State House New Service Weekly Roundup: Exit Strategy
Clouded by sharp rhetoric, fragile egos and fluid whip counts, an endgame to the showdown between Gov. Deval Patrick and legislative leaders over tax increases and transportation began to emerge in which everyone could come out a winner, or at least save face. On this Democrats seem to agree: It’s in everyone interest to find a solution, and quickly, before unresolved questions of new revenue for the MBTA and MassDOT force action on fare hikes and muddy a budget process now fully underway and reliant upon said tax hikes. The Senate’s plan to go slightly higher on new revenue than the House—$ 600 million versus $ 500 million—and direct as much as $ 800 million to transportation spending five years from now triggered a thawing in Gov. Deval Patrick’s adamant opposition to the direction of the debate. “Very hopeful,” Patrick said when asked his thoughts on the Senate plan – a far cry from “pretend fix,” “fiscal shell game” and “meaningless” used to describe the House version. Click here to subscribe to MASSterlist, a free morning newsletter by State House News Service that highlights political news from a wide array of newspapers and journals in Massachusetts and New England When Patrick said he thought it not “likely” that the transportation debate would end without additional revenue, it’s possible he did so because he knew his veto threat was just that—a threat he never really believed he would have to follow through with. Advocates remained skeptical heading into the weekend. Transportation for Massachusetts claimed Senate Ways and Means overstated its revenue plan, particularly with regard to leasing property to utilities, putting the risk of higher fees, fares and tolls on motorists and transit riders. Regardless, the shift from Senate President Therese Murray and Ways and Means Chairman Stephen Brewer appeared to hit its mark leading into the Senate’s rare Saturday debate, leaving previously disenchanted liberal Democrats like Sen. Dan Wolf teetering on the fence. The revised plan came after two “very good, long caucuses,” as described by Murray, where Senate members “talked out” and progressives “got to be very passionate about what they feel should happen going down the road.” So the House claims the mantle of true pocketbook protectors, the Senate plays peacemaker and Patrick cuts his losses, signs the bill and says they moved in my direction? A looming possibility. They may not be talking to the governor, but Murray and Speaker Robert DeLeo are talking to each other. The House on Monday engaged in its first real debate of the year on the tax and transportation bill, carrying on late into the evening hours before approving tax hikes […]
State House News Service Weekly Roundup: Games People Play
There have been rifts over the gas tax and collective bargaining rights, skirmishes over sentencing reforms and more serious disagreements about casinos – not once but twice. But not since the great staring contest of 2010 between Speaker Robert DeLeo and Gov. Deval Patrick over slot parlors have hostilities between the executive and legislative branches been so open and raw. Patrick this week didn’t just threaten to veto the Democratic leadership’s proposal to raise $ 500 million for transportation with tax hikes on gas, tobacco and businesses. He eviscerated it, challenging not just the policy points, but the sincerity of the leaders who crafted it. “To come up with this plan is just not serious and to say it’s a plan, to say it’s a solution is just not serious and I’m not going to play that game. I’m still here. I’m still engaged. I’m still willing to talk about compromise,” Patrick said, calling it “too small” and too short-sighted after years of neglected infrastructure investments. DeLeo and Senate President Therese Murray finally fully responded this week to Patrick’s proposal to generate $ 1.9 billion in new revenue through tax reform for long-term transportation and education investments with a more immediate, and scaled down proposal focused on a 3-cent gas tax hike, a $ 1 per-pack cigarette tax increase and business taxes on software and out-of-state corporations. “We’re trying to protect the middle class. That is I think one of the major differences of the two plans,” DeLeo said Thursday after Patrick’s veto threat. DeLeo called the leadership plan one that is “more responsive to the needs of the middle class,” a clever way of packaging a $ 500 million tax increase. Murray said the plan would not “bankrupt” the current generation. “Doable,” she called it. Click here to subscribe to MASSterlist, a free morning newsletter by State House News Service that highlights political news from a wide array of newspapers and journals in Massachusetts and New England For three leaders of the same party who profess to have great respect and personal admiration for one another, Patrick, DeLeo and Murray seem to be having considerable difficulty playing nice. The governor did not see a summary of the legislative leadership’s plan until minutes before they rolled it out for the press, and they had not spoken about it before Patrick stood before the cameras to call it “a pretend fix.” Hatched largely in private among a select few lawmakers, even members of DeLeo’s leadership team were uncertain early Tuesday morning where the speaker had landed on a plan that’s already up for a vote on Monday. Two major differences between this battle over taxes and the gambling impasse […]
