Last week, on the heels of Election Day, municipal leaders around the state, including Northampton Mayor Clare Higgins and Holyoke Mayor Mike Sullivan, headed to Boston to meet with Gov. Deval Patrick.
Press reports about the meeting contained little real news: local officials reiterated the painfully obvious point that their respective municipalities are hugely dependent on state aid. Higgins, who was quoted in our local papers, expressed the need for dependable amounts of local aid—predictable revenue to allow towns and cities to do better long-range planning. Gov. Patrick, quite predictably, assured the locals that he would do what he could, but reminded them that the state is fairly strapped itself.
This sort of wonk fest is common; if nothing else, the meeting allowed freshly reelected incumbents like Higgins and Sullivan to look as though they have meaningful access to the governor's office. (Reportedly the governor invited Higgins to a private tete-a-tete after the "official" meeting.) But what the governor and his minions actually achieved in this meeting, what actual peoples' business was done, is far from clear.
Patrick chose not to use the meeting to discuss taxes. Why should he? From the White House to the corner office in the Massachusetts State House and on down to the local level, very few of our elected leaders dare to confront the issue. Despite President Bush's historic unpopularity, none of the Democratic weenies lining up for the chance to take on the mess he's made, save for courageous but out-of-the-mainstream candidates Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel, will challenge his irresponsible decision to borrow trillions for the occupation of Iraq rather than raise taxes.
In Massachusetts, Deval Patrick has similarly sidestepped the subject of taxes, effectively conceding the issue to his predecessors of the last 16 years—an unbroken line of Republicans dedicated to precious little other than the unthinking, Reagan-era no-new-tax policy that has led to a reduced level of public service and a move increasingly to a fee-for-service model.
As workers struggle to balance family budgets in the face of stagnant wages and rising fees, it was not unreasonable to think that Patrick, the first Democrat governor since 1990, might entertain a less regressive way of raising revenues. In his highly acclaimed campaign for the office, he refused to take the gimmicky no-new-taxes pledge offered by his opponents, focusing instead on the relationship between lower income taxes and higher property taxes across the state. Alas, it appears that Patrick's fixation on property taxes was itself a gimmick—a way to differentiate himself from his opponents without ever having to take action.
Last week's summit gave Patrick the opportunity to publicize what he claims will be a $1.9 billion budget shortfall in the coming year. To balance the budget, Patrick offers essentially the same solution as his Republican predecessors: cut waste and drive economic development as a means of increasing the tax base.
He proposes to take on certain sacred cows—he's considering doing away with police details on roadway construction projects, as well as privatizing some of the state's highways—while legalizing casino gambling, from which he says the state can make billions.
Patrick's dubious plan, of course, was already well known to the local leaders who flocked to his office last week. Nevertheless, they afforded the governor the chance to play king, suffering his rather lordly response to their request for more local assistance: "I don't have the up or down, yes or no answers you hoped I would have today."
Worse than patronizing, Patrick's comment is fatuous, implying that the issue at hand is more complicated and vexing than it really is and trying to nudge the body politic toward his proposed solution: gambling. Truth is, the problem isn't overly difficult to understand. It's finding leaders with the backbone to consider real solutions that is proving nearly impossible.
