Ask your Democratic state legislators...

... why the political support they get every two years from the unions is more important to them than protecting local aid to the cities and towns they represent. 

It's a legitimate question, and the only possible conclusion to be drawn once one connects the series of dots that have been lining up over the past couple of weeks.

First, there was the Democratic leadership's refusal to allow "plan design," a proposal that would allow cities and towns to save millions by designing their own employee health benefit packages, into a piece of legislation misleadingly called the Municipal Relief Act.  "Too controversial," declared Rep. Paul Donato, chair of the committee that is supposed to look out for our communities.  (More on plan design here).  According to the Mass Municipal Association, plan design would save cities and towns approximately $100 million per year.  Local officials feel so strongly about plan design that a bipartisan group of 20 mayors last week announced a plan to go straight to the ballot to seek the authority that the gutless wonders in the legislature refuse to even debate.  From the State House News Service:

Over 20 mayors and municipal officials from across the state are plotting an end-run around Beacon Hill, taking to voters a bid to relieve local budgets by wresting control of employee health plans from labor unions.

Then we have the Globe's recent renewed attention on a perennial proposal to remove union impediments to joining city and town health plans to the state's larger plan, known as the Group Insurance Commission (the GIC).  (More on Municipal GIC here).  According to a recent study by the Boston Foundation, Boston alone could save $45 million per year by joining the GIC.  In the aggregate, the Commonwealth's cities and towns would save several hundred million dollars.  Asked by the Globe last week to comment on legislative prospects for removing the absolute veto currently held by local unions on proposals to join the GIC,  House Speaker DeLeo and Senate President Murray demurred, citing the importance of collective bargaining.

And this morning, the final dot.  Top Mass. legislators warn cities, towns to prepare for a 5% cut in coming fiscal year, reads the headline in the Springfield Republican.  That's the word out of a two hour, closed door (of course!) meeting of the House Democratic caucus yesterday.  Here's an excerpt from the Republican (the non-partisan newspaper):

After leaving the closed meeting at the Statehouse, several House members, including Reps. Anne M. Gobi, D-Spencer, Benjamin Swan, D-Springfield, and Kathi-Anne Reinstein, D-Revere, said communities should brace for a 5 percent reduction in local aid.

“Considering all the obligations we do have, that is reasonable to plan for,” Gobi said.

Gobi said unrestricted government aid and Chapter 70 education aid could each be cut.

Rep. Ellen Story, D-Amherst, and Swan said they would support up to a 5 percent cut in local aid in order to avoid massive reductions in human services.

“If we level fund local aid, it seems we will devastate health and human services,” Story said.

“We’re not going to be able to hold local aid harmless,” Swan added.

So how many dollars is that?  Again from the Republican:

Local aid, which also includes money for specific programs such as reimbursements for regional school transportation, totals $5.2 billion, or 18 percent of the budget. A 5 percent cut would be about $250 million.

$250 million.  Plan design could take an estimated $100 million bite out of that, but it is "too controversial" even to discuss.  Municipal GIC could eliminate that $250 million cut entirely. 

One might think that yet another cut in local aid - in an election year - would be a bit "controversial" in itself.  And indeed, apparently it is.  House Republicans are pushing for a vote on a resolution that would commit the House to maintaining current local aid levels.  DeLeo is blocking that vote, handing the growing number of Republican legislative candidates a very ripe issue for the stump.  That isn't sitting well with embattled Democratic rank-and-file Reps, one of whom told the State House News yesterday, anonymously, "That gets everybody really [expletive] fired up... [The Speaker] doesn’t want to do anything because he doesn’t want to take the vote that early."

So to review:  (1) Plan Design is "too controversial" even to debate, because the unions oppose it.  (2) Municipal GIC is a no-go, because the unions oppose it.  And (3) already strapped cities and towns are being warned to brace for another five percent cut to local aid - which, by the way, will result in another round of property tax increases next year.  Conclusion?  The Beacon Hill Democrats who represent the vast majority of our cities and towns would rather cut aid - again! - to our communities than risk annoying the state's politically powerful unions in an election year.

For all the money and manpower the union bosses put into Democrats' campaigns in this state, there is one essential electoral commodity that they do not control - our votes.  Which is why you should call your Democratic state representatives and senators and ask them why union political support is more important to them than local aid.

Failing the smell test

One has to feel for Lieutenant Governor Tim Murray these days.  Four years ago he was the luckiest guy in the state, winning a hotly contested Democratic LG primary for the privilege of hitching his wagon to the Commonwealth's fastest-rising star.  Now, he's the political equivalent of a Prius driver - left wondering when the vehicle that once had all of his pals thinking he was the coolest cat in the room turned into a electoral death trap, accelerating out of control and barreling toward Election Day.

This week his boss added insult to injury by deploying the LG to make an argument that does not come close to passing the public's smell test.  As reported by the Associated press (via the Boston Herald),

Lt. Gov. Timothy Murray says Republican gubernatorial candidate Charles Baker is misleading the public by suggesting state employees haven’t suffered like their private sector counterparts amid the economic downturn.

 You have to hand it to LG Murray, though.  When he's asked to go out and sell a bill of goods to the public, he does it with enthusiasm.  Again from the AP:

"It’s bad enough to try to score cheap political points on the backs of public employees, but he’s wrong. He’s flat-out wrong," Murray said.

 Trouble is, Baker is right.  Flat-out right, even.  And the public knows it.  For one thing, the state payroll has been allowed to expand under Patrick/Murray, even as tens of thousands of jobs have been shed in the state's private sector.  80,837 full time employees when they came into office, 84,688 today.  A quick mathematical calculation tells me that 84,688 is more than 80,837.  As a baseline matter, many voters find it understandably intolerable that the state continues to add employees who are paid with the tax dollars that are taken in greater and greater quantities from out wallets.  Then there are all of the stories that appear in the papers and on TV just about every week touching on the broad topic of the state payroll.  In an unfortunate bit of timing for the LG, three such stories appear in our newspapers today alone:

From the Herald:

Gov. Deval Patrick's tough talk on vacation pay perks in state government has landed with a thud in the Corner Office where his top strategist and 21 other exiting staffers cashed in more than $90,500 in unused vacation days last year.

One of those 21 staffers was none other than Patrick's Chief of Staff, Doug Rubin, who cashed in unused vacation time to the tune of $11,000 taxpayer dollars.

Elsewhere in the Herald, the editors write:

It took a Herald report last week for the state Department of Transportation to begin investigating why it is that three civil engineers working for the Department of Conservation and Recreation managed to rack up more than $100,000 apiece in overtime last year, jacking their earnings for 2009 to nearly $200,000 in two cases, over that in the third.

(They are referring to this story from last week, in case you missed it).
 
 Over in the Globe, we get this little anecdote:

For 22 years, Robert Tweedie served as a part-time, on-call pharmacist for the New Bedford Board of Health, making $2,200 a year.
Then, in 2001, he took a $77,000-a-year pharmacist job in the office of Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson. After working exactly three years - public retirees’ pensions are based on their top three years’ salary - Tweedie retired, boosting his pension from $1,171 a year to $46,781.

 (These kinds of shenanigans are common enough in Massachusetts for the Globe to devote an entire ongoing series to them).

And that's just today!  Recently there has been a flood of press attention to the disparity between the severe impact of the recession in the private sector, and the, um, blunted impact felt in the Commonwealth's public sector.  On Sunday, under the headline "Public Enemies!" the Herald's Margery Egan railed,

Make no mistake. This is why we’re broke. This is why your neighborhood firehouses and libraries are shutting down and your kids’ class sizes are going up - along with your property taxes. Your local politician might try to blame the recession or energy costs or whatever. Don’t believe him.
The truth, Average Joe and Jane? You are paying more taxes and getting fewer services so that government workers - whose wallets already are fatter than yours - can continue to get theirs, and more. You’ll be scraping by in retirement, assuming you can ever retire. They’ll be retiring in their 50s, secure, with health care and pensions for life. And you paid for them.

The Globe, on February 19 reported:  With a salary of $136,000, [Governor] Patrick is out-earned by 1,294 other state employees, according to a payroll database released by the state."  And then of course there were the recent revelations concerning the (un)shocking disparity between jobs "created" in the state by the federal stimulus bill and the many thousands of state jobs temporarily funded by those federal tax dollars. 

Then there's this.  And of course, this.  And my personal favorite anecdote on this general topic - this. 

