Last Thursday, the MA House passed its FY2019 budget 150-4. The dissenting votes came from the most conservative quarters of the Republican caucus.
This degree of unanimity seems like the polar opposite of what we see at the national level. Why is that? How do we have such broad bipartisan consensus around the budget year after year?
Let’s turn to the recent analysis of the House Ways & Means budget from the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center. It begins, “The House Ways and Means (HWM) Committee’s Fiscal Year (FY) 2019 budget proposal largely aligns with the Governor’s proposal.”
In other words, this consensus is achieved by Democrats largely agreeing to the Republican governor’s budget. Oh.
Big Picture: Lack of Investment, Lack of Revenue
Where there are differences, they are certainly for the better.
Mimicking his Republican allies in Washington, Baker is still pushing an anti-health care agenda. His budget moved 140,000 low-income adults off MassHealth coverage, which would subject already struggling individuals to higher premiums and a loss of dental coverage and other vital benefits. Massachusetts would have the dubious honor of becoming the only state to repeal the Obama-era Medicaid expansion. The Legislature rejected this push last year, and the House rightfully chose not to include the Governor’s ask in the budget.
Mass Budget also outlines a few modest improvements the House made:
- Early Education and Care. The HWM budget provides $20.0 million for Center-Based Child Care Rate Increases to improve early education quality by increasing the rates paid by the state to child care providers. That funding should aid in increasing salary, benefits, and professional development for early educators. The HWM Committee also proposes $8.5 million for a new initiative focused on professional development for early educators facilitated by Massachusetts community colleges.
- K-12 Education. This budget provides $33.5 million more in Chapter 70 Aid (and related reserves) than the Governor proposed. In addition, it funds grant programs at $20.8 million more than the Governor recommended. This includes an added $9.5 million for charter school reimbursements and $8.9 million more for special education costs.
- Housing. This budget proposal would increase funding for the Massachusetts Rental Voucher Program (MRVP) to $100.0 million, which is $7.3 million more than FY 2018. MRVP provides housing vouchers to help low-income families, including those living in emergency assistance shelters, secure housing.
Given the crisis in housing affordability in Massachusetts, a $7.3 million bump in funding for housing vouchers doesn’t go very far. Consider this: a minimum wage worker would have to work 80 hours per week to afford a modest one-bedroom rental home at fair market rent.
The bumps in education spending don’t look that impressive when you dig deeper there either. As you might remember from the Question 2 debate two years ago, in Massachusetts, school funding follows the students, but since so many of the costs of education are fixed (think: the school building itself), the state offers a partial reimbursement to public school districts for lost funding when students leave to go to charter schools. Massachusetts, however, has not been meeting its statutory obligation here. According to the Mass Municipal Association, the shortfall is already $75 million and would grow significantly to between $85 million and $100 million under Baker’s budget. The House budget’s addition is only 10% of what’s needed. Baker’s budget underfunded special education reimbursements by $20 million; the House’s additional $8.9 million is less than half of what’s required.
And how does the House fund these modest improvements? By robbing Peter to pay Paul. Back to Mass Budget:
“Without any significant revenue sources beyond those in the Governor’s budget, the HWM budget funds these differences largely by underfunding various accounts – such as for the removal of snow and ice from state roads – that likely need to be funded eventually. This risks leading to challenges maintaining a balanced budget during the upcoming fiscal year.”
A common refrain from us here at Progressive Massachusetts is that if we want a Commonwealth where everyone can thrive–where we have quality public schools, public schools, health care for all, a clean environment, etc.–then we need more revenue (and more investment in our collective, long-term future). However, our Democratic Legislature, like our Republican Governor, has been hostile to raising revenue. We are an affluent state: third highest in per capita income and sixth highest in median household income. In other words, we aren’t lacking in revenue sources; we’re lacking in political will.
The expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) in both the Governor’s budget and the House budget suffers from this same problem: if we are not meaningfully increasing revenue, then the EITC expansion will just be funded by cuts to other programs on which working people depend.
The Amendment Process: What Happened?
