The city of Worcester, tired of waiting for the Legislature to do something about the home foreclosure crisis, is asking for permission to act on its own, reports Shaun Sutner of the Worcester Telegram. If a home-rule petition passes on Beacon Hill, the city would "halt sub-prime foreclosures for six months, protect tenants in foreclosed buildings and force judicial review of foreclosures."
A new poll from Suffolk University and Channel 7 has "someone else" beating US Sen. John Kerry this fall, 51-38. That same entity is ahead of Gov. Deval Patrick, who is up for re-election in 2010, by a 41-39 margin.
Neither man is likely to be panicking yet, given that an early 1994 poll had "someone else" beating US Sen. Ted Kennedy easily, 52-38. Kennedy beat his actual Republican opponent that year (Mitt Romney) by 17 points.
The Boston Globe's website has a handy rundown of Proposition 2 1/2 override votes that have been held so far this year. Eighteen cities and towns have voted so far, and only seven have approved property tax increases for such things as schools, police departments, and (in Rowley) a "pumper truck." Will these springtime results offer clues about what will happen with the big tax question of the year -- the referendum on the November ballot that would eliminate the state income tax? (That's something the Legislature is not likely to let happen no matter how the referendum turns out.)
Abolition of the income tax lost by a 40-48 margin the last time it was on the ballot, in 2002. (Blanks made up the remaining 12 percent of the vote.) In most towns, the anti-tax forces got more than 40 percent of the vote, but most cities and more affluent suburbs soundly defeated the measure. Six of those communities have had override votes so far this year, and they've split down the middle, with property tax increases passing in Brookline, Natick, and Wayland but losing in Harvard, Newton, and Sudbury. The city of Newton, in particular, bears watching this fall: If the anti-tax measure comes within 10 points of passing there (it lost 29-56 last time), it should win statewide easily.
It's also worth noting that traditionally liberal Newton is the home of a controversial $200 million high school project, detailed by Seth Mnookin in this week's Boston Globe Magazine.
CommonWealth contributor Dan Kennedy has an unsentimental appreciation in the Guardian on what Sen. Ted Kennedy (no relation) means to residents of Massachusetts, where he's a lot more than a liberal lightning rod:
This may or may not come to a surprise to outsiders, but in Massachusetts Kennedy is known principally for two things: his diligent attention to the constituent-intensive aspects of being a senator, especially when it comes to bringing home the bacon; and his easy affability and accessibility, especially in comparison to our more dour and distant junior senator, John Kerry.
In the current Boston Phoenix, David Bernstein writes about the lack of dissent (and dissenting votes) in the state House of Representatives as ruled by Speaker Sal DiMasi -- who, despite the thesis of a professor at the University of North Carolina -- may be the most powerful politician in the state right now.
"DiMasi’s critics say he runs a tyrannical operation that buys acquiescence and punishes dissent," writes Bernstein, but some say that his power is the result, not the cause, of meek legislators:
“He is credited and blamed with being a lot more heavy-handed than he actually is,” says Arline Isaacson, a lobbyist for gay rights and teachers’ unions. “Because legislators believe the myth, they pre-emptively vote the way they think he wants them to vote.”
MassINC is now hosting a reader's forum on the state budget in Massachusetts and the "point of reckoning" caused by an economic downturn and soaring health care costs. Daniel Winslow, who was the chief legal counsel to Gov. Mitt Romney, kicked things off with a provocative essay on ways to limit spending on social services, such as using "lifestyle analysis factors" to determine who is really in need:
For state entitlement eligibility, a simple LAF checklist can consider discretionary spending such as whether persons or households seeking free or discounted state services own property, have credit cards, hold bank accounts, or own a new car, multiple cars or a boat. The checklist could also consider whether an individual purchases cable television, Internet service, or premium cell phone service and whether they buy airline tickets, possess illegal drugs, or smoke a pack of cigarettes daily.
Is this the kind of reform that can solve our fiscal crisis? Is it fair or compassionate public policy?
