Including a Revenue Message

We would all love to fully-fund each and every great public and nonprofit program that folks in our state work so hard on, and that make our state a better place to live. Unfortunately, each budget season, we find ourselves competing for a limited pool of funding for the good of our programs.

Lew Finfer, ONE Massachusetts Leadership Team member and Director of the Massachusetts Community Action Network, goes a step further. He integrates support for additional revenues into each of his budget requests.

Here is an example of a request Lew recently made to his network of advocates working on youth violence prevention and teen jobs programs:

The things that make Massachusetts a great place to live – including the public structures that many of you are fighting to support – are things that we are not able to do as individuals. In order to build safe, healthy communities, we must all work together to support our state.

Due to decades of deliberate tax and budget decisions, along with the national economic downturn, our state currently faces a $2-3 billion budget deficit. Because states are not legally allowed to run deficits, our state leadership must balance the budget using more cuts, tax increases, or a combination of the two options.

Last year, we saw big budget cuts across the board, but many cuts were reduced or avoided because they also raised the sales tax from 5% to 6.25%, bringing in over $700 million each year in new tax revenue.

The next time you set a meeting with your legislators, it is likely that they will ask you how they can justify voting for an increase for teen jobs and youth violence prevetnion programs (or even spare those items from cuts) in the face of a $2-3 billion deficit. They may even ask you what programs should be cut instead of the one for which you are advocating.

Your request for additional funding will be stronger if you can say that your organization supports increasing state revenues to support all of our public structures, including your request. This may mean ending special tax cuts or loopholes like the film tax credit or the single sale factor corporate tax, or boosting a broader progressive tax like an income tax increase.

If you worked against the Question 1 referendum in 2008, the ballot question that would have eliminated the state income tax, tell the legislator you did that. You can also say you will work against any referendum that might be on the ballot this fall to eliminate or lessen the sales tax.