We in Massachusetts like to think of ourselves as something special. We see ourselves setting a civic example for the nation, if not the world; how else could we justify quoting John Winthrop’s “city upon a hill” line ad nauseum? We certainly take our politics seriously. Massachusetts serves the nation as a training ground for political operatives and mother lode for campaign cash. And as a place that regularly produces some of the most liberal figures nationally in both major political parties, we take justifiable pride in our state’s high level of social benefits, in our respect for individual rights, and in our faith in the legitimacy of our public institutions. Like any body politic, Massachusetts has its cantankerous extremes, but its political center is broad, inclusive, and generous.
For the last few months, we have indeed been special, but hardly anything to be proud of. In fact, Massachusetts would be the laughingstock of the nation, if the rest of the country paid any attention to us.
We can start with the state budget. I can remember when legislators used to routinely, almost to the point of cliché, refer to the budget as the most important law they passed all year. But that was when lawmakers actually had something to do with the state budget. Now most representatives and senators are mere spectators in the process of setting fiscal priorities.
How we got to where we ended up in December would almost defy explanation to anyone from another political jurisdiction. Two branches of the Legislature each passed budgets with bottom lines less than one-half of 1 percent apart, but their two leaders–members of the same political party from similar urban, working class districts not 10 miles apart–were unable to settle the relatively minor differences for months on end. As bizarre as it seems, this was not a freak occurrence, but a repeat episode from two years before, when the same two leaders stewed over discrepancies for four months into the fiscal year, then pronounced the resulting budget worth the wait.
This time around, there was no such self-congratulation. While House Speaker Thomas Finneran and Senate President Thomas Birmingham fiddled the state’s fiscal situation burned. After nearly five months of cogitation, hastily assembled cuts needed to balance the budget were presented to the embarrassingly powerless members as a fait accompli, to be digested in barely more than 12 hours and approved in an up-or-down vote on Thanksgiving Eve.
Let’s be clear on one thing: Even if the fiscal 2002 budget process had gone according to Hoyle, there would have been a round of budget cuts by December, if not earlier. But going into this new fiscal crunch, there was reason to believe the budgetary reckoning wouldn’t need to get as ugly as it did.
In 1999, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington, DC, declared Massachusetts one of only eight states that had sufficient reserves, or “rainy day” funds, to weather an economic downturn. Though the liberal think tank frowned on subsequent tax cuts, past revenue surpluses still gave the state a $2.3 billion cushion to land on this year. Doling out just a portion of these reserves- the rain, after all, had not yet stopped- kept cuts down to $600 million out of a budget of nearly $23 billion, or about 2.5 percent.
Now, at least half of the state budget is untouchable, either legally or politically, so these reductions landed disproportionately where they always do, on human services and higher education. But it was the ill-considered nature of some of these cuts–services for the mentally retarded mandated by a court settlement; English-language and GED courses for adults that would have had to shut their doors entirely, forfeiting future federal funds–concocted behind closed doors that sent up surprisingly bleeding-heart cries from our Republican administration and caused a chastened Legislature to hurry through a supplemental budget undoing the worst of them.
At best, it was budgetary amateur hour. At worst, however, last fall’s fiscal follies poisoned the inevitably difficult process of coming to terms with diminished expectations. The miscues and miscalculations of fiscal 2002 feed the delusion that serious budget choices don’t really have to be made at all. Every cost-saving measure, right down to the Registry of Motor Vehicles no longer accepting credit-card payment for a small number of transactions, has been decried as some kind of outrage. Meanwhile, Gov. Swift and her minions refuse even to take under advisement the idea of delaying the final step in the income-tax rollback she and former governor Paul Cellucci sold to the voters as no fiscal threat.
In this, Massachusetts stands out, compared to the dozens of states grappling forthrightly–and promptly–with their budget problems. In California, which faces a possible $14 billion budget shortfall, agencies have been told to cut their budget requests for next year by 15 percent. Washington Gov. Gary Locke recently proposed cuts of $544 million, eliminating 440 government jobs and scaling back many human-service programs, toward solving his state’s $1.2 billion budget gap, a move welcomed by his fellow Democrats in Washington’s legislature as “a good start.” At least 14 states have cut or are considering cuts in school funding, which went untouched in Massachusetts even after eight years of steady increases. By some standards, we’ve not yet begun to cut.
On the other hand, public officials elsewhere have dared to utter the “t” word as an option to consider in the present difficulties. In Florida, Republican Gov. Jeb Bush, who has signed $1.8 billion worth of tax reductions, brokered a deal with legislators that cut $1 billion in spending from that state’s $48 billion budget, but also delayed for 18 months a tax cut on stocks and bonds that was scheduled to go into effect January 1.
This is not to suggest we should jump into tax increases at the first sign of revenue drop. Nor is it to suggest that we should take pleasure in cutting programs or services. But it does suggest we’d be better served if our political leaders spent less time trying to change as little as possible–in the budget and their political postures–and more time thinking about new ways to deliver and finance public services.
Of course, the state budget is only one of our recent embarrassments. There is Massport, where an epic story of national tragedy degenerated into a sordid exposé of patronage and golden parachutes, and the turnpike-authority food fight, which kept the Big Dig cost-overrun story alive. Finally, there’s the Clean Elections soap opera, which drags on here, in stark contrast to Arizona and Maine, where voters approved Clean Elections the same time we did but one publicly financed legislative election has already taken place there and gubernatorial campaigns are now underway.
Perhaps it’s time to set a new civic goal: to make Massachusetts a bit less exceptional.