Editorial Roundup: New England
Barre-Montpelier Times Argus. January 11, 2024.
Editorial: A great gamble
Gov. Phil Scott said what needed to be said during his State of the State address on Thursday. The four-term Republican told lawmakers of all stripes that Vermont cannot keep on the path it is on if it wants to be affordable for all Vermonters.
He knew he was addressing a supermajority. He knows that all he can do it make his best case, and hope that Vermonters will help persuade Democrats and Progressives to help change the course toward one that he deems necessary.
Just hours before he was walked up to the podium in the House of Representatives to address the joint assembly, the House handily overrode Scott’s veto of the bottle bill, 112-31. It was one of several overrides during the past two years.
The governor sounded like a broken record. But with added urgency this time around. In his fourth such address, he gave nods to some of the good things going on across Vermont. But most of the hour-long speech hinged on the sticking points that are keeping Vermont from prospering.
The state’s demographics are not improving, despite concerted efforts to turn things around. More Vermonters means the tax burden is spread among a larger number. Without more people coming to the state, the burden of paying for services falls on a smaller pot.
“It continues to be an issue we must solve to meet today’s obligations, and make every investment needed for the future. And to have any chance of reversing our demographic trends, there are three issues we can’t ignore: public safety, affordability and housing. These challenges are urgent, immediate, and we must address them this session.”
He is not wrong. Others in the chamber have their own list of priorities — a few of which might rise to the governor’s top five. Housing is first among them. Scott acknowledged that solid foundations have been put down — literally — but without more units the state is hogtied. His urging for more steps toward affordable housing across Vermont is, in fact, critical.
But this governor knows that through the filter of politics, most of his speech was relegated to the trash bin. That is why he tried to keep the focus on what “could” be changed with tripartisan reaching, and placed hope on setting aside party playbooks for the good of all Vermonters.
We like that approach, but know too well there are lawmakers who would never dare to deviate from their party platform that they rely upon to get reelected. There are too many of those short thinkers at the moment.
Yes, fiscally, the challenge is real. The governor alluded to his upcoming budget address, calling the picture there “sobering.” Where Thursday’s scene-setter was one of hope, the reality of the scene will be revealed in a couple of weeks — at which time the blood sport of politics is pushed into overdrive. The call for unity should not be ignored.
Of course, Scott has the advantage of saying what he thinks a majority of Vermonters — not just Republicans — want to hear. That way, when lawmakers deny him his promises or plans, he can say he tried. That is all one can do when they do not own the high ground.
But that gamble can cause political bruising, especially in the polling booth. Vermonters have long memories, and if they do not like where lawmakers are taking the state, even if the governor is providing a map, the voters will get to decide who calls the shots.
Ultimately, the governor is right, and by the sound of the applause he received on Thursday, no one really wants to put the state in the same kind of gridlock that plagues Congress. No one wants to be seen as ineffective, or not thinking in the best interest of Vermonters.
Very tactfully, for a second year in a row (because of the supermajority, of course), the governor tried to use the speech to ratchet down the politics, ratchet up the sense of community and well-being, and reiterate the concerns everyday Vermonters are talking about around the dinner table. Phil Scott is a lot of things, and a good listener is one of them.
“So, while the lobbyists and advocates will have their agendas, and being an election year, political parties and partisans will have theirs as well, we owe it to Vermonters to put all that aside and make real progress on public safety, affordability, and housing needs — because these issues don’t discriminate based on your party affiliation,” he said.
It is always refreshing to hear a politician talk about us — the people they serve — with respect.
“The burden of citizenship, and all who aspire to it, is the work to fulfill the promise of a more perfect union. This is the great gamble of our republic — that everyday Americans, and everyday Vermonters, will show up, do the work, and carry out those “small acts of decency that build community,” he said, pointing to many examples of coming together.
We would submit the next gamble for our state does not rest with any political answer, but with one another.
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Boston Globe. January 9, 2024.
Editorial: Massachusetts’ good times not rollin’ like they used to
Mid-year budget cuts usher in an era of belt-tightening.
The economic sky isn’t falling in Massachusetts — but the state government’s tax revenues are no longer coasting along at a level of growth that for the past several years seemed to know no bounds. And that means some tough choices in the near term and a sober approach to the state budget in the year ahead.
