Unlimited Help

Please do what you can for an organization that has helped so many in the Bay State.

CLT’s annual brunch will be held on Sunday, November 15th. Its success is essential to our continuing as the voice of the Massachusetts taxpayer.

Over the thirty-five years of its existence, CLT has been financially on the brink many times. (Barbara remembers it considered laying her off in 1979 until she pointed out that her boss at the time couldn’t type. She also recalls working without pay during part of the 1980 Prop 2½ campaign.) Somehow, with the help of its loyal activists, and some generous assistance from a very few “John Hancock” contributors, we’ve muddled through.

But right now we are hurting financially more than ever before, partly because most of those few “larger” contributors have passed on or have moved to a better state. Because of the generous response to our September mailing from some members, we figure we can stay afloat until after the annual brunch (more details below) on November 15. The next day — November 16th — CLT will shut down.

Your check — made out to CLT — MUST be received by us no later than November 8th to ensure your reservation. All per-person reservations arriving after November 8th: $75.00

OR CALL (781) 344-2797

You can make your reservation(s) by mailing your check made out to CLT, with your notation of how many in your party, to:

CLT
PO Box 1147
Marblehead, MA 01945-5147

There’s also credit card payments available through PayPal — with your notation during the transaction that it’s for the brunch and how many are in your party. Without a notation, we won’t know to have your reservation at the door. You will not be seated, as we won’t be able to arrange for your meal(s).

This is not a major fundraising event — at $60 per person, CLT barely breaks even. (In the past, “John Hancock” supporters and those who could not attend but sent a contribution RSVP, made it financially worthwhile.) It is generally a celebration where members get together once a year to socialize and strategize. This year it may become a memoriam of CLT’s accomplishments over the past 35 years, and a farewell.

Best of luck to Barbara Anderson in her effort to keep her organization alive.

UPDATE: More from the Boston Herald, WBUR, Red Mass Group, Holly Robichaud, Michael Graham and the Boston Globe.

SECOND UPDATE: Please be sure to join us Wednesday night for The Notes on Blog Talk Radio at 8:00pm EST. Plus, more from Holly Robichaud, the Herald and the Globe.

THIRD UPDATE: From the Harvard Crimson, Joan Vennochi, the Globe and Herald.

Meeting The Man

Barbara Anderson on a nice little conversation she had with Gov. Patrick.

…Gov. Deval Patrick came to Marblehead for one of his community meetings. I was there to take notes for this column so I didn’t raise my hand to ask a question. But suddenly I found myself answering one from the governor when he asked for a show of hands on who supports, and who doesn’t, a graduated income tax.

I was a definite “doesn’t,” so to my surprise he walked over to my chair and asked, “Why?”

It’s funny how disoriented you can be when someone who is there to answer questions suddenly asks one. I had never met Gov. Patrick, but I’m sure I made an impression by first looking behind me and saying, “Who, me?” and when he nodded, asking “Why what?”

When I finally got around to it, I explained that the grad tax (which would require voter approval for a constitutional amendment) always loses because voters understand how varied rates would allow the Legislature to pick us off one bracket at a time, ratcheting up every two years; and Massachusetts taxes are already the fourth highest in the nation per capita.

“No, they’re not,” the governor argued.

“Yes, they are,” I said. This first meeting was going well.

UPDATE: From Wayne Woodlief, the Herald and the Sun-Chronicle.

SECOND UPDATE: More from the Globe.

THIRD UPDATE: More from the Globe, Herald and WBZ.

The Anderson Tapes

Barbara Anderson on the Bay State’s tax fetish.

Governor Deval Patrick, in an effort to let us know how serious the budget crisis is, says that “if we fired every single state employee, we’d still have a billion-dollar hole.”

Of course we would. Many of those employees would go out on instant pensions. Others would collect unemployment, have state-subsidized health insurance, or get a job at one of the independent authorities where they would start to accrue bigger pensions like those available at the MBTA after 23 years.

Would we still have a $28-billion state budget to go with the billion-dollar budget hole? Who would be running it and spending the money? Governor, what’s your point? That payroll costs aren’t much of the problem?

Can we stop being silly now?

At least Patrick’s sticking to his demand for “reform before revenues.” Unfortunately, the Legislature is sticking to its resistance to reform.

