is the Southwest Corridor
On the Northeast Corridor,
Amtrak on time...
Happiness is no freight train whistles,
Which means the Framingham/
Worcester's on time
Happiness is Red Sox commuters
When the Sox win
And happiness is the walkway at Wellington.
Happiness is the SL Washington
You close your eyes,
And it's like a train*
Happiness is running to Heath St
Catching an E-Line
Out of the rain...
Happiness is paying $1.70
Instead of $2
And happiness is new cars on the Blue.
*Well...kinda sorta.
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Marzilli wins it: Fourth Middlesex 2007 State Senate Special Election Results
http://www.arlington-mass.com/4middlesex.pdf
Just look at those numbers, though. This seems to be one of the most divided districts in the state.
Just look at those numbers, though. This seems to be one of the most divided districts in the state.
Saturday, November 3, 2007
State of Emergency declared in Pakistan
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7076670.stm
8 opposing Supreme Court members arrested, including Chief Justice Chaudhry.
8 opposing Supreme Court members arrested, including Chief Justice Chaudhry.
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Murphy
I talked with Representative Charles Murphy, D-Burlington, a candidate for the 4th Middlesex Senate Seat, on the first of the month.
Because the representative preferred a telephone conversation, I cannot provide a full transcript as I did with Marzilli. However, I have taken down the entirety of the substance of his answers.
Priorities
Murphy stated that his priorities were issues important to this district, including bridges, roads, schools, and local aid. He says that there needs to be significant increases in state local aid.
Revenue.
Progressive Mass: Clearly, these things, especially local aid, require revenues. The major revenue proposal right now seems to be casinos. What do you think of guv's plan?
Murphy: Guv not have a plan released yet, as no bill has been filed. It would depend what the bill is. He could see himself supporting casinos, but thinks they should be resort: probably western or rural areas.
Progressive Mass: Another revenue questions. Each MPA provision.
Murphy: Telecom tax is good idea. However, does not support meals and hotels taxes. It is not fair to cities and towns because some have larger revenue potential for meals and hotels.
When asked why this would matter, as the decision on whether to levy the tax or not would be left to municipalities, he said, "I just don't support it."
Progressive Mass: Transportation. Specific projects, such as Fall River/New Bedford. Also, revenue in general. Gas tax, tolls, etc. Thoughts?
Murphy: Fall river/New Bedford not applicable, because it is not in the Senate district. Does not support raising revenues for tolls/gas tax.
When asked if he thought we would have the revenue for needed infrastructure repairs, he replied that of course we would need to do the repairs, and would have to find the money. When pressed as to whether we could make infrastructure improvements without revenue increases, he replit would have to be eventually addressed, on a year-by-year basis, but not necessary now.
Progressive Mass: CORI reform. Should it happen? What form?
Murphy: Reform needed. Was at hearings, thinks governor has right idea. It is important that bills go through hearing process, are vetted.
Progressive Mass: Climate change. What can states and towns do?
Murphy: All should have role. State Senate can provide subsidies and incentives for energy-efficient incentives. Municipal buildings.
Progressive Mass: So are there any specific policies you would push for in the State Senate?
Murphy: My first job is to help cities and towns. Education is important. Veterans' issues, senior' issues.
Progressive Mass: Yes, but something specific.
Murphy: Just gave specifics.
Progressive Mass: Specific legislation, a line item.
Murphy: Mass. Legal Assistance Corp is important line item.
Progressive Mass: Health care. Current system enough? Should we be moving toward single-payer.
Murphy: Eventually, single-payer healthcare will come. For now, this program is a step in the right direction. Give the program time: it will not be perfect.
Progressive Mass: Education policy in general. MCAS, charter schools, anything else.
Murphy: Supports MCAS. Supports charter schools, but no raising the cap until funding formula changes so that non-charters don't lose funds.
Progressive Mass: Final thoughts?
Murphy: I read BMG occasionally. So-called progressives shouldn't be fighting between Marzilli and Peters [this was before Peters had dropped out.] I mirror Marzilli on major issues, and should not be dismissed.
Because the representative preferred a telephone conversation, I cannot provide a full transcript as I did with Marzilli. However, I have taken down the entirety of the substance of his answers.
Priorities
Murphy stated that his priorities were issues important to this district, including bridges, roads, schools, and local aid. He says that there needs to be significant increases in state local aid.
Revenue.
Progressive Mass: Clearly, these things, especially local aid, require revenues. The major revenue proposal right now seems to be casinos. What do you think of guv's plan?
Murphy: Guv not have a plan released yet, as no bill has been filed. It would depend what the bill is. He could see himself supporting casinos, but thinks they should be resort: probably western or rural areas.
Progressive Mass: Another revenue questions. Each MPA provision.
Murphy: Telecom tax is good idea. However, does not support meals and hotels taxes. It is not fair to cities and towns because some have larger revenue potential for meals and hotels.
When asked why this would matter, as the decision on whether to levy the tax or not would be left to municipalities, he said, "I just don't support it."
Progressive Mass: Transportation. Specific projects, such as Fall River/New Bedford. Also, revenue in general. Gas tax, tolls, etc. Thoughts?
Murphy: Fall river/New Bedford not applicable, because it is not in the Senate district. Does not support raising revenues for tolls/gas tax.
When asked if he thought we would have the revenue for needed infrastructure repairs, he replied that of course we would need to do the repairs, and would have to find the money. When pressed as to whether we could make infrastructure improvements without revenue increases, he replit would have to be eventually addressed, on a year-by-year basis, but not necessary now.
Progressive Mass: CORI reform. Should it happen? What form?
Murphy: Reform needed. Was at hearings, thinks governor has right idea. It is important that bills go through hearing process, are vetted.
Progressive Mass: Climate change. What can states and towns do?
Murphy: All should have role. State Senate can provide subsidies and incentives for energy-efficient incentives. Municipal buildings.
Progressive Mass: So are there any specific policies you would push for in the State Senate?
Murphy: My first job is to help cities and towns. Education is important. Veterans' issues, senior' issues.
Progressive Mass: Yes, but something specific.
Murphy: Just gave specifics.
Progressive Mass: Specific legislation, a line item.
Murphy: Mass. Legal Assistance Corp is important line item.
Progressive Mass: Health care. Current system enough? Should we be moving toward single-payer.
Murphy: Eventually, single-payer healthcare will come. For now, this program is a step in the right direction. Give the program time: it will not be perfect.
Progressive Mass: Education policy in general. MCAS, charter schools, anything else.
Murphy: Supports MCAS. Supports charter schools, but no raising the cap until funding formula changes so that non-charters don't lose funds.
Progressive Mass: Final thoughts?
