No surprises here.

Krugman points us to this piece at Crooks and Liars.

Maybe George Will is still using the same old scripts on climate change.

Think Different.

Libertarians for tax hikes

Don't spend the money yet, but....

Now that the stimulus bill is law, we're beginning to get some idea of what might happen for municipalities. Commissioner of Education Mitchell Chester sent a memo to school superintendents and charter school directors (but apparently not to us municipal types) announcing funding. The Gazette published a list with specific numbers for various districts, but as the Commissioner's letter notes "much needs to be done before we can make commitments to your districts for a specific amount of funds under any of these programs." Allocations from the federal "stabilization fund" are determined by the governor and Governor Patrick promised (at the MMA annual meeting) to attempt to use the money to help reduce the deficits towns face.

Late Friday the Lt. Governor's office sent out an email advising that the lists published on the state's recovery web site (and reported in area papers) are a "work in progress" and "no decisions have been made relative to funding or priorities." It notes that most municipal projects are on the "unreviewed" list but will be evaluated and considered for funding. This is welcome news, given the reaction to the "state approved, shovel ready" list which contains a lot of requests from charter schools. The list was also heavily weighted toward communities that have ready access to planners and designers and have projects on the shelf.

The unreviewed list is 187 pages long and one wonders just how much the wish list got pared down in the preliminary review process. Greenfield's $250,000,000 biomass plant is there and I have difficulty believing that project would be designed, permitted and bid out in six months or that the Buckland highway and public safety complex (at $0) is feasible in that timeframe. Amherst drivers will be happy to note that the town listed a $4.8 million request for backlogged projects identified through its pavement management program.

Working through all this will be a major task in what is already a very difficult budget year. I'm waiting for the House Ways and Means Committee to report out its budget (towns have an able advocate in Steve Kulik) and proposals from the Municipal Relief Commission co-chaired by Stan Rosenberg. Those efforts should frame what the next fiscal year will look like. In the meantime, we'll keep looking for those black swans.

Newtonian Politics

Krugman's assessment of Repub behavior on the stimulus bill is right on target, per usual:

And the rhetorical response of conservatives to the stimulus plan — which will, it’s worth bearing in mind, cost substantially less than either the Bush administration’s $2 trillion in tax cuts or the $1 trillion and counting spent in Iraq — has bordered on the deranged.

I also think that Avigreen over at the Blue Mass Group has a handle on their strategy:

In 1993 and 1994, Newt Gingrich changed the way that the Republican party does business. Before Gingrich, there were policy differences, but strong working relationships allowed major legislation to move when Reagan and Bush Sr. worked with Democratic Speaker Tip O'Neill.

Faced with the election of Bill Clinton, Gingrich offerred a new approach designed to change the long-term minority status of Republicans in the House and Senate: fight President Clinton on everything.

And so it goes. What makes the situation more frustrating is Democrats like Ben Nelson getting suckered into collaborating.

Trivia

Google Robert DeLeo and the entry that comes up first is for Stone Temple Pilots' bass player.

The Massachusetts Speaker of the House takes second place.

Ed Brooke on Obama

Ed Brooke reflects on Obama and Steele.

My sentiment exactly...

John Cole (Balloon Juice) sez:

I really don’t understand how bipartisanship is ever going to work when one of the parties is insane.

Amen.

Budget Blues, part 2

The Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center offers an overview of the Guv's budget (House 1) here. Note the discussion of education aid and the bind about half the state's municipalities are in with foundation spending for K-12 education:

under the Governor’s FY 2010 budget, increasing
foundation budgets at the local level, combined
with no increases in state aid, would mean that 153,
or 47 percent, of the state’s school districts will
have spending requirements below their
foundation budget.

That may pose a constitutional problem. In the interim, the Massachusetts Municipal Association's noted that the budget appears to require communities to spend no less than 95% of their FY '09 school budgets in FY '10. That may force additional cuts to the "municipal" side of the budget, given that Chapter 70 (education aid) is earmarked for schools.

The Guv is counting on Federal aid to make the whole budget work and that may or may not be gone due to the actions of "moderates" in the Senate who don't quite have the big picture on what a stimulus is. This from Republicans who have taken a surplus to a deficit and spent a trillion on a war of choice, with more losses to come, being aided by post partisans from across the aisle. If you want the height of hypocrisy, check out the McSame quote in the NYT piece on the bill.

It's stimulating all right

Sad, watching the senate Democrats in Washington pull apart the stimulus package and strip out aid to the states in the process. The intent, of course, is to get a “bipartisan” bill which increasingly has the appearance of a “ share the blame” bill offering cover if the whole thing doesn't work or fending off potential 2010 campaign issues. We've seen this before, as with the house vote on the bill or in Peanuts cartoons – Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown.

Krugman is right on target, as usual.

Must be a slow news day

The Globe finds it necessary to run a story on those mounds of snow. Then again, I'm blogging about it.

Happy Groundhog Day!

Waiting on Phil to tell us about the next six weeks of weather we also have this (click to enlarge):

Fees

The folks who write the Amherst Center op-ed piece in the Bulletin seem to be unhappy with Larry Schaffer's meeting the Finance Committee's target of no more than 2% growth by increasing earnings (aka fees) for a couple of departments. The Centrists give Larry credit for creativity but then go on to argue that his actions somehow deprive other town functions, including those whose budgets the Town Manager is not responsible for, of needed revenues. They believe that revenue from ambulance fees, for example, are not used simply on ambulance services but “spread across” the other priorities of the town. If Liesure Services can raise revenues, shouldn't those revenues get shared with perhaps the library?

But if the article's correct, Larry's meeting the target by raising fees, not taxes. There are a whole range of fees a town can raise either by statute or bylaw. Whatever the case, a fee is designed not to raise general revenues but to compensate the community for the provision of the service, has to relate to the provision of that service and provide a benefit to the fee payer. Fees aren't intened to be spread all over, taxes are.

The Centrists appear to have the same misunderstanding of enterprise funds. Basically, the fund gets used to offset the particular operation or department its set up for. Any retained revenues have to get deposited back into the fund at the end of the year, rather than becoming free cash. You can take money out of the fund to reimburse the town for expenses related to the operation of the enterprise. In short, if wastewater is operated as an enterprise, you can compensate the town for expenses related to wastewater but you can't take funds from the sewer bills for the library or have them “allocated like any other revenue.”

In getting a department to pay for some, or all, of the costs of operating itself Larry is in effect freeing up general revenues (that would be taxes and unearmarked state aid) for other purposes. The last paragraph notes that revenues should be shared “where the law allows” and its helpful to know where the limits lie. The Centrists are certainly correct to suggest that all sources of revenue be on the table when discussing the town budget as a whole, if for no other reason to determine to what extent departments can be self funding. To state the obvious: if a department is self-funding but less than functional, that's a good reason to consider eliminating it.

Conspicuous Consumption

Taxes going up, fees going up, unresponsive government, property values dropping...sound familiar? Money meets the recession.