revenues

As we move into the season where state legislators will decide on what gets funded in the state budget and what gets cut, we wanted to share various organizing materials for your use.

The most important single thing you can do during the next 5 months when the budget decisions are made is to organize a local meeting with your state representatives and state senators. Here you can tell them why these programs are important to you, why their funding must not be cut and cuts made should be restored, and the tax and revenue options that could enable this.

Each of your legislators will be meeting 1:1 with the powerful House and Senate Ways and Means Chairman during the next two months to tell them what their budget priorities are.

So when you meet with your legislators, you have a specific "ask" or proposal for them, namely, will they make funding the specific programs and at what funding level you care about be one of the budget priorities they make in their meetings with the Ways and Means Chairman.

You decide, based on your priorities which specific programs you want to bring up at these meetings. For example, as a youth violence prevention and teen jobs advocate, I will be bringing up programs like Shannon, DPH Youth Violence Prevention Program, Teen Jobs--YouthWorks and School to Career, ASOST, and/or Mentoring.

Remember that potential allies may be wary of promising support for our priorities while our state operates under a $3 billion deficit. They are forced to build budget priorities in an environment in which many worthy programs are competing against each other to be spared.

If we come to the table with suggestions on how to face our ongoing budget issues, options like reforming our current tax breaks, utilizing our Rainy Day Fund, and raising new, progressive taxes, then our credibility in asking for programmatic funding, or rolled back budget cuts is vastly improved. 

We wanted to share these documents for your use from a statewide training we did at the beginning of February:

1. Understanding the State Budget: how we got a deficit, what combination of cuts, savings, taxes was made last year, and what could happen this year.
2. Organizing meetings with legislators: A guide to setting meetings with your legislators, talking to them about your budget priorities, and what you can say on revenue if they say, "there's no money".
   

Cross posted from  A Healthy Blog by Brian Rosman

Michael Widmer and the Mass Taxpayers Foundation he heads have long been recognized as one of the preeminent authorities on the Massachusetts budget and spending levels. The Foundation’s analysis is considered honest and credible. When Mike Widmer speaks, people listen.

That’s why today’s Globe op-ed, “Health law costs aren’t the problem” by Widmer is so important. The Foundation has reviewed actual health reform spending, and corrects the common wisdom:

Many Massachusetts Representatives have already been asked by their constituents to support an "adequate, balanced tax package."

They know that Massachusetts has worked for decades to build a system of public structures that keep our communities safe and healthy, educate our children, and draw businesses to our state.

The House has already passed its version of our State Budget. [Budget Process]

Now is the time to ask your Senator to support our public structures with an "adequate, balanced tax package."

 

HOW TO PARTICIPATE IN THE VIRTUAL RALLY:

1. Contact your Senator. Tell your Senator that you support an adequate, balanced tax package that both addresses our structural deficit and stabilizes the public programs that we depend on!

   Customize your message, telling why restoring these public programs is important to your local community!

2. Pass this on to your personal and professional networks via Facebook, mailing lists, or dining room table - and recruit five of your friends and neighbors to do the same.

3. Let us know how it went! Once you've called each of your legislators, Twitter about it with the tag: #MassRevenues
   

Boston community groups gathered today at the Massachusetts State House to tell their legislators:

“We need to raise new revenue to invest in our future and stop these cuts!”

Meanwhile, in the Boston Globe:

House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo said yesterday that he is "open-minded" about raising the Massachusetts sales tax to help the state cope with a historic economic downturn, a sign that representatives will seriously entertain at least a one-cent hike in the sales tax in an upcoming budget debate.

"I'm open-minded towards it, as I am with the others," DeLeo told reporters yesterday, after being asked how he felt about increasing the sales tax.

...The House is scheduled to begin debating its budget Monday, a spending plan that is loaded with deep cuts that have drawn protests from social-service advocates, as well as unions. Business groups and state residents have said a recession is the wrong time to raise taxes. [Boston Globe]

In preparation to call my legislators for this week's Virtual Rally, I've decided to check out which of the amendments proposed after the release of the House's Ways and Means budget called for increased revenue.

