Healey will sign antitax pledge

Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey , eager to position herself as the only dependable firewall against tax increases in this year's gubernatorial election, is trying to seize control of the tax debate raging among the Democratic primary candidates.

Today, Healey, the Republican gubernatorial nominee, plans to sign a pledge to ``oppose and veto any and all efforts to increase taxes," which was drawn up by Citizens for Limited Taxation, an antitax group based in Massachusetts.

``Voters need to understand I'm the only candidate in this race who has committed publicly and pledged not to raise taxes," Healey said in an interview.

Previously, Healey signed a pledge that was distributed to all the gubernatorial candidates by the Americans for Tax Reform, a Washington, D.C.-based group . None of the three Democratic primary contenders has signed the pledge.

Last week, the tax issue took on new prominence in the Democratic gubernatorial primary. Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly dubbed Deval L. Patrick ``For-it-all Deval," citing Patrick's support of a bill that would allow communities to raise the meals tax and two other taxes that would help fund a plan to expand healthcare. Then, in a new television ad, Democrat Christopher Gabrieli went after Healey, Reilly, and Patrick on the tax issue, asserting that his plan to cut the income tax gradually from 5.3 percent to 5 percent is the only responsible one.

Healey and Reilly want an immediate rollback and Patrick opposes it.

Yesterday, Healey said the Democrats could not be depended upon to keep taxes down. She said Reilly had opposed an income tax cut as recently as last year, and that Gabrieli's plan was too gradual.

``In good times, it's easy for the attorney general and Gabrieli to jump on board, when we've created a $1 billion surplus through fiscal discipline during the last three years," she said. But when a recession created a state fiscal crisis in 2003, she said, ``they would have given in to pressure to raise taxes and we wouldn't have a budget surplus today."

Patrick said yesterday that he has repeatedly opposed an income tax increase, but he would not sign the pledge because state tax cuts shift the tax burden to local communities.

``The no-new-taxes pledge in Massachusetts has been a lie because what it has become is the centerpiece of a fiscal shell game that has just led to higher property taxes," he said.

The Gabrieli campaign refused to say yesterday whether Gabrieli would sign the pledge. Reilly spokesman David Guarino said in an e-mail that Reilly ``is the only Democrat who has been clear he won't raise taxes" and who favors an immediate income tax rollback.

The state and local tax burden in Massachusetts is the 28th-highest among the 50 states and the District of Columbia, according to the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan tax research organization based in Washington, D.C.

Yet taxes remain a potent issue in Massachusetts gubernatorial elections. A Globe poll last month found that 57 percent of likely Democratic voters surveyed supported a rollback of income taxes. The three fiscally conservative Republicans who won the last four gubernatorial elections, despite a Massachusetts electorate that otherwise tends to support Democrats, talked tough on taxes.

Two of them, William F. Weld and Paul Cellucci , took the pledge.

Barbara Anderson, a Healey supporter, is the executive director of the Citizens for Limited Taxation, whose antitax pledge Healey will sign today. She said Weld and Cellucci used the pledge as a tool to curtail legislative spending.

``That is the real power of it," she said.

Four years ago, Mitt Romney broke with GOP tradition and refused to sign the pledge, though he repeatedly said he had no intention of raising taxes. A spokesman for Romney then called the pledge ``government by gimmickry." Healey signed the pledge as a legislative candidate in 1998.

Romney and Healey relied on increasing fees and closing corporate tax ``loopholes" -- which some business owners considered tax increases -- to help close the budget deficit they inherited.

Healey said yesterday that she might be willing to revisit some of those corporate tax changes to ease burdens on small businesses.

Lisa Wangsness can be reached at lwangsness@globe.com.