State House News Service Weekly Roundup: Hizzoner’s Decision
He’s been omnipresent for 20 years from Roslindale to East Boston. His endorsement is coveted by city council hopefuls and U.S. senators alike. He occasionally mutilates the English language, mangles the names of sports stars, and commands loyalty unlike any public figure in Boston. He was mayor-for-life. Now he’ll be mayor for only another nine months. This week, as House Speaker Robert DeLeo continued to wait for the rescue helicopter to take him away from Gov. Deval Patrick’s “fantasy land” of higher taxes and trains, the Governor’s Council was up to its old tricks and the race for U.S. Senate kicked into a higher gear. But little could compete with Boston Mayor Thomas Menino and “The Decision” that held foes and allies alike breathless for months. Menino decided not to seek a sixth-term and will at the end of 2013 end on his own terms — his 20-year tenure as the city’s longest-serving and first Italian-American mayor. At the first of what is sure to be many tributes to Menino over the coming months, a who’s-who of past and present power players from City Hall, the State House, and the business community crowded into Faneuil Hall on Thursday to hear Menino make it official. “I could run. I could win,” he said to the delight of the audience. Click here to subscribe to MASSterlist, a free morning newsletter by State House News Service that highlights political news from a wide array of newspapers and journals in Massachusetts and New England But slowed by illness, Menino can no longer do it his way, and so he said he won’t do it at all. Menino’s way required a tirelessness that few younger than his 70 years can muster. There were ribbon cuttings, school plays and block parties to attend, new business owners to meet and development plans to review. Before Menino retires to Hyde Park to download the latest edition of SimCity, he has his lame duck period to look forward to. “Just think what I can do in nine months. I don’t have to worry about a thing. No voters or anything else. We’re going to have some real fun,” he said. Trying to keep track of who gave thought to running for U.S. Senate in the days after John Kerry left to become secretary of state was hard enough. The mayoral sweepstakes promises to be on another level. In addition to forcing an entire generation of Bostonians to contemplate what life will be like P.M., Menino’s exit creates an opportunity for dozens of public figures bubbling over with pent-up ambition. They’ll have little time to pull the trigger and fire up their campaigns. There are probably no fewer […]
State House News Service Weekly Roundup: March Madness
The calendar says it’s spring, but Mother Nature remains unconvinced. House Speaker Robert DeLeo can sympathize. Nearly three full months into the year, and the Speaker seems no closer to making up his mind on taxes than he was in 2012 when he announced the transportation fix would be the first order of the business for the new Legislature. It still might be. House and Senate committees are still dormant, for the most part, and leaders are fixated on responding to Gov. Deval Patrick’s package of tax reforms. It’s usually at this point that Senate President Therese Murray tends to get antsy, and orders her Ways and Means chairman to advance something, anything, that senators can vote up or down – okay, up. That’s not the case, yet. “The committees still need time to have their hearings,” Murray said this week. So what about Sen. Stephen Brewer down on the second floor? He must be cooking up something right? Sex offender registry reform? “He’s cooking up the budget,” Murray said. Click here to subscribe to MASSterlist, a free morning newsletter by State House News Service that highlights political news from a wide array of newspapers and journals in Massachusetts and New England By most accounts, DeLeo has become a tortured leader. Monday morning meetings with his leadership team have turned into two-and-a-half hour long fence dancing sessions. Even simple questions like what committee is working on the transportation financing bill can’t be answered directly. DeLeo, by those around him, is said to be deeply conflicted, not just on how much revenue he can ask taxpayers to shoulder and from where it should come, but also what those votes will mean for his membership come election time next year. It’s impossible to separate the politics, a fact not missed by Charlie Baker slowly reinserting himself into the public sphere, or Bill Weld. DeLeo is equally unsure whether he wants to tackle the issue with a separate bill before the budget, in the budget, or in multiple steps, and is said to be increasingly peeved by Gov. Patrick’s rhetoric encouraging supporters to “get in the grill” of lawmakers who lack the “political courage” to vote for new revenue. Witness his radio interview Wednesday night when friend and host Dan Rea asked DeLeo from where he might pull new revenue considering he’s not enamored with the governor’s one-point hike in the income tax. DeLeo said he was entertaining Patrick’s proposed sales tax on candy and soda, but then kind of quickly shot it down, saying he was worried about government becoming Big Brother. Smart money in the building has been on the gas tax as the House vehicle of choice to […]