A week and a half ago, we drew attention to a list of amendments that would counteract this chronic underinvestment and improve the quality of life in the state by building on the recently passed criminal legal system reform, investing in public education, protecting our environment, and building strong communities for all.
More than 1,000 amendments were filed to the FY2019 budget. And, unfortunately, the House doesn’t make it easy to follow what happened to them all (in case you’re wondering, yes, it is on purpose).
Some amendments are withdrawn before debate begins, usually under pressure from House Leadership
The following amendments we highlighted were withdrawn:
- Amendment 781 (Khan), which would set out punishment for police officers who have sex with individuals in police custody
- Amendment 889 (Provost), which freezes the income tax at 5.1 percent. Automatic declines in the state income tax mean billions of dollars of lost revenue each year and less money to fund vital programs across the Commonwealth
- Amendment 925 (Walsh, Chris), which would allow local governments and regions of the state to, with local government and voter approval, levy taxes to fund transportation initiatives
Now, the House rarely votes on individual amendments. For the sake of time and opacity, House Leadership will gather together thematically similar amendments to produce a “consolidated” amendment. BUT that “consolidated” amendment often doesn’t include many of the requests from the included amendments. The “consolidated” amendments effectively dispense with the amendments in the guise of addressing them. And then they pass almost unanimously, with everything “controversial” having been removed.
Most of the amendments we supported saw just such a fate.
Subsumed and eliminated via “Consolidated Amendment A” (Education and Local Aid)
- Amendment 156 (Higgins), which would provide much-needed funding for public colleges and universities
- Amendment 246 (Garballey), which would revise our outdated education funding formula along the lines of the the Foundation Budget Review Commission recommendations
- Amendment 715 (Moran, Mike), which would ensure that immigrant students receive in-state tuition
- Amendment 924 (Higgins), which would create new consumer protections for student loan borrowers and allow state to crack down on unscrupulous lenders
- Amendment 950 (Koczera), which would increase funding for adult education and English classes (essential for new immigrants) by $1.9 million, to $34.5 million
- Amendment 952 (Ultrino) / 977 (Coppinger), which would increase charter school tuition reimbursements for sending public school districts from $90m to $170m so that our public schools have the funding they need
- Amendment 1343 (Decker), which would mandate at least 20 minutes of recess for elementary school students
Subsumed and eliminated via “Consolidated Amendment B” (Energy and Environmental Affairs)
- Amendment 640 (Ferrante), which increases funding for the Massachusetts Emergency Food Assistance Program by $2m to $20m — Covertly dispensed with via Consolidated Amendment “B”
- Amendment 864 (Walsh, Chris), which increases the funding for the Department of Environmental Protection’s hazardous waste clean-up program by $2m — Covertly dispensed with via Consolidated Amendment “B”
- Amendment 906 (Rogers, David), which requires the state to issue a report on measures necessary–including new staffing, monitoring, permitting and other measures–to address water pollution and comply with the federal Clean Water Act — Covertly dispensed with via Consolidated Amendment “B”
- Amendment 1005 (Muratore), which would provide initial funding and regulatory authority for the state to implement decommissioning of the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station Covertly dispensed with via Consolidated Amendment “B”
Subsumed and eliminated via “Consolidated Amendment E” (Public Safety and Judiciary)
- Amendment 54 (Livingstone), which would provide funding for the Resolve to Stop the Violence Program, a restorative justice program in the Department of Corrections with proven benefits for reducing recidivism
- Amendment 219 (Livingstone), which increases funding for community-based re-entry programs from $3 million to $5 million
Subsumed and eliminated via “Consolidated Amendment F” (Housing, Mental Health and Disability Services)
- Amendment 269 (Connolly), which would increase housing voucher rent caps to current fair market rents, get vouchers out faster, set aside a portion for extremely low-income households, and increase funding for the Massachusetts Rental Voucher Program overall — Consolidated F
- Amendment 801 (Khan), which increases the funding for Juvenile Court Clinics, which provide mental health evaluation, consultation, and liaison services for children and families in the juvenile court system, from $3.5m to almost $10m
Subsumed and eliminated via “Consolidated Amendment G” (Public Health)
- Amendment 867 (Garlick), which would boost funding for Domestic Violence/Sexual Assault Prevention services by $3.5 million, to $37.6 million, to increase access to culturally and linguistically appropriate crisis intervention and safety planning, legal services, and advocacy — Consolidated G
One amendment did pass (👏👏👏), although the House modified it to begin in FY2020 and did not provide the necessary funding. It’s a victory, but as with most victories, the fight continues.
