomes.
I’m not saying all the flaws in the final bill are Tom Conroy’s fault. But I’d be a little more circumspect about claims that he “led the charge” on minimum wage given the history of the issue.
As Chair of the Labor Committee Rep. Conroy stayed silent on the proposal to link a minimum wage increase to cuts in unemployment benefits for six months. My union and many others spent countless hours lobby to defeat that proposal. Chairman Conroy could have put it to bed far earlier.
And as for the minimum wage increase -same thoughts except that the bill he put forward, without indexing, as Committee Chair was disappointing. Not sure why he thinks taking a victory lap on that is a good idea.
Since you raised the issue:
I’ll take those qualifications along with her very public support of an increase in the minimum wage with indexing. Her opposition to cutting unemployment benefits and her strong support of collective bargaining.
I’ll add that to the best of my knowledge, Deb is the only candidate in this race who has negotiated a collective bargaining agreement, and she’s now endorsed by the unions that sat across from her at the bargaining table in Brookline, and by those which represent the workers alongside whom she worked at Stop and Shop, and later managed as an executive.
I collected signatures for Deb outside a Stop and Shop in Boston and was approached more than once by long-time employees who to this day consider her a friend and miss her family’s involvement in that business. One elderly man was picking up his wife who is still a store employee. I asked him for his signature and he signed immediately when he saw it was for “Debbie.” When his wife’s shift ended, she also signed and told me that when she started working there many years ago, she was given responsibilities that were difficult as a result of her disability. She didn’t want to complain, but Deb was in the store one day and realized this employee was having a hard time. Deb personally saw to it that the employee was reassigned to a less physically taxing role, and the employee has remained happily in that position ever since. That alone isn’t a reason to vote for her for Treasurer, but it speaks to Deb’s values and shows that she was “walking the walk” long before she decided to run for office. I was trying to sell Deb to these voters, but I think they did a better job selling her to me.
It would be good to see more posts promoting favorite downballot candidates.
the comment asking if she had any qualifications for Treasurer but I agree with you. Comments supporting downballot candidates would be welcome.
I was leaning Conroy, but you made a strong case for Deb and You and Fenway pointed out he was a no show during the fight he claims he led on. I want to hear more from these candidates and get a sense of their values from the debates.
I am very impressed with Conroy’s background, it is very similar to the path I hope to follow. But Goldberg isn’t unqualified either, and her history with labor seems to be a lot better than either of her opponents.
Both of her opponents, Tom Conroy and Barry Feingold voted to take away workers rights to negotiate fair healthcare options during collective bargaining. That was WRONG!
The House roll call for H. 3580 was 150 to 2 (assuming this is the right bill) so you can’t really fault Conroy and Feingold for their votes here–they were joined by the vast majority of other legislators.
As for the substance of that bill, it basically brought the health benefits of municipal employees in line with state employees, and you can’t argue that those are not generous as compared to many private plans. There is always a tradeoff when it comes to negotiations like this. The bill brought some much needed property tax relief to a lot of lower- and middle-income state residents who were struggling to stay in their homes.
Was 111 -42. That was the vote to strip collective bargaining rights away from public employees. Conroy voted in favor of the bill. 42 State Representatives voted against it. So actually you can fault both Conroy and Finegold for a solution that simply said you don’t have the right to bargain anymore. It did nothing to cut costs except cost-shift to public sector workers.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/specials/roll_call_for_health_care_bargaining_vote_042711/
Many of those public sector workers are the lower and middle income state residents who are struggling to stay in their homes.
Goldberg was not in the legislature so did not vote on this bill. Not clear how you can say that her record is better because she did not participate in any legislative vote.
As for Finegold, he cosponsored a mean spirited bill to force juveniles who had been sentenced to life without parole to serve at least 35 years (talk about mandatory minimums!). IMHO, this makes him morally unfit to hold any public office.
Both Finegold and Conroy voted to strip collective bargaining rights from public sector workers. Goldberg has negotiated contracts and has been public about her support for collective bargaining rights. For me that makes her “record” that much better.
That striped public teachers and public transit workers of collective bargaining right and forced many transit workers and retirees into higher costing GIC plans (Conroy and Finegold both voted for these bills). That included retirees on fixed incomes. Not my idea of progressive votes by either of them.