Murphy: I read BMG occasionally. So-called progressives shouldn't be fighting between Marzilli and Peters [this was before Peters had dropped out.] I mirror Marzilli on major issues, and should not be dismissed.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Peters, Mooney out
(Crossposted at BMG)
Both of these were in the Lexington Minuteman, but that doesn't seem to be online. Peters announcement:
http://petersforsena...
Mooney: http://www.woburnonl...
Both of these were in the Lexington Minuteman, but that doesn't seem to be online. Peters announcement:
http://petersforsena...
Mooney: http://www.woburnonl...
Monday, October 1, 2007
Interview with Jim Marzilli
Bob Peters interview here:
progressivemass.blogspot.com/2007/09/interview-with-bob-peters.html
Jim Marzilli is a State Representative and a Democrat from Arlington running in the 4th Middlesex state senate primary. I sat down with him in the Cary Memorial Library in Lexington. Full transcript below (my questions have been paraphrased. Marzilli's answers are in full. It works much better in a quieter venue. Note the only large policy difference between the two interviewed is on casinos.
Progressive Mass: To start things off, I'd like to hear why you're running, what your issues are, your reason for being in the race.
Marzilli: I think that we need to rebuild the partnership between state and local government, which has, over the last decade, become very frayed. The state needs to make a real commitment to increasing local aid. We need to give cities and towns the tools they need to control costs. I'm pleased to be, along with two dozen of my legislative colleagues, a sponsor of legislation to increase chapter 70 money by a hundred million dollars this year and revise the formula and get new targets for the future. But at the same time, even while we increase local aid, we need to help cities and town, give them the tools they'll use to reduce the costs of healthcare and pensions. We voted on two pieces, and enacted two pieces of the governor's municipal partnership act. One of those, allowing cities and towns to, with collective bargaining agreements, bring their employees into the state's Group Insurance Commission, came out of my committee of healthcare finance in the last term. We actually initiated that project. The second piece that we enacted this year would allow cities and towns to choose whether to join the state's pension system. If every city and town in Massachusetts had been in the state's pension investment over the past decade, those cities and the towns would have $3 billion in additional funds that they would have received on their investment because the state has more flexability and greater investment capacity, it's been able to get a much higher rate of return than most cities and towns. The town of Arlington, if we had been part of it, the state's pension investment, we would have $11.5 million dollors more. In the town of Lexington, it would be $10.5 million dollars more. So those are two examples of how we can do that, but there's a lot more we can do. I filed legislation that would provide a dedicated funding stream from the state to city and town governments to allow them to invest in energy efficiency, to reduce energy cost. I filed legislation to cap the growth in cost of health care, written in conjunction with my friend John Mcdonough at Health Care for All. So that's just one piece of the municipal government side, how state and local governments work together. But I'm also running because we have so much capacity in Massachusetts to create a more just society, something that we miss all too often. I've led the last two efforts in MA to increase the minimum wage, giving us the highest minimum wage in 1998, when we enacted my legislation, and last year, when we enacted my legislation, creating the highest minimum wage in the nation. I led the effort to restore the capital gains tax. I initiated, when I was elected in 1991, the circuit breaker legislation. It became law in 1998, along with Peter Enrich and Jay Kaufman and Tom Birmingham. But that was my initiative. There's a lot we can do, and if I'm in the state senate, I'll have a much greater capacity to do it there than from the house, and frankly, there's no one in this race who has a record of achieving legislative victories on the progressive side of politics that matches mine.
Progressive Mass: You mentioned local aid. Where do you see that $100 million coming from?
Marzilli : State revenues grow on an annual basis far in excess of $100 million. The problem that we face at the state government level, the local government level, that everyone faces, is that the growth in the cost of healthcare eats up all of that. So what we need to do is cap the rate of growth. And we don't cap it simply by issuing an order, we cap it by being smarter. So, for example, we will this week in the legislature have a hearing on my health care cost control legislation. It's 17 policies, and it's all consumer directed. It's not about reducing choices in healthcare, it's about expanding the quality of care. In healthcare financing, there's something we call the 80-20 rule. Eighty percent of the costs of healthcare in a universal setting is caused by the 20 percent of patients who have chronic diseases. Asthma, diabetes, heart disease. If we can get those people treatment early, then we can avoid expensive treatment later. If a child is asthmatic, if we get the child into an asthma treatment program, they're not going to end up in a hospital emergency room, where it costs thousands of dollars to treat them. So, for example, this legislation would eliminate the co-pays and the deductible, for every insurance plan in the state, to treat those kinds of chronic diseases. That means that the asthmatic or the diabetic person gets the treatment that keeps him out of the hospital, and makes sure that we don't we don't end up with big costs later on. My legislation also takes away the ability of phamaceutical manufacturers to essentially bribe doctors into prescribing more expensive and no more effective drugs. Right now doctors can receive gifts in an unlimited fashion from pharmaceutical manufacturers, and that means that some doctors, after they've been wined and dined, prescribe something new, and with direct marketing to consumers, consumers are always looking for the the newest drug. The newest drug isn't necessarily the best drug. What we need to do is make sure that physicians are prescribing the most effective and most cost-effective drug. So my legislation addresses that problem also. What it will do is squeeze the waste out of the healthcare system, and create a new savings that will allow us to fund education and other local services.
Progressive Mass: What is your opinion on the loophole closings?
Marzilli: Two years before Governor Deval Patrick was elected, I wrote that legislation. I'm the author of the combined reporting bill, which is the biggest, and I'm the author of a number of other loophole closing measures. I have been the one single leader on closing corporate tax loopholes in MA for the last half decade.
Progressive Mass: To finish up with state revenues, the major thing everybody seems to be talking about for state revenues, in terms of billions of dollars, are casinos. What's your feeling on that? Also, does it matter if it's in Boston or a rural area?
Marzilli: Casinos look to many people to be the easy way out of a tough problem. But the smartest thing, maybe one of the simplest things, that the governor told us when he was campaigning is that schools that are broken are ours. They're our broken roads, they're our broken cities. They're ours, we own them, and we all have to pay for them. And casinos are a way to avoid that responsibility. Casinos are a way to make only some people pay for them. I don't think they're a good economic development strategy. They're a way of ducking our combined responsibility, and the way to deal with that combined responsibility isn't to take advantage of the small number of people who gamble. The way to deal with the problem is to be responsible, to have a discussion about how do we pay for our shared needs, and I think that means a discussion about taxes. It's a discussion about closing corporate tax loopholes, it's a discussion about reducing costs, reducing waste where it exists, and I think that the discussion about casinos is going to be six to eight months of distraction without addressing the real problems that we have.
Progressive Mass: So when the time comes, would you support the state issuing those licenses?