The Boston Globe's Sean Murphy reports on former Big Dig administrator Michael Lewis, who was able to triple his annual pension to $73,000 as a result of being "fired" by the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority -- as opposed to voluntarily retiring, which was how the departure was annnounced last year. (Lewis now earns $130,000 as Rhode Island's transporation secretary, but Murphy reports that he is already collecting his Massachusetts pension.) From the Globe story:
The pension increase for Lewis was the result of a state law intended to protect state employees from politically motivated dismissals. Employees with more than 20 years of service are eligible for enhanced pensions if they can prove they were not fired because of poor performance or malfeasance. In his case, the reason was that his job was eliminated.
CommonWealth's Michael Jonas reported on the questionable application of this law in 2002:
The review shows that at least four ex-state legislators, including former House majority leader Richard Voke, have been granted early pension payments, despite apparently not qualifying for them. In hundreds of other cases, the timing of the pension application raises questions about the validity of claims that the employee was terminated or their position was abolished.
...top state officials, including lawmakers voted out of office and ex-legislators fired from plum patronage jobs, have legitimately qualified for a benefit whose public policy purpose appears dubious at best. Among those tapping into the rich grab bag of retirement provisions is former governor Paul Cellucci, who is now collecting $42,573 a year while serving as US ambassador to Canada on a federal salary of at least $130,000 a year.
And in 2004 state Treasurer Tim Cahill told CommonWealth that he would work to reform what are known as "termination pensions."
State Rep. Denis Guyer, whose district is about as far away from a subway stop as one can get in Massachusetts, is peeved that MBTA vending machines give change in dollar coins rather than in paper currency. The Boston Globe's Glen Johnson reports that Guyer has filed legislation requiring that the T give back paper when a customer is owed more than $5. Not coincidentally, "the Dalton Democrat ... lives in the same town as Crane & Co., the exclusive supplier of paper stock used to make dollar bills and other U.S. currency, and he'd like to preserve some jobs." But he also argues that special interests are behind the dollar coin:
"I'm not going to apologize for fighting for jobs in my district. I think that's one of the reasons people elect me to office. At the same time, the dollar coin has been wildly unpopular and the federal government and their friends in the mining industry keep fighting for the coin," Guyer said.
MBTA manager Dan Grabauskas counters that it would be prohibitively expensive to make the switch to paper change.
At least the T has no stake in the great debate over whether to abolish the penny, a move that William Safire suggests and Barack Obama seems to like.
MassINC is sponsoring a forum next Thursday that promises some spirited debate -- and, no doubt, an audience with some passionate opinions. Will the fiscal crisis encourage the major political players in Massachusetts to work together on reform measures? Come to the event and find out whether change is in the air. Also, get the PDF of the MassINC policy brief "Point of Reckoning: Two Decades of State Budget Trends."
The Politics of Tough Choices During Tough Fiscal Times
Date: April 10th, 2008
Time: 8:00-9:30AM
Location: Omni Parker House Boston, MAClick here to RSVP or call (617) 742-6800 x120.
Join us for this special MassINC event on the Massachusetts budget and the choices facing the governor and legislature as they look toward the future. Moderated by Jim Braude from WTTK and NECN, panelists include former Senate president Thomas Birmingham, former Senate Ways and Means chairwoman Patricia McGovern, former secretary of Administration and Finance and MassINC board member Thomas Trimarco and former secretary of Administration and Finance Steve Crosby.
Blue Mass. Group's Charley on the MTA calls for a grass-roots effort to abolish the singular Massachusetts sensation of mandating that police officers (instead of mere civilians) stand guard at utility repair and construction sites along public roads:
Now, $5 million/year that the state spends on the details is not that big a deal, although it may add up to many times that when you include local roads. But this is the test case for all the other important, cost-saving reforms that [Senate President Therese] Murray has proposed. If the legislature rolls over for the police unions (again), then come the MBTA unions, with their cushy pension deal. Then come the toll collectors. Then come the contractors, who don't want the stricter oversight that Murray's bill would provide.
