Some of the Family

I started a blog to talk about issues, but also to post pictures. It has been a long time since I have posted pics, so I decided to post a few of my animals. Banker is the Dalmation. He is two and is very active. He is my second Dalmation and they are intelligent, loyal, inquisitive, and very social. Here is Banker being precocious.
I also have two cats and this is Sasha. Can you tell that the scratching post is filled with catnip? One more time, This is my cat on drugs!!

Best Places to Live in Massachusetts

The Boston Globe has a story in Sunday’s paper that gives us the best places to live in Massachusetts in quite a few categories. Of course, those of us from Western Massachusetts know that this means the best places in the eastern third of the state. Sure enough, not one Central or Western mass city or town is mentioned.

Of course we are used to this in the Berkshires. We are like a foreign country to the Globe. Unfortunately this has lead to a like mindset in the Greater Boston area. There are many examples of this. A story on WBZ-TV a few years ago detailed the plan to try to open a second large airport in Massachusetts in “Western Mass”. I was intrigued and turned on the story only to find that they were talking about Worcester!

A second example was the discussion of a broadband bill on Blue Mass Group. People were insulted that we wanted to spend state money on bringing high speed services to Western Massachusetts. Some people suggested that we shouldn’t spend money out here when more money was needed d for mass transportation in the Boston area. Never mind that 20% of all of our sales tax in western Mass goes to paying the MBTA now, they wanted more.

The third example would be the suggested 19 cent increase in gas tax. It would appear that a fair tax is one that someone else pays.

It is unfortunate that people have so little regard for Western Massachusetts. It contains a great deal of beauty; both natural and cultural. We have the highest peak in Massachusetts, Mt Greylock. We have the state’s leg of the Appalachian Trail. In our area, you can see bike paths, trails, lakes, and some of the best fly fishing on the East Coast. Want to raft? There are a number of places and services that can be utilized. If you would like to see 500 million year old bedrock marble quarries, you can visit the Natural Bridge State Park. Or maybe you would like to just relax and camp in a scenic park with a beautiful lake. Clarksburg State Park has been named as one of the top 100 small campgrounds in the US several times over the past few years. And on the Taconic Trail, you can actually stand in three states at one time while partaking of some spectacular scenic vistas. You can bike up Taconic, but if you prefer flat land, we have miles of bike paths.

Maybe history is more your thing. The Berkshires are filled with history and ties to some of the great movements, people, and thought that molded our American culture. It seems as if everyone stopped in the Berkshires at some point. You can see the site that used to be the North Adams Iron Works, where the steel plates were made for the first ironclad union vessel in the Civil War. You can visit the Susan B. Anthony House. Or how about the home of W.E.B. Dubois? Hancock Shaker Village combines history with out door activities, with culture, great furniture and a sense of immersion into a culture and way of life. There are many different sites that contribute to the history of our great nation.

Here in Berkshire County we have more cultural organizations, facilities, and activities per square foot than anywhere else in the US. We have museums such as the Berkshire Museum that has an innovation hall detailing Massachusetts contributions to American life. We have great art museums regardless of your tastes. For example, we have the quintessential American artist, Normand Rockwell at the Rockwell Museum in his home town. We have the eclectic teaching museum, the Williams College Museum of Art. And that is bracketed by the Clark Art Museum with impressionists and old masters; and the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MassMoca), one of the largest museums in the country.

We have more acting troops in Berkshire County than almost anywhere else. They are lead by two of the oldest theaters in the US, the Berkshire Theater in Stockbridge and the Williamstown Theater. Each year, some of the top actors from Broadway, Hollywood, and around the country come to the Berkshires to ply their trade and enthrall visitors.

I love music and what better place to be than in the Berkshires in the summer. Tanglewood brings the Boston Symphony to the Berkshires.

Artisans, artists and Hancock furniture awaits the visitors who stay at out summer cottages, hotels, and bed and breakfasts in the summer. Skiing, both cross country and downhill await our winter travelers and of course, even the Globe must know about the spectacular foliage in the autumn.