I could go on forever.  The point is, poor Lt. Governor Murray was dispatched to make an argument that the public cannot possibly be expected to believe, because it quite simply does not pass the smell test.  In much the same way that the voters instinctively reject President Obama's implausible insistence that creation of a massive new entitlement program will magically save money, the public is by-and-large unwilling to discount Charlie Baker's criticisms of the Patrick/Murray stewardship of the state payroll, simply on Murray's emphatic say-so.

As for Murray's attempt to curry favor with state employees by claiming that Baker is trying to "score cheap political points on the backs of public employees," the voters are smart enough to see through that transparent attempt to incite class warfare.  Arguing, as Baker has, that in the midst of a deep recession the Governor ought at a bare minimum to have instituted a government hiring and salary freeze is not trying to "score cheap political points."  It is common sense, and easily recognizable as such.  Most state employees - who would likely welcome the notion of working for a Governor who will get the state budget under control - will appreciate that approach just as much as their private sector compatriots.

People expect politicians to forcefully assert blatant falsehoods during election season.  It is annoying but generally accepted, like the fact that every time you buy a new cell phone, the charger port will have changed in some small but functionally crucial way.  Just because it is accepted, though, does not mean that the Lt. Governor does not lose a little bit of credibility every time he agrees to stand up and affirmatively mislead the voters on behalf of his foundering boss.

On casinos, our timing is impeccable

I noticed an interesting headline on the Drudge Report this morning, linking to an AFP dispatch carried by Breitbart.com: Chips are down for US casinos as revenues slide.

The fact that casinos are suffering along with the rest of the economy is hardly breaking news.   Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun, our closest "destination resort casino" neighbors, have been hurting for a while now (ditto Twin Rivers in Rhode Island, the nearest prototype for Speaker DeLeo's favored "racino" option).  But today's article is a nice reminder of a pesky little thing those of us who do not work on Beacon Hill like to call "reality."  Here are the lowlights:

US casinos have run into a string of bad luck as the recession and other factors cut into gambling revenues, even as more states move to get a piece of the action. Gaming revenues in the 12 US states authorizing casinos fell 5.7 percent in 2009 to 30.7 billion dollars, according to a preliminary estimate by the American Gaming Association, a trade group.
This followed a 4.6 percent drop in 2008 gross gaming receipts, the figures showed...

[Research analyst Billy] Hulkower said the trend suggests little or no growth in casino attendance over the past decade, a period that included two recessions and an economic upturn. This means economics is not the only factor, he said...

Twelve states currently authorize casino gambling, but Mintel notes that at least 25 states have proposed or are considering expanding gambling operations including lotteries and sports betting to help balance their budgets.
"If a whole lot of states are suddenly starting to allow gambling and were counting on this revenue you're going to have a problem," Hulkower said...

"The expansion of gambling does not bring more customers into the market," said Lucy Dadayan a senior analyst at the Rockefeller Institute.
"There are only so many customers, so with every new casino there are only marginal increases."
Although the economy is showing signs of reviving, casinos are still struggling, based on tax receipts said Dadayan, who calculated a decline of five to six percent in state revenues for the July-December period.
"The overall trend for the state tax collections from casinos... is still downward," she said.

The nice thing about this kind of analysis is how well its conclusions match up with yet another pesky little thing that those of us who do not work on Beacon Hill like to call "common sense."  There is no reason why gaming - particularly destination resort gaming - should be immune from the effects of an economic downturn.  For most people, other than the addicts, gambling is the ultimate form of discretionary spending.  It is profoundly frivolous entertainment - the first spending to go when belt-tightening is required.

Moreover, common sense tells us that there is a finite market for gambling.  New casinos do not create new gamblers.  They simply compete against already existing facilities for a share of the existing market.  Currently, the existing market is barely sustaining Twin Rivers, Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun.  Yet somehow, on Beacon Hill the rational conclusion to be drawn from all of this is that legalization of casino gaming in Massachusetts and construction of who knows how many new casinos will magically defy market reality and common sense to net untold millions for the Commonwealth's coffers.

Gaming Games

As expected, Massachusetts Speaker of the House Bob DeLeo yesterday released the outlines - the very broad outlines - of his pending plan to legalize casino gambling in Massachusetts. The Speaker wants two "destination resort casinos," locations TBD, and establishment of so-called slot parlors at 4 current racing facilities (in Beacon Hill-ese, this is known as "slotsattatracks"). He hasn't released his bill - or even many details of his bill. Heavens no. He won't do that until he has his Reps whipped into line for a vote. But at least we now have a general sense of what he is thinking.

Governor Patrick, who, as Brian McGrory notes in his Globe column this morning, is trying to dance a very fine line between his anti-gaming base and the pro-gaming unions, is voicing cautious support for the first part of DeLeo's plan (casinos), but opposition to the second (slotsattatracks). The third point in the state's ruling triumvirate, Senate President Therese Murray, is keeping mum - but she is widely know also to disfavor slotsattatracks.

Further complicating all of this is the fact that for Speaker DeLeo, who has two race tracks in his own district that are barely limping along, pressing him hard for slots, slotsattatracks are the whole ball game. DeLeo voted against Governor Patrick's three-casino plan two years ago, first because then Speaker (now federal corruption defendant) Sal DiMasi told him to do so, but close second because Patrick's plan did not allow for slotsattatracks.

So here's a summary of the state of play:

DeLeo = slotsattatracks + casinos to win votes for his plan. He controls the House, where most expect the first big battle to play out, with plenty of back-room enhanced interrogation techniques employed by the Speaker and his crew to convince a large number of Reps who voted against gaming just two years ago to flip their votes in an election year.

Patrick = casinos, but no slotsattatracks. He believes (correctly, in my humble opinion) that slotsattatracks presents all of the downside of legalized gambling (addiction, corruption, preying on the consumer who can least afford to toss money into a hole) and none of the upside of the 'destination resort casinos' that he favors (restaurants, hotels, enhanced tourism). In his heart of hearts, the Governor probably has no desire to replay the gaming battle that drained so much of his early political capital, and wishes the whole thing would just go away.

Murray = keeping her cards close, but based on prior statements seems to be a lot closer to Patrick than to DeLeo.

Now add another crucial little wrinkle - the tribes. Like Governor Patrick before him, Speaker DeLeo proposes somehow to limit the number of casinos that can be built in the Commonwealth. In DeLeo's formulation, we'd have two. This is fantasy.

The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA) gives a federally-recognized tribe (of which we have several) the absolute right to operate a "Class III" gaming facility (a casino) on its sovereign land in any state where such gaming is legal. Advocates for expanded gaming will rely on the public's (and the media's) relative ignorance of this complicated law to argue that a tribe may only establish a casino after entering into a "compact" with the state. This is accurate, but misleading. Under the IGRA, once a state legalizes Class III gaming and a tribe requests such a compact, the state "shall negotiate with the Indian tribe in good faith to enter into such a compact." It's compulsory. A tribe asks for a compact, the state must give it one. Further, if the state delays or refuses to enter into negotiations, or fails to negotiate in "good faith," the IGRA gives the tribe the right to petition the federal government, which is thereafter obligated to impose a compact of its design upon the state.

Bottom line: any of our tribes that have land and want to build a casino can build a casino once the state legalizes casino gaming.

This is precisely what Cedric Cromwell, chairman of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe, had in mind yesterday when he released a statement saying, "Once gaming is expanded, we intend to move forward with our plans to build a full resort-style casino in Southeastern Massachusetts under the rights afforded to us as a sovereign Indian tribe." Simplified: once you open the door, we're walking through it.

Speaker DeLeo may wish to crack open Pandora's Box, pull out what he wants (two casinos, four slot parlors) and then slam it shut again. That isn't how Pandora's Box works. Once it is opened, it is opened. Everything comes out.

Once casino gambling is legalized in Massachusetts, all of the well-crafted, hastily-crafted, and stuck-together-with-spit-and-bubblegum "plans" emanating from Beacon Hill will be rendered instantly meaningless. We'll have as many casinos in this state as there are developers interested in our market. And there are a lot of developers interested in our market.

As I've said before, many times, whether Massachusetts should adopt a 'casino culture' is open to debate. Opinions vary. I do not think it should. But let's at least have an honest debate, informed by reality and not political hokum, before taking that plunge.

Globe continues its municipal health care tirade

... so I'll continue mine.