Marzilli: No, I will vote against the expansion of gambling in MA. We already have legal gambling. We have dog tracks and race tracks and we've got the lottery, and when you look at the way the lottery functions, you'll see that it takes money from the poorest people in the state of MA, and redistributes it across the state in the form of local aid in order to pay for schools, police, and fire protection. We need the schools, police, and we need fire protection services. But what we shouldn't do is take money from people with problems with gambling and use that as the means of funding local government. Responsibility means everybody pays for the shared benefits, not just a small subgroup.
Progressive Mass: The Municipal Partnership Act. Are you for the provisions of that, meals and hotel taxes, etc.?
Marzilli: Two years before Governor Patrick got elected, I filed the legislation that closed the telecom corporate tax loophole, so I, you know, I'm thrilled that the governor is in office. I was the first elected official in Massachusetts to support him. I was in his very first meeting in the campaign, so I'm glad to have a partner now in the corner office. You have to remember also, though, that a couple of years ago, Governor Mitt Romney was actually a leader in closing corporate tax loopholes, and I was there with him on that, one of the few times that he was right in his four years, until he went south because of his presidential ambitions. We now have a governor who is committed to a shared mission and not just committed to his own career. It's real nice to go into the State House and know that in the Corner Office, there's a partner rather than a guy who's just trying to advance his career.
Progressive Mass: So now we'll move on to transportation. Both in the district and in the state, which is seeing growth on 495, which for public transit is not good. What do you see in the future in terms of prioritizing projects and also in terms of revenue, like gas tax and tolls, and also rails versus roads?
Marzilli: I think that there two simultaneous areas which we need to address. One of them is in dealing with the deferred maintainence problems that we've accumulated in the past decade and a half. We're going to have to spend somewhere between 15 and 20 billion dollars just to restore our roads and bridges to a point where they meet our safety and transportation needs. That alone is a tough job. We also need to deal with expanding our mass transportation capacity. Tomorrow, for example, there will be a press conference in Somerville on expanding the Green Line from its existing Lechmere terminus to Somerville and Medford. That's a commitment the state entered into before the Big Dig, and we need to live up to that commitment. I happen to represent West Medford, and probably the location of the end of that Green Line extension. We need to meet that commitment on time. I see you're wearing a T-Shirt that has the MBTA on it, and when you look at it [just a side note. I was wearing the old system map before the silver line. So back then, nothing went to Dudley. So what did the MBTA do? They had the Orange and Green Lines rotated 45 degrees from where they are now! The orange line went straight south, the green line southeast, and the Red Line going due east and curving north! Check it out next time you're in Davis or Porter Square on the Red Line-Ed.], it betrays the fact that the blue and red lines come very close to each other, and don't connect. If we connect the blue and the red line, it will allow low-income people in East Boston, and Revere and Lynn, to get to the jobs growing in the Charles/MGH, Kendall and Central Square areas. Connecting those two lines is another [commitment] the state made, in the Dukakis days. We need to live up to that. We need to do both of those projects before we extend commuter rail down to southeast Massachusetts. Connecting people inside the city is the best way to make sure we have economic justice, especially for the people who can't afford to own their own cars and pay for the cost of gasoline and insurance, and it's also the best way to avoid sprawl. We should not be paying to expand a transportation system that encourages businesses to open in what is now greenfield, open spaces. We should be bringing them the tools that businesses need to get their workers into the cities, and into the areas that are already developed.
Progressive Mass: I want to talk about healthcare now, which you've mentioned. Is the state system what we're going to have for the near future, and do you support single-payer government HC?
Marzilli: In 1994 along with John Mcdonough, my former colleague, who now heads healthcare for all, I led the effort for a single-payer plan in Massachusetts. We lost that fight, and it seems unlikely that in the near future we'll be able to get enough votes to create a single-payer system in Massachusetts. Having said that, we shouldn't give up the fight, we should just be aware that there are still half a million people in Massachusetts who don't have health care. So, in the last two years in the legislature, we've engaged in a wide-ranging debate about how to expand access to healthcare, how to rein in a little bit of the costs, how to improve quality. I happened to be the vice-chair of the healthcare finance committee, and one of the architects of the plan that came out of the House. The plan that came out of the House of Representatives was frankly far better from the one that got signed into law, in large part because the governor just would not tolerate the kinds of health care measures that we were pursuing. What we need to do in the short term is implement the cost-saving measures that are embodied in the legislation I filed with Senator Mark Montigny and Health Care for All. That's the first step. Second, we need to step in quickly to cap the high costs that some low-income people are paying for their healthcare under the new law, chapter 58. No one should be forced to pay the combined permium, copayments, and deductibles that are currently called for for low-wage, working families. Third, we need to eliminate the disparities in our healthcare system between white people and people of color, between wealthy people and poor people. The Health Care Disparities Project, which we'll be having a big hearing on this week, is essential to our definition of social justice in Massachusetts. If we tolerate a system that consigns people of color, black people, immigrants, to a second-tier system, then it speaks loudly about our shared commitment to a healthy Massachusetts.
Progressive Mass: One last question about taxation. A part of the constitution prevents a progressive income tax from being enacted. I know amendment attempts failed pretty spectacularly in the nineties-
Marzilli: 1994.
Progressive Mass: Right. Do you see that happening, and...
(Here the tape ended without my noticing for a short time before I replaced the tape. Marzilli expressed continuing support for ending this provision, but doubting that the votes will be there. He also stressed the need to defeat the ballot initiative to end the income tax, calling it one of the fairest taxes we currently have. We then moved on to climate change.)
Marzilli: State government has an enormous capacity to deal with the issue of climate change, and probably more than any legislator in the United States, I've been a leader on that. I am the author of the energy, climate and economic security act this year, which is almost two dozen major policy changes that would reduce energy consumption, emphasize the use of conservation and renewables, in electricity generating, transportation, and buildings. It covers the gamut from implementation of RGGI to tax incentives for clean cars, alternative fuel vehicles, green buildings, and a couple dozen more items. I do that in MA, that kind of policy work, but as a volunteer I've worked with dozens of people in Arlington over the past half decade to reduce our energy consumption immediately in Arlington. We've changed the lighting in the library to create more energy efficient lighting, which is better to read by, it's more even, and we saved 35 thousand dollars a year in energy costs in the library because of that. We've change over our streetlights to more efficient bulbs and cut our fixtures so we don't waste electricity, we save more than $100,000 a year on that. We've changed our regular green incandescent traffic lights to LEDs, which saves us labor and energy costs. So I work at the state government level on policy and with the cities and towns in conjunction with the ICLEI climate protection program across the state of MA. I've taken my work much beyond that. I'm the chair of the energy and environment committee at the Council of State Governments which covers eastern Canada and Maine through Maryland, where we have recently adopted the most aggressive climate change guides in the United States, 85-90 percent reduction by 2050. I've worked through the United Nations, I've participated in four rounds ofthe Kyoto Negotions that the UN sponsors on climate change and if there wasn't an election right now I'd be at the next round in December. I've brought legislators with me to those. I created a sister city program between the seven metropolitan Boston communities and the city of [?] in Brazil to do an energy and climate change agenda. I've worked with the German Green Party, the government of the United Kingdom, the national government of Canada, the provincial governments of Canada, Mexico...climate change is one of the two biggest threats to mankind, the other being nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons are a threat, not a certainty. Climate change, if we don't act on it, is certain to wipe out this population as we know it and this planet as we know it. So we have to move aggressively, and that's why I've spend so much time working on this, at the local, the state, the national, and the international level. There is no candidate in this race who comes close to that level of work.
