Editorial Roundup: New England
Boston Globe. July 5, 2023.
Editorial: The Legislature should stop dithering on tax relief
After a year of waiting, taxpayers could use a break and the state could use a boost to its competitive edge.
For more than a year, Massachusetts taxpayers facing rising housing costs and increases in the price of just about everything, from eggs and milk to their utility bills, have been waiting for the tax breaks they were promised.
Governor Maura Healey was quick to pick up the tax relief ball in February, offering her own $742 million package of cuts aimed at benefitting families and boosting the state’s competitiveness. The House, taking up that theme, opted for a more cautious approach by phasing in some of the tax breaks and offering a more modest exemption on estate taxes but served up a generous package that at the end of four years would put some $1.1 billion back in the pockets of taxpayers annually.
The Senate followed, with a substantially less generous package overall — totaling about $590 million in its first and subsequent years but also including some small tax benefits aimed at incentivizing housing opportunities and production.
Now the real work begins — all of it behind closed doors on Beacon Hill — as six lawmakers, including the chairmen of the House and Senate Ways and Means Committees, thrash out a final product. The outcome will impact family budgets and this state’s economic future for years to come.
“We think you can have an inclusionary tax relief proposal and still stay within that $600 million envelope for fiscal 2024,” said Doug Howgate, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, previewing the theme of a report the group is scheduled to issue later this week.
A package that includes the best of the House’s efforts to address the state’s outlier status on the estate tax and short-term capital gains taxes, while adopting some of the Senate’s housing-related proposals — including an increase to the Housing Development Incentive Program (included in Healey’s bill) and an increase in the annual authorization for the low-income housing tax credit — looks like the basis for a meaningful bill.
The Senate’s more cautious approach just wouldn’t solve the problems Healey identified.Asan earlier Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation analysis also noted about the Senate tax package, “Its exclusion of capital gains tax reform and more limited estate tax and child and dependent tax credit relief undercuts its ability to meet two key goals: promote Massachusetts’ competitiveness and address high costs of living.”
Massachusetts is one of only three states in the nation (the others are Wisconsin and South Carolina) that tax short-term capital gains at a higher rate than long-term gains. Here, assets held for less than a year are taxed at 12 percent compared to 5 percent for other income. Healey and the House saw the wisdom in leveling that playing field — the House phasing the change in over three years.
The House approach on raising the exemption on the estate tax (keeping in mind that Massachusetts is one of only 12 states that actually levy an estate tax) to $2 million and doing away with the so-called cliff effect (taxing the entire estate from $1 if it exceeds the current $1 million exemption) is preferable to the Senate’s use of a tax credit but ought not to be a deal-breaker in talks.
What could — and should — be a deal-breaker is the Senate’s proposal to change the rules of the game on how the so-called millionaires tax is implemented by essentially creating more millionaires.
An amendment, proposed by Senator Jason Lewis and added during Senate debate on the bill, would require married couples who file a joint federal tax return to also file a joint state tax return.
Lewis insisted to his Senate colleagues that it was simply closing a “loophole” in the voter-approved surtax law.
Nonsense. Voters were told, just a few months ago, that the tax was to be applied to individuals. Fair Share Massachusetts, which backed the proposal, said on its campaign website, “Only the wealthiest Massachusetts residents — individuals who earn MORE THAN $1 million per year — will pay more.” The definition of individual hasn’t changed, unless Lewis knows something we don’t.
Even if the proposal didn’t amount to breaking faith with voters, it would be premature without seeing how the new surtax plays out.“We don’t think that it makes sense six months after passing this law to opt to expand it,” said Howgate; his is one of several business-backed groups raising objections to the move. House Revenue Committee Chairman Mark Cusack has demanded real numbers on its impact from the state’s Revenue Department, telling State House News Service, “You can’t dismiss it as a small thing or a loophole to close.”
More broadly, a bill aimed at providing tax relief ought to stick to that basic premise. Itought to balance the needs of working families who today spend too much of their income on child care, low-income seniors who simply want to stay in their homes, and renters squeezed by rising costs, with the needs of this state to keep and attract high earners.
Cusack has promised to have a bill on the governor’s desk this summer. Taxpayers have waited long enough.
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Rutland Herald. June 30, 2023.
Editorial: In the open
Transparency in government is key to its function and integrity. Whether it is making public meetings and spaces open to everyone, or it is holding hard discussions in public session.
Two Vermont news stories in recent weeks have shown the range of responsibility public officials are willing to take, or not take.
This week in Mendon, after making the town offices open by appointment only because of harassing behavior from members of the public, the select board adopted a visitor code of conduct policy. It ensures that the town offices can be accessible, and makes clear that bad behavior will not be tolerated. Being able to conduct town business was of equal importance to the safety of town employees.
