Reckless tax game
Is this gubernatorial campaign really so bereft of original or substantive ideas that it has come back to this, a tired old slugfest about a meaningless tax pledge?
Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey makes much of little when she touts her willingness to sign a pledge not to raise taxes if she is elected governor. That gimmick has been around long enough for voters to recognize an empty gesture when they see it. Remember George H. W. Bush and ``read my lips"?
As Governor Mitt Romney's deputy for the last four years, Healey owns the millions of dollars in fee increases that this administration has imposed in the last four years while claiming to have kept its promise not to raise taxes. A fee? A tax? A distinction without a difference.
That's pretty much what Romney said in 2003 when he accused administrators at the state's public colleges of ``fee abuse" for claiming to have held tuition costs steady for a decade even as they hiked student fees to cope with drastic cuts in state aid.
For Republicans, the mantra of no new taxes is election-year boilerplate. For Democrats, it is quicksand -- and two of the three rivals for the nomination are diving in headfirst. Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly favors an immediate rollback of the state income tax from 5.3 percent to 5 percent, a new position he can expect Healey to deride as an election-year-conversion if he wins the primary Sept. 19.
Christopher Gabrieli, the millionaire philanthropist, promises to reach the 5 percent benchmark with incremental tax cuts.
Deval L. Patrick, a former corporate lawyer and civil rights chief in the Clinton administration, would hold the line on taxes, accurately describing the proposed rollback as a shell game that will just force the state's 351 cities and towns to raise property taxes or cut services.
Reilly has mocked Patrick as ``For-it-all Deval" for supporting legislation that would give cities and towns the power to raise the meals tax to deal with such skyrocketing expenses as health insurance costs.
Does that make Reilly's pal, the mayor of Boston, ``More-for-me Menino"?
Thomas Menino, in response to state cuts in local aid, has lobbied relentlessly on Beacon Hill for years to win exactly that option for local communities.
The reckless tax pledge is yet another example of the ways in which political candidates underestimate the intelligence of the electorate.
Voters want a governor who is capable of fiscal restraint, but they also want one who will deal with the lack of affordable housing, the loss of jobs, and the state of public education. To promise to roll back or never to raise state taxes is to pretend to know the future. Massachusetts voters know it is hard enough to govern in the present.
Who knew last year that the Legislature would need to authorize $20 million for repairs to the Big Dig, an amount that is certain to rise, given the $4.5 million invoice from the Illinois engineering firm Romney has hired just to make sure the road and tunnel system is now sound? Counting on recovering the cost of repairs from contractors and project managers is a far from certain bet. Years of litigation loom involving the $14.6 billion highway project, not least of all from the survivors of the Jamaica Plain woman killed in the ceiling collapse in July.
Who knows how the landmark legislation requiring all residents of Massachusetts to have health insurance will be working next year?
Already, advocates for low-income people say the price of ``affordable" health plans will be too high.
Employers that do not offer health insurance say the $295 they will be assessed (read: taxed) by the state is more than they can afford.
There is no dedicated revenue stream for this ambitious initiative and more than one analysis has concluded that the state will not have the money to fund it.
What good will the tax pledge be then?
Eileen McNamara is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at mcnamara@globe.com. 