It’s that time of year again, when everyone from newspaper editors to neighbors to your cranky uncle is telling you how to vote on November’s ballot. Herewith, your humble editors’ submission with respect to the four statewide ballot questions. Spoiler: the correct answers are No on 1, and Yes on the rest. They are all pretty easy calls, in our view.
NO on 1. Question 1, if passed, would repeal the indexing provision that the legislature recently added to the gas tax. The indexing provision adjusts the gas tax (currently 24 cents per gallon) “every year by the percentage change in the Consumer Price Index over the preceding year.” In other words, it automatically adjusts the gas tax for inflation.
An outrage, some cry! Taxation without representation! The legislature should have to vote every time a tax is raised! There are many problems with this argument, not the least of which is that the sales tax for everything else is a percentage, and therefore automatically adjusts for inflation – if prices go up, so does the sales tax in dollar amount. Frankly, a percentage sales tax is probably a better way to manage the gas tax as well, but since the tax is per gallon, failing to index results in the gas tax actually losing value over time.
And an inadequate gas tax is a real problem, since the gas tax funds road and bridge projects around the state. Needless to say, these projects are necessary. MA’s infrastructure is not getting any younger; much maintenance has been deferred way longer than it should have been; and catastrophes like this one only seem likely to happen more often if something isn’t done.
The legislature isn’t very good at enacting sensible tax policy. This gas tax bill was a rare exception (it probably didn’t go far enough, but it was a big improvement over what was in place before). We see no good argument for undoing it.
YES on 2. Question 2, if passed, would update the bottle bill (which requires a five-cent deposit on certain beverage containers, refunded when the bottle is returned) to include water, juice, sports drink, and other now-popular drinks. The statistics around the bottle bill are overwhelming: 80% of containers with a deposit, but only 23% of containers without, are recycled. Lots of anecdotal observations support this: it’s actually pretty rare to see a Coke can or beer bottle on the street, but plastic water and juice bottles are ubiquitous.
So, the bottle bill works, and things that work should be encouraged and expanded to keep up with the times. Furthermore, the folks urging you to vote “no” have been … massaging the facts, shall we say, with respect to current recycling rates in Massachusetts. This is bad behavior that should be punished; if it isn’t, they and others will assume (correctly) that they can get away it, and will behave similarly in the future.
YES on 3. Question 3, if passed, would pretty much repeal the state’s casino law by making slot machines and table games illegal again in Massachusetts. We’ve talked about this issue a great deal on BMG in recent months, so there’s no need to rehash those arguments in detail here. In brief, we think casinos are a lousy economic development strategy (recent events in Atlantic City and elsewhere suggest that they are not the golden goose their boosters would have you believe), we think they prey on people who really don’t need another toilet down which to flush their money, and we think the shenanigans at the Mass. Gaming Commission have amply demonstrated that they tend to operate in a shady fashion. We recognize that Springfield, in particular, could use an infusion of economic activity of just about any kind. We are happy to see recent news reports that just such a thing appears to be happening, and we hope this is the start of a trend. Building a plant to assemble desperately-needed subway cars is real economic development. Gambling isn’t.
YES on 4. Question 4, if passed, would require employers with 11 or more employees to allow their employees to “earn and use up to 40 hours of paid sick time per calendar year, while employees working for smaller employers could earn and use up to 40 hours of unpaid sick time per calendar year.” This one is really so easy. Of course employees should be able to take a modest number of sick days per year (five seems perfectly reasonable) without putting their jobs in jeopardy or (at larger employers) taking a financial hit for it. If you’re sick and you stay home and rest, (a) you will get better and therefore return to productivity much faster, and (b) you won’t get your colleagues or the people next to you on the T sick. It is both sensible economic policy and sensible public health policy.
n/t
I concur with all, and will email these concise and persuasive explanations to friends and family!
Would you rather live in a town with an underfunded department of public works, litter, a casino, and sick people serving you at coffee shops, grocery stores, and so on……..or would you prefer a better place?