The Visitor Code of Conduct reads, in part, “The Town supports a workplace that is conducive to personal safety, security and is free from intimidation, threats or violent acts. The Town will not tolerate workplace violence, including the threat of violence by anyone who conducts business with the Town. The Town will not tolerate harassing conduct that affects employment conditions, that interferes unreasonably with an individual’s performance or that creates an intimidating, hostile or offensive work environment. Complying with this Visitor Code of Conduct is required by all people doing business with Town employees. Violators who do not comply with this policy may be required to leave the premises.”
According to reporting by journalist Keith Whitcomb, the code expects people to be courteous; show respect for others; avoid disturbing people; not engage in lewd or otherwise offensive behavior; and not use alcohol or drugs.
We appreciate and applaud that effort by Mendon officials.
Also in the news in recent weeks was an incident in Barre, where the city’s Diversity and Equity Committee, which has come under public scrutiny in the last year, objected to committee members recording their proceedings. The committee chair argued that the work being done needs certain protections in order to be thoughtful and thorough. She questioned the motives behind the committee member’s intention to record, not the legality of whether it’s OK to record a meeting being conducted by a City Council-appointed committee.
The article got the attention of the New England First Amendment Coalition and the Vermont Press Association. They fired off a letter to the committee members (and the mayor and city manager) “to express our shared concern” over the push for committee members to stop recording the meetings. (There was no objection to CVTV, the local public access station, recording and rebroadcasting the same committee meeting.)
“(We) urge the members of the committee to immediately discontinue this practice of prohibiting the members of the public from engaging in their right to record public meetings,” states the letter, which was also emailed to The Times Argus, as it was the newspaper’s coverage that first caught their attention.
The First Amendment advocates noted that recording is not only a common practice for meetings of public bodies throughout Vermont, it is required under the state’s Open Meetings Law: “A public body shall electronically record all public hearings held to provide a forum for public comment on a proposed rule.”
While the law “does not explicitly grant Vermonters a right to record public meetings, the public’s right to record public meetings is solidly established in other sources of Vermont law,” they point out. In its 2019 Guide to Open Meetings, the Vermont Secretary of State’s Office declared “the open meeting law to permit members of the public to record or film public meetings, so long as this is not done in a manner that disrupts the meeting.”
They go on to point out that the Open Meeting Law was drafted in the spirit of Article VI of the state constitution: “That all power being originally inherent in and co(n)sequently derived from the people, therefore, all officers of government, whether legislative or executive, are their trustees and servants; and at all times, in a legal way, accountable to them.”
The Open Meeting Law states: “(P)ublic commissions, boards, and councils and other public agencies in this State exist to aid in the conduct of the people’s business and are accountable to them pursuant to (Article VI).”
That being stated, “To be truly accountable to the public under Article VI, public bodies such as the Barre Diversity and Equity Committee must submit themselves to scrutiny by the public. Allowing the public to record these meetings facilitates this key constitutional value.”
Ultimately, the coalition noted that “freely allowing recordings of meetings increase not just access, but equity.”
Barre’s committee chair responded, stating in part, “In a perfect world where civility and respect were a premium, I would agree. Of course I cannot prevent people from taping our meetings, it is legal, but I can ask them to be responsible about using it. With (artificial intelligence) and the ability to edit, I am concerned about truth and justice. ... I think it is unconscionable that volunteer committee members are subjected to out-of-state and other bullies who harass us because we focus on anti-racism, anti-discrimination and bias against (LGBTQIA+), equity and diversity. It causes fear, anxiety and depression for good people who are working to make our community more inclusive and to have our neighbors feel like they belong. … When first amendment rights veer into the territory of hate speech, we need to take a pause.”
We always will advocate for open government. Transparency breeds accountability and its own code of conduct. How public officials want to pivot to hard conversations and criticism is up to them, but it should be done in the open.
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Bangor Daily News. July 5, 2023.
Editorial: Welcome to Maine. Unless you’re a racist.
Summer in Maine means visitors from out of state. Even with the crowds, that’s usually a good thing. Everyone is welcome here in Vacationland.
Well, almost everyone. Racists can stay home, please and thank you.
While we’re celebrating America this week, everyone should also remember that this imperfect union is made up of people from all sorts of backgrounds. There is no one way to look or be American; that is a beautiful strength of this country.
So it is decidedly ugly and un-American to assume someone is from another country just because of how they look, to threaten them, hurl racial epithets at them, and to tell them to go back where they came from.
This is what a woman from Florida allegedly did while visiting Kennebunkport recently. According to the Maine Attorney General’s Office, which has rightly filed a civil rights complaint against the Florida woman, she allegedly made racial slurs against an Asian-American woman, who was visiting from Massachusetts, and threatened to run her over in a parking lot.