As various Democrats have said: “We can’t reform our way out of this crisis.”

Translation: “Let’s go directly to the revenues.”

So the Senate opened its budget debate by passing a 25-percent sales tax hike and local option taxes. Maybe it will get to reforms after my column deadline. Darn, it’s hard to write while holding my breath.

UPDATE: More from Cape Cod Today, Wayne Woodlief, the AP and Boston Phoenix.

SECOND UPDATE: More from Adrian Walker, Scot Lehigh, WBZ, WCVB, Red Mass Group, the Globe and Herald.

Newburyport Republican Committee Upcoming Events

The next Newburyport Republican Committee meeting will be held at the Starboard Galley on Wednesday May 27th at 7:00pm.

All residents of Newburyport and surrounding cities are welcome.

Guest Speakers include Barbara Anderson of Citizens for Limited Taxation & contributor to the Newburyport Daily News, and Elliott Margolis & Gail Burke of Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility

The Newburyport Republican Committee be conducting a food drive at the meeting benefiting the Newburyport Salvation Army. Please bring one of the following items to the meeting: Toothpaste, Deodorant, Laundry detergent, Toilet paper, Vaseline, Talcum Powder, Coffee (both decaffeinated and regular), ketchup (medium size and plastic) mayonnaise, mustard, relish (this is a list of the most needed items at the Salvations Army’s Donation Pantry.

For More information please contact Larry Giunta

The Newburyport Republican Committee will be hosting a “Support the Troops Drive” on June 27th.
The committee would like to invite all residents, active military members and area veterans to help with this effort. Anyone interested in assisting with the Troops Drive, please contact Paul Breau for more details.

Taxpayers Struggle To Keep Deval Administration Growing and Well Paid

Last week, the Boston Herald reported that Deval Patrick’s transportation secretary, Bernard Cohen, has given his his own staff 195 pay increases, even after he pressured MBTA general manager Dan Grabauskas into rescinding pay raises to his own employees.

The state transportation chief who pressured T general manager Dan Grabauskas into rescinding pay raises this week said he won’t halt 195 pay hikes he granted his own staff.

“I think it’s pretty hypocritical for the secretary to look at other agencies and departments and grandstand when he has different standards in his own shop,” said Sen. Richard Tisei (R-Wakefield).

Transportation secretary Bernard Cohen asked Grabauskas to halt the raises the T chief gave 273 employees this week as an effort to “leave no stone unturned in restoring fiscal health to all transportation agencies.”

But at his own transportation agency, Cohen granted pay hikes ranging from 1 percent to 7.5 percent last year. Some of the annual raises far exceed the hike given to Grabauskas staffers, who were supposed to get a 3 percent raise each of the next three years.

[...]

The annual raises, which Cohen has final say over, are based on merit and performance evaluations. Employees must be in the bottom half of the agency’s salary range and produce exceptional work in order to get more than a 6 percent raise.

Grabauskas granted an automatic 9 percent raise to non-union staffers to keep them in line with a recent union pay hike last week, but then rescinded most of the raises when Cohen leaned on him. News of the pay hikes broke shortly after Grabauskas hinted at a potential fare increase unless the state helped with an $8.2 billion debt load.

Adding insult to injury, the Herald reported today that the state payroll has exploded, even with the current economic downturn.

Gov. Deval Patrick has added almost 2,000 new workers to the state payroll in the past year even as he warns of dire budget cuts in the face of a $1 billion deficit, a Herald review shows.

And his administration continues to dole out millions in overtime, with nearly 80 prison guards raking in more than $100,000.

A mid-year Herald payroll analysis reveals that since July 2007, the number of state jobs has jumped by about 1,900, many of them new hires in the Department of Correction and MassHighway.

The soaring payroll comes at a time when the state is stepping in to bail out a debt-ridden Mass Pike and being asked to do the same for the MBTA, and the governor is requesting special powers to cut the budget this fall if the local economy continues tanking.

“It’s very worrisome,” Jim Stergios, executive director of the Pioneer Institute, said of the hiring frenzy. “It’s a problem, given that we’re probably heading into a recession, and we’ve been borrowing extensively.”

Barbara Anderson, of Citizens for Limited Taxation, told the Herald it’s time for state officials to get off “the gravy train.” They’re riding the gravy train alright… and Deval Patrick is the engineer.