Today's installment of what is now effectively a three part Globe series is about something called the state Group Insurance Commission - the "GIC" for short. I wrote a little bit about this over a year ago. The GIC is the Commonwealth's state-administered health plan. "Minicipal GIC" refers loosely to the notion of allowing our cities and towns to enroll their employees in the GIC, thereby saving hundreds of millions of dollars. Bigger plan = more options, more flexibility, and lower costs. I am personally quite familiar with this issue, having worked on a proposal crafted by my former boss, Kerry Healey, when she was Lt. Governor. Healey's plan, which would have given municipalities the unfettered ability to join the GIC if they wished, almost made it past the finish line at the end of the Romney/Healey Administration... but not quite. Governor Patrick, after besting Healey in the 2006 gubernatorial election, co-opted the municipal GIC idea (great!) and then gutted it (not great) by caving to pressure from organized labor and inserting a provision in the implementing legislation that gave local unions an effective veto over any decision to join the GIC. As a result of that veto power, as the Globe reports today, only 19 of the Commonwealth's 351 cities and towns have joined the GIC.

So what kind of dollars are we talking about here? Big ones, that's what kind. From the Globe:

Cities and towns would save tens of millions of dollars in health care costs for employees, retirees, and elected officials by joining the state’s much larger, more flexible health care system, according to a new report by the Boston Foundation.

The foundation’s detailed study of four municipalities - Boston, Cambridge, Melrose, and Marshfield - illustrates how health care expenses are severely hampering communities across Massachusetts.

Boston, for example, could reduce its health insurance premiums this fiscal year by up to 17 percent, or $45 million, by joining the state’s Group Insurance Commission, the report finds. Melrose, which joined the GIC in July, will likely save $1.6 to $1.8 million annually, says the report, which the foundation will release today.

“The irrefutable point,’’ the report concludes, “is that there could be significant savings for cities and towns - in a time of severe fiscal challenges - if they were allowed to join the GIC apart from collective bargaining.’’

And there's the rub: "apart from collective bargaining." More from the Globe:

Currently, communities can join the GIC only with the approval of local unions. But with some exceptions, unions across the state have rejected such a move because it would end up costing their members more money, particularly in the form of higher copayments.

Cities and towns are pushing the Legislature to change the law so communities can join the state system without union approval.

“It’s the single most important step the Legislature can take to address the budget crisis of the cities and towns,’’ Paul S. Grogan, president of the Boston Foundation, said in an interview yesterday.

As anyone who has ever dealt with a union knows, union bosses do not agree to tie their shoes without collectively bargaining about it first. The union mantra - "you give something to get something" - has the weight of a Holy Commandment in union world. Brad Tenney of the Commonwealth's largest firefighters' union argues to the Globe that "Members gave up pay raises or accepted smaller pay raises through the years for the health care benefits they have."

That may be true in some cases. Assume it is. So what? If there's one lesson we should have all collectively learned as we rode the nauseating economic roller-coaster from the highs of 2004-2006 to the lows of 2008-2010, it is that things change. One day you have a secure job, the next you don't. One year a bonus, the next a pay cut. People who used to shop at Whole Foods now patronize Market Basket. We all see countless examples of this adaptation and flexibility every day. Most of us do not assume any longer that current economic reality - whether based on a written agreement or a nod and a handshake - is writ in stone. We adjust, we compromise, we push forward and we hope for better times ahead.

But not the union bosses. For them, a benefit negotiated is a benefit locked in forever, if they have anything to say about it. That is why, as the Globe reports, "[c]ities and towns are pushing the Legislature to change the law so communities can join the state system without union approval." The only way to make the needed change is to ensure that the unions don't have anything to say about it. That is the unfortunate situation that they have created with their intractability on this and many other issues.

And let's be clear. Nobody is proposing to strip municipal employees of their generous health benefits. Joining them to the GIC would simply bring municipal benefits in line with those enjoyed by state employees - which are still extremely generous. The Globe notes that municipal employees currently pay an average $5 co-pay to visit their doctors. Five bucks. Unless you are a municipal employee, you probably pay closer to $20. And guess what? You also help to pay the delta between that $5 co-pay and the $20 you pay, through your ever-increasing property taxes, hiked year after year in good part to keep pace with exploding municipal health insurance costs.

So here's a summary: allowing cities and towns to join the GIC without union approval would save millions upon millions of dollars, while still providing our municipal employees - many of whom (including those in my own town) are by and large treasures of their communities - with extremely generous, comprehensive health care coverage. Seems like a pretty good trade, especially at a time when our representatives on Beacon Hill can hardly draw breath without telling someone that they are doing everything they can to get the state out of the red without raising any more taxes. Sounds like a no-brainer, right?

Wrong. Globe again:

Public employee unions and retiree groups, which make generous donations to the treasuries of many state officer-holders, are well-connected on Beacon Hill.

In brief interviews on Monday, House Speaker Robert DeLeo and Senate President Therese Murray expressed little desire to strip union employees of long-held collective bargaining rights.

So that's that. At least until November.

Great series - a week too late

The Globe yesterday and today ran a two-part feature story analyzing how and why employee and retiree health care costs are crippling the Commonwealth's cities and towns. Both parts - linked here and here - are well worth your time. If you are in a pinch and just don't have the ten minutes required to read both pieces, take a quick look at the interactive graphic linked here. It does a better than good job at explaining the crux of the problem in thirty seconds.

And there's the irony of this issue. For such a massive and apparently intractable problem, its fundamentals are quite easy to identify and to understand. In fact, a reader can get a basic understanding of both the problem and its primary cause simply by reading the Globe headlines that ran yesterday and today. First: Runaway health costs rock municipal budgets. Second: Unions safeguard health benefits. Cause and effect. Or, more precisely in this case, effect and cause.

The two Globe articles make very clear a base truth that has been well known to policy makers at the state level and to local officials who must deal with that truth every single day: municipal health benefits - both for current employees and for retirees - are unaffordable as they are currently structured. Pure and simple. With each year, as what are called "unfunded liabilities" (basically: obligations incurred for which there is no identified source of funding) pile up, that truth becomes more and more profound.

Well known too - and obvious - is the solution. Contracts that are unaffordable need to be re-negotiated. Period. Current employees should derive no real comfort from a contract that promises benefits down the road that are in no way affordable. Cities and towns can - as Springfield and now Lawrence are illustrating - go belly up. Unfortunately, fiscal reality has little if anything to do with the calculus once politically powerful unions are part of the equation. And when it comes to the prospect of renegotiating existing contracts to reduce bargained benefits, those unions are functionally the only part of the equation worth mention.

The Globe's second piece, the one that ran today, captures the relevant dynamic in three quick paragraphs:

But organized labor, fiercely protective of its members, has largely refused to budge, resisting local efforts to transfer more health care costs to workers and move communities onto the state’s health care plan. State lawmakers have shown little appetite for forcing an overhaul of the system.

The state forbids cities and towns from shifting health care costs to employees without bargaining with unions. It is this aspect of state law that municipal officials say the Legislature must rewrite to address the crisis.

Municipal unions and retiree groups, however, have for decades cultivated close ties on Beacon Hill - spending generously in campaign contributions - and have so far successfully fought major changes.

Looking at the state's fiscal problems, I often point a finger of blame at public employee unions. While they deserve "blame" in the sense that they are indisputably a major cause of a great number of fiscal problems in the first instance, and a huge and often insurmountable obstacle to reform in the second, in another way it is inappropriate to "blame" the unions. They do what they are supposed to do. They exist to advocate for their members. They operate (usually) within the law. It is unquestionably the case that on an individual, short-term level, it is "against the interests" of a municipal employee or retiree to support renegotiation of an existing contract. This is the time-honored "bird in the hand" rule in operation.

The true blame lies with our elected officials, who time and again bend to the will of the unions and block or avoid reforms that become more clearly necessary with each passing year. This is the point of my subject line for this post: "Great series - a week too late." Exactly a week ago I noted that a supposedly major piece of legislation - a so-called "Municipal Relief Act" - deliberately omitted a proposed change in the law to allow local officials to design their own employee and retiree benefit plans. Dubbed "plan design," this proposal has been a major policy aim of the Massachusetts Municipal Association for some time. According to the MMA, plan design authority would save approximately a hundred million dollars a year at the local level - real money even in good times.

But plan design was not to be. Again. According to Representative Paul Donato, Chair of the Committee on Municipalities and Regional Government that authored the toothless "Relief Act," plan design was "too controversial" even to be proposed, much less debated on its merits.

"Too controversial," as I noted last week, is Beacon Hill vernacular for "the unions don't like it." Particularly in an election year, that is more than enough to earn the proposal a cradle stifling.

The Globe feature makes for excellent and informative reading. It should be widely circulated. It probably would have made little to no difference had it run a couple of weeks earlier, while plan design could still have made the cut for inclusion in the Municipal Relief Act. But it couldn't have hurt.