Great endorsement! We will defeat Question 1 with your help. Please email Molly Stolberg, mstolberg@t4ma.org and tell her Blue Mass Group sent you.
NO ON 1 has very effective TV ads, a compelling message, hundreds of endorsements from a diverse coalition, but you personally can make a big difference. Thanks for helping out and for sharing on social media.
saferoadsbridges.com
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Josh
and will vote accordingly. However, I do not like the 11 employee number in Question 4. It’s too low. Number should be more like 50.
Really, why?
It’s too big an onus on small businesses. I think something like 50 is a better way to divide large and small business if you’re doing it by numbers of employees. Alternatively another metric could be used, like revenue but that has issues too. I’m in favor of the concept and will vote yes but I think the cost is too high on small businesses.
what exactly is a medium one? 1000?
Very few small businesses have 50 employees. I’ve seen what 50 employee companies can look like and they’re pretty big in my book.
50 employees isn’t a small business. A small business is a mechanic that has 2-3 employees. It’s a lawyer with her own practice. It’s a Mom and Pop shop on Main St.
50 employees could light manufacturing, or a small restaurant chain. It could be a pretty major medical practice, a tech company that’s already received venture capitalist funding.
It’s also the parent company of GEICO, Heinz Ketchup, Dairy Queen *and* Fruit of the Loom.
I feel very, very comfortable in the knowledge that companies with 19, 25 or 49 people will be bound by this ballot initiative.
I’m also confident the 11-person figure is not an arbitrary number, and is one that’s meant to protect Mom and Pop stores while ensuring that companies worth millions aren’t stiffing their employees.
50 is big, but it’s not hard for a restaurant to get to 50. Lots of wait staff working nights and weekends, often “on-the-side” while in school or as a second job. It’s not crazy to have a total of 10 kitchen employees, 5 behind the bar, 5 host/bus boy, and 30 wait staff.
If you own one restaurant — even a sizeable one — I think it’s fair to call you a small businessman. It’s not a classic “mom and pop” but if you own one restaurant, you can bet you live and breathe and bleed that restaurant.
Personally, while I support 4, I don’t think it goes far enough. The reason we have paid sick leave is not to punish large businesses. It’s to protect workers. Why do we, as public policy, treat employees of very small businesses worse than those who work at larger businesses? I understand the desire to protect small businesses, but where is the desire to protect the employees of small businesses?
That written, my understanding was that for businesses with 10 or fewer employees, the sick leave is unpaid. For restaurants, my understanding is that they collect their wage, so a full time waitress would be entitled to a whopping $105.20 in sick pay per year.
All restaurants should give all their employees sick time. It’s a public-health issue. Currently, food workers don’t get paid enough to take a day off when they’re sick, and are frequently fired for doing it, so they go to work and infect hundreds of people who’d not otherwise be exposed.
All restaurants should be required to give all their employees sick time.
There’s only one dividing line in the ballot question — 11. So asking whether “1000” is a medium sized company is besides the point. All companies (private and public) are bound by the ballot question regardless of size. The issue is whether or not it is earned sick time that’s paid or unpaid. To use an extreme example, Fidelity shouldn’t be treated like a landscaping company or small grocery store with 12 employees. As stated, it’s not a deal breaker for me but, yes, small businesses do frequently have 19, 25 or 49 employees. And, public policy like this comes with a cost. I would apply the sick time to slightly larger companies. That’s my only point on this ballot question which I support and will vote for.
Why should the number of employees determine if someone should earn sick time. I believe it should be universal.
The issue is what the dividing line is for paid vs unpaid accrued sick time. I think that paid time should apply to only larger employers (something like more than 50 employees, as opposed to 11). That’s my only point.
As a general rule, I disagree with legislating at the ballot box. But since these questions are before us, I encourage you to vote “NYYY.”
My mnemonic is “New York Yankees Yuck.”