As I just sat down and wrote this, I am sure that I have left out a ton of activities. There are malls and outlets stores for shoppers, antique stores, baseball in two locales, and outlet stores. There is a little something for every taste and you can make a week out of activities and site, or you can move here (median house price at last look was $203,000), breathe the fresh air and shop for local foods at farmer’s markets from local farms just down the road.

If you come out to visit, plan to spend a little time and please spend a little money. It’s good for the economy. And let’s not tell the Globe. We don’t need them angry about all the fun they are missing.

Get a Receipt with that Doughnut!

The late comedian, Mitch Hedberg had a skit about getting a receipt for a doughnut. He would ask why he received a receipt for a doughnut and insisted that paper and ink should not come into this transaction. He said, “Why would you ever need the receipt as proof of purchase?” He would end by saying, “I have proof, no wait, its home in the file, under “D” for delicious.” We now know why he would need a receipt. He would need it if he lived in Massachusetts, where Governor Patrick has filed a “sugar” tax and where DOR is going after every penny in our couch cushions.

Governor Patrick has filed a “sin tax” to charge people sales tax on candy bars, soda, and other forms of sugar foods. So you may need a receipt if you are eating a candy bar walking down the street and an agent of the Department of Revenue (DOR) approaches demanding proof that you have, indeed, paid your tax.

Outrageous? Yes. However, in a recent conversation with a constituent who owns a business in my district, I was told a story that makes this seem not so farfetched. This struggling business man told me he had just gone through a DOR audit at his hotel. I have known this individual for 30 years and know him to be meticulous in his book keeping. I told him so and opined that he couldn’t have had any problems. He pointed to his fireplace and said he was hit on the fireplace and had to pay for that. Let me explain that his fireplace is in his outer dining room just off of the bar and is lit in the winter time for a little warmth, but more for ambiance than heat. The auditor told him that fireplaces are utilities just like gas and electricity and he needed to pay a sales tax on his cord wood! If we are hitting businesses up for their fireplace wood, we should just stop people and demand their pocket change as they walk down the street.

Is this an isolated incident? Sadly, no. Over the past few years, I have been called by store owners who sell herbs in their supermarket and the DOR is now differentiating as to how they are sold. As food, it is tax exempt, but if they believe they are being sold as vitamins, they reach back to tax the store owner. Got a coffee bar as well as sell food for take -out? Count your cookies! Cookies are tax exempt if taken out as food, but taxable on premises as a meal. Somehow DOR determines what you are selling and how.

And it is not just small business owners. The Department has determined that they are going to restructure the taxation of telecommunication services reaching into other states to look for taxes. While this may or may not be good policy, it doesn’t matter. The Department is supposed to enforce the law, not create it.

Large companies aside, we have to examine who we are taxing and why. In the Governor’s supplemental budget filing, he counts on over $100 million in tax case settlements with big companies and tax disputes. So let’s settle with the big guys, but we’d better count the candy in the little guy’s pockets.

The latest proposals for taxation hit the poorest taxpayers. Proposals to tax candy or sugar, gas, alcohol, telecommunications (phones and cable TV), as well as the recent increase in tobacco all fall disproportionately on the low income tax payers. How much can they afford to pay considering that 653,000 Americans filed for unemployment payments for the first time last week? 12 million Americans are unemployed and here in Massachusetts our unemployment rate is at 8.4% and rising.

Can we afford this? Ah what the heck, it only comes out to a large vat of coffee a week! So, be prepared to pay more for the simple things in life, and don’t forget, keep your doughnut receipt handy.

One More Gas Tax Comment

After a district meeting on Monday this week, I traveled back to Boston in the evening. As I was leaving town, I noticed at an area gas station that the price of a gallon of regular unleaded gas was $1.91. On my way to Boston, I stopped at a Shell Station in Templeton, just outside of Gardner. There, I filled my tank for $1.79/gal. Not only was it cheaper there, but I saw several stations in Cambridge with lower gas prices!