Progressive Mass: CORI reform in general. There was just a committee hearing on CORI reform. Do you support the current legislation, and does it go far enough?
Marzill: I was one of the legislators who initiated the reform of CORI, and it happened because a constituent of mine, an African-American, came to me because his son had been picked up by the police on the suspicion that he had committed a crime. It turned out that he wasn't even in the state the day that the crime occured, but he ended up with a black mark on his record, and it's something that follows him to this day. He clearly wasn't the perpetrator of the crime. He was out of state. But with the pickup, he ended up with that. It became clear to me with that incident, almost a half-decade ago, that there was somthing from with our criminal offender records system that allows an innocent man to be followed for years and years, simply because he was black and someone made a false identification. When I started looking into it, though, I found out that it wasn't simply that there were some innocent people who have been tagged with that mark, but there are people who have been offenders, people who have been convicted and who paid the price, whether it's jail time or any other kind of sanction against him. But they need to reintegrate into society, and they can't, because they've got that mark on their record. And so what we need to do is go back to the core concept of what we mean when we say we have a correctional system. It's not simply about finding the bad guys and throwing them in jail and punishing them, it's about having a correction system that changes their behavior and once they've paid the price for the crime that they've done, we move on and reintegrate them into society. If we don't do that, when a guy comes out of jail, they will never be employable, and they will be an even bigger problem for society for the rest of their lives. Instead of having a correctional system, we have essentially in our jails a graduate school for criminals. We don't want them to go in, learn more bad stuff, and tell them that there's no place for them for housing, or for jobs. So we need to fundamentally alter our criminal record system. Again, it's one of the great things about the difference between having former Governor Romney and Governor Patrick. Governor Patrick understands that, and will not block us. We'll have a debate. No doubt we'll have a vigorous debate among the members of the house, the senate, and the administration, but I think that we have a very good chance at changing our records system.
Progressive Mass: Education in general. MCAS, Charter.
Marzilli: My two brothers, two sisters, and I went to the Arlington Public Schools when this state was truly committed to public education. In fact, between the five of us, we have five college degrees, also from the University of Massachusetts system, so we are the products of a public education system. We survived and thrived economically because of that commitment. The state's lost its commitment to that on the financial side, I talked about that earlier, but we clearly have to do a lot more. We are in the lower half of the states when it comes to spending on education, on K-12 and higher education. When you compare it to our income, we're in the bottom tier, absolute bottom tier of the states. But it's about more than spending money. It's about how we structure our educational system. We need to essentially blow up the board of education. It is a captive organization by right-wing interests, an ideological bastion left over from the Weld-Celluci-Swift-Romney years. We should bring educators into the board of education so we actually have people who know what they're talking about rather than a couple of right-wingers, telling us the prescriptive program for public education. We absolutely have to have a way of judging the quality of our schools, but the MCAS test is not the end-all and be-all. When we enacted the education reform law in the early 1990s in the legislature it did not say that there would be a single test that everyone had to pass in order to graduate. It said there would by quantifiable systems, plural, and we have to get back to that. The MCAS test causes teachers and school administrators to teach to that test and the closer your students come to exceeding everybody else on the test we brand those schools superior. But they're not necessarily superior. What we need to do is have a fully integrated curriculum, K-12, and we need to have our elementary school curriculum in line with our middle schools in line with our high schools. We need to offer broad education, in science, in math, in social studies, and that is not done simply by teaching to the tests. Charters schools can be an interesting experiment, but only if they're funded by state money. If cities and towns lose huge pools of cash to charter schools which don't have the same kind of obligations in accepting all students as public schools do, then we create a two-tiered system that impoverishes our public schools to fund an experiment that has mixed results at best, and we need to make sure that if we're going to have an experiment, the state pays the price of that experiment, and doesn't do it at a cost to cities and towns.
Progressive Mass: So at this point you would not support raising the charter cap?
Marzilli: Correct. I do not support raising the cap on charter schools in MA.
Progressive Mass: So are there any other issues you'd like to touch on?
Marzilli: I think that this is a very unusual election. A small number of people are going to vote. There are six candidates. There is only one candidate who has a demonstrated record of being a success at enacting progressive legislation. That's me. The other candidates are good guys. I like them. One of them, Ken Donnelly, is my neighbor. But there's one who consistently gets new policies signed into law. There's only one who's led the effort to raise the minimum wage. I'm the guy also who led the effort for three years in a row to increase salaries for human services workers. I'm the leader of progressive tax reform in MA, I'm the leader of energy policy, I'm the leader on healthcare policy. If you're a progressive, you can vote for someone who has the capacity to go to the Senate as a winner, or you can stay home, or throw away your vote on something that doesn't advance the progressive cause.
Progressive Mass: Thanks for coming out here.
progressivemass.blogspot.com/2007/09/interview-with-bob-peters.html
Jim Marzilli is a State Representative and a Democrat from Arlington running in the 4th Middlesex state senate primary. I sat down with him in the Cary Memorial Library in Lexington. Full transcript below (my questions have been paraphrased. Marzilli's answers are in full. It works much better in a quieter venue. Note the only large policy difference between the two interviewed is on casinos.
Progressive Mass: To start things off, I'd like to hear why you're running, what your issues are, your reason for being in the race.
