March 30, 2026
Chair Friedman, Chair Peisch, and members of the Special Joint Committee on Initiative Petitions;
My name is Jonathan Cohn, and I am the Policy Director at Progressive Massachusetts, a statewide grassroots advocacy group fighting for a more equitable, just, sustainable, and democratic commonwealth.
We are submitting testimony in opposition to Petition No. 25-17 / H.5006: An Act relative to limiting state tax collection growth and returning surpluses to taxpayers, as well as IN OPPOSITION to Petition No. 25-18 / H.5007: An Act relative to reducing the state personal income tax rate from 5% to 4%.
In 2022, because of your help, Massachusetts did something transformative: we—you, the legislators who placed it in on the ballot; us, the organizations and activists who campaigned for it; and the voters across the Commonwealth—passed the Fair Share Amendment, securing a more progressive tax code and new investments in public education and transportation.
That new revenue has helped our Commonwealth do great things. It has provided stable funding for universal school meals, ensuring that no children are going hungry during the school day. It has provided funding for free community college, creating new pathways for economic mobility. It has provided more money for child care, to boost stability for child care providers, better pay for educators, and greater affordability for families. It has expanded scholarship programs, increased investments in school facilities, provided new investment in the MBTA and our roads and bridges, and guaranteed better hours and free fares on regional transit authorities. It has made our state more affordable, more accessible, and more welcoming.
These ballot initiatives want to wipe that—and more—away in order to give more money to the richest residents of the Commonwealth. Only for those richest residents of the Commonwealth will the tax cuts from this question outweigh the likely financial burden of lost public services.
The idea of a commonwealth is based on the idea that when we pool our resources and all chip in (and those who have more chip in more), we can do much more than we could do just by ourselves. The gain from a small tax cut quickly disappears for regular people if public school quality goes down, public transit becomes unreliable, health care becomes more expensive, and child care options disappear.
It is clear why this question exists: the corporate titans of the state are unhappy that, for once, the people won, and they want to wrest power back. Having already received massive tax cuts from the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress last year, they want even more.
The loss of more than $5 billion to the state budget would be damaging in any year. It is catastrophic when we are facing severe funding cuts from the federal government, as well as a federal government that wants to sabotage the foundations of economic prosperity.
We make our state more affordable through the investments we make and the services we provide to ensure a stable foundation on which all can thrive. We need to do even more than we already are. These questions would undo recent progress and make those goals even further out of reach.
Sincerely,
Jonathan Cohn
Policy Director
Progressive Massachusetts
