BOSTON -- State government will have less money for local aid, transportation and other services if voters approve planned ballot questions next year to kill
casinos and annual increases in the gas tax, legislators said.
Organizers have each submitted more than enough certified voter signatures to place seven statewide questions on the ballot in November of next year including measures to repeal
laws that legalize casinos and that automatically hike the
gas tax to account for inflation.
Sen.
Stanley C. Rosenberg, an Amherst Democrat, estimated that state government would face budget cuts if voters repeal the 2011 law that allows up to three casino resorts and a single slots facility.
Stanley Rosenberg
The Republican file photo
Rosenberg said transportation funding would be hurt if voters revoke the law to increase the gas tax in accord with inflation starting in 2015.
The casinos and slots facility together could eventually generate $2 billion in gross gaming revenues each year. With a 25 percent tax rate on two commercial casino resorts, a 17 percent tax on a proposed Mashpee Wampanoag casino in Taunton, and 40 percent tax on the slots parlor, the state might eventually raise $300 million to $500 million a year, according to Rosenberg.
"If that money disappears, then there will be cuts," said Rosenberg, a key author of the casino law.
Rosenberg, the Senate majority leader, said about half the new casino revenues would be local aid for cities and towns and a sizable portion of the rest would go to transportation.
Rosenberg said he would personally vote against the ballot questions but he never tells people how to vote on ballot questions.
Kathleen Norbut
Michael S. Gordon/The Republican file
Kathleen Norbut of Monson, an original signer of the petition to revoke the casino law, said the state coffers will never see $400 million a year from casinos. She said casinos will be hurt by expansion of online gambling and declining interest from the public.
She also said legislators are failing to account for the social and other costs of casinos. Mitigation money does not cover the damage caused by casinos, she said.
"Let's get an independent cost-benefit analysis," she said. "You talk about the revenues. What about the costs?"
Norbut is a leading member of Repeal the Casino Deal, a coalition that collected about 73,000 certified voter signatures to make the ballot.
In order to make the ballot, the group may also need to persuade the state Supreme Judicial Court to overturn the attorney general's decision to ban the casino repeal question.
Beacon Hill is also worried about losing expected transportation dollars if voters approve a Republican-backed question to rescind the automatic increases in the state's 26.5 cent-a-gallon gas tax. The annual increases would begin in January of 2015.
Democratic
Gov. Deval L. Patrick told reporters that the proposed ballot question is a mistake.
"Everywhere around the commonwealth people understand that we have got to invest in our transportation system in order to sustain and indeed accelerate growth," Patrick said. "While it was not my first choice, the Legislature ... selected the gas tax and a way not to have to come back to it every 15 minutes. And it hasn't been updated in many, many years. So I think the indexing is wise. I think it is fair and I think it was done in the right way ..."
Steven Aylward of Watertown, chairman of the Committee to Tank the Automatic Gas Tax Hikes, said history shows that legislators often divert tax dollars that are intended for a program such as transportation.
Aylward, a member of the Republican State Committee, said repeal of the law would put money where it belongs -- in the pockets of consumers.
Aylward said the "real issue" is that legislators should vote each year if they need revenues and want to raise the gas tax.
The provision for automatic increases is in a transportation financing law that raised the gas tax by three cents, starting July 31. The repeal effort received about 77,000 certified signatures.
Sen.
Stephen M. Brewer, a Barre Democrat and chairman of the Senate Ways and Means Committee, said the provision would raise about $10 to $12 million a year.
Brewer said legislators should support the wishes of voters if they vote to repeal the law to index the gas tax to inflation.
Another ballot question with fiscal implications for state government is a
proposed expansion of the state's 5 cent bottle deposit law to include additional containers such as water, flavored water, coffee-based drinks, juices and sports drinks.
The governor proposed a similar expansion, partly because he said it would generate about $25 million a year for the state including $5 million for recycling initiatives. The state receives money from unclaimed bottle and can deposits.
Christopher P. Flynn, president of the Massachusetts Food Association, which includes supermarkets and grocery stores, said the state already raises about $35 million a year from distributors who pay the nickel for each unredeemed container. There's something wrong when the state financially benefits from a law that fails because people don't return containers, he said.
"This is nothing more than a money grab," he said.
Janet Domenitz, executive director of the Massachusetts Public Interest Group, said advocates turned in about 106,000 certified signatures for the ballot question to expand the bottle deposit law.
If the law is approved, it would save about $6 million statewide for cities and towns, she said. The law would save on costs for litter and trash pickup, because it would increase redemptions, and therefore recycling, she said.
She said she is not using the argument that state government would get a boost from money from unclaimed deposits.
"I'm for this if 100 percent of nickels are redeemed," she said. "That's our goal."
Flynn said cities and towns would lose $15 million in annual payments for aluminum if the ballot question was approved. He said communities or their contractors are paid for the value of aluminum that is recycled.
Flynn said approval of the ballot question would require Massachusetts’ consumers and businesses to spend $58 million annually to operate an expanded redemption program.
Flynn said an expansion of the deposit law would be "counter productive." He said it costs three times as much to recycle bottles and cans by redemption than it does to recycle them by dropping them at municipal stations or by leaving them at the curbside for pickup.
"Folks are going to see through this," Flynn said of the proposed expansion of the bottle deposit law.
The secretary of state's office said backers of four other proposed statewide questions also collected more than the required 68,911 certified signatures to qualify for the 2014 ballot.
Two of those questions, if approved, would raise the minimum wage from $8 an hour to $10.50 an hour and would require that every worker in the state could earn up to 40 hours of sick time.
The Massachusetts Nurses Association also gathered more than enough voter signatures to put before voters two separate questions that would limit the number of patients who can be assigned to a nurse at one time and that would restrict CEO salaries and regulate the annual operating margins of hospitals.
Unless state lawmakers approve the proposed ballot questions by early May, supporters would need to gather an additional 11,485 signatures by early July to secure a spot on the ballot.
http://www.masslive.com/politics/index.ssf/2013/12/massachusetts_faces_400_millio.html#incart_river_default
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