Friday Morning Miscellany

Charlie's got the mo'. That's the only conclusion to be drawn from the latest Suffolk University-7 News poll on the gubernatorial race, as reported in the Herald, and on whdh.com. Channel 7's inimitable Andy Hiller sums it up:

Deval Patrick is holding on... Charlie Baker is coming on... Christy Mihos is barely on... and Tim Cahill needs to turn it on.

The biggest winner in our poll is Republican Charlie Baker.

He now seems set to cruise by Christy Mihos in the GOP primary..(47% to 17%) and is showing the most growth of any of the gubernatorial candidates.

Governor Patrick has mo' too... just in the wrong direction. The Herald disagrees with Hiller's conclusion that Governor Patrick is "holding on," reporting

Meanwhile, there are ominous signs for Patrick. Only 29 percent of likely voters said they thought the governor deserved re-election, compared to 60 percent who wanted to give “someone else” a chance. Equally grim for Patrick is a job approval rating of just 35 percent, and 68 percent who view him as a “weak leader.”

Using the sour economy as an excuse won’t fly with voters, the survey shows. Only 22 percent agreed that Patrick is a “victim of the bad economy.”

29 percent "deserves re-election" is a rough number three months into an election year. Perhaps the worst news for Patrick lies in that second bit, though - the result showing only 22 percent of voters will let him get away with his preferred mode of 'leadership' (finger-pointing).

Looks like that Superbowl ad didn't do much for Tim Cahill. The Treasurer got some exposure earlier in the month when he made much of a Superbowl ad buy. No, he didn't spend millions - broadcasters reserve a slot for cut-rate local market ads, and Cahill snatched it up. The ad was intended to convince voters that the decade-long Beacon Hill Democratic fixture has transmogrified into a genuine "independent." This is a tough sell for Cahill, first because of his history as a statewide office holder, and second because of the long and very public evaluation of his chances in a Democratic primary that immediately predated his change of registration. Voters who are paying attention aren't so easy to fool. They can tell the difference between opportunism and ideology. In any event, the Suffolk poll shows the voters aren't buying what Treasurer Tim is selling, as noted by the Herald in a separate article titled "Analyst says Timothy Cahill's suffering from 'lack of definition':

State Treasurer Timothy Cahill may have made a grand exit from the Democratic Party, but that bold move has done little to boost his independent street cred.

A new Suffolk University/7News poll shows only 26 percent of likely voters view Cahill as a “true independent.” That compares to 47 percent who view him as a “true Democrat,” and 26 percent who were undecided.

Being viewed as a "true Democrat" is hardly the worst thing that can happen to a statewide candidate here in Massachusetts. This year, though, being viewed as a Beacon Hill Democrat is probably something to be avoided. Hence, Cahill's continuing effort to flee his true identity.

Meanwhile, Christy is... still running. In the November Suffolk poll, the mercurial Christy Mihos held a small lead over Charlie Baker among Republican primary voters. A few months later, without having run a single ad, Baker has surged past Christy to a 47-17 lead among those same voters. In a question asking Scott Brown's voters their preference for Governor, Mihos didn't even register (43% said Baker, 28% Tim Cahill, 11% Patrick, 2% Jill Stein of the Green Party, and 16% are undecided, as reported by Andy Hiller). Ouch.

Ironically, in a month that has seen his campaign bounce a $20,000 check and lose his celebrity consultant and top fund raising draw, the news that there are still 17% of Republican primary voters willing to support him might well be the best news Christy has heard in weeks.

UPDATE (2/27): Mihos's spiral accelerates.

The exodus continues. The Globe gives front page space this morning to the accelerating phenomenon of state legislators making the decision to leave office rather than face the voters this year. Yet another day of front page treatment for the Beacon Hill Democrats' long series of embarrassing scandals:

Republicans are expected to seize on ethics scandals that have forced several Democrats out of the Legislature in recent years. Former senator Dianne Wilkerson is awaiting a federal trial on charges that she took bribes, and former senator James Marzilli stepped down after being accused of accosting several women. Salvatore F. DiMasi, the former House speaker, was indicted in a federal corruption probe after his resignation in January 2009, just three weeks after his Democratic colleagues reelected him speaker during an ethics scandal.
DiMasi is accused of taking money from a software firm he helped to win a state contract. Republicans were thrilled at news yesterday that DiMasi’s trial is expected to begin in September, during the campaign.
“Any incumbent who voted for Sal DiMasi has a target on their back,’’ said Jason Kauppi, a Republican consultant. “Scandal was everywhere around him. They still voted for this guy. Someone has to take responsibility for condoning the culture of corruption.’’

Well said. And as the Herald noted earlier this week, the DiMasi scandal is likely to continue to burn its way through the Beacon Hill Democrats all year, as his trial approaches and a long line of party luminaries are summoned to testify. A lot of legislators will have cause to deeply regret their sheep-like votes to reelect DiMasi as Speaker back in January - especially the freshmen who had the dubious honor of making that vote their first.

They still don't get it

According to the Herald earlier this week, "House Speaker Robert DeLeo said a bill to legalize expanded gaming will be released in the next few weeks, and said he expects a vote before the House budget is debated in March."

Okay... now take a look at a calendar. It is February 25. In four days, it will be March. If a casino bill is to be "released in the next few weeks" AND the Speaker "expects a vote before the House budget is debated in March," then you can be sure Mr. Speaker is not planning on much of a debate prior to that vote. Nor much time for an extremely interested public to internalize the proposal and provide feedback to the legislature prior to the vote.

By any measure, the proposition of expanding legal gambling in the Commonwealth - whether by way of "slots parlors," "slots at the tracks," or full blown "destination resort casinos - is a very big deal. Should the state legislature decide to go that route the Governor will almost certainly go along, having blown a whole lot of political capital already in a failed attempt to legalize casino gaming earlier in his administration.

Successful passage of a 'casino bill' this year will significantly change the budget calculus, allowing spendthrift legislators to plan for unknown and unknowable millions in additional state revenues, pushing off necessary spending cuts for another year. It will touch off fierce battles at the local level across the state, as developers who have been eying potential casino sites swoop in with bulging wallets and defenders of a more serene way of life mount the barricades against their efforts. Ultimately, development of one or more casinos in this state will change the 'character' of at least the area(s) in which they are built, and possibly of the state as a whole.

I've explained my thoughts on expanded gaming at length - here, here, here, here, here, and here. I think casinos, 'racinos' or slot parlors are a lousy proposition for the Commonwealth, not so much because of moral objections (I have them, but they are personal) as out of a deep certainty that placing a bet on gaming to pull the state out of its economic doldrums will end the same way as most nights at the casino end - in bitter disappointment and even deeper debt. But those objections (set forth at greater length than I'd realized at the links above) are not my point here.

Opinions vary on gaming in this state. It's a debate worth having. Unfortunately, comments this week by House Speaker Bob DeLeo - the man commonly understood to hold the future of gaming in Massachusetts in his hands - strongly suggest that this extremely important issue will be "debated" in the legislature in the same perfunctory, outcome-determined way that every other issue of any moment is "debated" in our legislature.

At this point, the Speaker won't even provide the broad outlines of the gaming bill that all the world knows is being drafted in secret, behind the closed doors of his office. Is it slots at the tracks? Maybe. Full blown casinos? Maybe. If so, how many? Nobody knows.

And nobody will know until Mr. Speaker deigns to release his bill to his members. Even that will likely happen in closed caucus to give the Speaker and his cronies plenty of opportunity to firmly twist the arms of the healthy majority of those members who (responding to similar arm-twisting by now-indicted former Speaker Sal DiMasi) voted against expanded gaming the last time around. The arms will be twisted, the votes secured, and only then will the bill be released and voted on - as quickly as possible. Leadership will even have the gall to cite the pending budget bill as the reason for the rushed process. Wait and see if I'm not right.

All of this just goes to show that despite the klaxon wake-up call delivered to Beacon Hill's sclerotic ruling class just a month ago, the Democratic leadership still doesn't get it. This heavy handed, government behind closed doors nonsense fuels a lot of the voter anger that put Scott Brown in Ted Kennedy's old office, put Deval Patrick's poll numbers in the cellar, and has a steady stream of long-time Democratic pols heading for the exits rather than face an angry electorate in November.

Yet DeLeo and his crew soldier on. Business as usual.

"Fair and reasonable"... but that's not the point

Let's re-cap what has become a stale story:

In January 2009, Sal DiMasi, the recently (overwhelmingly) re-elected Speaker of the Massachusetts House resigned in the face of an escalating federal investigation into allegations of fraudulent activity. He was the third Democratic House Speaker in a row to end his tenure in such fashion here in the Commonwealth.

In June, the former Speaker was indicted.

In October, he was indicted yet again, on additional charges.