Marzilli: I think that we need to rebuild the partnership between state and local government, which has, over the last decade, become very frayed. The state needs to make a real commitment to increasing local aid. We need to give cities and towns the tools they need to control costs. I'm pleased to be, along with two dozen of my legislative colleagues, a sponsor of legislation to increase chapter 70 money by a hundred million dollars this year and revise the formula and get new targets for the future. But at the same time, even while we increase local aid, we need to help cities and town, give them the tools they'll use to reduce the costs of healthcare and pensions. We voted on two pieces, and enacted two pieces of the governor's municipal partnership act. One of those, allowing cities and towns to, with collective bargaining agreements, bring their employees into the state's Group Insurance Commission, came out of my committee of healthcare finance in the last term. We actually initiated that project. The second piece that we enacted this year would allow cities and towns to choose whether to join the state's pension system. If every city and town in Massachusetts had been in the state's pension investment over the past decade, those cities and the towns would have $3 billion in additional funds that they would have received on their investment because the state has more flexability and greater investment capacity, it's been able to get a much higher rate of return than most cities and towns. The town of Arlington, if we had been part of it, the state's pension investment, we would have $11.5 million dollors more. In the town of Lexington, it would be $10.5 million dollars more. So those are two examples of how we can do that, but there's a lot more we can do. I filed legislation that would provide a dedicated funding stream from the state to city and town governments to allow them to invest in energy efficiency, to reduce energy cost. I filed legislation to cap the growth in cost of health care, written in conjunction with my friend John Mcdonough at Health Care for All. So that's just one piece of the municipal government side, how state and local governments work together. But I'm also running because we have so much capacity in Massachusetts to create a more just society, something that we miss all too often. I've led the last two efforts in MA to increase the minimum wage, giving us the highest minimum wage in 1998, when we enacted my legislation, and last year, when we enacted my legislation, creating the highest minimum wage in the nation. I led the effort to restore the capital gains tax. I initiated, when I was elected in 1991, the circuit breaker legislation. It became law in 1998, along with Peter Enrich and Jay Kaufman and Tom Birmingham. But that was my initiative. There's a lot we can do, and if I'm in the state senate, I'll have a much greater capacity to do it there than from the house, and frankly, there's no one in this race who has a record of achieving legislative victories on the progressive side of politics that matches mine.
Progressive Mass: You mentioned local aid. Where do you see that $100 million coming from?
Marzilli : State revenues grow on an annual basis far in excess of $100 million. The problem that we face at the state government level, the local government level, that everyone faces, is that the growth in the cost of healthcare eats up all of that. So what we need to do is cap the rate of growth. And we don't cap it simply by issuing an order, we cap it by being smarter. So, for example, we will this week in the legislature have a hearing on my health care cost control legislation. It's 17 policies, and it's all consumer directed. It's not about reducing choices in healthcare, it's about expanding the quality of care. In healthcare financing, there's something we call the 80-20 rule. Eighty percent of the costs of healthcare in a universal setting is caused by the 20 percent of patients who have chronic diseases. Asthma, diabetes, heart disease. If we can get those people treatment early, then we can avoid expensive treatment later. If a child is asthmatic, if we get the child into an asthma treatment program, they're not going to end up in a hospital emergency room, where it costs thousands of dollars to treat them. So, for example, this legislation would eliminate the co-pays and the deductible, for every insurance plan in the state, to treat those kinds of chronic diseases. That means that the asthmatic or the diabetic person gets the treatment that keeps him out of the hospital, and makes sure that we don't we don't end up with big costs later on. My legislation also takes away the ability of phamaceutical manufacturers to essentially bribe doctors into prescribing more expensive and no more effective drugs. Right now doctors can receive gifts in an unlimited fashion from pharmaceutical manufacturers, and that means that some doctors, after they've been wined and dined, prescribe something new, and with direct marketing to consumers, consumers are always looking for the the newest drug. The newest drug isn't necessarily the best drug. What we need to do is make sure that physicians are prescribing the most effective and most cost-effective drug. So my legislation addresses that problem also. What it will do is squeeze the waste out of the healthcare system, and create a new savings that will allow us to fund education and other local services.
Progressive Mass: What is your opinion on the loophole closings?
Marzilli: Two years before Governor Deval Patrick was elected, I wrote that legislation. I'm the author of the combined reporting bill, which is the biggest, and I'm the author of a number of other loophole closing measures. I have been the one single leader on closing corporate tax loopholes in MA for the last half decade.
Progressive Mass: To finish up with state revenues, the major thing everybody seems to be talking about for state revenues, in terms of billions of dollars, are casinos. What's your feeling on that? Also, does it matter if it's in Boston or a rural area?
Marzilli: Casinos look to many people to be the easy way out of a tough problem. But the smartest thing, maybe one of the simplest things, that the governor told us when he was campaigning is that schools that are broken are ours. They're our broken roads, they're our broken cities. They're ours, we own them, and we all have to pay for them. And casinos are a way to avoid that responsibility. Casinos are a way to make only some people pay for them. I don't think they're a good economic development strategy. They're a way of ducking our combined responsibility, and the way to deal with that combined responsibility isn't to take advantage of the small number of people who gamble. The way to deal with the problem is to be responsible, to have a discussion about how do we pay for our shared needs, and I think that means a discussion about taxes. It's a discussion about closing corporate tax loopholes, it's a discussion about reducing costs, reducing waste where it exists, and I think that the discussion about casinos is going to be six to eight months of distraction without addressing the real problems that we have.
Progressive Mass: So when the time comes, would you support the state issuing those licenses?
Marzilli: No, I will vote against the expansion of gambling in MA. We already have legal gambling. We have dog tracks and race tracks and we've got the lottery, and when you look at the way the lottery functions, you'll see that it takes money from the poorest people in the state of MA, and redistributes it across the state in the form of local aid in order to pay for schools, police, and fire protection. We need the schools, police, and we need fire protection services. But what we shouldn't do is take money from people with problems with gambling and use that as the means of funding local government. Responsibility means everybody pays for the shared benefits, not just a small subgroup.
Progressive Mass: The Municipal Partnership Act. Are you for the provisions of that, meals and hotel taxes, etc.?
Marzilli: Two years before Governor Patrick got elected, I filed the legislation that closed the telecom corporate tax loophole, so I, you know, I'm thrilled that the governor is in office. I was the first elected official in Massachusetts to support him. I was in his very first meeting in the campaign, so I'm glad to have a partner now in the corner office. You have to remember also, though, that a couple of years ago, Governor Mitt Romney was actually a leader in closing corporate tax loopholes, and I was there with him on that, one of the few times that he was right in his four years, until he went south because of his presidential ambitions. We now have a governor who is committed to a shared mission and not just committed to his own career. It's real nice to go into the State House and know that in the Corner Office, there's a partner rather than a guy who's just trying to advance his career.
Progressive Mass: So now we'll move on to transportation. Both in the district and in the state, which is seeing growth on 495, which for public transit is not good. What do you see in the future in terms of prioritizing projects and also in terms of revenue, like gas tax and tolls, and also rails versus roads?