North Adams Mayor John Barrett has been complaining for the past year that gas prices are higher in the Berkshires than elsewhere in the state. I have made numerous phone calls to complain about the higher prices (and prices are even higher in South County). I have been told that transportation is the difference in price, but that makes no sense. The station at Templeton is at least as far away from gas distributors as is my district. And it doesn’t explain why prices invariably go up every week end.

That means that Berkshire County residents are expected to pay more per gallon than those areas that will actually see a benefit from this gas tax. Let me see; more per gallon, in an area where the rural nature means we use more gallons to travel and the weather and hilly terrain mean we actually need our SUVs and we don’t have the option of mass transit.

Just another reason to find a better way to pay for our transportation system.

More on the Gas Tax

In 1986, I first ran for state representative and one of the things I talked about was our need to repair or replace the Hadley Overpass in North Adams. This is the longest span in Berkshire County and was in bad shape. Here we are in 2009 and the Overpass is finally being rebuilt twenty-three years later. We are not replacing it, but rebuilding the existing structure after years of being told we have to replace it and much dithering back and forth on replace/repair.

The machinations over this bridge are, in a nutshell, why it is difficult for me to vote for a proposed 19 cent gas tax in Massachusetts. We have poured money into the greater Boston area and have neglected the rest of the state as we did so. Now, my constituents are asked once again to send money to Boston for its road and mass transit systems.

This is unfair. When I entered office, over 80% of the bridges in Berkshire County were substandard. These were not unsafe, but needed work. Today the number is still around the same. For years the western part of the state has seen money diminish for roads and bridges. We have witnessed time and again the postponement of bids for work, and we have lived with lousy roads in an area that doesn’t have the luxury of a sprawling mass transit system. In all that time, I have never complained because Boston and the surrounding areas have been a powerful economic engine for the state. However, enough is enough and I am very reluctant to vote for more money to once again bail out bad projects, decisions, or management. If we had had the same percentage spent here as in the eastern part of the state, we could have been part of the economic engine for the state.

Today, the people of my district subsidize the MBTA with one penny on the sales tax even though they are not within scores of miles of that system. We passed this as we were told that a penny from the sales tax and forward funding for the “t” would take care of them and we wouldn’t have to spend any more money on this system. Live and learn. Hiring practices, inefficiencies in new construction and ridiculous pension benefits are piling up new costs on this system.
For years we have waited for the “Big Dig” project to be done so that we could expand road construction in other parts of the state. The cost overruns on this project were legion and here we are after the system is in place and we are being asked to pay once again.

While I know that we need to come up with a plan to fund our transportation needs, I am unclear as to why people actually using the roadways that need to be paid for can’t pay a greater share for that benefit. The people going north/south on the Big Dig should pay for this. Many of the people in my district live in rural towns where a car is a necessity. They should pay a modest increase in the gas tax in order to repair their roads and bridges. And they shouldn’t be penalized for having SUV’s in the more hilly and snowy terrain of the Berkshires. In some areas, these are necessities.

Finally, I can’t fathom the Governor’s desire to eliminate any tolls when the entire system in fiscally insolvent. People of the Metro West area should not be asked to shoulder the burden of paying a disproportionate share of the Big Dig debt obligations. However, the solution seems to be to shift that disproportionate share to others rather than those who actually use the roads. Keep the tolls as they are and supplement these with a gas tax increase that is an acceptable size. And put the tolls back on exits one through four. I have been saying this since Gov. Weld eliminated these tolls and no one on Berkshire County has ever complained that I want to tax them more. Most of the travelers through these exits are not from Massachusetts!

Fixing our transportation system is a difficult problem and I know that it will cost us more money in order to right our system. However, the Governor’s statement that this will cost about as much per week as a large cup of coffee is wrong on two counts. First, in the Berkshires we tend to drive more because of the lack of mass transit and the rural nature of our population. It would not be unreasonable to put 20,000 miles on our vehicles per year. That would work out to a cost of $16.00/mo. That’s a lot of coffee. And new more energy efficient vehicles are nice, but unaffordable to people in lower income levels that have a hard time keeping the old car going on their income. A new car doesn't just mean more car payments, but higher insurance costs, excise tax, etc.

