Tax Expenditure Budget Hearing: Yawu Miller Testimony

Revenue Committee Hearing on Tax Expenditure Budget

Oct. 28, 2009

ONE Massachusetts is a network of activists and organizations across the state who are working to restore the public faith in government as the space where we come together to increase prosperity and expand opportunity in Massachusetts.

While most of our work is focused on revenue reform, we also see civic engagement and government reform as key to our greater goal of restoring public faith in government. We have found that people will support new revenues if they understand that their taxes are raised in a manner that’s fair and that government funds are spent in a manner that’s wise. Government transparency is key to this happening.

I am here to urge this committee and the Legislature as a whole to examine the tax expenditure budget as carefully as legislators examine the state budget every year when considering where to make increases and where to make cuts. We believe that there are many exemptions in the Tax Expenditure Budget that may have made sense when enacted — some more than 20 years ago — but now may no longer serve the policy goals they were intended to serve.

ONE Massachusetts urges the Legislature to take a balanced approach to steering our state out of its current fiscal crisis, an approach that includes federal stimulus funds, rainy day reserve funds, carefully considered cuts and new revenues.

The ONE Massachusetts leadership team has asked us to conduct a public education campaign about the tax expenditure budget, including how the sales tax could be extended to professional services that are not aimed at low-income people.

We want a healthy, open debate in this state about how our tax system can be reformed to provide enough stable revenues to adequately fund our communities in a way that does not ask more of low income residents than it asks of the affluent.

We understand that in the current political climate, it is not likely that the Legislature will raise new taxes. But we also understand that the cuts that are being proposed could have a devastating impact on our state and its economy.

In times like these it is critical that the state invest in its support network — in job training, safety net services, in the public universities and community colleges that are training and re-training the Massachusetts residents who make up the workforce that attracts new businesses and powers our economy.

Thank you for the opportunity to weigh in and listen in on this important conversation.

Yawu Miller
Project Director
ONE Massachusetts.