Currently, there is a complete lack of transparency and debate when the legislature creates the state's annual budget. This leads to the continuation of programs that have outlived their useful life, little scrutiny on personnel costs that continue to outpace all other spending and misplaced spending priorities. 

The first piece of legislation I will file as Beverly's representative on Beacon Hill will call for an automatic roll-back of the most recent legislative pay raise and a 50% reduction in leadership stipends for the remainder of any fiscal year in which the legislature votes to give the Governor 9-C budget cutting authority or in which a budget gap of greater than $250 million develops due to lower-than-expected revenues.

When cuts need to be made during a budget year, they should start with the people who passed an unsustainable budget in the first place.

With this plan in place legislators would have skin in the game to build budgets that have a realistic chance of staying in balance and not load up budgets with spending that cannot be sustained and then leave the tough cuts to the Governor as has been the case in recent years.

Legislators often lament the 'structural deficit' we face in Massachusetts, but what they overlook is that 'structural deficits' do not just happen. They are the result of spending policy that far outstrips realistic revenue estimates over time. Too often, Beacon Hill looks at a 'structural deficit' as being the fault of taxpayers and not the fault of the lawmakers who committed to the spending in the first place and it is taxpayers who are asked to fix it.

For two great reviews of the Massachusetts state budget situation and reasonable solutions to fix the problem, click below for two reports from the Beacon Hill Institute and the Pioneer Institute.

File Attachments
090611_fiscal_sanity.pdf	551.64 KB
ShadowBudgetTEL10-0112FINAL.pdf	801.03 KB