No Slot machines at the Tracks

This morning has been all about gambling, but the Senate has defeated an attempt to raise revenues through gambling by allowing slot machines at race tracks.  The Senate is also just about to defeat extending the deadline by which the greyhound racetracks must close, pursuant to the winning ballot iniative from last November.  See the Boston.com article on the same topic below:

What did the Governor Say (to Tweak them so?)

I don't quite know what the Governor said, but it's clear that he really upset the Senate with an email that he sent from Atlanta today.  It sounds like more of what the Governor had already been saying -- that he would veto the sales tax increase if the Senate didn't pass some of his recommended reforms first -- but whatever he said, it got the Senate collectively to have their knickers in a twist.  They unanimously passed an amendment, with the Republicans on board and Tisei even speechifying in support, proposed by Senator Tarr, that would require the Governor to develop a report detailing what actions he's taking with respect to FY 2009 and post it on the State website.  Here's the full text of the amendment:

Mr. Tarr moved that the bill be amended by inserting, after Section X, the following new Section:-

“SECTION XX. Notwithstanding any general or special law to the contrary, the Governor shall, through the Secretary of Administration and Finance, develop a report detailing all action undertaken by the Executive Branch in Fiscal Year 2009, and those planned to be undertaken in 2010, to reduce the costs of employee compensation. Said report shall also include an itemization of any and all stuffing reductions, furlough and salary wage reductions in addition to any salary and wage increases and any increases in staffing levels from 2008 to 2009 to those projected for 2010.

Said report shall be filed with the clerks of the House and Senate and the House and Senate Committees on Ways and Means and posted electronically on the official website of the Commonwealth not later than three months following the passage of this act.”

Withdrawn Amendments added to redrafted #46

Not only did the Senate enact 93 line-item increases along with the redrafted sales tax amendment (#46), but they also took care of the substance of some of the amendments that had been withdrawn.  So for, example, there is an emdnemtn which increases the appropriation of the Massachusetts Legal Assistance corporation by $5 million and change.  

JUD 94

RELATIVE TO MLAC

Ms. Creem moved that the bill amended, in Section 2, in item 0321-1600 by striking the figure “6,000,000” and inserting in place thereof the figure “11,070,424”.

On the state website, that amendment is listed as having been withdrawn.  However, in amendment #46 it shows up in the following format:

And, in Section 2 in item 0321-1600 by striking the figure “$6,000,000” and inserting in place thereof the following:- “$8,000,000”

So yes, the amendment was withdrawn, but in substance it has been taken care of.  Not for the full $5 million, but for $2 million nontheless.

Click here to see a small table of all the amendments that were technically withdrawn that were actually taken care of in the redrafted sales tax amendment (#46).

Analysis of the 93 line-items in Section 46

We've completed our analysis of the 93 line-items added in the redrafted Section 46, and the end result is that the amendment adds $531,359,170 to the bottom line just from line-item increases alone.  

The larges increase is $82,916,451 added to the MassHealth Managed Care account. The MassHealth Fee-for-Service Payments account also gets a $59,503,373 shot in the arm.  DMA MassHealth Senior Care gets an additional $49,322,782 and the DOE Circuit Breaker for Special Education Residential Schools adds another $36,000,000.

Click here to see a table with all 93 line-items amended by the redrafted Section 46.

Senate Didn't Just Enact a Sales Tax

The Senate didn't just enact a sales tax last night.  Instead, in their redrafted amendment #46, they also took care of 93 line-items in what was, in effect, a consolidated amendment.  You can see the full text of the sales tax amendment in the frame below.  It's substantial.  Not only does it raise the sales tax and add 93 line-item increases, it also enacts an entirely new chapter, a state sales tax on meals (Chapter 64L of the General Laws).

The Sales Tax was a Foregone Concolusion

It seems that it was a foregone conclusion that the Senate was determined to follow the House's lead in raising the sales tax to 6.25%.  Any other tax ideas were off the table, and although freshmen Senators Sonia Chang-Diaz and Jamie Eldridge made a nice run at the income tax -- even lowering their sights from 6.3% to 5.9% -- that one wasn't going to happen.  The Governor's 19¢ gas tax idea was obviously a dead letter from the start.  So the sales tax it is.