“The economy is growing year over year. It’s just not growing as fast as anticipated,” Secretary of Administration and Finance Matthew J. Gorzkowicz said Monday at a briefing to unveil $375 million in mid-year spending cuts the administration is making to the current $56 billion budget to deal with this year’s revenue shortfall.
The state, he said, will need to cope with a 12- to 18-month period “where we will have to do some belt-tightening.”
Slowing revenues also mean that next year’s budget, which Governor Maura Healey is expected to file at the end of the month, will have to make up for $1 billion less in revenues than anticipated for the fiscal year that begins July 1. The so-called consensus revenue figure also announced Monday — agreed to by the secretary and the chairs of the House and Senate Ways and Means Committees after consultation with economic experts — was $40.202 billion, plus another $1.3 billion from the 4 percent millionaires surtax that must be earmarked for education and transportation needs.
The Healey administration’s approach to dealing with the shortfall is commendable not simply for what it did but what it did not do to close this year’s budget gap. It did not touch the state’s $8 billion rainy day fund, which Gorzkowicz insisted was indeed for “extraordinary circumstances” where revenues are actually declining, not situations where they’re simply increasing less than expected. Nor did it dip into a $700 million escrow account, which Healey has been eyeing to deal with the migrant shelter crisis. It did not cut local aid or school funding.
Instead, it opted to cut $375 million from more than 60 accounts, including what Gorzkowicz noted were about $20 million in local earmarks, many of them for nonprofits. It was the first time mid-year cuts had to be made since 2016.
Now, every one of the thousands of line items in the state budget has a constituency behind it, a group counting on money that won’t be coming their way. So none of this is easy or completely painless. But dealing with small cuts halfway through the budgetary year is far less painful than looking at an insurmountable deficit at year’s end.
The big-ticket item was $294 million (in gross reductions) for MassHealth’s fee-for-service payments. But administration officials said the state’s redetermination of need effort, in which the state has scrutinized MassHealth recipients to ensure they are still eligible for the program, has indeed lowered overall costs.
The rest of this year’s shortfall will be covered by some $625 million in non-tax revenue, including earnings on investments and untapped departmental revenues.
The good news is that because employment is still high, withholding taxes and sales tax revenues are holding up.
“What we’re experiencing now is a soft landing,” the secretary said. “But we’re here to make sure we have a balanced set of solutions.”
There will, of course, always be those who insist that the state is in this situation because Healey gave away too much to “the wealthy” in a tax reform bill approved last year. That group includes Senator Jamie Eldridge. “At the end of the day, earmarks are not going to cover this budget deficit,” he told the Globe. “I am very troubled that we just passed a tax reform package where over a third of the tax cuts went to the wealthy. I think that’s extremely concerning.”
In fact, that bill was aimed at making the state “more competitive,” Gorzkowicz said Monday. It was also aimed at helping lower income residents stay in their homes or afford day care or services for other dependents, something Healey reiterated in her formal letter to legislators informing them of the budget cuts.
When times are tough — or at least a little tougher — it’s easy to turn on one another or default to a favorite bete noire like “the wealthy.”
But the budgetary year ahead will require a thoughtful approach. The shortfall is real and will need to be dealt with. The sooner that reality sinks in on Beacon Hill, the better.
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Boston Herald. January 10, 2024.
Editorial: Mass. can get $$ for IT, but cuts programs
In announcing her administration’s $1.23 billion plan to modernize its IT systems, Gov. Maura Healey stressed the positives for constituents.
“Our administration is committed to making state government more accessible to the residents, businesses and visitors of Massachusetts – and a key way to do that is to ensure that our IT services are updated and easy to use,” she said.
Be careful what you wish for: Healey and other leaders may not like what constituents have to say as they make use of that boosted access to state government.
Such as the phrase “we can spend $45 million a month to shelter migrants, but we can’t cover…”
Thanks to budget cuts stemming from a $1 billion shortfall in the state’s FY2024 revenue forecast, there are a number of things on the “we can’t cover” list.
