Our Leadership Team voted in favor of a campaign for new revenues in the 2011 state budget. ONE Massachusetts network members are calling on our legislators to close tax loopholes that cost the state money and close the budget gap, which is threatening our communities with drastic budget cuts.

We’re asking the Legislature to back to following revenue options:

• Restore of the tax on dividends and interest to 12 percent, with provisions to exempt moderate-income seniors (+/- $500 million)
• Cap of the Film Tax Credit for one year to save $75 million
• Limiting Life Sciences Tax Credits by $5 million
• Repeal of the Aircraft Sales Tax exemption ($4.5 million)
• Removing the sales tax exemption for cigars and smokeless tobacco ($15 million)
• Sales tax on candy and soda ($51 million)
• Support for transparency and accountability measures advance by Revenue Committee chairmen Ben Downing and Jay Kaufman and Gov. Patrick

It was bad, but it could have been worse. Last week, Gov. Deval Patrick announced $352 million in cuts in response to a $600 million budget gap. Federal stimulus funds plugged the rest of the gap (see the Mass Budget and Policy Center's report.

The cuts hit the executive offices of state government, which include human services, public health and public education, and landed particularly hard on critical community programs for the homeless, domestic violence victims, gang involved youth, environmental protection, and public safety.

Local officials are waiting for the other proverbial shoe to drop on local aid formulas and it may not drop until a second round of 9C cuts in December, or when the Governor files his budget in January and stimulus funds are exhausted.

The Legislature’s Joint Committee on Revenue made the first of its six stops on its listening tour yesterday, hosting a session on taxes and municipal budgets at the Academy at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Revenue Committee Co-Chairman Rep. Jay Kaufman, who convened the meeting, said the aim of the listening tour is to facilitate a conversation about how best to structure the state’s tax system and end the cyclical budget crises that lead to program cuts like those likely to come from the governor’s next round of 9c cuts.

The meeting, titled Tax Policy and the Challenges of Local Government, featured a presentation by Massachusetts Municipal Association Executive Director Geoff Beckwith.

When asked about whether Massachusetts needs to increase taxes due to a possible $1 billion deficit in the fiscal year 2010 budget, and an even larger deficit next year, Beckwith noted that while there is no consensus on any new revenue proposals at his organization at this time, the group has consistently supported revenue measures put forward by the Legislature or Governor.

There are a wide variety of revenue options to look at, he said, including broadening the sales tax to include services and increasing the income tax rate.

Other options discussed at the meeting included a call for a local income tax option for Massachusetts communities. Virginia McIntyre of Concord said her town’s over-reliance on the property tax has made it difficult for the 40 percent of households there who earn less than $60,000 a year. The average property tax bill there is $12,000 a year.

Anyone who's been reading Boston.com's Budget Blues blog can see the connections between declining revenues, cuts in local aid and the ensuing cuts to libraries, schools, fire stations and other essential public structures.

Unfortunately, what many people in the state are perceiving is a series of incremental cuts that, when viewed discreetly, don't show the whole picture. People see potholes on the main street and blame their town government, rather than connecting the dots between diminished local capacity and the billions of dollars of tax cuts we enacted in Massachusetts over the last 15 years that have gutted local aid.

This is why the Joint Committee on Revenue's listening tour is so essential. We need to address these problems at the macro level. We need to connect the dots between the 9c cuts Gov. Patrick will likely announce and the obvious solution of additional revenue, which the state could raise by removing exemptions from the Tax Expenditure Budget.

Here are the tour dates:

Worcester - Tax Policy and the Challenges of Local Government
October 7th   
4:00pm to 6:00pm
The Academy at Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Framingham - Tax Policy and Vulnerable Populations
October 13th
10:00am to 12:00pm
Framingham Senior Center

(more below)

Fitchburg. On Wednesday July 15th members of the Cleghorn Neighborhood Center gathered together for a ONE Massachusetts session about the current state fiscal crisis and ways on how to better communicate about government.

In the two hour Spanish session the members of the Center learned about the decisions that have put us in our current state fiscal crisis that have jeopardized our ability to create and maintain the public structures we all value and rely on.

As a Boston resident, I'm always proud to see great events happening around the city - and across the state. But shouldn't those events - especially those that bring in tourist dollars - benefit our cities? 

In an Op-Ed in Wednesday's Globe, James Rooney, Director of Public Affairs at the Boston Foundation, and Elaine Dandurand Beattie, Vice President of the Boston Municipal Research Bureau explain how the "anachronistic relationship" between Massachusetts and its municipalities make Sail Boston more of a cost than an opportunity for the city.

Their report, "Home Field Disadvantage" found that:

due to excessive state restrictions on its ability to maintain a balanced revenue stream, the City of Boston not only did not gain revenue from hosting the 2007 playoff games, it actually lost revenue due to limited receipts and incurring costs that were not fully reimbursed. In contrast, the City of Denver, which boasts a wide range of local options with which to generate revenue, gained revenue from hosting the games. These two cities had very different experiences when it comes to benefiting from a major event held in their city.

After calculating tax receipts, reimbursements and expenses, the City of Denver gained $940,365 from hosting the 2007 postseason while the City of Boston lost $649,084. As a percentage of total state and local tax revenue, the City of Denver received 63% of total tax revenues from games it hosted, while the City of Boston received only 12%, a ratio of nearly 6 to 1. Simply put, while the Red Sox may have won the World Series in 2007 over the Colorado Rockies, its host City of Boston was at a clear home field disadvantage compared with Denver.

How do you think locally-collected funding should be handled?

Who Benefits from Multi-million Dollar Tax Incentives to Local Filming?

Everyone likes to see their hometown on the big screen, and many states are competing to entice blockbusters with tax incentives, hoping to attract this relatively low-pollution, high-profile industry. The question is whether Massachusetts taxpayers are getting enough return on these investments.

This story in today's Globe, State's fiscal picture dims: Cuts, tax hikes may be on table, is very interesting. What I want to know is, where's the table, and isn't this a good time for community input into what kind of government we want and how we pay for it?