Dirty-energy billionaire

There are so many loathsome things about dirty-energy billionaire Bill Koch’s ramblings about Cape Wind in CommonWealth (“Look who’s talking,” Spring ’13) that it was hard to know where to start. His dismissal of renewable energy’s environmental and climate benefits as “BS arguments”? His blatant NIMBYism? His climate change denial? His hypocrisy? His greed?

But perhaps the most disturbing thing about Bruce Mohl’s revealing glimpse into Koch’s rarified world was Koch’s unapologetic disclosure of his two-pronged strategy to try to stop Cape Wind from getting built: “delay, delay, delay,” and “elect politicians who understand how foolhardy alternative energy is.” In the interview, Koch details how he has attempted to influence the political and legal process, from installing lobbyists in Washington to funding an opposition front on the Cape, which goes by the name of Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound. The non-profit group, which masquerades as an environmental organization, is engaged principally in the manufacture of flimsy lawsuits focused on delaying Cape Wind. Koch himself paid $100,000 toward the executive director’s salary in 2010, according to the group’s tax return.

Karen Wood
Director of Communications
Conservation Law Foundation
Boston

Tax analysis misses

I read with interest the cover story in CommonWealth’s Spring issue titled “Fear and loathing on the tax trail.” This piece offers an interesting retrospective view on our state’s fitful relationship with tax burdens and perceptions. However, the centerpiece of its analysis, a chart that put Massachusetts in the middle of the 50 states in terms of state and local taxes as a share of personal income, misses a central competitive reality: Massachusetts rarely, if ever, competes against most US states for innovation economy jobs. In fact, a forthcoming survey of Massachusetts competitiveness undertaken by the Mass. High Tech Council includes just 16 states in our competitive set. These include innovation-friendly states such as North Carolina, Virginia, and Colorado—all of which have lower tax burdens than Massachusetts.

Restricting CommonWealth’s analysis to just those states in our competitive set reveals that Massachusetts’s share of state and local taxes relative to personal income is higher than a majority in our peer set, and is another data point that contributes to our relatively low cost-competitiveness in national rankings.

No one disputes that Massachusetts is a strong competitor on talent. A 2010 study by the Milken Institute ranked Massachusetts number one in science and technology. But we cede that advantage when we consider a variety of costs—including taxes. A 2012 Tax Foundation/KPMG study placed Massachusetts 44th out of 50 in overall cost-competitiveness.

CommonWealth’s analysis, while well intended, paints with too broad a brush. We’re not facing competition from higher tax states such as Alaska, Wyoming, or North Dakota; we’re facing it from a range of peer technology states with deep reservoirs of talent whose government policymakers are highly motivated to compete with us for high tech jobs. To sustain and grow the high technology sector that is so critical to the Massachusetts economy we must not allow our chief competitors to outflank us on taxes.

Chris Anderson
President
Massachusetts High Tech Council
Waltham

UPDATES

Ramos back at work

Johnny Ramos is back at work as a security guard, but he’s steeling himself against the possibility that he could once again be out of a job in the blink of an eye. Ramos was the focus of a story in the Spring issue (“What happened to Johnny Ramos is criminal”) after he lost his job of 27 years because of a decades-old felony conviction.

Ramos and at least five other security guards for Longwood Security in Boston, which is based in the Back Bay and provides security services for area colleges and hospitals, were forced out after a state trooper conducting an unauthorized audit discovered they had criminal records. A 50-year-old state law bars felons from holding jobs as security officers. Ramos’s conviction and the convictions of some of the others dated to when they were teenagers.

Ramos says some other State Police officials, who apparently felt bad that he had been fired, urged him to have his criminal record sealed and reapply for his old job. The end run around the law worked. Ramos got his job back (Longwood couldn’t technically see a felony conviction on his record), but it could all be for naught. If the State Police conduct another audit of Longwood, Ramos and the other security guards, all minorities, could lose their jobs again since State Police have access to sealed records.

Ramos, a single father of a teenage son who also cares for his aging mother, says he is glad to be back at work. “It just depends on what the State Police do,” he says. “My job is happy, the building I work in. The people here seem happy, just those guys, the State Police, that probably are not too happy.”

Paul edges Peter

Only one Picknelly brother was going to win the downtown Springfield casino sweepstakes (“Springfield bets on sibling rivalry”), and real estate developer Paul Picknelly emerged victorious over his older brother Peter, the head of Peter Pan Bus Lines. In April, Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno selected MGM Resorts International, which had joined forces with Paul’s Blue Tarp Development, to put forward a casino plan for the Pioneer Valley city. MGM proposed an $850 million complex in the South End of downtown Springfield.

Peter partnered with Penn National Gaming on an $807 million proposal on the northern edge of downtown on land currently occupied by Springfield’s bus station, Peter Pan headquarters, and The Republican, Springfield’s newspaper of record. The older Picknelly may have overplayed his hand when he waffled on a non-binding agreement to move his bus operations to the city’s planned multi-modal center at Union Station. Instead, he announced that the bus line would stay put if Penn National did not get the go-ahead from the city.

The Peter Pan chairman did receive some good news in May when a Hampden County Superior Court judge threw out a lawsuit launched by Northeast Gaming Group, owners of Palmer land where Mohegan Sun wants to build a casino. The company alleged that Picknelly reneged on an agreement to work with Northeast on the Palmer project in order to pursue the Penn National deal.

Springfield holds a referendum on the MGM plan on July 16.