As the Herald reported, the budget for MassHealth, the state’s insurance plan, will drop by $294 million. The Commonwealth Care Trust Fund, which helps those who can’t afford insurance but don’t qualify for MassHealth, was set to receive $50 million in 2024. It will instead get nothing, “because the existing balance of the (fund) is sufficient to support projected spending.”
This begs the question: If the existing balance is enough to support projected FY24 spending, why was $50 million on the budget?
Especially painful: The Emergency Aid to the Elderly Disabled and Children program, Community College SUCCESS fund, and the State Scholarship Program will be reduce by $4 million or more.
IT upgrades are important, of course, but given the revenue shortfall and budget cuts, is this the best time to pursue such a spending bill? If Massachusetts can come up with funding for the ever-growing needs of the state’s emergency shelter system due to the influx of migrants and homeless, surely a fiscal focus on the elderly disabled, underinsured and community colleges is equally worthy.
The IT spending bill does have real-world benefits. “We are thrilled to see a $12 million investment to support the Child Care Financial Assistance Modernization (CCFA) project in the bill filed today by Governor Healey,” Amy O’Leary, Executive Director, Strategies for Children said in a statement on the state’s web site. “This capital project is critical to continue the momentum at the Department of Early Education and Care to better serve children and families. Infrastructure matters.”
True. A lot of things matter. Efficient processing of financial assistance, keeping families from living on the streets, helping the elderly poor. We don’t envy Gov. Healey’s job in having to triage the needs of Mass. residents.
But what constituents see in the day-to-day is less money going to things they need. Healey may excel at seeing the glass as half full, saying the IT borrowing bill shows the “strength” of Massachusetts’ fiscal standing, despite the $1 billion revenue slowdown and hundreds of millions in budget cuts, but for residents on the business end of those cuts, the glass has a hole in it.
And no one is footing the bill for glue.
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Portland Press Herald. January 11, 2024.
Editorial: Build roadways that are safe for everyone
Telling drivers to pay attention and slow down hasn’t been working.
Twenty people were hit and killed by drivers last year in Maine, spread over 10 of the state’s 16 counties. Another 225 pedestrians were injured, and who knows how many more were kept from walking or biking somewhere because it was simply too difficult or dangerous.
The fact of the matter is that, in many cases, Maine’s roads are not safe for people outside of automobiles. More often than not, our roads are built to get cars from end to the other as fast as possible, putting everyone else who wants to use them at risk.
It took a long time for our transportation system to look like it does and it will take some time to change it. But that’s what we should do, one project at a time, until our infrastructure matches the way people want to use it now.
TRENDING UPWARD
The high level of pedestrian deaths in Maine is part of a national trend. According to the Governors Highway Safety Association, more than 7,500 pedestrians were hit and killed by drivers in the U.S. in 2022, the highest number since 1981.
Nationwide, pedestrian fatalities have been trending upward since about 2009, after falling steadily since the early ’80s. Notably, nearly all of the increase in deaths can be attributed to fatalities occurring when it is dark, between sunset and sunrise. Also, the same trend cannot be seen in other rich countries.
An investigation by the New York Times found a number of contributing factors, first among them the smartphone. After that, car dashboards are now like computers, with touchscreens that are just as distracting as our phones. Americans spend more time on their phones while driving — three times as much as British drivers, according to one study, something researchers say may be connected to the popularity of automatic transmissions here.
At the same time, millions of Americans have been moving to the Sun Belt, a part of the country developed specifically for car transportation. There and across the country, a lot of people, particularly those earning lower incomes, have moved from more urban areas to growing suburbs, where arterial roads with multiple lanes are popular.
Those type of roads are everywhere now, with more people living in and around them. A lot of those people don’t have vehicles, so they are forced to walk to work and on errands. Think of Western Avenue in Augusta, Broadway in Bangor, or Forest Avenue in Portland, all places where drivers feel safe going fast, particularly at night when there are few other cars around.
It’s a dangerous recipe: more pedestrians coming onto roads built for speed, made worse by darkness and distraction.
The trend has been met with calls for drivers to put the phone away, or for pedestrians to wear bright colors and be more aware of their surroundings.