- Amendment 1361 (Decker), which would lift the “cap on kids.” The “cap on kids”/”family cap” denies welfare support to children conceived while the family receives assistance. 8,700 Massachusetts children are currently harmed by this policy that many other states have already repealed.
Funding increases for the Massachusetts Legal Services Corporation (Amendment 243-Balser) and Regional Transit Authorities (Amendment 743-Peake) did make it into the budget via other consolidated amendments, but in much reduced form. MLAC got $750,000 extra, rather than $2 million. And RTAs got $2 million in additional funding, rather than the requested $8 million. The extra money is important, but the Legislature’s refusal to offer robust funding speaks to systemic indifference.
They Don’t Pass The Good Ones. But, Thankfully, They Don’t Pass the Bad Ones Either.
Marc Lombardo’s xenophobic Amendment 113, which would have taken away money from cities that choose not to be accomplices to a mass deportation regime, was withdrawn. Geoff Brad Jones’s Amendment 508, which mirrored Baker’s unconstitutional proposal to overturn the Lunn decision, was subsumed into “Consolidated E” and eliminated. So were Amendments 515 (Jones) and 1174 (Markey), which would have expanded state wiretap powers to “listen in” on a wider range of personal communication
Jim Lyons’s Amendment 347, which sought to create even broader authority for police to detain immigrants along the lines of a bill filed by Governor Baker, failed 10 to 145 (RC 334). One Democrat–Jim Dwyer–joined 9 Republicans in voting for it. Geoff Diehl’s amendment, which was akin to Lombardo’s withdrawn amendment in its assault on cities that choose not to have local law enforcement be deputized to ICE, was sent to further study on a 136 to 19 vote (RC335). The study, of course, will never happen (which is the point). Colleen Garry and Jim Dwyer joined 17 Republicans in voting for it.
Rep. Howitt’s Amendment 979, which would have curtailed the right to free expression, namely the use of economic boycotts against foreign governments (Think: the boycott movement against apartheid South Africa), was subsumed into and eliminated by “Consolidated H” (Constitutional Officers, State Administration, and Transportation).
If you’re still with us: The Senate will be voting on its budget (and its own series of amendments) mid-May. The two bodies will then go to conference and hash out a final budget.
Well said. We aren’t lacking in resources, we are lacking in political will. Other states are leapfrogging us on progressive legislation and policy innovation. It is time we start working locally to primary the rubber stamps for the Baker agenda and start reviving our movement at the grassroots.
A big reason I tried, and failed, to make a viable third party possible was because I gave up on our state party. When Stacey Adams’s, a Democratic of color in a red state, can run in on a bolder platform than any recent candidate for statewide office we got a problem. She does not hesitate to endorse a $15 minimum wage, progressive tax, free college, healthcare as a human right, and paid family leave. Our candidates for Governor are talking the talk, but when will our supermajority walk the walk it already has? This is immensely frustrating and difficult to explain to out of state friends, comrades, and coworkers. Let us move forward as worker affirming Democrats instead of austerity lite Republicans.
Too many of our “Democrats” are DINOs.
Real Democrats would not tolerate the lies of Mr. DeLeo and Mr. Baker regarding the need for new taxes on the wealthy. Real Democrats would have supported Deval Patrick when he proposed to raise taxes on the wealthy in 2013. Instead, our “Democrats”, led by our DINO-in-chief joined their GOP brethren in chopping off Mr. Patrick’s legs at the knees.
At least our few remaining GOP representatives admit their actual party affiliation to themselves and the voters.
I think Massachusetts Democrats need to take over the Massachusetts Democratic Party from the DINOs who control it.
