Last week, Gov. Deval Patrick dropped by the Daily Hampshire Gazette's Northampton offices, where the Valley Advocate is also headquartered, for a meeting with the Gazette's editorial board. Gazette editor Larry Parnass invited me to join in; when my turn came, I asked the governor about taxes.
Specifically, I wanted to know why Gov. Patrick has not, in keeping with the rhetoric of his successful 2006 campaign, attempted to reverse the cuts made by his Republican predecessors to the state income tax. I asked why he has proposed and supported regressive tax measures—a gas tax, which hasn't made it out of the Legislature, and a 25 percent hike in the sales tax, which went into effect Aug. 1—rather than developing a more equitable, progressive income tax policy. I asked why he's pushed a "potentially divisive" casino plan—"as opposed to potentially divisive issues like the income tax," Patrick injected, with a chuckle—rather than push back on 16 years of Republican tax policy. Is his objection to taking on the income tax political or philosophical?
Here is Gov. Patrick's answer in its entirety:
"It may be all that, but let me say this: first of all, the resort casino proposal, as divisive and complicated as it was, was not about taxation. For me, that was about jobs, it was about revenue and it was the same analysis that we ought to apply to any industry that's interested in operating here. It had upsides and downsides. If we're going to go down that path, there's a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it, in my view, and we tried to come up with a right way to do it and it went down in flames, as you know.
"We have avoided proposing any broad-based tax. I had the same hesitation around the sales tax—not for philosophical reasons, but because I think, one, it's a crummy time to ask people, whatever it is—even a gas tax—it's just a crummy time to ask people, but second, I think it's a very hard case to make to the public to pay more for the status quo. That was the reason for insisting on the reforms before I would support the sales tax. And I think there is more we're going to have to do to show people that they're paying for something better than the status quo.
"I'll push back on one factual premise [of the question]. When you said the income tax was the most progressive [tax]—it isn't. We have a flat tax in the Commonwealth. Changing that is a constitutional change and you know what's involved in that. It's not that it shouldn't be done or couldn't be done, but I don't think that—see, my view is, and I did say this during the campaign if you were, and it sounds like you were, paying attention: I think we start in the wrong place with the question of, you know, what's the revenue source. I think the place to start is, what do we want government to do and not do? And then, what does that actually cost? And then, what are the levers to pull, the different means by which to pay for that?
"I think that's a conversation we have to have. I think that's a conversation we may begin to have in the course of the campaign. It's a conversation, if anything, this crisis has made more immediate. I'm eager to have it, and then what the outcome is, we'll see. But I think there are some fundamental questions we have to ask first about what we want government to do."
I pushed the governor on the income tax, noting that, even with a flat rate, the state income tax is still proportional and, I'd argue, equitable, taking more total tax from high-wage earners than low-wage workers.
"We have a flat tax," Patrick said. "What I hope one day we will get to is a progressive income tax, but I don't think that's the place to start."
As the governor noted in his campaign, and as reported by the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center in January, the current revenue crisis in the state is, in large part, due to substantial income tax cuts made over the last decade. Does the governor not recognize how much more ambitious—and ambiguous—the conversation he now wants to have about government is than the conversation he started in his campaign about fair and sustainable tax policy?