In December 2009, a related brouhaha erupted on Beacon Hill with the revelation that in the midst of a deep recession, the House had spent nearly $400,000 on a private law firm to represent the interests of the Office of the Speaker in connection with the DiMasi investigation.

From multiple fronts (including, in fairness, from a tiny minority within the House Democratic caucus) came calls for full disclosure of the legal bills that added up to that surprising total. New House Speaker Bob DeLeo steadfastly resisted those calls. He ultimately tried (unsuccessfully) to placate his critics by appointing a hand-picked attorney (yet another one!) to review the bills in question and render judgment as to their reasonableness. That review was to include no public disclosure of the contents of the bills in question.

End of re-cap. I'm sure you've been waiting with bated breath for the news reported - finally! - today on Boston.com (and elsewhere). The Speaker's hand-picked attorney has rendered his judgment, and all is well. Review finds House legal bills were reasonable in DiMasi investigation, reads the Boston.com headline. Long exhale.

Except... the question was never really whether Gargiulo Rudnick, the firm blessed with the House's largess, had over-billed the Commonwealth. Not really. The question everyone wanted to get at back in December, the question Speaker DeLeo stiff-armed by appointing yet another lawyer to conduct a review of the first lawyers, was: what, exactly, were the interests of the Office of the Speaker that needed protecting in the DiMasi investigation?

We've been repeatedly assured that Sal DiMasi's sins were individual ones; that his departure cleansed the House of its latest infection. But those lawyers racked up $400K in bills dealing with something, presumably something pretty significant. What? Disclosure of the bills and the narratives usually included with such bills would have answered that question. The report issued today does not.

Well, to be totally fair it does answer that question partially. And it provides some intriguing new information. Here's the partial answer: those lawyers reviewed a lot of documents. A lot lot. As in (from page 8 of the 15 page report), "approximately 1,080,000 documents, including emails, spreadsheets, PDFs, Word documents and paper documents." That's a lot of trees!

But wait, there's more. "A total of 58 computers, two (2) servers, and one year of backup tapes were analyzed for responsive [to federal subpoenas] materials as well as 94 locations for paper documents." I don't envy those lawyers one bit.

And here's the intriguing new information: While Gargiulo Rudnick was initially retained in January 2009 to coordinate the House's response to multiple subpoenas issued to the Office of the Speaker, it wasn't until April 16, three months later, when "Federal investigators served an additional grand jury subpoena... upon the Keeper of the Records, House Ways and Means Committee." (page 6 of the report). So a quarter of a year into its investigation, the US Attorney's office determined that it needed to expand the DiMasi investigation to the House Ways and Means Committee. The Ways and Means Committee, as you probably know, is one of the most powerful bodies on the Hill, responsible for formulating the House's version of the annual budget, among other things.

Under Speaker Sal DiMasi, the House Ways and Means Committee was chaired by... now-Speaker Bob DeLeo.

I'll digress now, as I nearly always do whenever I type something that might arguably cast an implied aspersion on the current Speaker, to note that he's never been accused (so far as I know) of being corrupt and - more importantly to me - we have a mutual trusted friend who assures me that he is a straight arrow. So despite the weighty ellipsis in the paragraph above, I'm not trying to imply anything about the current Speaker beyond this: his reasons for wanting to avoid public disclosure of the legal bills detailing the work performed by private lawyers to protect the interests of not only the Office of the Speaker, but also of the powerful committee that he chaired during the time period under investigation, are fairly obvious.

Obvious too is the simple fact that today's report (cost to the taxpayer, $13,000 - or $866.67 per double-spaced page) does little to answer the very legitimate question asked in December and still pending today: nearly $400K in legal bills paid by the taxpayers of Massachusetts... for what?

We'll find out eventually.

"Too controversial"

Ask any elected municipal official for the single largest cost burden weighing on his or her town's finances, and the chances are good that municipal health care premiums will be the answer you get. Municipal health plans are dictated by the state, in a all-too-typical 'one size doesn't fit all' arrangement that imposes huge and avoidable costs at the local level.

That's why the Massachusetts Municipal Association (MMA), the state's primary political advocacy arm for city and town officials, has been pushing for a change in the law to allow municipalities to design their own employee health benefit plans, tailoring them to fit differing local needs and saving - according to the MMA - approximately $100 million each year.

On Beacon Hill, the House Committee on Municipalities and Regional Government has been hard at work cobbling together what it calls the "Municipal Relief Act." Since the MMA has identified plan design as the next best way (besides an increase in local aid than nobody sees in the cards) to bring relief to our 351 cities and towns, one would think that 'plan design' would be a part of that package. You know, so that it could go to the floor and be debated on its merits, and then voted up or down by our elected representatives - many of whom spend a great deal of oxygen and ink pledging to do whatever they can to help the cities and towns they represent. Wrong. Here's the State House News this afternoon:

Lawmakers are poised to vote on a plan Tuesday aimed at prodding municipal government to streamline services and save money, a proposal that also boosts auto inspection fees and does not address what municipal leaders have described as their biggest cost driver: rising municipal health care premiums.

Empowering city and town leaders to redesign health plans for their workers, which advocates for municipalities say could save $100 million statewide, was “too controversial” to include in the wide-ranging proposal, according to its lead sponsor, Rep. Paul Donato, co-chair of the Committee on Municipalities and Regional Government.

Get that? "Too controversial." And why, you ask, is a proposal to allow local officials to save money by designing their own health insurance plans "too controversial" even to include in a "wide-ranging proposal"? As usual in these situations, the answer is simple: the unions don't like it. Again from the SHNS:

But employee unions have countered that empowering municipal leaders to make unilateral changes to health plans would cut workers out of the bargaining process and could result in unaffordable premiums and cost-sharing.

Okay... but that sounds an awful lot like the sort of argument that might be made on the floor, to be set and considered against the many arguments in favor of plan design that would doubtless be presented by the MMA and others. You know, in a debate. Like they have in democratic systems of government in other places like, I dunno, North Carolina and Nebraska.

But as we all know, it is an election year. And in an election year, proposals that might rankle the powerful union bosses cannot be suffered to see the light of day, lest the "debate" take a populist turn and our representatives be forced to either buck the bosses or defy the will of the voters who will soon have their biannual opportunity to pass judgment on the representation they are getting. Much better to stifle the proposal in committee.

Instead, the package that will be released this week for consideration by the House contains - wait for it! - a 20 percent increase in auto inspection fees that will hit the Commonwealth's drivers for a cool $27 million this year.

Yet another example of a reform opportunity deliberately bypassed in favor of yet another dip into our wallets.

"Too controversial," my tuckus.

There goes another one

From the Globe: St. Fleur won't seek reelection to House.

State Representative Marie St. Fleur will not seek reelection to the seat she has held since 1999, a statement from her office yesterday said. St. Fleur, a Democrat who represents parts of Dorchester and Roxbury, did not give a reason for her decision.

You remember Rep. St. Fleur. She ran the shortest-lived campaign for Lieutenant Governor in Commonwealth history when she was tapped in 2006 to team up with then-AG Tom Reilly, apparently before Reilly's campaign ran a background check. 24 hours of news stories about St. Fleur's well known financial, um, "issues," and she was dropped from the ticket.

St. Fleur represents one of the safest of Massachusetts' many safe D districts, so it's hard to attribute her decision this year to bail out to the Scott Brown effect. But we can add her to the growing list of Beacon Hill fixtures deciding this year to move along anyhow. This is nothing but good news.

Cahill's Catch-22

The Globe this morning runs a front page article titled "Patrick challengers offer ideas to close budget gap." The sub-title reads: "But Cahill demurs on detailing a plan." That sounds familiar for some reason...

Three paragraphs in comes this jaw-dropper:

And state Treasurer Timothy P. Cahill, although he promises to cut spending on health care, education, and local aid, says he cannot offer more details about his plans until he is elected governor. “I don’t have enough insight into the budget, especially particular areas where money is being wasted, until I get in there,’’ he said.

Just to clarify for those who might be joining late, Tim Cahill is the Massachusetts State Treasurer. He's been the Treasurer for the past eight years. The first paragraph of his official bio says he "manages the state finances...". A year-old, pre-gubernatorial-campaign version of that bio went further, calling him "the Commonwealth's Chief Financial Officer."

One might reasonably ask how he's possibly fulfilled that important CFO role for most of the past decade, while lacking "enough insight into the budget" to identify potential spending reductions.

But in truth, Treasurer Cahill's demurral to the Globe's invitation to "come up with five ways [he]would close the more than $2 billion budget gap the state is facing next year" is not an answer so much as implied recognition of the Catch-22 that he has walked into at this early stage of the campaign.

