Last week, we recommended 13 budget amendments for the Senate debate. What happened to them?

The Good

To start off with the good news, five of them were adopted. The Senate budget now includes greater funding for the Community Preservation Act--and thus more money for affordable housing and green and open space (Amendment 286), the Department of Environmental Protection (Amendment 790), workforce training to help those involved with the criminal justice system (Amendment 883), and the Massachusetts Legal Assistance Corporation, which helps provide access to justice for more low-income residents (Amendment 896).

Last Tuesday, after only two days of debate, the House approved its budget for FY 2018 on a nearly unanimous vote of House 159-1. Republican Jim Lyons of Andover was the sole dissenting vote.

If some of the House’s most conservative Republicans are willing to vote for a budget, you know it’s not particularly ambitious. State House News Service described it as “the latest in a string of austerity budgets,” and they were right. Even though an additional $77 million was added during the amendment process (bringing the budget to $40.8 billion), the budget still entrenches a pattern of underinvestment in public transit, public education, and the vital social services that are the foundation of a thriving and equitable economy.

Budget season in the House tends to follow a particular script. Amendments from progressive representatives proposing new revenue or creative new ideas will be withdrawn, often without floor debate. Amendments from Republicans will be debated on the floor and then “sent to further study,” i.e., tabled indefinitely. And the leadership will decide behind closed doors which line item increases will get into the final budget, bundling them into large, omnibus amendments. Votes, including that on the final budget, will mostly be either party-line or (nearly) unanimous (with occasional splits in the Republican caucus or defections from the likes of Colleen Garry of Dracut or James Dwyer of Weymouth on the Democratic side).

This dynamic was largely on display last week.

During his State of the State speech last Tuesday, Governor Charlie Baker congratulated himself on his commitment to addressing the opioid epidemic. He also congratulated himself on curtailing public spending in order to reduce the deficit without raising taxes. These priorities, however, are in fundamental conflict.

In December, in an act largely buried by the news around the presidential transition, Governor Baker unilaterally cut $98 million from the state budget, taking the axe to a wide range of programs. Among the agencies hit was the state Bureau of Substance Abuse Assistance (BSAA), which faced cuts of nearly $2 million. This money is neither an abstraction nor a rounding error: this is money that would be used to hire treatment and prevention coordinators, as well as to fund various treatment and community programs that directly combat addiction in local communities.

Analysis by Robert Fitzpatrick, Progressive Newton

On March 4, Governor Charlie Baker released his proposed state budget for Fiscal Year 2016, which starts this July 1. The new Governor’s first budget proposal – and the reaction of some Democratic legislators to it – contains some positive developments but a lot more to be concerned about.

The Boston Globe recently reported there's an expected $1.5 billion shortfall in fiscal year 2016.

This is an alarming figure, and as both the Republican Governor and the Democratic Speaker of the House have ruled out any tax increases, we can expect yet another round of cuts to our already slashed budgets and agencies.

Already we hear many voices rail against "living beyond our means" and the need to tighten belts further. But this narrative always leaves out an important piece of the story of our structural deficit -- we've lost $3.3 billion in FY2015 ALONE because of tax cuts enacted 1998-2002:

via Mass. Budget and Policy Center

Given the massive reduction in our revenues, it should not be a surprise that we are repeatedly facing budget shortfalls. But now that we've lived through this cycle -- and are seeing the disastrous results of underinvestment and austerity -- we need to reject the simplistic and false narrative of "overspending" and talk about how we've been underfunding.

Why is it always more cuts -- to programs and investments that have already been cut -- but never restoring lost revenue? Especially when our tax system is so unfair? 

On November 4, Massachusetts voted to defund road and bridge repair, by eliminating the 'indexing' on the gas tax, part of the flawed and inadequate "Transportation Funding Package" passed in Spring 2013. Jim Aloisi rightly points out in the Boston Globe that this is an opportunity to go back to the drawing board and get transportation funding right this time: 

ON ITS FACE, last Tuesday was a bleak day for anyone who rides a train or a bus around Boston. Massachusetts voters overturned a new law that would have ratcheted up the state’s gas tax at regular intervals, and they installed in the governor’s office Charlie Baker, who doesn’t want to backfill the hole the gas tax repeal will leave behind. This should be a recipe for more broken trains, fewer buses, shoddier transit service, and ever-worsening traffic in and around Boston.

But it’s also a blessing in disguise. The gas tax repeal took the stuffing out of a weak transportation finance package that the Legislature enacted last year.

Beacon Hill now has a chance to take a second run at the issue, and get it right this time. 

As part of our Shared Prosperity Agenda blog series, Kurt Wise of MassBudget shares their on progressive revenue. MassBudget is an independent nonprofit organization that provides non-partisan research and analysis of state budget and tax policies, as well as economic issues, that affect low- and moderate-income people in Massachusetts.

The state budget, and the taxes that fund it, are the primary way we pay for the things that we do together through government. These include police and fire protection; public education; roads, bridges and public transportation; a safety net for when people face hard times; and more. These investments can both make life better for our families today and build a foundation for a stronger economy in the future.

Beginning in 1998, a number of significant changes were made to the state tax code, including a series of cuts to the state personal income tax. These cuts reduced the Commonwealth's capacity to fund essential services. 

We haven't deserved the insult since the 1970s.

So if someone's trying to convince you of an argument by shouting "TAXACHUSETTS!!" ...

...you might want to be skeptical of everything else they're selling.

Functionally obsolete — but not structurally deficient!

Scary scenes in Washington state yesterday when an Interstate bridge collapsed, but perhaps even scarier is the fact that the bridge was not even among the bridges in advanced disrepair — just merely “functionally obsolete”. Meanwhile, we have 493 structurally deficient bridges in Massachusetts.

We need to invest in our infrastructure, but that takes revenue – yes, “taxes.”

Awaiting rescue in Washington’s I5 bridge collapse.

Republicans have blocked infrastructure spending at the national level. And at the state level, Massachusetts legislators, controlled by Democrats, have rejected infrastructure investment spending, most recently in the April 2013 vote on new revenue (review the Governor’s “Choose Growth” agenda), capping off a decade of revenue shortfalls and budget cuts.

If our government officials cannot muster up the will to take invest in repairing our infrastructure, citizens need to start demanding it. Although yesterday’s accident was miraculously without casualties, we know from Minnesota 2007 that we cannot always be so lucky.

Minnesota bridge collapse in 2007 killed 13 people.

UPDATE…

The Boston Globe weighed in today (5/29) with an editorial echoing our reading of the Seattle and Minnesota collapses as a warning bell to the Mass. Legislature. 

(originally published Feb. 12, 2013)

About 15 years ago, at the height of the dot-com bubble, our state made tax policy choices that have shaped state policy ever
since. At the time, our economy was so strong that it seemed we could cut taxes dramatically with no consequences….

Of course, the dot-com bubble eventually came to an end.   And when it did, we still had to pay for those tax cuts. During recessions we have made deep budget cuts, and during recoveries we have barely been able to balance the budget.

Make sure you check out today’s Globe piece by Noah Berger of Mass Budget and Policy. As the Governor, legislature and citizens wrestle over details in the budget and how to address our structural revenue shortfalls, while services have already been cut to the bone, Berger outlines why it is we are in this spot to begin with. 

Read, below, and then check in at our “Campaign for Our Communities” page, and be in touch to see how you can get involved in fixing the problem and investing in our future.