Second, this is on top of other tax and fee proposals. I drove approximately 29,000 miles back and forth to Boston last year. Some of that is paid for by per diems, but much is not. For me, in my income bracket, this proposed tax would be an inconvenience. However, we have many people living from paycheck to paycheck in the Berkshires and throughout the state. We had an increase in our unemployment rolls of 16,800 last month. Those people are living on an unemployment check. If all of the plans being floated around were to occur, the average family may be paying more for their alcohol, candy, meals, hotel stays (yes, people from the Berkshires pay this on the Cape or elsewhere in the state. It is not just a tax on out of state visitors.), telephone service, broadband, as well as the recently raised tax on cigarettes. Add to this higher local fees to make up for lost state revenues and that family living week to week could experience a $30-40 increase in their monthly bills or more. Where does this money come from?

Again, I know we have to pay for our transportation system. But we must keep in mind that we are in the worst fiscal climate in 70+ years. People can’t rely on state services given the constraints of our budgets. Every dollar is precious. We need to be intelligent and innovative in our thinking. And we need to be fair to all of the citizens in the Commonwealth, regardless of where they live.

Gas Tax Proposal

The recent pronouncement from Governor Patrick over a 29 cent gas tax increase has resulted in many phone calls, emails, text messages, and people stopping me on the street asking me what the hell we are thinking in state government.


First, let me say I am not in favor of a 29 cent gas tax. That said, we have a serious problem with our transportation systems in Massachusetts and we need to do something about it. A commission formed to look at this has indicated that we need to spend $19 billion on our roads and bridges just to stay where we are in terms of the shape of our roads. That is not a good place. In 1986, when I was first elected to the legislature, approximately 85% of our bridges in Berkshire County were substandard. That doesn’t mean they were unsafe, but indicated that we needed a lot of maintenance. Today, the number is pretty close to this in spite of the work that we’ve done over the last 23 years. It is clear that we need to do more for our transportation system.

Of course, we need to do more than “run in place”. Here in Berkshire County, we need to increase the amount of money spent on our regional transportation system, the BRTA. We need to do so throughout the state. Sen. Stan Rosenberg and I have established and chair a caucus on regional transportation and the needs in our areas are many and urgent. We need to look at rail for both passengers and freight in Massachusetts. There are better and greener ways to move people around.

The dilemma is how we pay for this. We need a long term strategy that will take care of our back commitments and let us plan for the future. There is no one good solution to this. Any solution has to incorporate a lot of differing strategies in order to stabilize our transportation system.

I started by saying that I was not in favor of a $.29 gas tax. That said, we have not had an increase in the tax since 1992. It has remained at 23.5 cents since then. It has to go up modestly. Here are the gas taxes for the surrounding states:
Vermont $.20
New Hampshire $.20.6
Maine $.27.4
Rhode Island $.31
Connecticut $35.5
New York $44.5
At 23.5 cents we are at the low end regionally. However, if we are to ask people to pay more for gas tax, there are a series of other things that need to happen prior to a vote on the gas tax. Here is my list of suggestions

First, we need to enact the “Olver amendment”. This was an amendment that Congressman Olver used to add to every transportation bill when he was the State Senator from Amherst. It would ensure that each region of the state received a benefit from the gas tax or any transportation plan. If people in my district pay more for a tax, they should reasonably expect that that money will go towards improvements in Berkshire County. One of the problems many of us have with the new proposals is that the administration proposes, and that every news report covers, mentions the dire need to fund the “Big Dig” debt and the MBTA in Boston. After years of road and bridge neglect in order to pay for the big dig, the people of Western Mass can’t be expected to continue to pay for these.