Earlier this month at a state AFL-CIO conference, Cahill reassured his long-time union allies that if elected he will keep his hands off of the current public pension system. That public pension system is, by any honest account, a huge part of the cause of the state's current fiscal problems - both at the state and local levels. A couple of weeks later, Cahill performed a tax-cut about-face and announced a proposal to cut state taxes across the board.

These two bold statements: "leave the pension system alone" and "tax cuts across the board" are intended to woo two very different groups of potential supporters. The first is obviously meant to retain and shore up the support of organized labor, a crucial part of the political machine that he spent years building as a Beacon Hill Democrat, before his politically-induced conversion to "independence" late last year. The second, just as obviously, represents an attempt to poach the state's resurgent fiscally conservative faction (Republicans, Unenrolleds and Democrats alike) from Charlie Baker, the obvious and natural choice for such voters.

The problem for Cahill is that there is no way to connect up his two bold statements. There is no way to square that circle. You can't get there from here, as they say. Some significant reform of the state's public pension system, such as proposed by Charlie Baker, is a sine qua non for getting the state's budget back in order - and for implementation of any significant tax cuts. Left as it is, as Cahill proposes to do, the public pension system will continue to consume an increasing share of state and local budgets, edging out other spending and forcing never-ending tax increases just to keep pace with current obligations.

Treasurer Cahill certainly knows enough about the budget to know this, his utterly incredible profession of ignorance in today's Globe notwithstanding. It's a Catch-22 of Cahill's own making. To wriggle out of it he will eventually have to retract - or at least significantly revise - one of this month's bold statements. It will be interesting to see which he chooses.

"It's as simple as that."

Long-time Democratic state house fixture Senator Joan Menard announced earlier this month that she is joining the incumbent voluntary retirement party on Beacon Hill, and will decline to seek reelection this year after three decades in the legislature (21 in the House, 12 in the Senate).

Explaining her decision today to the State House News Service, the outgoing Senator said, "I decided I didn't want to campaign again... I just decided I didn't want to do it again. It's as simple as that."

Maybe it is, but looking over election records for the past few cycles (back through 2002, which is as far as the Secretary of the Commonwealth's website will take me), I cannot help but wonder if there is a very particular kind of "campaign" that Senator Menard decided she "didn't want to do." Specifically, a contested one. It seems Menard has not had a real campaign in nearly a decade. I have no idea if she was challenged with any regularity in the two decades before that, but the demographics of her district and the Massachusetts Republican Party's long, unfortunate history of leaving the vast majority of legislative incumbents unopposed for cycle after cycle both suggest that Senator Menard may have long ago forgotten what it is to work for her office.

This time, she was going to have a primary and (if she made it through that) a general election challenger, in a year when anti-incumbent sentiment is running very, very high. It's a good bet that when she told the SHNS today that she "didn't want to campaign again," she meant exactly that. She doesn't want to campaign. There is a difference between "running," as in unopposed, and "campaigning," as in 'knocking on doors eating rubber chicken 3 meals a day seven days a week debating fund raising and putting every available moment for several months into convincing angry voters to give you another go.' Those are very different things.

Of course, with three decades in the legislature and a career as a municipal official and then as schoolteacher before that, it is entirely possible that this particular Senator just happened to hit retirement in an anti-incumbent year. She also told the News Service, "You really don't want to stay too long. You want to leave at the top of your game." Which begs two related questions: (1) 32 years!! What would have been "too long?" And (2) why did it take the Senator three decades to get to the top of her game?

More likely, Senator Menard's calculus was exactly as it appears to have been: she's had a good ride, and she just doesn't have a contested race in her. She is hardly alone in performing that calculus, as a growing number of her colleagues in Massachusetts and in Congress come to the same conclusion.

Meanwhile, my Facebook feed overfloweth with invitations to Republican campaign kick-offs. There will be more. Additional incumbents will decide to follow Senator Menard out the door rather than face a credible challenger in November. Others will choose to fight, and some of those will lose. Still others will continue to believe - as they have been conditioned by experience to believe - that so long as their name appears on the ballot, the voters will put them back in office for as long as they wish to serve.

This blinkered outlook was expressed nicely today (again to the State House News) by Representative Ellen Story (D-Amherst). Asked to assess her party's prospects in November in light of increasing anti-incumbent sentiment and voter frustration, Rep. Story was sanguine. "I can't think of a single rep who is going to lose their seat." Of course, Rep. Story represents Amherst, sometimes known as "Cambridge West," so she can be forgiven her political bubble dwelling. Back here in the real world, Rep. Story's colleagues are all too aware of the fact that many of them will have a capable challenger in November, some of them for the first time in their (often long) legislative careers. Some of them will not want - or will not be able - to handle the challenge.

As Senator Menard said, "It's as simple as that."

Update 2/18/10: Another one. From the State House News:

Rep. Bill Greene (D-Billerica), in his ninth-term, has no plans to run for a tenth, he told the News Service Thursday. Greene, who joined a handful of Democrats recently to criticize House Speaker Robert DeLeo's leadership, said he intends to retire once his term expires. "I'm old enough," he said with a smile as he walked toward his fourth floor office. The news was first reported earlier this week by Greene's local paper.

Tuesday lunchtime miscellany

A needed reset? Looking out my window at the virtual white-out created by the very considerable amount of snow coming down, I cannot help but note that at this time last week, the internet, television and radio were all abuzz with dire predictions about the next day's apocalyptic storm. Many schools had already preemptively canceled classes for the next day. The Governor was soberly discussing storm preparations. States of emergency had been declared. Today, with snow coming down at mid-day at pretty much the clip that was predicted, incorrectly as it turned out, for last Wednesday... there's nothing. Boston.com's home page as I type has barely a mention of the weather. This is it. My wife tells me that on the streets near our home, cars are sliding off the road. And yet, so far as I know, state workers (essential and... otherwise) are still at work, with no mention of sending them home early. There was much lamentation last week, post Chicken Little-o-rama, of our lost Yankee fortitude; much self-flagellation by meteorologists and public officials alike over their shared responsibility for whipping up costly public panic over what - even if it had panned out as predicted - would have amounted to nothing more than a run-of-the-mill February snowstorm in New England. I realize this is school vacation week, and so the muted public reaction to today's weather could have something to do with the fact that most kids are not in school anyhow. But I would like to think that our deserved collective embarrassment over last week's ridiculousness caused a good, firm push on our societal reset button. Every snowfall need not conjure the Blizzard of '78. That Boston.com article I linked above contains this little nugget from a National Weather Service meteorologist:

“If temperatures get colder, it may be a little more problematic,” he said of road conditions for this evening's commute. “But as long as people use some common sense, it shouldn’t be a problem.”

True today, true last week. Here's hoping we remember next week.

The checks and balances of Charlie Baker. On the off chance that you are not a daily reader of the Lowell Sun and you missed the excellent political column by Peter Lucas a few days back, read on. It makes the case for electing Charlie Baker Governor in November about as well as anything I've seen. Here are the highlights:

Simpler and smaller.

That's the way Republican Charlie Baker sees state government.

Hardly were these words out of his mouth than Gov. Deval Patrick and his new friend, Senate President Therese Murray, who once said the governor was "irrelevant," teamed up to propose a streamlining of state agencies to help small businesses create jobs and stimulate economic development.

"I'm thrilled to see this come about," Baker said. "It confirms what I've been saying all along. We've got to cut the size of government, period. We are spending at an unsustainable rate. We've got to make government simpler and smaller."...

Prior to working in the health-care industry, Baker served as secretary of Administration and Finance in the administrations of Republican Govs. William Weld and Paul Cellucci. In that capacity, Baker put together more state budgets than the incumbent governor has. With state Sen. Richard Tisei as his running mate, the pair bring to the campaign more political and business experience than the rest of the field of candidates for governor and lieutenant governor combined...

Baker knows government finances, and his knowledge concerns Patrick, who eventually will have to face Baker in a debate and defend all those failed campaign promises he made four years ago.

Read the whole thing by clicking here.

