Patrick Defends Proposed 'Big Data' Levy
Sensing a political moment unlikely to come around again soon, Gov. Deval Patrick on Wednesday said he has not yet resigned himself to accepting anything less than the $1.9 billion in new revenue he has requested to invest in education and transportation.
The governor also rejected new criticisms of his revenue plan lobbed by the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation that a new sales tax on "Big Data" and software solutions would hurt the state's technology industry and overall business climate. Patrick's budget counts on $265 million from the tax code change.
"Though we are asking people to pay a little bit more, we are assuring people they will get a lot more," Patrick told reporters after huddling for about an hour with more than a dozen Massachusetts business leaders and economists support his plan to generate new revenue through a series of tax reforms and rate changes.
"There's also a consensus here that the $1.9 billion we have proposed is the right number for transportation and education and we should try as much as possible to land there," he said.
House Speaker Robert DeLeo has committed to finding a new revenue stream to support investments in transportation and infrastructure but has yet to produce a plan or settle on a revenue number that he said should be smaller than Patrick's.
"We are unlikely as a state government to go back to the people any time soon to ask for additional tax increases. I just think this is it for a time," said Patrick, who has less than two years remaining in his second term.
Patrick met, as he often does, with DeLeo and Senate President Therese Murray on Monday afternoon, but said he did not come away with any sense that House leaders had arrived at a decision or plan to address transportation financing. DeLeo said this month he would prefer to tackle the issue before the budget next month.
"The House hasn't landed yet on what they want to do," Patrick said.
The Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation published a report Tuesday comparing Patrick's plan to tax software solutions as a good rather than a service to "Pandora's box," suggesting business products from custom Web design to cloud computing, data storage, computer programming and software installation could be subject to taxation.
Patrick said he disagreed that the tax change would make Massachusetts less competitive. "These are companies that are dealing nationally and the majority of states treat these matters exactly as we have proposed. Again, this is not something I proposed lightly, but it's not like it's an outlier by any means," he said.
Strategies for Children and Horizons for Homeless Children also announced with the governor standing by that 87 business leaders across the state – up from 47 at last count – had signed on to a letter supporting Patrick's plan to invest $900 million in new revenue in education.
The statements of support came as the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education said it would not support any increase in education funding that was not "highly targeted and based on strong evidence of what works."
WBJ Web Partners
Most Recent
Most Recent
0 Comments