The Attorney General’s Office alleges that the June 6 incident, which began with sampling chowder at a restaurant, involved the accused calling the other women a “foreigner,” a “Chinese (expletive),” telling her to go back to “your country,” threatening to run the other woman over, and swerving her van in her direction.
All together, this alleged behavior is not only abhorrent, it also appears to be a fairly clear-cut violation of the Maine Civil Rights Act. Along with other protections, this law protects people from violence or the threat of violence based on “race, color, religion, sex, ancestry, national origin, physical or mental disability, sexual orientation or gender identity.” Since this law was passed in the 1990s, the Maine Attorney General’s Office has used hundreds of injunctions to prohibit offenders from violating the act again.
“Maine should be a safe, welcoming place for everyone,” Attorney General Aaron Frey said in a June 28 statement. “The Maine Civil Rights Act recognizes that bias-based incidents like this one cause not only extreme harm to the victim but also to others in the community who might fear similar, unlawful, treatment. That is why my office will continue to pursue civil injunctions to protect communities targeted for their identities.”
The Maine Attorney General’s Office should continue these efforts, regardless of whether an alleged perpetrator is visiting from another state or from Maine. No one in Maine, or anywhere else in America, should experience this. Racism sadly already exists in Maine, and while working to combat that, we don’t need to be importing any more of it.
There is a bleak yet unmistakable irony in this alleged June 6 incident, with a person coming all the way from Florida and telling someone, from just down the road in Massachusetts, to go back where they came from. As the alleged victim responded, according to the AG’s office, “you wouldn’t say this to a white person.”
Far too many people equate being American to being white, as if people from other backgrounds are automatically not from here. This racist way of thinking and acting has seen a frightening uptick in recent years, particularly directed at Asian Americans.
A 2022 report from the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino found that anti-Asian hate crimes went up over 300% in 2021. Black people remained the most targeted group in most cities, that report found.
“Especially during a time when groups are trying to divide and pit vulnerable communities against each other, we must remember that we are stronger together,” John C. Yang, president and executive director of the civil rights nonprofit Asian Americans Advancing Justice, told NBC News last year.
The alleged conduct of the Florida woman in this recent incident here in Maine is obviously grotesque. But don’t think for a second that it’s isolated. Asian Americans and other minority populations are frequently facing hateful language and actions. Many hate crimes go unreported. All of this requires continued response from people in power and continued outrage from those of us who recognize that hate has no place in this state or this country.
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Portland Press Herald. July 2, 2023.
Editorial: A budget that works for Maine families is a budget worth passing
The Legislature should support the bipartisan spending plan passed last week by the Appropriations Committee.
Having passed a baseline budget funding the basics of government back in March, the Legislature was tasked, for the past three months, with taking aim at a series of critical issues facing Maine families.
To its credit, the more than $800 million spending plan passed last week by the members of the Appropriations Committee hits a lot of them. If passed this week by the full Legislature, the bipartisan proposal will provide relief and support to people throughout the state.
The proposal, which passed the committee 11-1 early Wednesday morning, is essentially the second part of what would be a roughly $10.8 billion two-year state budget. It follows the Democrats’ budget funding continuing services, which included no new initiatives but ensured that the government could keep running in the new fiscal year.
The hard choices were left for later in the session, and there were no shortage of them.
In the end, the Appropriations Committee, which ultimately decides which passed bills get funded in the budget and which do not, did a good job of balancing the various ideas and commitments on the shelf.
Included in the budget is $60 million for child care, critical funding for an industry that doesn’t work for anyone right now. It’s too expensive for parents and too stressful for providers, and wages are far too low for workers, who are leaving in droves – even if they would much rather stick around and help take care of Maine’s kids.
The budget would double the wage stipend available to child care workers and expand the subsidy program, so more parents could get help with the high cost of care.
Improving child care will not only mean better outcomes and early lives for our children, but also will lower the stress on families and make our workforce stronger, as more parents will be able to go to work without worrying about their child care.
Families will also be served by the new paid family and medical leave program, which receives $25 million in startup costs in the budget. Eventually, it will be funded by a 0.7%-1% payroll tax, split evenly between employers and employees, and it will allow Mainers to take time off to take care of themselves or a family member without putting their job or their finances at risk.
The plan comes after a lot of deliberation, both from a task force that painstakingly built the program by analyzing others, and the Legislature and Gov. Mills, who is wisely backing the plan rather than allowing the issue to go to referendum, where there are fewer opportunities to tailor the program to fit Maine.
There are questions about how the program will be used, and how its use will affect businesses already struggling to keep enough workers. Done correctly, however, it can allow people to keep working through family crisis, even if they need a short break, rather than leaving the workforce altogether. In any case, it’ll give a lot of Mainers peace and mind they haven’t had before.
The budget will also help to put out other policy fires cropping up around Maine.
