Day 2 of House Floor Debate

Day 2 is now in the books as well. Today was focused primarily on Local Aid. The House took the eleven Local Aid related amendments and consolidated them into one amendment. Introduced by HW&M Chair Charles Murphy, the amendments added $201,518,000 to the total Local Aid amounts, which represents a 9.85% from what was recommended in the House Ways & Means Budget.

Municipality          HWM           HFA      Difference   Percent
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Boston           $381,036,934  $419,732,904  $38,695,970  110.16%
Springfield      $308,828,796  $314,936,638   $6,107,842  101.98%
Worcester        $232,138,653  $237,690,023   $5,551,370  102.39%
Cambridge         $27,415,591   $32,758,350   $5,342,759  119.49%
Fall River       $113,777,201  $118,737,443   $4,960,242  104.36%
Somerville        $40,986,924   $45,903,924   $4,917,000  112.00%
Lynn             $138,213,147  $142,423,920   $4,210,773  103.05%
New Bedford      $134,076,565  $137,771,923   $3,695,358  102.76%
Lowell           $144,817,216  $148,449,150   $3,631,934  102.51%
Quincy            $36,576,805   $40,202,290   $3,625,485  109.91%
Lawrence         $159,656,619  $163,039,138   $3,382,519  102.12%
Brockton         $153,099,146  $156,098,062   $2,998,916  101.96%

Click here to see a complete list of the House Floor Amendments for Local Aid, compared to what House Ways & Means recommeded.

The biggest winner by far was the City of Boston (see above), which added a whopping $38,695,970 to their total. Of course, the city had also seen it's biggest decrease in the HW&M budget from last year. Percentage-wise, the biggest winner was tiny Aquinnah (a.k.a. Gay Head), which saw a 132.98% increase in it's Local Aid contribution.

Day 1 of House Floor Debate

So, day 1 of the House Floor Debate is in the books.  What was accomplished today?  Not much other than the on-going debate on the sales tax increase.  Our guys are a little boxed in on income taxes, of course, given that in the last couple of election cycles the electorate almost repealed the income tax altogether.  The electorate at least has signaled a clear desire to get the income tax back down to its original 5%.

The Governor sent a letter to the Legislature yesterday telling them that he would veto the sales tax increase if the Legislature was not serious about the reform agenda that the Governor has proposed, including reform of the state pension system and, most importantly, the Commonwealth's transportation system.  On this point I have to agree with the Governor.

So, last night the House used Rep. Carl Sciortino's proposed sales tax amendment (see amendment #717) as the vehicle for raising the sales tax from 5% to 6.25%.  They apparently counted enough votes to get a veto-proof majority of 108 votes (one more than the 107 needed) to go for the increase.  The roll call vote has, of course, not yet been made available. but we'll post it when it is.  Other than that, and no surprise here, the House didn't accomplish much.  If the 1003 amendments, they've so far dealt with thirteen: two adopted, two rejected, six withdrawn, two precluded because of other action, and one laid on the side.

How many Amendments did Representatives File?

The House posted the floor amendments yesterday and the good news is that they came in just under a thousand.  Last year House members filed 1512 amendments, this shows unusual restraint on their part.  With 160 members filing just under a thousand amendments, that means the average member filed 6.25 amendments.  Still, some were more aggresive than others.

The table below sets forth a list of House members and the number of amendments that they filed.

Benjamin Swan heads up the list, having filed 40 amendments all by himself.  Bradley Jones, William Lantigua, Cheryl Coakley-Rivera (last year's champion), Gene O'Flaherty and Martin Walsh all hit the twenties.  On the other end of the spectrum, a half dozen Representatives only filed one amendment apiece.  Now that's restraint.  Or maybe indifference.  Who knows?

The Budget Amendment Process

So, how does the amendment process work anyway.  In a nutshell, once the Ways and Means Committees report the budget on the House and Senate side, the other members of the House and Senate get their crack at the budget.  There are 160 Representatives and 40 Senators.  During a typical budget season, the House will debate the budget on the floor for an entire week, normally the week after House Ways and Means has released the budget. The 160 members typically file between 1000 and 1600 amendments, or about a half dozen to ten apiece.  Some file more, some file fewer.  

On the Senate side the numbers are lower, as the Senators typically file under a thousand floor amendments.  Of course, with only 400 of them, that means that they can each put about twenty in the can.  One of the perks of being a Senator.  The Senate Floor debate is usually a little shorter, often wrapping up after three days (as opposed to five for the House).

Now, it is axiomatic that neither body can really debate 1000, let alone 1500 amendments. That would take more like a year than a week.  As a consequence, what happens in practice is that amendments get bundled.  Especially on the House side, probably 95% of the amendments get thrown in a bundle, and only 5% actually get debated.  On the Senate side, the number that gets debated is a little higher.

The Ways & Means Committees, with some input from the individual members, put together the bundles.  The way it used to work is this:

• The Ways & Means Committee put together "yes" and "no" piles.
• A member could pull a cherished amendment from the "no" pile and have it debated individually.
• Most of the time, these individually-debated amendments were voted down.

I don't know if it still works this way.  What the House now does is to take the bundled amendments, rewrite them (often with a different number for the earmark or the increase) and simply propose the bundle as one "consolidated" amendment.

House Ways & Means Budget Recommendations

The House Ways & Means Committee reported it's budget for FY 2010 today.  Your intrepid budget watcher has run the numbers, and here's how they look:

FY09:  $29,669,583,970
GOV:   $30,872,229,255
HWM:   $29,345,431,975

Click here to see a full spreadsheet with a complete comparison of every line-item from FY09 (Chapter 182 of the Acts of 1988), House 1 (the Governor's recommendation), and House 4100 (the House Ways & Means recommendation).

This means the following:

• The Governor proposed a budget that was $1,202,645,285 over the level of the FY09 Budget.  This amounts to a 104.05% increase from FY09.

• The House Ways & Means Committee has proposed a budget which is -$324,151,995 less than the FY09 budget.  This represents a decrease of 98.91% from the FY09 levels.
  

However, keep in mind that these numbers are BEFORE the Governor's 9C cuts, which he made in October of 2008 and January of 2009.

Here is my question: I keep hearing that the sky is falling, and that the Commonwealth needs to make drastic budget cuts from previous fiscla years.  Honestly, I don't see it.  I'm not sure I understand how these proposals reflect a drastic reduction in the size of state government.