Another way
Governor Slots spent yesterday making the case (again) of why the Commonwealth should get deeper into the gambling business, something he will spend too much of the rest of his term doing. But in another time one of Massachusetts' most effective and underrated governors, John Volpe, was willing to stand up and make the case for new taxes. And he did it with the business community standing squarely beside him.
Volpe's famous, bloody fight to enact the state's first sales tax could - and should - be a model for today. Then as now, there was no fiscal crisis as such, but Volpe wanted to do more: reform the mental-health system, rebuild the community colleges, construct highways. Volpe, a moderate to liberal Republican in the mold of Ed Brooke and Frank Sargent, was no particular fan of new taxes, but he considered a sales tax the lesser of all the competing evils - particularly at a time of rising property taxes.
In defiance of conventional wisdom, Volpe ran for governor on the sales tax in 1964, defeating Lieutenant Governor Frank Bellotti, a Democrat who opposed the sales tax. Volpe had to send his sales tax bill to the Legislature seven times before it was passed in 1966, but after all these years it remains a signature example of political courage and leadership. The Vault and the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, the key players in the business community in those days, were among Volpe's most important allies.
The business community has a chance to get off the sidelines and lead again. All the big business lobbying groups understand the necessity for repairing the state's infrastructure, and while few of them are ready to talk about it publicly, they all appreciate that raising the gas tax is the fairest and most efficient way to do it. Having said no to Deval Patrick's corporate tax hikes, the business community has an obligation to offer another way. A coalition that includes business and environmental groups could be a powerful voice for a gas tax hike.
Michael Widmer, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, one of those business groups, says raising the gas tax would provide far more money for transportation than the governor's casino tax. According to Widmer, the casino tax will raise only $200 million for transportation between now and 2012, when the first casino is supposed to open. Raising the gas tax 11.5 cents and indexing it to inflation, as proposed by the state's Transportation Finance Commission, would raise 10 times that, or $2 billion, Widmer says. Over 20 years the gas tax would raise $10.5 billion for transportation, versus $3 billion from a casino tax, he figures.
"There is a connection between the gas tax and the use of roads," says Widmer. "There is no connection between casinos and the use of transportation."
When it comes to the gas tax, there is far too much angst over all too little money. Hiking the gas tax 11.5 cents would cost the average driver about $66 a year, the price of three of the lottery's new $20 scratch tickets and a few minutes' worth of Keno.
Any gas-tax hike should be accompanied by savings. It is not too much to ask that we get rid of police details on state highways (for starters) and deal with the costly pension and health-insurance giveaways to MBTA workers in particular. If there is money to be saved in the governor's plan to merge overlapping agencies, we should do it.
Deval Patrick ran as the candidate of hope. Gambling, by contrast, is all about false hope. There is another way. John Anthony Volpe, a straight-arrow, popular governor who left the state better than he found it, nurtured an alliance with the business community and did something hard and lasting, unlike some of the dilettantes who have infested that office since.
All the elements are there for it to happen again.
Steve Bailey is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at bailey@globe.com or at 617-929-2902.
