Over the past couple weeks as I’ve been blogging about the pending state vote on Question 1, the effort to do away with the state’s income tax, I’ve received a lot of feedback from readers – both for and against Question 1. Frankly, the “for” comments have outweighed those against. A consistent theme in those is echoed in the recent comments by “LoudELF”:
“I personally don’t see the wisdom of sending money to the state, only to have it given back to my town for police, fire, schools, roads, etc. Why not have my town decide what needs doing, and administer it right there? The state needs people to administer all of these things which are redundant to what the towns on this. Voting yes on #1 allows for more efficiency, and for cities and towns to better determine their fate and their budgets.”
It’s a hard idea to refute — why send our money in to Beacon Hill when we can “cut out the middle man,” so to speak, and just spend our dollars locally as we need to? I’ve tried to address this line of thinking in my posts, and certainly the folks over at Vote no on Question 1 have some useful statistics on what services Belmont receives from the State that we’d be unlikely to replace. But I also reached out to our State Rep. and former Selectman, Will Brownsberger, to get his thoughts on the debate. Will was nice enough to write back with his thoughts, which I’ve included below.
“It’s quite true that resident Belmontians pay more in total income taxes than the community receives in local aid. I’m not sure what the multiple is, but based on old data, I know that it is substantial. It is not, however, sensible to think that the only value that Belmontians get from the state is local aid. Belmont is not an island. Human services, criminal justice protection, state road and park maintenance, etc. would be gutted by the proposal. Even if Belmont schools, police, and fire, are saved by a huge override vote, our quality of life will suffer, directly and indirectly in a host of ways.
Also, it’s not true that if we passed the income tax cut, overrides would sail through. It’s the homeowners who have more limited incomes and are already having trouble paying their property taxes, who are most likely to vote against an override. They won’t benefit much from an income tax
cut.”
“Finally, there is a moral dimension to this vote. It is morally wrong to abandon the mentally ill, the mentally retarded, the abused children, the working single mothers who can’t afford health care for their kids and the many others who depend on the state for assistance in one form or another. That’s really what we are talking about — it’s not about optional services and it’s mostly not about waste. No one with a realistic vision of the real human cost of this proposal could vote for it. That’s why many church communities are becoming active on the issue.”
We realize that Question 1 is Risky. Any new thing that we try always has a risk factor and the brilliant legislators up on Bacon Hill may screw it up.
What we do know, is not doing anything will lead to higher taxes and more graft and corruption. That has already been shown and proven. What we do know, is not doing anything is no longer acceptable. So the Question I have for the No On Question 1 folks is what do you suggest? Give me a workable plan that will end the craziness up on Bacon Hill and in our local governments with out lowering taxes.
Question 1 may be risky but doing nothing is stupid
I guess Rep. Browsberger is a little misguided. Getting rid of the state income tax would not get rid of state revenues, so Belmont and other municipalities would still not be “islands” nor would they be abandoning the needy. What it does is reduces the state offices that are redundant with the towns, and allows the towns to more accurately project their needs and tax accordingly. The state would still receive federal revenues, as well as revenues from licensing, tolls, fees, etc.
If the state government could show it was without corruption and inefficiency, the Yes On 1 initiative wouldn’t have gained any steam. The problem is, we’ve seen projects consistently get mismanaged, and politicians abusing the system and so on. This is a way to reduce this, and keep this on a more local-level where the average citizen can more easily be a watchdog, as well as play a role in deciding where the tax dollars go.
Please don’t take this to be an insult, as I’m not trying to take a shot, but you should form your own opinions, rather than seeing a great retort, then going to another group to seek a response. Your writing is sharp, and you are obviously educated. You don’t need others to do the thinking for you.
Paul and Will support the defeat of Q1. They provide no solution to Belmont’s $4.5m 2009 deficit besides raising taxes. Make no mistake here… if Q1 fails then the override fails and we have class sizes soaring, the elimination of sport and music programs, METCO will be dropped, the Library open on weekends only, and garbage collection fees.
The Scary part is that to make matters worse, Will’s legislative coleagues are holding off on raising tolls and other taxes until after the Election. Would Will agree to a No new tax or fee pledge for the next 2yrs if Q1 fails?
Q1 is not a moral issue when Bill Bulger gets a $235,000 a year pension, when it costs the State $122m a year because they give out tax free pensions, when you can retire at age 43 with 70% of your pay and full medical as an MBTA bus driver, when politicians travel the world on tax payer funded junkets. Somehow Deval finds cutting aid to the Mentally Retarded as the place to start cutting. That is using the Mentally Retarded as pawns in a political fight.