Forget the national level… it’s the polar opposite of the relationship with the previous Democratic Governor. And yet, the Legislatures regard for Charlie Baker, so in contrast with the lack of regard for Deval Patrick, is entirely in keeping with the cozy, indeed cosseted, relationship to both the Romney administration and the twelve year long hydra that was essentially the Weld administration.
It’s de rigeur, nowadays, to bust on and disrespect Deval Patrick for not getting more done. Maybe, now, we can admit to each other the nature of some of the obstacles he faced.
You mean the same Senate who jettisoned the progressive president over his boyfriends reliving his high school glory days? You think they are going to do anything in the face of the House who can’t be bothered to even investigate their own ‘un-indicted co-conspirator’ of a leader?
Get rid of them all. Every last one. Even the purportedly ‘good’ ones. Start over entirely.
I was with you until the last line. It makes a fine closing sentence in an otherwise well-written polemic. In practice, it would make a terrible situation worse.
Denise Provost is a tireless champion for progressives. She should be elevated, not dismissed.
Will we admit that one of the obstacles faced by Deval Patrick was the color of his skin?
The plain fact is that our “Democratic” supermajority includes a great many actual Republicans who profess to be Democrats in order to be elected. Our “Democratic” majority of voters includes a great many actual Republicans who vote from their greed, magical thinking about the economy, biases and prejudices.
Massachusetts is far more racist, sexist, and Republican than our self-professed political affiliations suggest.
They did the same to Dukakis until he “played ball.” (i.e., submitted). It has looked for decades that our legislature is far more conservative than our electorate, because our local Democratic Party gives unconditional cover to incumbents.
To reach a racism explanation, you must ignore the last 50 years of statehouse politics.
I encourage you to refresh your memory about the role Mike Dukakis played in the busing crisis, and the political price he paid for that role.
I think a “racism explanation”, for at least some — if not most — of Massachusetts political dynamics is compelled by a review of the last 50 years of statehouse politics.
Unlike Obama, I don’t recall Deval Patrick’s race ever coming into play, and I was so glad for that.
Short answer: They are listening to their donors and not the voters and running on the notion that “at least they are better than Republicans”.
It take a LOT of money to run a campaign like that because it’s hard to sell.
“If the only tool you have is a hammer, then everything is a nail”.
I don’t get how this answer connects to the question or the thread.
The voters of Massachusetts loudly and repeatedly reject every hint of a tax increase. They’ve done that since 1980. If anything, the problem right now is that both Democrats and Republicans are listening too much to at least those voters.
It doesn’t take any money to run these campaigns. Did you forget that we’re talking about the Massachusetts legislature here? WHAT campaign is “hard to sell”?
The core of our current issue is magical thinking by voters — and the disgusting extent to which spineless hacks pander to that magical thinking.
Nobody who has attempted to get to and from work using the commuter rail or set foot inside a public school in the last five years — and is willing to actually see, hear, and feel what is happening around them — can rationally conclude that we don’t need new tax revenue. Yet that is what our Governor and our Speaker of the House tell us.
Where do we find these voters that you think want something different from that?
Sure, I’ll agree, but they are told by their elected officials that taxes are bad, Both political parties tell their members that taxes are bad. There is no bold leadership that is willing to take the stand that, “you know what Massachusetts? Taxes, when administered properly and spent wisely, are a good thing”.
There is no will on the part of the Democrats in office to raise taxes. They are all taking the easy way out.
In my town, Franklin, since we can’t “raise taxes”, parents of school children have to pay hundreds of dollars, even thousands of they have a few kids, to pay for busing to school and after school activities. That’s a tax.
I agree wholeheartedly.
There’s no will on the part of ANYBODY to raise taxes. It looks to me as though that’s because the prevailing belief among aspiring politicians is that voters will reject any call for tax increases.
I just don’t see this as an issue with donors versus voters. I think, if anything, that a few deep-pocketed donors who see what’s happening and want to affect change might be very effective.
We do see some evidence, finally, of grassroots rebellion against tax cuts in the news. I think the change we need is going to start there, because those states have more pain.
I think we’re going to see Massachusetts voters hold out against new taxes until things get much worse here.