Now that's what you call "marginalized." The State House News reports that all of the candidates lining up to oppose Governor Patrick in November stand in uniform opposition to last year's massive sales tax increase. We're talking about people aligned all across the ideological spectrum, from fringe lefties Grace Ross and Jill Stein, through ideologically ambiguous Democrat-in-Unenrolled's-Clothing Tim Cahill and Republican-then-Unenrolled-then-Republican Christy Mihos, and finally to solid fiscal conservative Charlie Baker. As the State House News puts it:

All four gubernatorial candidates addressing a technology industry group in Waltham Tuesday endorsed cutting the state’s 6.25 percent sales tax rate, positioning Gov. Deval Patrick as the only member of the field on record backing last year’s 25-percent increase. Patrick, who preferred a gas tax hike and other targeted increases to the sales tax bump, ultimately signed the budget the Legislature sent him. Administration officials said Patrick would support restoring the 5 percent rate once revenues recover elsewhere. Green-Rainbow candidate Jill Stein, unenrolled Treasurer Timothy Cahill and Republican Charles Baker want to ratchet the sales tax back to 5 percent, and Republican Christy Mihos would peg it at 3 percent, they said in Waltham Tuesday. Democrat Grace Ross said she would trim the rate to 5 percent, and recalled speaking at a rally against last year’s increase.

Yikes. Now that's what you call "marginalized." Of course it does leave Patrick as the only candidate out there for that obscure portion of the electorate that likes paying higher taxes...

Problem is, the flip is only the first part

Treasurer Tim Cahill is getting some press attention this morning for his plan(ish) to cut state taxes across-the-board. Some of those articles are accurately pointing out that a mere two weeks ago, Cahill unequivocally expressed opposition to an income tax cut. Here's the Associated Press (via MassLive.com):

Yet the policy reversed Cahill’s comments two weeks ago, when Republican Charles D. Baker announced his own gubernatorial campaign. At the time, the treasurer said he favored cutting corporate taxes, but not the income tax rate.

Cahill said then an income tax cut would not “put people back to work.”

He also told the State House News Service: “I don’t think it’s necessary at this point.”

Baker’s campaign manager, Lenny Alcivar, pounced on the change.

“Will the real Tim Cahill please stand up?” Alcivar asked in a statement. He noted that three years ago, Cahill praised Gov. Deval L. Patrick’s “courageous” stand against cutting the income tax rate.

To his credit, Cahill did not try to weasel out of the obvious (and quick!) change in position, as many other politicians would. He did not try to explain how "I do not think it is necessary" really meant "we've got to do it now!" He just owned up to the "flip". Again from the AP:

“If I’m going to flip, I’m going to flip in favor of cutting taxes,” the independent candidate told The Associated Press in an interview...

In his interview with the AP, Cahill said he changed his position as he developed his recovery plan. He said he concluded many small businessmen pay their taxes through the income tax rate, so a cut would leave them with more money to hire workers.

“The more research we did, we realized cutting corporate taxes was not enough. If you want to spur job creation, you have to do it at the small-business level,” he said.

That's good as far as it goes. The more statewide candidates are out there spending time and money clamoring publicly for tax cuts the better, so far as I'm concerned. The problem for Cahill is that his recent, rapid transformation - and especially the way in which he chose to phrase his initial opposition to an income tax cut - lifts the veil on the fiscally conservative persona his campaign is trying so hard to create for him.

Way back when, in early February, Cahill opined that the income tax cut proposed by Charlie Baker "would not put people back to work." That is just not how a fiscal conservative thinks. It is pretty much the opposite of how a fiscal conservative thinks. It's like a guy showing up to seminary and saying he wants to convert to Christianity and become a priest... but he does not buy the whole "thou shalt not kill" thing.

After 20 years in retail politics, including two statewide races, Cahill would have voters believe that it was only in the past two weeks that his "research" convinced him that income tax cuts benefit small business. But his quick shift speaks more to a finger in the wind than a nose in a book.

Again, though, I am all for another statewide candidate joining the tax cut brigade, no matter the motivation. The real problem with Cahill is not his "flip" yesterday.

The problem is that with every "flip" comes a "flop." And since Cahill's flip in this instance was so clearly motivated by political calculation rather than personal conviction, it is not hard to guess which way he'll flop when the winds change.

A pitch, sure. But no plan.

"Just In" says BostonHerald.com this afternoon, "Cahill pitching across-board tax cuts in recovery plan."

Sounds great! But it turns out the Herald (which is actually just reprinting a dispatch from the State House News Service) gives Cahill too much credit even in its headline by using the word "plan" to describe Cahill's pitch. A more accurate headline would read, "Cahill pitching across-board tax cuts," period. An even more accurate - if considerably less kind - headline would read, "Cahill pitches for headlines," or "Cahill pitches for attention," or "Cahill doubles-down on fiscal conservatism charade."

You do not have to get too deep into the article to see what I mean. Three paragraphs in, there's this:

Cahill did not offer numbers to delineate how deeply he hopes to reduce each tax, or the collective impact on the state’s revenues. "We’re not proposing any specific numbers right now," he told the News Service. "It’s something well have to work with the Legislature on.”

Ah, yes. After he gets elected Governor, he'll work with "the Legislature"... by which he means the Massachusetts Legislature... by which he means his fellow Beacon Hill Democrats... on the "specific numbers." For an across-the-board tax cut. Riiiiiight.

So what Treasurer Cahill has "pitched" today is in no sense a "plan" in even the most rudimentary sense of the term. It's an aspiration at best, but in truth it cannot even be fairly called that. More likely it is a pitch that some consultant told him was essential for him to make at some point soon to try and grab on to some part of the Scott Brown coalition. The "Reagan Democrat" part. The part that is not necessarily bothered by the fact that he is a lifelong Democrat with a long track record as a Beacon Hill fixture so long as he feigns the outraged populist thing even semi-convincingly.

Ponder for a moment a world in which Tim Cahill somehow catches lightning in a bottle and is elected Governor this year. What message, do you think, will be received by the Democratic leadership in the State House? Remember, Cahill's election would mean that the voters, for all of their disappointment in Governor Patrick and their disgust with Sal DiMasi, Diane Wilkerson, Anthony Galluccio and the rest, will have voted to put yet another Beacon Hill Democrat into the corner office.

The message the Legislature would take from such a result is: hey, the voters weren't so angry after all. They just wanted Patrick out. Business as usual to commence after lunch. Hey Tim, when are you changing your registration back so we can host a fun-da?

In any event, nothing in a Tim Cahill victory would say to the DeLeos and the Therese Murrays of the world, never mind the much further left benches over which they preside, to go against their every political inclination and enact an "across-the-board tax cut."

Cahill is like a kid running for class president in the 4th grade, promising his voters what he thinks they want to hear. Chocolate iced cream for lunch, every day! Will the school allow it? I'll work with them on that!

More to the point in the short term, simply by making the "pitch" and gaining the headline, he allows himself now, for as long as his campaign may last, to repeatedly say he's the "only candidate who has proposed an across-the-board tax cut." He'll probably also refer to his non-existent "plan" because, heck, the newspaper already did.

All of this in an effort to convince a small group of voters who (by necessity) are not paying much attention that it is he, a guy who just last week stood up at an organized labor event and promised not to touch a public pension system that is bankrupting the state, who is the "true fiscal conservative" in this race. Against Charlie Baker. Nonsense.

Cahill is taking advantage of the fact that, at least until he shows some staying-power, the press and the public are a lot less rigorous in evaluating the proposals thrown out there by the perennial third party candidates who tend to populate our ballot. Grace Ross, Christy Mihos and Jill Stein will make similar proposals (similar in credibility, if not necessarily substance). That's all fine. In the meantime, Charlie Baker will continue to make sober, considered and responsible proposals to cut spending, reduce taxes, reform the state's out-of-control bureaucracy and get the Commonwealth back on a sound fiscal footing. And unlike a hypothetical Cahill victory, Charlie's win on Election Day - likely sweeping in a new crop of Republican legislators in his wake - will send a loud and clear message to the Legislature. Then perhaps they really will be in a mood to talk about tax cuts, across-the-board and otherwise.

Just words? Just words?

Uh oh.

Speaking of the Massachusetts gas tax, anyone who closely observes both Massachusetts and national politics ought to be more than a little concerned about recent statements made by President Obama concerning his new amenability to a middle class tax increase. As reported in Business Week:

President Barack Obama said he is “agnostic” about raising taxes on households making less than $250,000 as part of a broad effort to rein in the budget deficit.

Obama, in a Feb. 9 Oval Office interview, said that a presidential commission on the budget needs to consider all options for reducing the deficit, including tax increases and cuts in spending on entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare.

“The whole point of it is to make sure that all ideas are on the table,” the president said in the interview with Bloomberg BusinessWeek, which will appear on newsstands Friday. “So what I want to do is to be completely agnostic, in terms of solutions.”

Obama repeatedly vowed during the 2008 presidential election campaign that he would not raise taxes on individuals making less than $200,000 and households earning less than $250,000 a year.

"On the table." Where have we heard that before? Ah, yes. When governor Patrick began his slow drift away from a very similar campaign vow not to raise the Massachusetts gas tax, he started by picking up the notion of a gas tax hike, dusting it off, and putting it "on the table."