I will Vote YES for Belmont and YES for 1. I will not support any override next Spring without tax relief. Q1 is a temporary solution which will cause the legislature to cut and reform and then re-introduce a fairer income tax in which Belmont doesn’t get the shaft.
I urge the NO voters to rethink the consequences to Belmont of your vote.
Hey nCitizen, it’s BEACON Hill not BACON Hill. Oh…hey…wait a minute? awww!
In all seriousness, though, you guys are all singing the same song here, which is “let’s punish corrupt legislators by taking away their money.” The problem is, you haven’t put a figure on this “graft.” As I said before, your attitude is that 100 percent of tax dollars are wasted on cushy pensions and salaries, political pork, etc. The reality is that, while cushy pensions and waste are in the system, the vast majority of our tax dollars go to support programs that help our citizens and keep the Commonwealth competitive. They nurture industries like medicine, education and biotech, as well as manufacturing and retail. They help provide health care to poor and middle class families that can’t afford it. In towns like Belmont, tax dollars support everything from teachers in the class to music and art education. As to the “we’ll still get federal dollars” — as has been pointed out here, we’ll lose federal matching funds for health, education and infrastructure improvements as we cut our investment in those things. The two are linked, so — NO– federal dollars will not cushion the blow. Just the opposite: as we stop investing in our future, the Feds will say “good riddance” and stop investing in our future too. you gotta get your facts straight before you step to it, nCitizen.
Furthermore, nobody on the “Yes” side has put a figure on this graft, waste and abuse. Carla says its $.40 on the dollar. Where does that figure come from? Well, it comes from a poll she conducted. You don’t have to be a statistics major to know that polling people isn’t a good way to arrive at objective figures about things like waste, fraud and abuse. Howell’s argument that we should pass Question 1, because a lot of people think the State wastes $.40 of every tax dollar is like arguing that we should be funding a space port in state for the UFOs that visit us, just because a majority of those polled think that UFOs are for real. Give me a break. If you’re so disengaged with the political process that you think nothing that you pay in taxes actually benefits your local community, I can see how Question 1 is appealing, in a couch potato logic kind of way. If you understand how much local communities rely on money from the state, it makes no sense at all that the best way to end waste fraud and abuse is by ending income taxes all together. Lobbying reform and tighter scrutiny of agencies like Massport and the Lottery (with the help of the Fourth Estate) can go a long way towards cutting out those cancers with a scalpel, versus the chainsaw that is Question 1. That’s my 40c.
Paul,
You don’t need to put a figure on the ‘graft’. Public safety, education, roads, etc are the largest parts of the budget. By shifting the cost and the responsibility back to the cities and towns for things that are directly related to them, you strip the need to pay for them from the state. Coming up with exact figures on fraud and abuse would require partisipation of the very parties that are purpotrating the problems, so let’s just say this — Just north of here there is a state with no income tax OR sales tax that is able to manage.
Mass would still have it’s sales tax, tolls, fees, licenses, etc that raise money for it without the income tax. The local communities only rely on money from the state because they make budgets based on what the state will give them. Take out that portion, and they have to rely on the townspeople, which can decide what they want to do about it, and will have the funds from not paying income tax to afford it.
I have personal experience dealing with government entities and their employees. Let’s just say that I don’t look there when trying to find a model of efficiency. Ever hear of “close enough for government work”? I believe a chainsaw is exactly what the state needs.
Comparing again to NH, who has a similar plan to what advocates of question 1 want, Forbes ranked NH as the 20th best state for business, while MA was 36th. Businesses will see this as a way to keep employees wanting to live in MA, and be eager to keep facilities there, and even grow them, as opposed to building them north of the border. Remember, Yes On 1 does not remove the business tax, which still generates a major portion of the state revenues, so we’ll still be able to afford 70k/year toll booth collectors, cadillacs for the governor, etc.
Paul,
A YES vote is a solution. A NO vote is complicity. Pension reform won’t happen with a NO Vote. Politicians giving $70k a year jobs to HS dropout relatives of theirs won’t change with a NO vote. Belmont’s paltry $6m in State Aid won’t change with a NO vote. Nothing will change with a NO vote except the Town will be forced to layoffs dozens of employees and cut services. For a blogger who says this election is about Change you certainly seem to be protecting the status quo in a State that is failing miserably under 1 party control. A scalpel is just what Deval did in cutting police details by a few million dollars. Pension reform would save Billions but No he goes after a couple million dollars that in reality will just create more jobs for relatives of state politicians at rates equal to what the cops are getting. The scalpel approach has failed on numerous occasions. Together we can protect the quality of life in Belmont by voting Yes. Give Change a chance and vote Yes