I was going to mention the polls supporting higher taxes to pay teachers, but you beat me to it. We do have the millionaires’s tax on the table. As far as the donors versus voters, I’d have to go into anecdotes but let me just say that it’s easy for any politician to come out against tax increases and be for tax cuts. Our Democrats are taking the easy way.
And the problem with this is that it’s already much worse for many citizens and some towns in Massachusetts but it will never get much worse for the rest.
I agree with everything you write in this comment.
I particularly agree that “our Democrats are taking the easy way”. I might edit that put scare quotes around “Democrats”, because far too many of our “Democrats” don’t act like Democrats at all.
Actual Democrats would care about the collapse of our ability to care for our least fortunate residents. Actual Democrats would care about the collapse of our public transportation system — catastrophic to working-class people who depend on it to get to and from work, school, and loved ones.
My prediction is that the “millionaire’s tax”, even if passed by the voters, will have little or no actual impact on actual taxes paid by anybody.
This does not mesh well with an electorate that also elects very liberal candidates to the Congress. The political center of gravity is FAR to the left of the legislature.
An equally likely explanation is that the electorate would dearly love to fund the T, public schools, infrastructure and social services, and would be willing to accept higher and indeed steeply progressive taxation in order to achieve it, had we any reason to believe that such taxes would be put to such use.
But we know– WE KNOW!!– that this would never happen. What would happen is that one or more state agencies– DCF? MBTA? Probation? State Police? turn at the trough is it?– would suddenly have a lot of friends and near-relatives of legislative leadership, as well as retiring legislators in need of a boost to their pension formula working highly-paid jobs with fantastic benefits such as 50 weeks paid vacation.
Eventually, the Globe, or WCVB, or WGBH will have an expose, and there will be a minor scandal. But that scandal will, as all of the ones before, be That Which Must Not Be Spoken Of in the subsequent round of elections.
Oh, and because the schools and the T will still be underfunded, some well-intentioned progressive will then say that we need a tax increase to fund schools and transportation, and we can go around again.
That is what happened most recently with the Probation Dept scandal, and in a sense is what is happening right now, today, with Senate President Rosenberg. People with business before the Legislature had to brave a sexual predator in a position of power. The entire Senate, probably the entire legislature, had to know, and tolerated it because that’s what you do. Do you think that “How in heck did you look the other way on that?!” will be an issue in primaries or in November? No, it will be just something that happened without cause or responsibility by anyone, and will be That Which Must Not Be Spoken Of.
I agree.
This is the true and actual impact of corruption, even “legal” corruption.
We are surrounded by a growing pile of evidence demonstrating that additional tax revenue is absolutely required. The driving forces that add to that pile are, if anything, amplified by our political cowardice.
The problems created by our refusal to pay taxes get worse and worse as we continue that refusal longer and longer. And so the result is that our collective power spiral into the ground gets tighter and tighter and faster and faster.
Illegal corruption is illegal precisely because it destroys the fabric of government. Legal corruption is an oxymoron. Too many of us excuse legal corruption (such as patronage) as “just politics”.
Too many of us are far too eager to passionately assert that no problem exists because nobody was convicted of any crime, or that our problems have been solved by convicting some (but not all) of the corrupt players.
Massachusetts had a pervasive culture of corruption in 2006 when I joined BMG. That culture of corruption is as bad or worse today than it was then. Even in the face of successive criminal convictions of legislative leadership we’ve done nothing. We have installed an unindicted co-conspirator in the Probation Department scandal to what amounts to life-long tenure.
Our Massachusetts government is pervasively corrupt, and we are only just beginning to see, hear, and feel the consequences.
Contribution limits in MA have always been low and we have been pretty strict on what used to be called soft money. There just aren’t many ways for big donors to put their thumbs on the scale in state politics.
From my own experience, I can also say that state politics are just not something that gets people excited. The UIP had a very particular vision of getting outsiders elected to the statehouse who would not toe the DeLeo or the Baker party line.