The police detail issue, though unknown in the rest of the country, has been inflaming passions for years in Massachusetts. It came up at MassINC's "Municipal Meltdown" forum in December (see transcript), where anti-tax activist Barbara Anderson referred to the "the policeman with the coffee and the donut in the other hand watching the hole being dug" and Amesbury Mayor Thatcher Kezer countered that "on the scale where the real [fiscal] problems are, that’s a blip."
Hub Blog weighs in on the "Judas" dust-up over Bill Richardson's endorsement of Barack Obama despite his long involvement with the Clintons:
James Carville defends his 'Judas Iscariot' attack on Bill Richardson and pronounces, 'I believe that loyalty is a cardinal virtue.' Actually, I've come to the conclusion that loyalty is the most abused and overrated of virtues. Its loudest proponents are usually bullies, thugs and gangsters, demanding one-way loyalty toward themselves and rarely extending it back to others.
That reminds me of one of my least favorite quotes about politics in Massachusetts, attributed to the late congressman Joe Moakley but expressed by plenty of local pols over the years: "Never forget where you came from." I get the part about not turning your back on your neighborhood after you've become a success, and I don't dispute that Moakley was an effective defender of the working class, but that quote always carried an element of parochialism and small-mindedness to me, especially in a city known for violence around school busing.
The Boston Globe is reporting today that Ralph Martin will not run for mayor next year, and the story by Stephanie Ebbert and Sacha Pfeiffer ends with a quote that pretty much says that holding an election in 2008 will be a waste of time and money:
"Mayor Menino is invincible at this point," said Jeffrey Berry, a professor of political science at Tufts University. "There is no candidate on the horizon who can effectively challenge him."
In other election news today, the residents of Ypsilanti, Michigan, and environs were no doubt heartened to learn that, though the local economy may be tanking, at least they'll be represented by a champion in Congress, John Dingell:
The Dearborn Democrat, who took over the office held by his father in 1955, is set to become the longest-serving member of the House ever on Feb. 14, 2009. He would pass Jamie Whitten, the late Mississippi congressman who holds the House record with 53 years, 2 months and 13 days.
Inexplicably, the Detroit Free Press doesn't mention an even more amazing fact, which is pointed out by Governing.com's Alan Greenblatt:
His dad, John Sr. had represented the district before him for 22 years -- meaning father and son have held the same seat since 1933.
Governing magazine and the Pew Center for the States give Massachusetts a "C" in their annual Management Report Card. Only New Hampshire and Rhode Island got lower grades for how well their state governments handle money. Massachusetts got mediocre marks for its budget process, the management of its public workforce, and the setting of performance goals, but it really ended up in a ditch thanks to the condition of the state's infrastructure. And the report's authors see no sign that we'll be patching up our potholes soon:
If Massachusetts did decide to make infrastructure a top priority, it's hard to know where the money would come from. The state's total outstanding debt already exceeds $18 billion — the highest in the nation per capita — and the Massachusetts budget for next year already faces a $1 billion shortfall.
Well, maybe that's not exactly their point.
UPDATE: Steve@Pioneer claims in our Comments section that Pioneer was actually trying to point out that Massachusetts has a heavy public debt, not that we spend relatively little on public higher education, and he points to this op-ed as proof. According to Pioneer's Charles Chieppo and Steve Poftak, the debt amounts to $12,550 per citizen. But surely we can match that by spending more on public higher ed. Doesn't every freshman deserve one of these as a reward for graduating from high school?
Ballot Access News reports that only 49 percent of state House seats in Pennsylvania are being contested by both the Democratic and Republican primaries -- even though the Democrats control the 203-member chamber by a single vote.