The proposal includes $31 million to support emergency medical services, which have been said to be at a “ breaking point ” in Maine after years of low funding and increasing costs of service. Ambulances have to be available whenever and wherever someone needs them; this money will help maintain that reality throughout our state.
The proposal also sets aside $16 million in additional funding for General Assistance, the program of last resort for Mainers who need shelter, fuel, food or medicine. GA programs in service-center cities throughout the state have struggled to deal with surging homelessness and the arrival of asylum seekers. A strong GA program helps keep those people afloat so that their struggles don’t become permanent.
In the same vein, there’s funding for Housing First programs, which aim to get people who are homeless quickly into stable housing, along with 24/7 services to help them succeed, as well as $1.5 million for rural recovery residences for families, so that families can stay together while a parent is treated for substance use disorder – one way to help deal with Maine’s child abuse and neglect crisis.
Together, these programs and services will be a hand up for Maine families as they face a series of tough, interconnected challenges. Republicans wanted more tax relief in the package, but ultimately supported the package, except for a lone holdout.
That’s a good outcome. This is a budget that invests in Maine families. The Legislature should pass it.
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Barre-Montpelier Times Argus. July 5, 2023.
Editorial: Truckin’
Trucks have been in the news a lot this week.
On July 5, a tractor-trailer truck carrying diesel fuel caught fire on Route 7 in Charlotte. The truck’s driver said he started to see smoke coming from the trailer tires. He was able to pull off to the side of the road. The truck was successfully separated from the burning trailer. No one was injured, and the fire was extinguished by the Charlotte Fire Department without incident.
In Worcester on the Fourth of July, moments after the grand finale of the town’s fireworks show, a U-Haul truck being used by Northstar Fireworks, the licensed pyrotechnical team, caught fire, causing a series of fireworks explosions and then a dramatic fire that blazed from the back of the truck. The incident, which remains under investigation, appears to have been caused by a box filled with raked debris from the fireworks show that came to be ablaze. No injuries were reported, however, the incident generated some tense moments for families.
And then there is the perennial annoyance along Route 108, more commonly referred to as “The Notch.”
Despite large billboard-like signs on Interstate 89 instructing truck drivers not to take Route 108, two drivers in the course of a matter of two days decided to ignore the warnings and take the shortcut that, according to a two-dimensional map, looks like a hop, skip and jump across the ridgeline.
Not so much.
Around 9 p.m. July 2, the narrow gap winding up to The Notch had to be closed so that crews could — throughout the course of a long period of time — navigate and remove the stuck tractor-trailer truck driven by Byambadorj Avirmed, 63, of Harbor City, California. According to a police report, Avirmed told Vermont State Police troopers that he observed all the posted signs but continued anyway.
Two days later, around 10 p.m. July 4, Yusnier Suarez Anuez, 36, of Florida City, Florida, got his tractor-trailer stuck in The Notch. Anuez also advised troopers that he had ignored signs along the route stating tractor-trailers are prohibited. He had his faith in his GPS. According to the police report, multiple bystanders attempted to stop Anuez from entering the Notch; however, he continued. The road was closed for hours.
Both drivers were issued tickets, and they were each fined $3,544 — the price the state imposes for getting caught in The Notch.
It all seems humorous, a very “Vermont problem.” Except that incidents involving trucks in the news never end well.
We will give the Worcester incident a pass, as that truck mishap probably was attributed to an honest mistake. It is the willful neglect of road rules, and continued concerns about safety that we feel needs some extra attention.
Vermont’s interstates — 89, 91 and 93 — are major arteries for commerce and transport. That New England saying of “you can’t get there from here” is a bit true for bigger rigs. If you are not staying on the interstate (and many businesses — from ski areas and restaurants, to tourist traps and bucolic towns that depend on tourism dollars — are not on the main roads), you are off the beaten path. Our state roads are mostly two lanes, and can — even in the best circumstances — get narrow and congested. Throw in our short season for road, bridge and infrastructure work along Vermont roads, and you have all the ingredients you need for trouble and delays.
We can coexist.
Rural states like Vermont (and really every state) depend on trucks for transport of goods. We often hear of incidents and tragic crashes involving large rigs with the blame for the accident being placed on overtired or reckless drivers. Like any industry, those are not the norm.
Were it not for the drivers — and the many regulations, rules and state laws that provide the protections for them and for us — commerce here (and elsewhere) would be far more challenging than it sometimes already is.
So while we ponder why the universe decided Vermont’s news cycle this week had to dial into incidents with trucks and trucking, we are grateful for the work of these individuals.
That being said, we are also grateful for the fines the state has imposed to keep large trucks off certain roads and away from some town centers, where large trucks are a tough fit for small-town life.
And we really wish that truck drivers wouldn’t trust their GPS more than our road signs or the advice of local residents.
We live here. We know you can’t get through The Notch with that rig.
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