Marzilli: I think that there two simultaneous areas which we need to address. One of them is in dealing with the deferred maintainence problems that we've accumulated in the past decade and a half. We're going to have to spend somewhere between 15 and 20 billion dollars just to restore our roads and bridges to a point where they meet our safety and transportation needs. That alone is a tough job. We also need to deal with expanding our mass transportation capacity. Tomorrow, for example, there will be a press conference in Somerville on expanding the Green Line from its existing Lechmere terminus to Somerville and Medford. That's a commitment the state entered into before the Big Dig, and we need to live up to that commitment. I happen to represent West Medford, and probably the location of the end of that Green Line extension. We need to meet that commitment on time. I see you're wearing a T-Shirt that has the MBTA on it, and when you look at it [just a side note. I was wearing the old system map before the silver line. So back then, nothing went to Dudley. So what did the MBTA do? They had the Orange and Green Lines rotated 45 degrees from where they are now! The orange line went straight south, the green line southeast, and the Red Line going due east and curving north! Check it out next time you're in Davis or Porter Square on the Red Line-Ed.], it betrays the fact that the blue and red lines come very close to each other, and don't connect. If we connect the blue and the red line, it will allow low-income people in East Boston, and Revere and Lynn, to get to the jobs growing in the Charles/MGH, Kendall and Central Square areas. Connecting those two lines is another [commitment] the state made, in the Dukakis days. We need to live up to that. We need to do both of those projects before we extend commuter rail down to southeast Massachusetts. Connecting people inside the city is the best way to make sure we have economic justice, especially for the people who can't afford to own their own cars and pay for the cost of gasoline and insurance, and it's also the best way to avoid sprawl. We should not be paying to expand a transportation system that encourages businesses to open in what is now greenfield, open spaces. We should be bringing them the tools that businesses need to get their workers into the cities, and into the areas that are already developed.
Progressive Mass: I want to talk about healthcare now, which you've mentioned. Is the state system what we're going to have for the near future, and do you support single-payer government HC?
Marzilli: In 1994 along with John Mcdonough, my former colleague, who now heads healthcare for all, I led the effort for a single-payer plan in Massachusetts. We lost that fight, and it seems unlikely that in the near future we'll be able to get enough votes to create a single-payer system in Massachusetts. Having said that, we shouldn't give up the fight, we should just be aware that there are still half a million people in Massachusetts who don't have health care. So, in the last two years in the legislature, we've engaged in a wide-ranging debate about how to expand access to healthcare, how to rein in a little bit of the costs, how to improve quality. I happened to be the vice-chair of the healthcare finance committee, and one of the architects of the plan that came out of the House. The plan that came out of the House of Representatives was frankly far better from the one that got signed into law, in large part because the governor just would not tolerate the kinds of health care measures that we were pursuing. What we need to do in the short term is implement the cost-saving measures that are embodied in the legislation I filed with Senator Mark Montigny and Health Care for All. That's the first step. Second, we need to step in quickly to cap the high costs that some low-income people are paying for their healthcare under the new law, chapter 58. No one should be forced to pay the combined permium, copayments, and deductibles that are currently called for for low-wage, working families. Third, we need to eliminate the disparities in our healthcare system between white people and people of color, between wealthy people and poor people. The Health Care Disparities Project, which we'll be having a big hearing on this week, is essential to our definition of social justice in Massachusetts. If we tolerate a system that consigns people of color, black people, immigrants, to a second-tier system, then it speaks loudly about our shared commitment to a healthy Massachusetts.
Progressive Mass: One last question about taxation. A part of the constitution prevents a progressive income tax from being enacted. I know amendment attempts failed pretty spectacularly in the nineties-
Marzilli: 1994.
Progressive Mass: Right. Do you see that happening, and...
(Here the tape ended without my noticing for a short time before I replaced the tape. Marzilli expressed continuing support for ending this provision, but doubting that the votes will be there. He also stressed the need to defeat the ballot initiative to end the income tax, calling it one of the fairest taxes we currently have. We then moved on to climate change.)
Marzilli: State government has an enormous capacity to deal with the issue of climate change, and probably more than any legislator in the United States, I've been a leader on that. I am the author of the energy, climate and economic security act this year, which is almost two dozen major policy changes that would reduce energy consumption, emphasize the use of conservation and renewables, in electricity generating, transportation, and buildings. It covers the gamut from implementation of RGGI to tax incentives for clean cars, alternative fuel vehicles, green buildings, and a couple dozen more items. I do that in MA, that kind of policy work, but as a volunteer I've worked with dozens of people in Arlington over the past half decade to reduce our energy consumption immediately in Arlington. We've changed the lighting in the library to create more energy efficient lighting, which is better to read by, it's more even, and we saved 35 thousand dollars a year in energy costs in the library because of that. We've change over our streetlights to more efficient bulbs and cut our fixtures so we don't waste electricity, we save more than $100,000 a year on that. We've changed our regular green incandescent traffic lights to LEDs, which saves us labor and energy costs. So I work at the state government level on policy and with the cities and towns in conjunction with the ICLEI climate protection program across the state of MA. I've taken my work much beyond that. I'm the chair of the energy and environment committee at the Council of State Governments which covers eastern Canada and Maine through Maryland, where we have recently adopted the most aggressive climate change guides in the United States, 85-90 percent reduction by 2050. I've worked through the United Nations, I've participated in four rounds ofthe Kyoto Negotions that the UN sponsors on climate change and if there wasn't an election right now I'd be at the next round in December. I've brought legislators with me to those. I created a sister city program between the seven metropolitan Boston communities and the city of [?] in Brazil to do an energy and climate change agenda. I've worked with the German Green Party, the government of the United Kingdom, the national government of Canada, the provincial governments of Canada, Mexico...climate change is one of the two biggest threats to mankind, the other being nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons are a threat, not a certainty. Climate change, if we don't act on it, is certain to wipe out this population as we know it and this planet as we know it. So we have to move aggressively, and that's why I've spend so much time working on this, at the local, the state, the national, and the international level. There is no candidate in this race who comes close to that level of work.
Progressive Mass: CORI reform in general. There was just a committee hearing on CORI reform. Do you support the current legislation, and does it go far enough?