Still, Pennsylvania is unlikely to beat Massachusetts, which was second only to South Carolina in 2006 in terms of clearing the driftwood off its ballots. Only 26 percent of the Bay State's House seats had both Democratic and Republican candidates that year. The deadline for filing nomination papers this year is April 29, so we'll know in a little more than two months whether we can expect another election year without too much political squabbling.
Colorado's Daily Camera reports that the Boulder City Council is unlikely to pass a resolution calling for Congress to consider the impeachment of President George Bush. Says one councilor: "I am not interested in engaging in purely symbolic acts. ... We obviously lack the power to act on any of the constitutional violations of the current administration."
That reasoning didn't stop Cambridge, Mass., which passed just such a resolution in 2006. Given its habit of weighing in on national and even global affairs, perhaps it's time for the Cambridge City Council to pass a resolution condemning the inaction of its liberal brethren in Boulder.
The two maps below show how the votes for Barack Obama in last week's Massachusetts presidential primary stacked up to the votes for Deval Patrick in the 2006 gubernatorial primary. Both ran as "change" candidates and there were similar patterns of support for both candidates geographically. Obama received 512,000 votes, considerably more than Patrick's 452,000 votes, but that wasn't enough in the higher-turnout presidential race. (Hillary Clinton received 705,000 votes, or almost three times the total of Chris Gabrieli, who finished second to Patrick in 2006.)
Obama was especially successful in getting new votes in rural areas and in high-income suburbs, consistent with national trends. But Clinton did much better getting out the vote in manufacturing towns and in the state's smaller "Gateway Cities." For example, Obama lost a big chunk of Patrick voters in Southbridge, a working-class community with a large Latino population (20 percent of the total).
In terms of raw votes, Obama did get new voters out in Boston, Cambridge, and Somerville, even if he wasn't able to improve on Patrick's percentage of the total vote. (Obama got 53 percent in Boston, well below Patrick's 58 percent.) But he was really hurt by a loss of Patrick votes in the cities of Worcester, Fall River, and New Bedford -- all of them in the districts of US Reps. Jim McGovern and Barney Frank, who both endorsed Clinton. Another big drop came in the town of Plymouth, the home of state Senate President Therese Murray, who made her displeasure known when Ted Kennedy snubbed Clinton in favor of Obama.
Matthew Yglesias summarizes the advantages of a highly partisan political atmosphere. Back in the days of Dixiecrats and Rockefeller Republicans, when many candidates completely disagreed with their own parties' platforms, you never knew what you were voting for:
So while pundits may not like it when the parties draw clear distinctions, it seems to me that it's clearly preferable for the voters to be put in a situation where they feel like they understand the stakes and there's a relationship between votes cast and policy outcomes.
This is a good point, and one that resonates in Massachusetts, where conservative Democrats often ran against liberal Republicans as late as the 1980s. But one problem that Ygelsias neglects to mention in his post is that clear party divisions can lead to more uncontested elections, as each party's label becomes toxic in different parts of the country. Here in the Bay State, it's possible that voters are happy with their all-Democratic congressional delegation and 80 percent Democratic legislature because their representatives vote in predictably liberal ways. But it's hard to be certain when the Republican Party concludes that it's futile to even offer an alternative in most elections.
Boston.com is reporting that George Keverian, once the Speaker of the state House of Representatives and thus one of the most powerful politicians in the state, has been fired from his job as director of assessors in Everett.
CommonWealth magazine ran a profile of Keverian, which emphasized his reformist credentials and also looked at his life after leaving Beacon Hill, in 2002. Read John McDonough's "The Speaker Who Believed in Democracy" here.
As noted in a previous post, Massachusetts state Rep. James Marzilli seems poised to move up to the state Senate seat vacated by Robert Havern earlier this year, which means Marzilli's House seat will also be filled via a special election. Also this week, state Rep. Douglas Petersen accepted Gov. Deval Patrick's offer to become the state's new agricultural commissioner, which means his seat will be taken over through a special election. That would make a new total of nine special elections in the 200-member Legislature since the last statewide election, and we're not even halfway through the two-year session.