Us liberals ain’t that bright but we can probably remember “NYYY” without a mnemonic….. Joking…….
…and yes, I voted this way, but only on 4 with any enthusiasm. On 1 & 2 I let civic responsibility trump individual preference – you’re welcome. On 3 I personally don’t have much stake one way or the other. On 4 it’s obviously the right thing to do though I wish it could somehow apply to substitute teaching.
As an aside I wonder if a lot of people are going to miss the questions. If Lowell’s ballot is any indication it looks a little daunting and I had trouble finding the bubbles on a couple of them.
Having read your posts for years, I mean that. I get your ambivalence on 1 & 2, and I appreciate your vote.
1. Yes. I am entirely sympathetic to the you-want-a-tax-hike-you-vote-a-tax-hike school of thought. The legislature has done nothing to convince me that any additional revenue will be well-spent, and so I am out on this one. Also, it is not a sales tax– if you want a sales tax, then enact one.
2. Yes. You guys convinced me on this one.
3. Yes. Easiest decision on the ballot.
4. Yes, but queasy. Right thing to do in the abstract. The 11 number is indeed low, but is at least consistent with the old Romneycare mandate number.
But the cavalier way that the costs of something like this are brushed aside makes me queasy. And the costs aren’t exactly slight:
An employer with those 50 employees, who earn something more than bare minimum wage, say $15/hour, gets a hit that could be as high as $30,000. It won’t be that high because every employee will not use all 40 hours, but it could be. And if there is a business that relies heavily on the labor that is paid hourly and operates at a healthy profit margin, I don’t know what it is. Most that I know are pretty low-margin operations. That means that this is going effectively be a very, very steep tax hike on some subset of of employers in the Commonwealth.
I disagree with you on 1 (I’ll vote “no”) because our need for a tax hike is desperate, our legislature will not vote for one, and I’d rather redouble efforts to spend the transportation revenue wisely than forego it.
I agree with your other votes.
In the spirit of perhaps assuaging your reservations about question 4, I wonder which group of people is better able to afford that $30,000 — the owners or the employees who work for them? In my view, if the cost of this provision hits certain business owners too hard, then I’d rather see those business owners clamor for HIGHER taxes on more prosperous business owners.
In my view, we need to STOP externalizing costs to those who are least able to afford them.
Your argument on Q1 doesn’t make sense. Q1 *cuts* the gas tax.
Sales tax goes up with inflation automatically because it’s a percentage of retail prices, which is what inflation is based on.
Income tax goes up approximately with inflation automatically, because it’s a percentage of wages/salaries. It’s not exactly the same as inflation but similar enough.
But the gas tax is a fixed amount per gallon. It can’t be a percentage because gas taxes fluctuate too wildly and it would be extremely unpredictable, so it makes sense for it to be a fixed number of cents per gallon. But that means if you don’t automatically increase that amount with inflation, its value goes steadily down.
Question 1 says, let’s keep automatically cutting the gas tax, while other taxes stay steady. It’s utterly stupid.
and many people have said Q1 is a tax cut.
In general, when things go “up” we use the word “hike.”
As in “hike up your pants.”
When things don’t go up but stay the same, we don’t usually say “cut.”
Inflation makes this tricky I agree, but we’re not trying to create a long term graph.
If inflation is at 3% and I get a 2% raise, do I go to HR and say “you cut my pay!” Do they agree?
Also we’re not talking about general inflation (cost of food has no effect on road construction and maintenance) so the idea that the purchasing power of the tax goes down every year is a stretch.
Many of the proponents of Q1 are fine with spending more money on roads. They just want to see the votes, and in a state where the legislature lacks a lot of transparency, you can see why some are skeptical, including myself.
If a decent amount of votes were out there I would be happy to have my gas tax indexed, but when NO’s are “sent for study” and YES’s are gavelled through on voice votes in rapid succession, I think they could press a button one more time a year.