And while every individual who uses the road for one thing or the other could be more careful — particularly if you’re the one behind the wheel of a two-ton truck — policy needs to focus more on changing infrastructure than changing individual habits.
BETTER DESIGN
Existing road design makes it easy for people to go to fast. Streets have been built solely for vehicles for so long that it’s easy for drivers to forget that people walk and bike on them as well.
Designs that implement traffic calming measures help change that perception, and make our public infrastructure useful for more people, in more ways. Bright, wide sidewalks and crosswalks do too, as do safe bike lanes.
Those measures and others that make our roads safer for pedestrians should be as much a part of the engineering process as painting yellow lines down the center. They should automatically be part of projects where they make sense — in town centers, near any significant population of residents or businesses, even along well-used rural roads.
People who have to walk or bike should not be forced to put their lives on the line. People who want to get around that way should be able to feel as secure as those in cars. One project at a time, we can get there.
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Bangor Daily News. January 11, 2024.
Editorial: Maine needs to pick a location and move forward with offshore wind port
Decades ago, the state purchased Sears Island with the consideration of building a port there. The island has sat mostly undisturbed since then. In 2008, in reaction to a proposal to build a natural gas terminal on Sears Island, the state agreed to preserve much of the island, while about a third was set aside — again — for port development.
With a goal for 80 percent of the state’s energy to come from renewable sources by 2030 and 100 percent by 2050, the state is moving ahead on numerous renewable energy projects, including offshore wind. Maine has one of the best potential offshore wind resources in the country.
In addition to a plan to generate electricity far off the Maine coast, state officials, environmental groups and unions hope to also develop and grow an offshore wind industry in Maine. This could include the construction, assembly and installation of offshore wind turbines and other infrastructure from Maine. An accessible port is integral to this plan, which could create thousands of jobs and new economic activity for the state and area where it is located.
The governor’s office and Maine Department of Transportation have reviewed possible locations, including existing ports in Eastport and Portland, for this new facility. They zeroed in on the Searsport area, with further assessment of both Sears Island and an existing port terminal at nearby Mack Point.
In coming months, the Mills administration is expected to file an application for a permit to construct a new port to support a new offshore wind industry, both of which will require lengthy state and federal permitting processes. The decision on where that port should be can be guided by a simple notion: It is reasonable to propose building a port on an island that was purchased specifically for a port (with a large portion later set aside for conservation). Especially when doing so would align several vital state economic and environmental objectives, including a necessary transition to cleaner energy sources.
A private engineering firm assessed both locations and determined that Sears Island was a better option. In part because the state already owns Sears Island, the expected cost of building port facilities would be lower there. In addition, because the water is deeper off the island, less dredging, which brings environmental concerns, could be needed if the new facility is built on Sears Island rather than at Mack Point.
Members of an offshore wind advisory group, which was created in 2022 as an avenue for stakeholder engagement in the port development process, agreed that saying no to an offshore wind port facility was not an option given the need to rapidly develop cleaner energy sources. They did not, however, vote to recommend a specific location for such a facility, although many members of the group supported building it on Sears Island, while some favored Mack Point.
Some groups that were part of the negotiations to preserve a portion of Sears Island, such as the Friends of Sears Island, want the port built at Mack Point instead, though building new facilities there would also surely impact nearby Sears Island. We’ve been struck by an argument that building the wind port on Sears Island is inappropriate because the 2007 consensus agreement that divided the island between conservation and development called for a “cargo/container port” and the proposed offshore wind staging area would not be such a port.
This kind of narrow semantic focus is an example of the sometimes frustrating types of opposition that have been used to stifle needed economic development plans in Maine. Frankly, if a port facility cannot be built on an island that the state specifically purchased for a potential port facility, Maine will miss out on opportunities to grow our economy, create needed jobs and meet our climate goals at the same time.
We do agree, however, that the lack of early consultation with tribes in Maine, especially those with a close connection to Sears Island, is concerning. As this project moves forward, in either location, the expertise and concerns of tribal members must be more fully included.
Port facilities to support Maine’s nascent offshore wind industry are very far from fruition, but pursuing them on Sears Island could meet a decades-old goal for the state-owned land, while helping Maine meet some of its climate and economic goals.
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