I'm working on getting a tally of all state legislators who captured their seats through special elections (generally characterized by low turnout and a lack of time for first-time political candidates to make their names known), but it may be a long process. The General Court's official roster of legislators does not indicate exactly when or how they took office, and the Secretary of State's Web page on the results of special elections covers only the current year.
Admittedly, I've checked the legislative Web sites in about a dozen other states, and none of them indicate exactly when members were elected. It's almost as if special election victories weren't something to brag about.
For state Rep. Jim Marzilli, yesterday's victory in the four-way special election Democratic primary for a vacant state Senate seat couldn't come a moment too soon. Though he still must defeat Republican and Constitution Party opponents in a Dec. 11 final election, the longtime Arlington rep seems well on his way to a Senate seat in the heavily Democratic district. Going from the 160-member House to the 40-member Senate is a well-worn path up the ladder for the politically ambitious. But for Marzilli it would represent much more, opening the door for nothing less than a move back into political relevance.
After filing a competing energy bill that appeared to be outflanking efforts by House Speaker Sal DiMasi to come up with an energy proposal of his own, Marzilli was stripped earlier this year of his post as vice chairman of the Health Care Financing Committee. DiMasi's office said at the time that the decision had nothing to do with the Arlington Democrat's bill, something that Marzilli certainly wasn't buying.
The last House member for whom a move up to the Senate carried a similar promise of return from poltical Siberia was Steve Tolman. In 1998, after serving two terms in the House during which he was part of the small band of Democrats that regularly challenged the strong-armed rule of then-Speaker Tom Finneran, the Brighton Democrat won the Senate seat vacated by his brother, Warren. Tolman immediately went from House backbencher to Senate player, and currently serves as vice chairman of the powerful budget-writing Senate Ways and Means Committee.
Senior citizens are often regarded as a prized voting bloc because of their reliability in heading to the polls for elections large and small. Inveterate Cambridge politics watcher Robert Winters has plotted just how potent the older voter demographic is in a series of charts that shows the age distribution of Cambridge voters in various elections. While the median age of registered voters in Cambridge is just under 40 (39.33), the median age of those voting in last November's gubernatorial election was 48.68, and it rose to 56.33 for those casting ballots in the 2005 city election.
Many Massachusetts municipalities -- including Cambridge and Boston -- are holding what promise to be low turnout elections today under drizzly skies. The Winters bar graphs illustrate why, especially for such elections, campaigns wisely spend a lot of time on Election Day ferrying coffee and donuts to senior citizen buildings in a bid to butter up the reliable voters therein.
The British Telegraph newspaper is in the middle of a weeklong parlor game in which it names the Top 100 liberals and conservatives in America. Today, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick showed up at No. 71 on the left-hand list, between West Wing scribe Aaron Sorkin and former president Jimmy Carter. The capsule description does not get into Patrick's performance as governor so far:
A businessman and lawyer who became the first black governor of the New England state of Massachusetts last year and only the second black elected governor. Patrick, 51, served as an assistant attorney general in Bill Clinton’s administration but recently endorsed Barack Obama for president.
Harvard-educated, he has worked for the United Nations in Africa and is part of a new generation of black American politicians who want to move beyond the more race-based politics of the likes of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. A possible Attorney General in an Obama administration.
The Washington Post's E.J. Dionne weighs in on the 5th District race narrowly won by Niki Tsongas:
Her victory on Tuesday speaks to the continuing unpopularity of President Bush and the war in Iraq. But her less than robust margin over Republican Jim Ogonowski -- she won 51 percent to his 45 percent, with minor-party candidates taking the rest -- tells Democrats they cannot assume that Bush's low standing will turn the road to next year's elections into easy street. Individual candidates can still trump party affiliation, and sleeper issues can catch politicians by surprise.
Ogonowski's "sleeper issue" was illegal immigration, but that may have been trumped by health insurance for children. See our maps on the 5th results here.
