Three Reform Bills

In a remarkable flurry of productive activity, the House and Senate have each passed transportation, pension and ethics reform. It looks like the Governor is going to get what he wants -- he won't have to veto the sales tax increase after all -- which may or may not be good news for the Governor. In any case, here is what we now have:

• HB 4133 - Ethics Reform (47 pages)
• SB 2079 - Pension Reform (8 pages)
• SB 2087 - Transportation Reform (175 pages)

In the succeeding weeks, we will look in a little more detail at what these bills actually do. In the meantime, we have to make do with the section-by-section summaries posted on the legislative home page, which have provided us with the following:

• Ethics Reform section-by-section
• Transportation Reform section-by-section (House version)

It's now Clear how they got to $27.4 Billion

I don't why it took me so long to grasp this, but what's now apparent that the way the legislature got to the "$27.4" billion budget is by only counting the direct appropriations and retained revenues, but not the chargebacks or federal grants. In other words, they only counted what was in section 2, and not what was in section 2B and 2D. That, however is -- and how do we put this? -- "disingenuous." The chargebacks and federal grants, whether they like it or not, are part of the budget. So, wouldn't be better to be honest about the true costs here?

Title                                  House          Senate         Conference   Sec
========================================================================================
Total for Direct Appropriations
          and Retained Revenue  $28,126,227,842  $27,326,828,832   $27,414,241,896   2  
Totals for Chargebacks             $401,402,034     $398,991,853      $390,982,830   2B 
Total Federal Grants             $2,366,949,242   $2,286,543,697    $2,485,936,271   2D 
Totals for All Types            $30,894,579,118  $30,012,364,382   $30,291,160,997   All 

More Proof this is no $27.4 Billion Budget

A couple of days ago I reported that this budget is actually more like a $30.3 billion budget than the $27.4 billion budget reported in the media. Now I have more proof from the Governor himself. The Governor has been updating his own website with not only his revised budget -- revised in light of the declining revenues -- but has also been keeping up a spreadsheet that compares the appropriation amounts from the various versions of the budget. This spreadsheet -- "fy10compare" -- documents the fact that even without the federal grants, the Conference report is actually $27.8 billion and not $27.4 billion. If you add in the 447 federal grants, the budget total, as previously reported, is actually just shy of $30.3 billion.

Click here to see a list of the 447 federal grants included in the Conference Report.

Conference Committee Report, Take 2

In case you hadn't noticed, the House and Senate have posted a new version of the Conference Committee Budget, since the version that they had originally posted on Friday morning had so many formatting errors in the revenue and local aid tables. As far as I can tell they have not revised any of the numbers or language -- that would be truly feckless, even for the Legislature -- but they have cleaned up the tables and the formatting.

• Click here for the first version of the Conference Committee report, released on Friday morning, June 19.
• Click here for the second version of the Conference Committee report, released on Monday, June 22.

Comparison of House, Senate, Conference Appropriations

We've completed our analysis of the House, Senate and Conference budgets, and the numbers don't add up to what was reported in the news with respect to how much the budget actually costs. Below is our spreadsheet that compares the House, Senate and Conference numbers:

The press reported that this is a $27.4 billion budget, but our numbers indicate that it's a $27.8 billion budget, and then only if you don't include the federal grants. However, the problem with that is that the federal grants are appropriated for, and they are part of the regular budget. Our numbers indicate that the conference committee actually approved a $30.3 billion budget (as can be seen below).

     Type                       House           Senate          Conference
     =======================================================================
     Direct Appropriation  $26,564,903,856  $26,827,416,172  $26,907,008,724
     Chargeback               $400,189,124     $391,745,702     $391,745,702
     Retained Revenue         $467,318,771     $503,056,162     $499,891,667
     Subotal               $27,432,411,751  $27,722,218,036  $27,798,646,093
     Federal Grants         $2,394,648,332   $2,300,842,188   $2,485,936,271
     =======================================================================
     Grand Total           $29,827,060,083  $30,023,060,224  $30,284,582,364

Click here to see a spreadsheet that compares all the House, Senate and Conference Report Appropriations.

Am I wrong? Show me where. I'm using the numbers that the House and Senate reported in their respective budgets and in the Conference committee reports.

Joint Rule 11A Conference Reports

Under the requirements of Joint Rule 11A, the Conference Committee has also put out several reports that note the resolution of the various items in conference. There are three of these reports posted on the State, dealing consecutively with:

• Differences in Section 2 (direct appropriations) between House and Senate engrossed budgets.
• Differences in Section 2B (chargebacks) between House and Senate engrossed budgets.
• Differences in Outside Sections between the House and Senate engrossed budgets.

Budget Conference Report Released

The House and Senate have released their conference report on the Budget. The Conference Bill number is House 4129, and this behemoth was printed at 1:25 a.m. last night and released to the web at 6:15 a.m. this morning (notwithstanding that the budget was allegedly "released" last night). It appears that the printing was a bit of a rush job as the tables for revenues and local aid are basically . . . how does one put this politely? . . . all screwed up.

Budget Monitor Review of new House Budget

The Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center has compiled a new Budget Monitor report, which looks at the Governor's revised budget and compares it to the budgets engrossed by the House and Senate. This is a detailed 26 report that divides the budget up into the various topica parts of government, such as educaiton, health care, human services, transportation, public safety, etc.

Governor Patrick's Revised FY 2010 Budget.

This may have escaped your notice, but at the end of last week, the Governor put out a revised FY 2010 budget. What's the point, given that the House and Senate have already engrossed their own budgets and are already at Conference?

Beats me.

My guess is that the Governor feels the need to weigh in politically, given the dramatically reduced (and predictable) revenue estimates. In any case, the Governor published a press-release on the matter.

According to the Governor's website, the difference in aggregate numbers from what he had recommended before and what he is recommending now is as follows:

Sales Tax Increase a Certainty

The Boston Globe reports today that Massachusetts business advocates and Republican lawmakers are resigned to the certainty of a sales tax increase. Given that the 5% to 6.25% increase is in both engrossed budgets, I'd say they're pretty much dead on. The two constituencies still battling are package store operators and satellilte TV companies, who opposed specific tax increases added to the Senate budget that impact their particular industries.

Three for Three on Speaker Indictments

Well, I trust that by now most of you know that we're now three-for-three on indictments of former speakers. To wit:

• First there was Charlie Flaherty, who pled guilty to tax evasion and ethics violations.
• Then, there was Tom Finneran, who pled guilty to obstruction of justice and was placed on 18 months probation.
• Now we have Sal DiMasi, indicted on seven counts of mail and wire fraud and five counts of criminal conspiracy, all to help Cognos software win two state contracts.  In return,  Salutatorian Sal got $57,000 in cash.

For risking 20 years in prison, you would have thought Sal would have done something bolder, made more money.

Conspicuously absent from this list, by the way, is former Senate President Billy Bulger who, his brother notwithstanding, has never been indicted for anything.  Of course, he did make a nice pension haul and failed to cooperate in the search for his brother, but he's had the good sense never to do anything indictable.  And trust me, if he had, they would have indicted him.

Set forth below is a copy of the actual indictment against  Sal DiMasi and associates Joseph Lally, Richard McDonough and Richard Vitaly:

House vs. Senate Inside Language

Well, we're back from a blessed week off and away from budget stuff.  Hope we weren't unduly missed.  In any case, to get back on-track, set forth below is an extensive redline version of the inside language from the House (HB 4101) and Senate (SB 2060) engrossed budgets: