Lawmakers Plan To Wait To Address Tax Plan
House and Senate leaders will ask lawmakers next week to reject Gov. Deval Patrick’s amendment to transportation financing legislation, expressing little concern that their decision to wait a week could prompt the governor to strip the annual budget bill on his desk of spending priorities contingent on new revenue in the separate tax bill.
House Speaker Robert DeLeo and Senate President Therese Murray met Monday afternoon without Patrick to discuss the timeline for consideration of Patrick’s proposal to guarantee $135 million in revenue beyond 2017 with a continuation of turnpike tolls or a gas tax increase.
DeLeo and Murray said the House will vote on the governor’s amendment next Wednesday, followed by the Senate on Thursday. Murray plans to spend the rest of this week in Scotland at a conference with Senate Majority Leader Stanley Rosenberg and Senate President Pro Tempore Richard Moore.
Patrick, who skipped the meeting to work from home in the Berkshires, is considering what to do with a $34 billion budget proposal reliant on $500 million in increased taxes on gas, cigarettes and software sales in the transportation bill. He has until Friday to act on the budget, and could veto or amend sections.
“I think it’s important that we first of all discover exactly what the governor is going to be vetoing, what he’s going to send back with an amendment. So that’s why, quite frankly, we thought it made a whole lot more sense for use to wait until next week till we have a fuller picture of what the governor intended to do,” DeLeo said.
Neither Democratic leader said they were worried that Patrick may have to slash some spending in the budget that he wouldn’t ordinarily consider because the fate of the transportation-financing bill remains uncertain.
“He doesn’t necessarily have to do that, ever,” Murray said.
House Minority Leader Brad Jones speculated on Monday that Democratic leaders might actually be hoping the governor vetoes some spending important to liberal Democrats in the House to hold the threat of the vetoes over members and ensure their support for the Legislature’s transportation financing bill.
Patrick's amendment would trigger an automatic increase in the gas tax in 2017 if Massachusetts Turnpike tolls come down as currently scheduled. Though he said he would prefer to see the tolls replaced with another source of revenue, Patrick said he's open to keeping the tolls up or using something other than the gas tax to replace the $135 million in toll revenue.
DeLeo said he was not yet ready to discuss the prospects for a veto override of the financing bill, but said he doesn’t see much of an alternative at this point to rejecting the governor’s amendment.
“Knowing what we’ve gone through so far, I don’t see a real boatload of support for either a gas tax or a toll hike,” DeLeo said, adding, “The amendment in its present form is unacceptable, so I don’t know what we could do besides straight reject it.”
Both leaders said they were confident that the transportation financing issues and any vetoes to the fiscal 2014 budget could be dealt with before Aug. 1 when a temporary $4 billion budget runs out.
Some Republicans hoped leadership would take the opportunity to revisit the proposed expansion of the sales tax to computer and software design service, which has been criticized by business groups as a potential blow to the economy.
“The tax on computer services has been identified as a major threat to our economic recovery, and it wouldn’t surprise me if folks in the House are having thoughts about using the opportunity the governor has given to try to re-examine that and to try to address that threat,” Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr said. “I don’t think that folks are using this time to debate the merits of the governor’s amendment.”
DeLeo aired potential actions that could hone the software tax proposal, including writing a letter to the Department of Revenue to clarify the intent of the legislation or adopting “better language” amenable to business leaders that could restrict the tax to no more than the $161 million in new revenue sought by lawmakers.
DeLeo and Murray had planned to meet with Patrick Monday afternoon, but the sitdown was cancelled on Friday and Patrick elected to stay at his home in Richmond and work from there.
“Is that high-speed Internet up out there yet? I don’t know. I’m here,” Murray quipped, before mentioning that a similar meeting last week was cancelled at the behest of the legislative leaders because they were in session.
Without asking members to support a continuation of tolls or another gas tax hike, Murray said she did not see much room for compromise with the governor and contradicted Patrick assertion that the tolls must come down in 2017 once the bonds on the highway are paid off.
Murray and DeLeo have both argued that a future administration after Patrick leaves office could decide to keep the tolls up on the Turnpike from Newton to the New York without a legislative directive if they deem the financial resources to be necessary to maintain the road in a state of good repair.
“We don’t feel the need to move ahead on the tolls right now,” Murray said. “Those tolls don’t have to come down because it’s based on are the bonds paid off and are the roads in repair. Those roads will not be in repair, so you have to look at the language that’s in the law.”
WBJ Web Partners
Most Recent
Most Recent
0 Comments