It is no secret that President Obama and Governor Patrick tend to use the same words to the same effect. Many will recall the most famous example of this phenomenon:



No mystery there. They have many of the very same people writing their words. As the months have passed on the Obama Administration, it has also become increasingly apparent that our president and our governor tend to set their tables with the same options. Tax increases. Spending increases. New burdens on business. Massive increases in the public sector workforce.

In ordinary life, when a person vows not to do something, it generally means that 'something' is pretty well "off the table." Not so with these guys. A vow, a promise, a pledge - no matter. Put it all on the table... but don't let it gather any dust before taking it back off the table and putting it into action.

The point is: anyone out there who might be riding out the current economic storm and taking slight solace in the notion that the president promised to leave them alone and only go after the "rich" had better pay attention. Your paycheck is suddenly "on the table" too.

"At least he tried to raise the gas tax"

There is a very telling exchange related in a front page article from yesterday's Globe about the challenges that Governor Patrick faces in wooing back the all-important Democratic "grass roots," who were so important to his win in 2006 but who have since abandoned him in droves.

Under a photograph of Patrick speaking to a tiny group of erstwhile supporters in what appears to be Pee-Wee's Playhouse (but is actually someone's home in Cambridge), the Globe reports:

Even on friendly terrain, though, the governor encountered some resistance. Fred Berman, a Somerville activist, told Patrick that some of his friends, disappointed with the governor’s support for casinos and his failure to increase the gas tax, are planning to support Jill Stein, the Green-Rainbow Party candidate.

“If the progressives stay home, if they don’t come out in force, we will be congratulating you on one term,’’ he warned.

Brian Corr, an African-American activist, said the black men he works with in Boston are also disillusioned.

“They are furious,’’ Corr told the governor. “They feel like they’ve been left behind. Their issues have not been addressed. I do my rap. But they look at me like I’m insane.’’

Patrick responded by saying he has never been closer to reforming sentencing and criminal offender record information laws, issues important to Boston’s black community. He told Berman that at least he had tried to raise the gas tax.

So there you have it. Patrick has evolved in four short years from pledging unequivocally not to raise the gas tax in an October 2006 debate exchange with his opponent, Kerry Healey, to four years later trying to regain the support of the grassiest of the grass roots by whining that "at least he had tried" to raise that very tax. Wow.

The obvious problem for Patrick is that if he stays in the race he needs these grass people (heh) to do his grunt work, and to vote for him in a primary against Grace Ross, that will be dominated by the left wing. But in the general, he needs unenrolled voters to pull the lever for him (while he simultaneously tries to keep too many grass people from fleeing to Dr. Jill Stein). Those would be the same unenrolled voters whose support he was courting in October '06 when he said he would not raise the gas tax. The same voters who have abandoned him over the past three years as he supported tax hike after tax hike and failed to keep the vast majority of his campaign promises. He (or any Democrat) will have a hard enough time wooing back those voters, especially up against Charlie Baker, a bona-fide fiscal conservative, and a newly-minted "Independent" Democrat doing his implausible best impression of a fiscal conservative (anyone else wonder when Tim Cahill's eyes are going to start glowing red?).

Simpering reminders of his failed effort to hike yet another tax on the Commonwealth's consumers may help Patrick in the Cambridge playhouse, but they will only continue to erode his already anemic support in the broader electorate.

At this point, the Governor must feel a rush of adrenaline every time "202" pops up on the caller ID. That call can't come soon enough.

The Scott Brown Effect (local edition)

Plenty has been written about the palpable changes down in DC since Scott Brown's election to the U.S. Senate. Although there is no local equivalent of the health care bill to illustrate the power of the "Scott Brown Effect" on state government here in Massachusetts, the political Geiger counter that is the local news media has been registering a steady series of aftershocks since election day. Some examples:

No new "revenue enhancements." That's what Massachusetts House Speaker Bob DeLeo said this weekend about the pending state budget. Governor Patrick, because he seemingly cannot help himself, earlier this month proposed a budget that includes significant new taxes on employers and consumers (most conspicuously, a new kind of "sin tax" targeting junk food). According to the State House News, DeLeo and Senate President Therese Murray are pouring cold water on the idea. "There'll be no new taxes," said DeLeo, while Murray called Patrick's proposed tax on candy and soda "a bad idea."

I know, I know - Beacon Hill Ds always say they have no plan to raise taxes, then they go ahead and raise taxes. Sometimes they admit to it, most times they call the tax hikes by another name: a repealed exemption, a fee increase. But DeLeo this weekend went further, saying, "I think any type of discussion about any other, you know, revenue enhancements will not be in the budget." The Scott Brown Effect.

And you know they'll do it, too. The State House News also reports that Speaker DeLeo has some sage political advice for his suddenly endangered troops:

Speaker Robert DeLeo has a message for the seven score or so House Democrats who will try to get reelected in the fall: Scram. Vulnerable Democrats say they have heard the message loud and clear from House leaders, increasingly in the days after Sen. Scott Brown’s upset victory over Attorney General Martha Coakley in the U.S. Senate election. The House’s senior members and strategists want less seasoned lawmakers in volatile districts, particularly, to spend less time on Beacon Hill, and more time mingling with constituents, calling in-district voter contact a sort of inoculation against the type of anti-incumbent wave some analysts think may be building.

If there's one thing we know about Massachusetts House Democrats, it's that they do what the Speaker tells them to do (with a few notable exceptions - eight, to be exact). So when you realize this summer that you cannot turn around in your local community without your state rep getting in your face, you can blame: The Scott Brown Effect.

A smaller helping of alphabet soup. The State House News has yet more potentially good news from our suddenly taxpayer friendly (or at least attentive!) State House:

Senate leadership will propose a drastic reduction in the number of agencies under the state’s far-reaching economic development bureaucracy, empowering the governor’s economic development chief with enhanced oversight of several quasi-public agencies and opening the door to a state-owned bank.

Under legislation developed over the last year with Senate President Therese Murray’s supervision, the state’s housing and economic development secretary would chair all boards that handle economic development work, including MassPort, the port authority that largely escaped consolidation measures in last year’s sweeping reorganization of the transportation bureaucracy, and the Mass. Convention Center Authority...

Six existing agencies – dealing with travel and tourism, trade, and marketing – would be collapsed into offices within the newly created Mass. Marketing Partnership, overseen by a nine-person board.

The alphabet soup list of agencies that currently share overlapping and wholly uncoordinated responsibility for "economic development" in Massachusetts is a source of enormous budgetary waste. Boiling them down and creating some transparency cannot help but make things better - perhaps substantially so. I'm not sure about this notion of a "state-owned bank" though. Only one other state has such a thing (North Dakota). And I'm instinctively leery of any entity prefaced by "state-owned." Still, on first blush this looks like a good initiative overall from the Senate President. Her people will note that she's been working on this piece of legislation "for over a year." You can bet, however, that its roll out now owes more than a little bit to... you know.

Even the Governor is getting into the consolidation act. From today's Globe:

The governor is also proposing to merge three state agencies that provide credit for small businesses, pool their resources, and float a $25 million bond to make it easier for the new agency to provide small-business loans, equity investments, and loan guarantees to private banks that support small businesses. The proposal would merge the Community Development Finance Corporation, the Economic Stabilization Trust, and the Massachusetts Technology Development Corporation into a new entity, the Massachusetts Growth Capital Corporation.

Presumably these are some of the "efficiencies in government" that Patrick promised he'd find when he was running in 2006, when his opponent, Kerry Healey, suggested that his election would lead to increased spending and increased taxes (crazy!). So why did it take until now, eight months before the end of his term, for Patrick to notice that three state entities are doing a job that could be handled by one?

That's right: The Scott Brown Effect (you're supposed to hear a majestic gong in your head when you read that. Is that working?)

Obviously the Democrats on Beacon Hill have become suddenly aware of their own political mortality, and are earnestly hoping that a flurry of market conscious, pro-taxpayer activity will eclipse a sorry record of profligate spending and extortionate taxation. Just like Martha Coakley hoped that if she said "Republican" and "Kennedy legacy" enough times, the voters would ignore the fact that she failed to make so much as a single argument in favor of her own candidacy. I'm betting it won't work for the Democratic machine any better than it did for Coakley.

Perhaps the most significant manifestation of The Scott Brown Effect here in Massachusetts is this; Brown's campaign and his victory have, at long last, brought into our political reality a phenomenon that has long been confined to the worst nightmares of Beacon Hill's ruling cabal: an electorate that is paying attention.