Marzill: I was one of the legislators who initiated the reform of CORI, and it happened because a constituent of mine, an African-American, came to me because his son had been picked up by the police on the suspicion that he had committed a crime. It turned out that he wasn't even in the state the day that the crime occured, but he ended up with a black mark on his record, and it's something that follows him to this day. He clearly wasn't the perpetrator of the crime. He was out of state. But with the pickup, he ended up with that. It became clear to me with that incident, almost a half-decade ago, that there was somthing from with our criminal offender records system that allows an innocent man to be followed for years and years, simply because he was black and someone made a false identification. When I started looking into it, though, I found out that it wasn't simply that there were some innocent people who have been tagged with that mark, but there are people who have been offenders, people who have been convicted and who paid the price, whether it's jail time or any other kind of sanction against him. But they need to reintegrate into society, and they can't, because they've got that mark on their record. And so what we need to do is go back to the core concept of what we mean when we say we have a correctional system. It's not simply about finding the bad guys and throwing them in jail and punishing them, it's about having a correction system that changes their behavior and once they've paid the price for the crime that they've done, we move on and reintegrate them into society. If we don't do that, when a guy comes out of jail, they will never be employable, and they will be an even bigger problem for society for the rest of their lives. Instead of having a correctional system, we have essentially in our jails a graduate school for criminals. We don't want them to go in, learn more bad stuff, and tell them that there's no place for them for housing, or for jobs. So we need to fundamentally alter our criminal record system. Again, it's one of the great things about the difference between having former Governor Romney and Governor Patrick. Governor Patrick understands that, and will not block us. We'll have a debate. No doubt we'll have a vigorous debate among the members of the house, the senate, and the administration, but I think that we have a very good chance at changing our records system.
Progressive Mass: Education in general. MCAS, Charter.
Marzilli: My two brothers, two sisters, and I went to the Arlington Public Schools when this state was truly committed to public education. In fact, between the five of us, we have five college degrees, also from the University of Massachusetts system, so we are the products of a public education system. We survived and thrived economically because of that commitment. The state's lost its commitment to that on the financial side, I talked about that earlier, but we clearly have to do a lot more. We are in the lower half of the states when it comes to spending on education, on K-12 and higher education. When you compare it to our income, we're in the bottom tier, absolute bottom tier of the states. But it's about more than spending money. It's about how we structure our educational system. We need to essentially blow up the board of education. It is a captive organization by right-wing interests, an ideological bastion left over from the Weld-Celluci-Swift-Romney years. We should bring educators into the board of education so we actually have people who know what they're talking about rather than a couple of right-wingers, telling us the prescriptive program for public education. We absolutely have to have a way of judging the quality of our schools, but the MCAS test is not the end-all and be-all. When we enacted the education reform law in the early 1990s in the legislature it did not say that there would be a single test that everyone had to pass in order to graduate. It said there would by quantifiable systems, plural, and we have to get back to that. The MCAS test causes teachers and school administrators to teach to that test and the closer your students come to exceeding everybody else on the test we brand those schools superior. But they're not necessarily superior. What we need to do is have a fully integrated curriculum, K-12, and we need to have our elementary school curriculum in line with our middle schools in line with our high schools. We need to offer broad education, in science, in math, in social studies, and that is not done simply by teaching to the tests. Charters schools can be an interesting experiment, but only if they're funded by state money. If cities and towns lose huge pools of cash to charter schools which don't have the same kind of obligations in accepting all students as public schools do, then we create a two-tiered system that impoverishes our public schools to fund an experiment that has mixed results at best, and we need to make sure that if we're going to have an experiment, the state pays the price of that experiment, and doesn't do it at a cost to cities and towns.
Progressive Mass: So at this point you would not support raising the charter cap?
Marzilli: Correct. I do not support raising the cap on charter schools in MA.
Progressive Mass: So are there any other issues you'd like to touch on?
Marzilli: I think that this is a very unusual election. A small number of people are going to vote. There are six candidates. There is only one candidate who has a demonstrated record of being a success at enacting progressive legislation. That's me. The other candidates are good guys. I like them. One of them, Ken Donnelly, is my neighbor. But there's one who consistently gets new policies signed into law. There's only one who's led the effort to raise the minimum wage. I'm the guy also who led the effort for three years in a row to increase salaries for human services workers. I'm the leader of progressive tax reform in MA, I'm the leader of energy policy, I'm the leader on healthcare policy. If you're a progressive, you can vote for someone who has the capacity to go to the Senate as a winner, or you can stay home, or throw away your vote on something that doesn't advance the progressive cause.
Progressive Mass: Thanks for coming out here.
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Interview with Bob Peters
I sat down today with Lexington resident and town meeting member Bob Peters, candidate for the Fourth Middlesex State Senate seat. I am working on digitizing this, but just a run-down for now:
Peters focused on local issues during the interview, and talked about issues as they pertained to towns and town budget, emphasizing his experience as a town meeting member and resident of Lexington and Burlington. He expressed strong support for all provisions of the Municipal Partnership Act, mentioning the Group Insurance Commission, meals and hotel tax options for towns, and lifting the property tax exemption on telephone wires. He expressed support for moving as quickly as possible towards a universal, single-payer health care system.
On himself and why he is running:
PETERS: I'm Bob Peters, and I'm running, as you know, in the Senate special election in the Fourth Middlesex, and the reason that I'm running is that I've been on [the Lexington] town meeting now for three years, and I've lived in Burlington, which is also in this district, and I've been on town meeting in the past there and the library board there, and I'm also on the housing board in Lexington, and the thing that strikes me as we do the budget in Lexington, a community of the commonwealth, is that we have a constant crisis at the local level in providing the resources that we need for the things that are really the basic responsibility of local government [a couple of seconds missed, due to taping problems] to support the things that local government is directly responsible for and also affects people's lives. And so I think there is a crisis in the financial underpinnings of our local government and I am in the race to be a strong advocate in the legislature for supporting local government.
Reducing property taxes, revenue in general.
PETERS: The governor ran on a platform of the need to decrease property taxes to provide support for cities and towns, and I support that entirely. The Municipal Partnership Act provides options for cities and towns in order for them to be able to support themselves better. The legislature so far has acted on the insurance portion of that, which allows cities and towns to join on behalf of their employees the state group insurance program. The rest of the partnership act hasn't been acted on yet. The other components that I think really ought to move forward are the local options meals tax, which gives cities and towns the option of adding one or two percent to the meals tax locally, committed to supporting local government, and the other area I think needs to be acted on, and is really critical, is taxing the telecommunications properties. For a hundred years, the telephone companies have been exempt from local property taxes on their poles and wires, while the same wires for electric utilities are subject to the property tax, and I think that's just an anachronism, [unintelligible for a few seconds) and I think we need to end that exemption, and give communities additional ways to raise revenues that aren't just merely the property tax. I think we owe it to our younger families that are trying to get into communities, I think we owe it to senior citizens who want to stay in communities.
Transportation
PETERS: I think that a lot of the things that the tax cuts in the nineties were built on were deferring expensive maintenance...the roads and bridges in the commonwealth aren't getting any younger...The infrastructure needed to collect tolls is very costly. I'm concerned that both [tolls and the gas tax] hit the lowest income communities the hardest, and I'm not sure that that's the way to go.
Spending priorities
He stated strong support of particularly the biotech initiative, as a way of job growth. He also recommended strong investment in clean energy.
PETERS: The best way to fund the things we need is to have a strong, growing economy that is creating jobs.