Is this a good idea?  I'm not so sure.  Somehow I see an initiative and referendum sales tax rollback (if not an outright sales tax repeal) in our future.

Thoughts anyone?

Tax Proposals going Down (if not the Taxes themselves)

Well, the income tax went down, as expected, and so did an 11¢ increase on the sales tax.  On the other hand, the Senate voted down a proposal to freeze the corporate tax rate, which was scheduled to go down via legislation passed last year.  That proposal was also soundly defeated, along with the provisions that would have repealed combined corporate reporting of state income taxes.  Guess we're heading for a sales tax increase before too long.

Starting off with the Income Tax

Well, it's just past noon on the 1st day of the Senate floor debate, and we're already debating an increase in the income tax.  It doesn't seem likely that this is going to have much in the way of legs. It may be less regressive than the proposed sales tax increase, but it's unlikely to get traction given the recent history of income tax referendums.

Second set of Senate Amendments

For those of you who were watching, it seemed like the Senate had posted the amendments it was going to debate this weekend.  The final tally was 647 amendments.  And for those of us who spend time processing amendments, we were busy this weekend and today sorting and anlyzing amendents, so that we would know the scope of the upcoming Senate floor debate.

Then, around 4:00 p.m. this afternoon, the Senate suddenly posted an additional 47 amendments. The same trick, by the way, that the House had turned just a few weeks earlier.

I'm sorry, but how hard is it to get a complete set of amendments and post it on the website?  It's not like they aren't going to have withdrawn amendments, redrafted amendments, or in the case of the House, completely new amendments that suddenly appear in the bundles.  This is an exasperating way to do business for those of us who are depending on reasonably complete information to do our analyses.

Click here to see the initial list of Senate floor amendments.

Click here to see the additional list of Senate floor amendments.

How Many Amendments did Senators File?

Curious about how many amendments the Senators filed?  It turns out quite a few.  First of all, as most of you know there are only 40 Senators, while there are 160 Representatives. This year the house filed about a thousand floor amendments -- just shy of a thousand at first, then a few more in the end -- which works out to be a little more than six amendments per representative.

On the other hand, the Senators filed 647 amendments -- before the additional 47 that were posted on the Senate website late this afternoon -- which works out to be a little over 16 amendments per Senator.

Still, some were greedier than others.  The table below sets forth the number of amendments per Senator, including those filed jointly by combinations of Senators.

As you can see, John Hart leads the pack with 56 followed closely by Tisei at 51.  McGee, Creem and Tarr are in the thirties, with Spilka and Tolman following close behind.

Senate Amendments Posted

The Senate posted their amendments this weekend.  The Senate has a bit of an awkward way of doing this. Instead of publishing an entire list of amendments which links to the individual amendments -- as the House does -- the Senate publishes their amendments bundled into thirteen topic areas.  This might be seen like the consolidated amendments acted on in the House during floor debate, only that the Senate doesn't do multiple consolidated amendments the way the House does. The Senate allows much more debate on individual amendments, and usually bundles the remaining amendments together in one big bundle at the end of the session.  At least that's what they did last year.  So what is the purpose of the bundles?

In order to get a list of the Senate amendments, you have to agglomerate each of the bundles together and then try to sort them on amendment number.  It's a lot more work than it should be, frankly, to get a clean picture of what's going on.

Senate Ways & Means Budget Appropriations

The Senate came out with it's budget today, and it seems to have been the first body to take the budget crunch seriously.  As you can see from the table below, the Senate's numbers are significantly lower than those of the Governor and House, and last year's enacted budget.

FY09 as Enacted .........................$29,666,643,801
Governor's House 1 ......................$30,870,720,678
House Ways & Means ......................$29,351,895,971
House Engroseed .........................$29,826,325,083
Senate Ways & Means .....................$27,415,399,490

The chart below demonstrates this graphically,  including the portions devoted to direct appropriations, chargebacks, retained revenue and federal grants respectively:

That means that what the Senate has proposed is:

• $2,251,244,311 less than last year's enacted budget
  
• $3,455,321,188 less than what the Governor proposed in House 1
  
• $1,936,496,481 less than House Ways & Means
  
• $2,410,925,593 less than the House Engrossed budget
  

Click here to see the entire spreadsheet of SW&M appropriations and how they compare to previous versions of budgets.