I'm scanning down the list of the 978 proposed amendments, looking for words like tax and fee.

Aha!

This sounds promising:
Amendment #131    Clark, Katherine    Alcohol Tax Exemption

Let's read the text: 

Ms. Clark of Melrose moves to amend the bill by adding at the end thereof the following section:-

“SECTION X. Subsection (g) of Section 6 of chapter 64H of the General Laws, as appearing in the 2006 Official Edition, is hereby amended by striking out, in line 72, the following words:- “and one hundred and thirty-eight”.”

Umm... So what does that mean??

We are excited to announce the official launch of the Virtual Rally to Support Our State!!

Massachusetts has worked for decades to build a system of public structures that keep our communities safe and healthy, educate our children, and draw businesses to our state.

Now, in an effort to avoid raising state taxes, the House Ways and Means Committee has proposed to dramatically cut those public structures in a time when we all rely on them more than ever.

All this week, our legislators will be considering amendments to our budget. Debate starts on April 27th. Now is the time to talk to your legislators!!

HOW TO PARTICIPATE IN THE VIRTUAL RALLY:

1. Contact your legislators - in the House and in the Senate. Tell them that you support an adequate, balanced tax package that both addresses our structural deficit and stabilizes the public programs that we depend on!

   Customize your message by telling your legislators why restoring these public programs is important to your local community!

2. Pass this on to your personal and professional networks via Facebook, to mailing list, or in person - and recruit five of your friends and neighbors to do the same.
3. Let us know how it went! Once you've called each of your legislators, Twitter about it with the tag: #MassRevenues

 

Charles Krupa AP Motorists, many with Massachusetts license plates, drive along the dense retail strip of the Daniel Webster Highway in Nashua, N.H., on Tuesday. A sales tax case Massachusetts is pursuing against a lone tire vendor could evolve into a much broader issue

Check out South Coast Today By GLEN JOHNSON Associated Press February 04, 09 

BOSTON — A sales tax case between Massachusetts and a lone tire vendor could evolve into a much broader issue, experts say, forcing Bay State residents to pay their state's tax on everything they buy in tax-free New Hampshire and allowing higher-tax states like Connecticut and Rhode Island to come here looking to recover their own money.

Go below the fold for an easy to read description of the Mass law regulating the "use Tax" and find links to the Mass Department of Revenue. For the easy to read summary thank  Peter Porcupine.

What is the Use Tax? read below

Lessons from 1994's Campaign for Guaranteed Tax Relief

You've probably heard Jim Braude asking tough questions on NECN's NewsNight, and on WTKK's Jim & Margery. In our last Insider Budget Briefing, ONE Massachusetts members had a chance to ask Jim their own questions!

On Wednesday, December 17th, the second in our series of Insider Budget Briefings analyzing the current public debates on tax policy, Jim Braude, former Executive Director of the Tax Equity Alliance of Massachusetts, debriefed 30 attendees on the lessons he learned during the Campaign for Guaranteed Tax Relief in 1994.

Keep your eye out for future events!

State reps Will Brownsberger (D-Belmont) and Alice Peisch (D-Wellesley) met with constituents in Belmont last night to talk about tolls, taxes, road and rails (as reported in the Belmont Citizen Herald). What makes this meeting somewhat remarkable is that it’s relatively rare for lawmakers to talk so frankly and openly about taxes.

But with I-90, commuter rails and Green Line rails running through their respective districts, neither lawmaker can ignore the looming funding problems our state’s transportation entities are facing. Kudos to the solons for bringing in Mike Widmer, President of the Mass. Taxpayers Foundation, to explain the relative merits of several solutions being kicked around Beacon Hill:

We all rely on Massachusetts public structures to provide clean water and public transportation, to educate our children, to control communicable diseases, and to perform countless other functions that are vital to the personal and economic health of our state.

9C cuts to our public structures are already occurring due to our state’s budget gap, and more cuts are likely to be imposed during the FY10 budget debate. Now is the time that we must begin to decide what we want and need from our government, and how we are going to pay for it.

The public is already analyzing and discussing our many options