Tone Deaf on Wall Street

Speaking of being tone-deaf, nobody seems to have a harder time hearing the pulse of America than the executive at AIG. Okay, I get that AIG had legally binding contracts with these executives and that these contracts required them to pay these guys "retention" bonuses. I get the legalities of that . . . although I don't quite get how those retention bonuses can apply to executives who've already left the company.

But here's a question: why don't we ask these executives to waive their rights to these bonuses and not insist on the fulfillment of their contracts. Mayor Menino has asked City of Boston employees to take unpaid days off, and state employees routinely take furloughs in a financial crisis. There are stories in the news about companies whose workers have given up pay so that their colleagues won't be fired. And we can't ask these AIG execs to waive their bonuses voluntarily?

I mean, I'm not surprised that Congress is looking at solutions, like trying to tax these specific bonuses at a 98% tax rate. Cute idea if it works. but I'm not sure that's constitutional . . . and apparently neither is the Congress. Ex post facto problems? Potentially. Wouldn't it just be simpler for the Execs to volunteer to give the bonuses back. That would buy them at least a little bit of good will for the next round of begging with the American people.

Tone Deaf in the State House

The Boston Globe had a story today about how Transportation Secretary James Aloisi's sister had a "no show" job in the State House for six months. According to the Globe story, former Speaker Sal DiMasi assigned Carol Aloisi to former State Representative Rachel Kaprelian, who is now the Registrar of Motor Vehicles in Governor Patrick's administration. According to the story, the incoming Floor Leader, Garrett Bradley of Hingham went to his new office, he literally "found" her there.

My question is simple: how tone deaf are these guys? Why would anyone with any common sense give that much ammunition to the Howie Carrs and Mike Barnicles of the World. Why didn't Carol Aloisi ask to be reassigned to somebody else?

This kind of stuff makes me crazy. Because state government is actually an honorable enterprise. Because most folks working for state government put in an honest day's labor, and many of them are actually underpaid. And this kind of story ruins it for all of them. I don't get it.

When will 2009 Info be Available on the General Court Homepage?

Here's a question: we're already half-way through March, and yet there's still no information about the 2009-10 session available on the General Court's homepage. For example, the bill histories page only has bill histories from last session, and treats that as if it were current.

See: http://www.mass.gov/legis/ltsform.htm

Or, the Session Laws have links back to 1997, but no links for the 2009-10 session.

See: http://www.mass.gov/legis/laws/seslaws.htm

Hey Gang, we have enacted legislation already for the 2009-10 session that people would like to see! Okay, so far it's only one piece of legislation. It's Chapter 1 of 2009, relative to expanding the Governor's Authority to Address Deficiencies in Revenue. (How do I know this? Because I'm subscribed to the InstaTrac system.)

However, last night the House and Senate enacted House Bill 3415, a supplemental appropriation providing an additional $96.8 million in spending for this fiscal year. It's been laid before the Governor. It might be nice to see the enacted version of that on the Legislature's homepage before it becomes yesterday's news.

Comparing Gov. Patrick's FY09 and FY10 Proposals

For those who argue that the sky is falling, or that the bottom is falling out of our economy, it's interesting to compare what Governor Patrick proposed in his FY 2009 budget last year to what he's proposed in his FY 2010 budget this year. The initial evidence suggests that Governor Patrick is proposing to spend about the same amount overall, with a very slight uptick. Here are the overall numbers:

Type	FY09	FY10	Difference	Percent
Direct Appropriations	$26,794,198,689	$27,499,508,518	$705,309,829	102.63%
Chargebacks	$295,092,747	$519,562,340	$224,469,593	176.07%
Retained Revenue	$1,369,666,331	$473,627,971	($896,038,360)	34.58%
Subtotal	$28,458,957,767	$28,492,698,829	$33,741,062	100.12%
Federal Grants	$2,168,024,888	$2,379,530,426	$211,505,538	109.76%
Subotal with Grants	$30,626,982,655	$30,872,229,255	$245,246,600	100.80%
Trust Spending Total	$12,420,884,159	$12,551,727,618	$130,843,459	101.05%
Grand Total	$43,047,866,814	$43,423,956,873	$376,090,059	100.87%

The first subotal ($28,458,957,767) is a little higher than the Governor's FY 2010 subtotal ($27,973,136) listed on his website.

See: http://www.mass.gov/bb/h1/fy10h1/brec10/ga/hdefault.htm.

I'm wondering, why the discrepancy? My numbers were all derived from the Governor's house1.xls spreadsheet, which can be downloaded off his website.

See: http://www.mass.gov/bb/h1/fy10h1/dnld10/hdefault.htm

Maybe the difference is due to rounding errors, since the Governor is rounding all his summary figure to the nearest thousands -- i.e., the "752,034" figure for the judiciary should really be read as "$752,034,357" (which is the actual figure when you add up all his Judiciary accounts).

Now I'm curious why the posted numbers and the ones I added up from the house1.xls spreadsheet don't match. Stay tuned, campers, as I try to sort this one out.

More on the Brian Mooney Article

With respect to the previous post (Legislature's Use of PAC Money) I contacted Brian Mooney from the Globe and asked him if he knew in which line-item accounts the reserve was stashed. His response was that that the prior-year appropriations are merely carried forward into the same accounts, which are then supplemented by annual appropriations for estimated operating expenses. Mr. Mooney reported that these accounts function as reserves but are technically part of a single amount in the respective line items.

Legislature's Use of PAC Funds

In case you missed it, the Boston Globe had an interesting article on how the Legislature has apparently been squirreling away money in a reserve account which they're now using to offset cuts they claim to have made. The Globe article claims that for the first round of 9C cuts in October, the Legislature announced $9.1 million in cuts and that for the second round in January, they announced an additional $1.6 million in cuts. The article further claims that not many cuts are actually being made because the Legislature has a little-publicized reserve fund of $32 million, the result of surpluses accumulated over a number of years.

If the legislature has a $32 million reserve fund, it really is well-hidden. The legislature historically used 65 different line-item accounts which, for the 2003 fiscal year, they consolidated into two: one for the House and one for the Senate. (Click here for a full list of Legislative line-items from FY 2000 through FY 2010, as proposed in House 1)

The total amount of legislative appropriations in the last decade look like this:

• FY00: $51,815,807
• FY01: $56,975,326
• FY02: $58,591,135
• FY03: $54,260,572
• FY04: $56,067,472
• FY05: $54,300,572
• FY06: $57,771,907
• FY07: $59,231,814
• FY08: $59,603,655
• FY09: $59,603,655
• FY10: $59,659,898

I'm not quite sure how the Legislature was able to squirrel away $32 million in a reserve account from those figures, but I'd be interested to know from anyone who has any insight into that question.