Climate Change
"There are limits to what the state can do." Encourage wind power, particularly on old landfills, which, because of elevation and often unusability, make great locations and don't impact quality of life. Cape Wind: mixed feelings. There is a program that funds construction of new schools, which requires schools to conform to green building requirements. Smart growth is important, one of the best ideas to come out of the Romney administration. On Cape Wind itself, there are some questions as to siting, and how the project specifically has been handled. However, he is very reluctant to oppose large new clean energy projects.
Health Care
The "double digit" yearly increases are unsustainable. Supports a single payer universal health care system. "I do think we need to move as quickly as possible to a single payer health care system...we will cover more people, and end the huge overhead costs, both on the insurer and on the patient side. The proposal that I've seen most recently, from John McDonough at Health Care for All, is a five to seven percent employer tax...and I can tell you that in the small business that I work for...a five to seven percent tax represents a savings." This would make small businesses more competitive.
Casinos
"I think that in general, there should not be casinos in Massachusetts. But, that train has left the station" because if the state refuses to issue any licenses, the tribe will go through the federal system. We could end up like Connecticut, in which the state, through opposition, lost a lot of negotiating power, and was left with very little money to defray the casino's costs. The bidding process is a good one for casinos.
CORI
"I think that the problem with CORI really is how information is used. Most people who are serving sentences will be back in our community at some point, and it's in our interest to help them make their way legitimately in society as well as possible. If CORI is getting in the way of people seeking legitimate employment, [he later added, "depending on the nature of the crime"], I think it does need to be changed." The information should not be available after a certain period.
Education and MCAS
MCAS was developed as "one tool in an arsenal of tools" of many to determine if a student or a school is performing adequately. Being used too much, although standardized testing has its purpose. Pre-K through college is very important. Governor is moving in the right direction.
Marzilli and Splitting the Progressive Vote:
Not running against any specific candidates, running to address town issues. Knows the district, probably understands it the best of all candidates. As to splitting the progressive vote, nobody knows exactly how the race will play out.
Peters focused on local issues during the interview, and talked about issues as they pertained to towns and town budget, emphasizing his experience as a town meeting member and resident of Lexington and Burlington. He expressed strong support for all provisions of the Municipal Partnership Act, mentioning the Group Insurance Commission, meals and hotel tax options for towns, and lifting the property tax exemption on telephone wires. He expressed support for moving as quickly as possible towards a universal, single-payer health care system.
On himself and why he is running:
PETERS: I'm Bob Peters, and I'm running, as you know, in the Senate special election in the Fourth Middlesex, and the reason that I'm running is that I've been on [the Lexington] town meeting now for three years, and I've lived in Burlington, which is also in this district, and I've been on town meeting in the past there and the library board there, and I'm also on the housing board in Lexington, and the thing that strikes me as we do the budget in Lexington, a community of the commonwealth, is that we have a constant crisis at the local level in providing the resources that we need for the things that are really the basic responsibility of local government [a couple of seconds missed, due to taping problems] to support the things that local government is directly responsible for and also affects people's lives. And so I think there is a crisis in the financial underpinnings of our local government and I am in the race to be a strong advocate in the legislature for supporting local government.
Reducing property taxes, revenue in general.
PETERS: The governor ran on a platform of the need to decrease property taxes to provide support for cities and towns, and I support that entirely. The Municipal Partnership Act provides options for cities and towns in order for them to be able to support themselves better. The legislature so far has acted on the insurance portion of that, which allows cities and towns to join on behalf of their employees the state group insurance program. The rest of the partnership act hasn't been acted on yet. The other components that I think really ought to move forward are the local options meals tax, which gives cities and towns the option of adding one or two percent to the meals tax locally, committed to supporting local government, and the other area I think needs to be acted on, and is really critical, is taxing the telecommunications properties. For a hundred years, the telephone companies have been exempt from local property taxes on their poles and wires, while the same wires for electric utilities are subject to the property tax, and I think that's just an anachronism, [unintelligible for a few seconds) and I think we need to end that exemption, and give communities additional ways to raise revenues that aren't just merely the property tax. I think we owe it to our younger families that are trying to get into communities, I think we owe it to senior citizens who want to stay in communities.
Transportation
PETERS: I think that a lot of the things that the tax cuts in the nineties were built on were deferring expensive maintenance...the roads and bridges in the commonwealth aren't getting any younger...The infrastructure needed to collect tolls is very costly. I'm concerned that both [tolls and the gas tax] hit the lowest income communities the hardest, and I'm not sure that that's the way to go.
Spending priorities
He stated strong support of particularly the biotech initiative, as a way of job growth. He also recommended strong investment in clean energy.
PETERS: The best way to fund the things we need is to have a strong, growing economy that is creating jobs.
Climate Change
"There are limits to what the state can do." Encourage wind power, particularly on old landfills, which, because of elevation and often unusability, make great locations and don't impact quality of life. Cape Wind: mixed feelings. There is a program that funds construction of new schools, which requires schools to conform to green building requirements. Smart growth is important, one of the best ideas to come out of the Romney administration. On Cape Wind itself, there are some questions as to siting, and how the project specifically has been handled. However, he is very reluctant to oppose large new clean energy projects.
Health Care
The "double digit" yearly increases are unsustainable. Supports a single payer universal health care system. "I do think we need to move as quickly as possible to a single payer health care system...we will cover more people, and end the huge overhead costs, both on the insurer and on the patient side. The proposal that I've seen most recently, from John McDonough at Health Care for All, is a five to seven percent employer tax...and I can tell you that in the small business that I work for...a five to seven percent tax represents a savings." This would make small businesses more competitive.
Casinos
"I think that in general, there should not be casinos in Massachusetts. But, that train has left the station" because if the state refuses to issue any licenses, the tribe will go through the federal system. We could end up like Connecticut, in which the state, through opposition, lost a lot of negotiating power, and was left with very little money to defray the casino's costs. The bidding process is a good one for casinos.
CORI
"I think that the problem with CORI really is how information is used. Most people who are serving sentences will be back in our community at some point, and it's in our interest to help them make their way legitimately in society as well as possible. If CORI is getting in the way of people seeking legitimate employment, [he later added, "depending on the nature of the crime"], I think it does need to be changed." The information should not be available after a certain period.
Education and MCAS
MCAS was developed as "one tool in an arsenal of tools" of many to determine if a student or a school is performing adequately. Being used too much, although standardized testing has its purpose. Pre-K through college is very important. Governor is moving in the right direction.
Marzilli and Splitting the Progressive Vote:
Not running against any specific candidates, running to address town issues. Knows the district, probably understands it the best of all candidates. As to splitting the progressive vote, nobody knows exactly how the race will play out.
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