State House News Service Weekly Roundup: Black Smoke
White smoke was rising from the Sistine Chapel as Speaker Bob DeLeo stood outside his office prepared to take questions about the formation of his new gun control task force. DeLeo had spent much of his morning meeting with deputies Rep. William Straus and Rep. Brian Dempsey to discuss the still elusive “magic number” for new tax and/or fee revenue that could satisfy the needs of the state’s seemingly insatiable transportation system without breaking the banks of the residents who use it. But for a moment, the Speaker’s interest was piqued by what was going on in Rome where 115 cardinals of the Catholic Church had just selected a new pope. The Boston press corps had spent weeks salivating at the possibility that the city’s own Cardinal Sean O’Malley might be the next pontiff. DeLeo’s money was riding elsewhere. “I picked the gentleman, the cardinal from Spain,” he said. Office pool? “Not in my office, let me put it that way,” DeLeo quickly explained. In this case, the speaker was out of luck. New Pope Francis calls Argentina home. Click here to subscribe to MASSterlist, a free morning newsletter by State House News Service that highlights political news from a wide array of newspapers and journals in Massachusetts and New England. As DeLeo tried to handicap the papal conclave, members of his House were busy trying to guess the over-under on new tax revenues. The Winthrop Democrat may soon ask his flock to support a sizeable tax increase, how large and from what source still to be determined. Business groups like the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation testified before Straus’s Transportation Committee that $ 800 million would be a good number, well shy of the governor’s $ 1.9 billion request, but if dedicated to transportation, a reachable goal that comes close to the $ 1 billion Gov. Deval Patrick earmarked for transportation. Asked whether that would be acceptable, Patrick said he was not ready to begin negotiating, at least not through the media: “You keep asking me to bargain against myself. I’ve put the number down that I think is the right number and I’ve expected all along that there’s going to be a negotiation in that.” Until then, the Speaker’s fireplace is still burning black. While Patrick headlined a rally Tuesday in Gardner Auditorium of hundreds of union members, seniors and community organizers in support of his tax plan for transportation and education investments, a group of about 20 members of the House Progressive Caucus, led by Medford Rep. Carl Sciortino, met with DeLeo on the third floor. The caucus asked DeLeo to support $ 2 billion in new revenue beginning this year. The source, they told him, should […]
State House News Service Weekly Roundup: Backing Into Half a Cat
Four years ago Gov. Deval Patrick went to the Legislature and asked for a 19-cent gas tax increase to fund transportation. They scoffed at his idea, then raised the sales tax and swore off further revenue increases, until now. With that history in mind, a sense of irony settled over Beacon Hill this week, where there’s a possibility that the governor’s proposal to hike the income tax, lower the sales tax and eliminate some tax deductions might be driving lawmakers back to that moment in 2009 with a chance to reconsider. It would be odd if House lawmakers turned later this month to the gas tax for new revenue. But not implausible. At least not anymore. The plot thickened as the negotiations between House Speaker Robert DeLeo and Patrick – private up until now – spilled more into the public sphere. And with little to nothing else on the legislative agenda at the moment, all ears were tuned. DeLeo on Thursday went before the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce to embrace Patrick’s priorities of investing in transportation and education, with one big caveat. He committed to raising new revenue for transportation, but said the House plan would be “far more narrow in scope and of a significantly smaller size” than Patrick’s $ 1.9 billion ask. And he said he wanted to do it apart from the budget, possibly by the end of the month. And so on a snowy Friday afternoon, Patrick went before the House and Senate Ways and Means committees to testify on his own plan, an unusual but not unprecedented step by the governor to lobby lawmakers face-to-face in public with the clock ticking a little faster. And he brought charts. Click here to subscribe to MASSterlist, a free morning newsletter by State House News Service that highlights political news from a wide array of newspapers and journals in Massachusetts and New England. Cognizant of DeLeo’s comments, Patrick warned against the temptation to focus just on transportation for now and to ignore education needs until a later date. He said he did not “pad” his $ 1.9 billion investment plan, and while there may be more than one way to skin a cat, he cautioned against “backing ourselves into half a cat.” Calling “brainpower” the hallmark of Massachusetts, Patrick likened a transportation-only strategy to the idea that Texas would stop investing in oil, or Iowa turning its back on corn. And then he addressed the gas tax, a topic that has dogged him for years – in short, he was against raising it before he was for that idea. Without being specific, Patrick said he has heard that some in the Legislature want to raise […]