Ad watch: Kerry Healey
Title: The Big Squeeze
Producer: Red October Productions
Description: The first 30-second spot of Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey's campaign shows a family of four being squeezed by a vise, as a narrator lists reasons why costs are going up. The second half shows clips of happy families as the narrator lists Healey's ideas for reducing costs. Healey briefly appears on screen, wearing a suit and standing behind a podium that features the state seal.
Text: "It's the big squeeze. Taxes go up every year. Gas prices through the roof. The Legislature wastes more and more. Sky-high auto insurance rates. Kerry Healey has solutions. Immediate tax rollback -- you voted for it. Suspend the gas tax -- with a $1 billion dollar surplus, we can afford it. Use the savings from pension reform to keep our property taxes down. Break up the auto insurance monopoly. Kerry Healey: Smart solutions that work."
Accuracy: The tax burden in Massachusetts is heavy, but not as heavy as its reputation. The combined state and local tax burden actually dropped slightly, from 10.4 percent of per capita income last year to 10.3 percent this year, according to rankings by the Tax Foundation, a non partisan group in Washington, D.C. Property taxes have been increasing, said Michael J. Widmer, the president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, but ``as you look over past decade and a half, the state has established a much more pronounced record of tax cuts rather than tax increases."
Healey's solutions would provide some savings, if passed by the Legislature. A proposed cut in the state income tax rate sought by Healey and Governor Mitt Romney would deliver $225 in savings to a household earning $75,000 a year . Her proposal to suspend the state's 21-cent-per-gallon gas tax for three months this summer would have delivered about $31.50 for a motorist who drives 3,000 miles in a vehicle that gets 20 miles per gallon. Romney has argued his proposal to gradually deregulate the auto insurance market would save drivers with clean records 5 percent in the first year on auto insurance premiums, though others dispute that. Healey's plan to revamp the state pension system could save local communities $160 million a year by improving investment results, according to the Pioneer Institute, a Boston-based, conservative think tank; Healey estimates an additional $40 million in administrative savings. The Healey campaign estimates millions more in savings from other changes in public pension plans.
Effectiveness: The ad aims at anxiety about the cost of living in Massachusetts and also subtly portrays Healey as the counterweight to the Democratic Legislature. It says she provides ``smart solutions that work" but does not mention that many of her ideas -- the gas tax suspension, the income tax rollback, auto insurance reform -- have been ignored by the Legislature.
SOURCE: Globe staff
