Massachusetts AFL-CIO Testimony Before Joint Standing Committee on Revenue Regarding Income Tax

Wednesday March 12, 2008

Written Testimony of Robert J. Haynes, President, Massachusetts AFL-CIO to the Joint Standing Committee on Revenue

RE: Oppose Repealing the State Personal Income Tax

As we enter both a looming economic downturn and an upswing in political intensity in a presidential election year, there is a risk of our civic discourse escalating to higher and higher levels of hyperbole. However, it is also a time in which the plain truth can resemble hyperbole. In the midst of all this heated and important public debate I know this much to be true and in no way, shape, or form an exaggeration: The question to repeal the state personal income tax that will appear on voters' ballots this November 4, 2008 is insane. As voters in our Commonwealth turn out to elect our next president, they will also be faced with the absurd question of doing away with our state personal income tax. On behalf of the 400,000 working families of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO I urge this Committee and all elected leaders to publicly disavow the attempt to repeal the state personal income tax. Please join me in telling the plain truth about this ballot question: It is certifiably, categorically, ridiculously insane.

I can understand the frustration amongst some in the public that lends itself to susceptibility to the anti-tax, anti-government arguments. The anti-tax, anti-government fervor is the product of a forty year campaign by people whose simple message of "taxes are bad" and "government is worse" is an easy sell. When former Governor Cellucci and anti-tax zealot Barbara Anderson misled the public in 2000 that they could cut the income tax from 5.93-percent to 5.0-percent without a deterioration of public services it served as the ultimate example of how easy it is to promise something for nothing. However, the seven-plus ensuing years have demonstrated time and time again that in government, as in all things, you get what you pay for.

Our roads and bridges are in disrepair and in many cases unsafe, and cost us untold amounts of personal money in repairs to our bruised and abused cars. Our schools are crumbling, overcrowded, understaffed, and woefully undersupplied. Our police, fire and public safety personnel are overburdened, under-supported, and as understaffed as our schools. We face a $1.3 Billion budget deficit just to maintain a level of services that is inferior to what we deserve and what we received when we had a 5.93-percent personal income tax rate.

At a time when people want more and expect more from our government we have an opportunity to reverse the "everyone for themselves" notion that anti-tax cheerleaders have made sexy these last few decades. Governor Patrick's landslide victory in 2006 was based largely on the notion that government is, in fact, not simply good, but is actually essential for everyone. Governor Patrick convinced the public that government consists of the things we choose to do together. The public agreed with him that we do not want to shovel our own sidewalks, plow our own roads, and put out our own fires. To paraphrase Governor Patrick, the people of Massachusetts embraced the notion that these truly are our broken roads and bridges, and our crowded, crumbling schools, and our challenged neighborhood and our broken neighbor. People are hungry for change because we are anxious about the state of our economic and civic present and future. We believe the government needs to be there for us on the things that we choose to do together, and that the government needs to do those things well that we ask of it.

To repeal the state personal income tax would severely damage our economic and social well-being here in Massachusetts. Businesses would be driven from our state, and even more citizens would flee. Our quality of life would suffer dramatically. We are already losing jobs and population in droves. Taking $11 Billion out of our state revenues, which would be the result of the wrong-headed proposal to get rid of the income tax, would decimate our already-challenged schools, our health care system, our roads and bridges, our public safety and other public services.

Local aid would be gutted if we take 40-percent of our state revenues off the table. We all know what happens when local aid declines: Property taxes soar. It is no coincidence that the cut in the personal income tax coincided with skyrocketing property taxes in our communities. Do we really want to force our property taxes to go even higher than they already are? Of course not.

It is time for this Committee, this legislature and the people of Massachusetts to come together to make the case that we truly are in this together. We must recommit to our partnership and take ownership over our own quality of life in this Commonwealth; we must do so by standing together against repealing the income tax. We cannot have a thriving economy or a strong society without combining our resources to do the important, indispensable things upon which all our families and businesses rely. We must maintain the current state personal income tax in order to strengthen our communities and avoid the regressive, overburdening taxes like high sales and even higher property taxes that we would be forced to adopt should the income tax be repealed.

Please join the Massachusetts AFL-CIO in opposing the repeal of the state personal income tax. Our families, our communities, our quality of life, and our future as a Commonwealth all depend on it. Thank you.