It failed for a variety of reasons, but one of the key reasons is that too many registered and active Democrats in this state equate the Massachusetts Democratic Party with the likes of Elizabeth Warren and assume their local legislator is just as good. Even within primaries, talking to strategists and candidates alike, the hardest thing is convincing people that their local incumbent is not automatically a progressive because of the D next to his or her name. That disconnect is huge and it is awfully powerful. Veterans of Mike Connolly and Carl Sciortino’s races told me that it required relentlessly direct negative mailers highlighting the bad votes the incumbents took followed up by direct door to door contacting. This work is very difficult to do across the 160 districts in Massachusetts.
DSA and Our Revolution were quite active in Somerville and Cambridge races, but I do not believe they were present for the Harrington primary against DINO Timilty to replace Joyce, or the primary on the South Shore I was involved in which most voters I spoke to were not aware was even happening. They certainly were not active in the First Suffolk Senate special either where the progressive vote was split three different ways.
Lastly, I agree with David Bernstein that a bicameral legislature of this magnitude frankly gives too much power and influence to small towns. A unicameral Senate of 100 members would mirror our Senate now, and be more progressive because it represents more people and is a better cross section of our diverse and progressive state. The sheer size and scope of the House encourages power consolidation in the leadership in order for anything to get done and overrepresents smaller, fiscally conservative towns that do not face the downsides of our growing regional governance challenge. It is very easy for the average state rep in those communities to be very visible in his or her parochial setting and ribbon cut, get bridges renamed, etc. in exchange for rubber stamping the Speaker. We just saw Jim Miceli euologized in his community for doing exactly that, and I will not demonize him for that. So long as our system and voters expect that low bar of their local representative, we will likely not see our state legislature reflect our Congressional delegation in terms of ideological voting patterns.
Are you saying a smaller legislature would be more representative? That doesn’t make any sense,
I think he said that a smaller legislature would decrease the influence of individual residents of small rural areas and increase the influence of individual residents of more densely populated urban areas.
It strikes me a manifestation of the same issue we see with Electoral College. Voters in geographically large sparsely-populated states have outsized influence in comparison to their counterparts in more densely-populated states.
It makes sense to me.
It makes no sense at all. The way the US Senate is apportioned is completely different from the way the Massachusetts Legislature is.
I meant that the comment from James makes sense. I agree that what we have today makes no sense at all.
EC includes a thumb on the scale because it takes into account the equality of the Senate, but any body that is strictly proportional is by definition representative regardless of total membership. After all if a larger body means more seats for rural areas it would have even more still for urban areas.
I invite you to recheck your math.
Consider “Footana”, an imaginary state with two counties, A and B. County B includes “FooTown”, the capital. Footana has exactly 100 residents. County A has one resident, county B 99.
Footana has a representative senate, like Massachusetts. The Footana constitution provides that each county shall have a single senator. The Footana senate therefore has two senators, one for county A and the other for county B.
I hope we can agree that the single resident of County A has a great deal more influence than any of the 99 residents of County B.
If the senator from County A takes a position that the single voter of County A dislikes, that senator will not be re-elected.
I’ve made this an extreme case for clarity. Unless I am mistaken (and I do make mistakes from time to time), my extreme example nevertheless shows how voters in rural outlying counties of Massachusetts have disproportionate influence in comparison to their urban counterparts.
But MA does not have equal representation by county. In fact SCOTUS decisions from the mid-20th century forbid it. If Footana had two Senators it would have to have one for the resident of County A plus 49 residents of County B, and the other for the remaining 50 residents of County B. If anything in this scenario the one County A resident might not feel very well represented.
My information comes from wikipedia (emphasis mine):
Wikipedia has been wrong before, I’m happy to revise my opinion if the above is incorrect.
Based on the above, however, I think that my analogy pertains.
You’re misreading the article. The State Senate seats are named for the counties where they are located, but the counties are combined freely to make up districts that are roughly equal in population.
At any rate, the whole idea that rural voters are over-represented in Massachusetts seems perverse, when you consider that BMG bloggers from Western and Central Mass have made a good case several times over that it is the rural part of the state that is left out.
Ah, I get it. 14 counties, 40 senate seats. Point taken.
The rural part of the state is left out of some, but not all, issues. It appears to me that it gets the short end of the stick when state funds are allocated to urban areas (I’m thinking Pittsfield, Springfield, etc). I think it is over-represented in discussions about public transportation.