Neither should we expect metro west to continue to pay more than their share from turnpike tolls. However, the Governor has indicated a desire to remove the tolls all the way across the state to Route 128. This is unfair. They shouldn’t pay more, but should continue to pay to use the turnpike. And given our financial situation, a suggestion to remove tolls at this time is silly. In fact, as a Western Mass legislator, I have advocated for a reinstatement of the tolls on exits one through four. We need the revenue, and studies indicate that a vast majority of the users on these exits are from out of state.

I realize that the Governor wants to charge tolls on the borders of the state, but there are far too many ways to circumvent the western borders on back roads throughout the Berkshires. You would create less congestion and make more money by simply reinstating the exit 1-4 tolls.

Lastly, but foremost, we need to reform our current system. We pay far more per road mile than surrounding states and we need to know why that is. We need to examine the policies and practices of surrounding states and take their best practices to streamline our system and its costs. This needs to happen before we increase any fees, tolls or taxes.

Changes in Latitudes; Changes in Attitudes

Well, the House members have finally received committee assignments for the new biennium. For the first time since 1992, I am not a chair of a major committee. I have been reassigned as the vice chair of the Standing Committee on Bonding, Capital Expenditures and State Assets. It is disappointing, but this is still a paid position and the committee will be active in the capital projects from around the state as well as the federal stimulus bill.

One of the problems with government on all levels is that it is reactive rather than proactive in nature. It reacts rather than plans for the future. Since we live yearly budget to yearly budget, and are elected in two year traunches, I guess that this is normal. However, we neglect our long term planning and need to think through the long term effects of short term policy decisions. Take, for example, the issue of gambling. Recent statements by pro-gambling interests have said that we should consider this as it would bring money in very quickly. However, we need to take a look at the long term effects of such a huge policy decision. We can’t look at a short term money grab when the long term effects may include dramatic increases in addiction, bankruptcies, and crime. All of these cost money. We can’t look at short term additions to our budget if there are long term ramifications that lead to state dependency on a few large tax payers at the expense of many smaller diverse businesses making up a more recession resistant stable tax base. Our well being has to include long term as well as short term thoughtfulness over the issues we face.

For many years, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has neglected our physical infrastructure preferring to spend money on our social service systems. We can’t neglect this any longer. Our ability to compete economically relies on our work force and creative, critical, innovative thinking. That means investing in our public higher education system. It means investing in infrastructure such as site preparation. It means new science buildings to educate people in new sciences. We need to address this need.

Recent reports indicate that we will need to spend upwards of $19 billion over the next twenty years just to run in place with our transportation needs. We need to fix our roads and bridges state wide. We need to get a decent passenger rail system in place state wide. We need to address this need.

Our position as a preeminent life science state means that we need to find ways to dispose of waste and more importantly, have a plentiful source of water. I have raised this issue over the past several years as we have had indications that we are running low on supplies south of Boston and in Boston itself. That doesn’t mean we are running out of water, but it does mean that we need to plan carefully for the future. As the national chair of the Council of State Governments in 2003, I saw the difficulties that western and southwestern states have had as they are running low on water supply. States are suing each other over water rights and rivers such as the mighty Rio Grande are merely trickles as upstream states dam the rivers and take all of the water. We need to address this need.

The federal stimulus bill is a big boost for states. We need to spend it wisely. The reaction of some is to substitute this wherever possible for state funding in our budget while revenues are down. This merely expands the base of the budget in an unsustainable way. We need to look at short term spending priorities that lead to economic projects that continue to give us a return on our investment. (Although taking $60 million off the top for a right handed power hitter for our beloved Red Sox is a pretty good investment too.) We have needs around the state and this gives us a chance to address capital needs in order to advance an economy that will mirror the evolving technology economy of America. With investment, we can maintain our edge in the creative economy. We need to address this need.

All of these should involve a lot of hard work for the bonding committee. I look forward to working on these issues and many others.

I will miss my economic development and emerging technolgies committee. It was designed by our former Speaker for me. And for the first time in 17 years, I will not chair an economic development position. But I have found that any position is what you make of it and starting Tuesday, I will be back in the State House working on the issues I care deeply about.