As if gambling isn't controversial enough on its own, Gov. Patrick's proposed "casino zones" -- three regions that would each host one Vegas-style complex -- are also stirring up trouble. Specifically, some residents in the far west object to being lumped in with Worcester County, and they fear getting cut out of the action. "It's another example of people misunderstanding what Western Massachusetts is," Chicopee mayor Michael D. Bissonnette told the Springfield Republican. "Western Massachusetts is the four western counties." (That would be Berkshire, Franklin, Hampden, and Hampshire.)
We'd like to dispel the stereotype of Bostonians thinking that the "west" begins in Dedham, so we'll remind our Area Code 617 readers that that the blogosphere does extend beyond Route 128. Walking the Berkshires, for example, gives a western perspective on the casino brouhaha. But is it too late to bring the state together? The Berkshire blogger darkly warns of "longstanding resentment, dare I say even secessionist grumbling out here that Boston hasn't got a clue about what lies West of Worcester."
The results from the 5th District congressional race are in, and as our map above shows, Democrat Niki Tsongas won by holding the Democratic cities of Lawrence and Lowell, plus sweeping the largely affluent suburbs in the south of the district. You can see town-by-town raw data at Boston.com, plus analysis at Blue Mass. Group. As the latter points out, a 47 percent vote against the Democrat is "normal" for this district, at least compared with the last gubernatorial race.
Indeed, Republican Jim Ogonowski did better than the 2006 combined vote for Republican Kerry Healey and conservative independent in only three communities: his hometown of Dracut, plus the nearby cities of Methuen and Haverhill. He apparently failed to hold the non-Democratic vote from last year's gubernatorial election in the southern and western edges of the district, though one could argue that he did a pretty good job in the rest of the district, given how badly the Republicans have been polling in Massachusetts and nationwide this year.
Our third map shows how much work the GOP needs to do in order to get back the solid majority that Mitt Romney won here in the 2002 gubernatorial election. Their road map is clear, though, as the conservative heart of the district has clearly shifted from the bedroom communities in the south to the more blue-collar cities and towns that are closer to New Hampshire.
The above map shows what a Republican victory looks like in the 5th District of Massachusetts, where voters will be choosing between Democrat Niki Tsongas and Republican Jim Ogonowski in a special election tomorrow. Mitt Romney who easily carried the district in 2002, winning all but four communities. (Note: The 5th District does not include a small portion of Wayland, but the votes involved would not change the overall results shown in these maps.)
Next we see the results of the governor's race last year. The 5th was one of Democrat Deval Patrick's two or three weakest congressional districts, but he still won a majority against the combined totals of Repubican Kerry Healey and conservative independent Christy Mihos.
Finally, we see where the greatest changes occurred between the 2002 and 2006 races. If Ogonowski is to pull off an upset in the 5th, he needs to get out the presumably more conservative voters who were cool toward Patrick in Dracut, Billerica, Lowell, and Tewksbury (while hoping that loyal Democrats in those communities stay home) or get back some of the Romney votes that swung toward Patrick in the more moderate towns of Sudbury, Wayland, Carlisle, Acton, and Concord.
For some reason, my Bloglines feed for today's Boston Globe sent me a chart listing the percentage of voters in each Massachusetts town who are "unenrolled" (i.e., not affiliated with a party). There was no story with it that I could find; even worse, there was no map, so I made the one above based on their data. Notice that independents are strongest in: small towns; communities close to the New Hampshire and Vermont borders; and towns far from the state capital of Boston. I wonder whether that last criterion (distance from the capital and/or largest city) is true in other states.
Independents make up more than 70 percent of the electorate in Monroe, Gosnold, Savoy, Florida, Phillipston, Westhampton, Clarksburg, and New Ashford. (All but Gosnold, a string of islands between the mainland and Martha's Vineyard, are in the western part of the state.) Independents are scarcest in Fall River (33 percent), Cambridge (35 percent), and Boston (37 percent), all overwhelmingly Democratic cities.
