House Ways and Means chairman Charley Murphy was all about the facts yesterday as he unveiled a bare-bones 2010 budget that includes more than $1.8 billion in cuts. “This budget is reality,” Murphy said at a State House press briefing where he outlined a spending plan that attempts to balance the state’s books without any new taxes or dipping into rainy day reserves. “We have to recalibrate how we do business.”
Five miles away, at the Dorchester Youth Collaborative, Emmett Folgert saw a very different reality in the grim numbers. “The budget laid waste to any kind of comprehensive youth violence prevention effort the state has built,” said Folgert, the longtime director of the Fields Corner agency whose programs are a lifeline to young people being sucked into the dead-end world of gang violence. Three different existing budget line items, which together provide more than $25 million a year in funding for youth violence prevention programs, were completely eliminated the proposed House budget.
The two views help set the terms for the looming budget debate. It is coming during what has been described as the worst fiscal crisis in the state’s history, and at a time when any remaining public confidence in state government has been nearly shredded by one story after another of mismanagement, pension abuses, and tin-eared patronage hiring.
That may explain why House leaders have begun the debate by laying out a budget that doesn’t dare look to taxpayers to help close the gap, and it means any talk of taxes will be met with even more than the usual degree of resistance. But notwithstanding Murphy’s claim that the dire budget he rolled out, which includes a 25 percent cut in local aid to cities and towns, wasn’t designed to set the stage for an argument for new taxes, that’s exactly what it is doing.
A group of Democratic lawmakers was slated to meet today to discuss a possible drive for new taxes. Meanwhile, municipal leaders and advocates for the scores of programs facing deep cuts or outright elimination will be trying to make the case for new revenue as well. Making matters much worse is the likelihood that the proposed $27.4 billion House budget relies on overly optimistic revenue projections. Michael Widmer, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, a business-backed watchdog group, expects that more than $1 billion in additional cuts will be needed to balance the 2010 budget. If he’s right, the state would need to raise taxes significantly just to keep the cuts from going any deeper than those outlined yesterday. (A 1-cent increase in the sales tax would generate about $700 million a year.)
Lew Finfer, who directs the Massachusetts Communities Action Network, which is part of a statewide coalition of 35 organizations trying to preserve funding for youth violence prevention services, is ready to try to make the case for new revenue, but he’s dreading the climate in which he’ll be trying to do so. “We’re going into this fight with one arm behind our back because of the litany of stories of pension abuses and patronage jobs,” he said.
The call for “reform before revenue” makes a lot of sense. Unfortunately, much of the pension and transportation reform put forward so far by the Legislature is pretty thin gruel. Even more troubling is the fact that starving state government at this point won’t mean cuts get targeted at the abuses and excesses that have stirred such indignation.
Trying to frame the coming budget debate, Finfer said, “Can you get the point where people feel we’d be throwing the baby out with the bathwater if we just let these cuts stand?”
