Just starting downhill, a growing, rolling snowball's easily stopped. Wait too long, and it's a cartoon cliche, an uncontrollable slapstick disaster. After today's news, you might well imagine that the State's been slicing and cutting to keep pace with the falling revenues.
State revenues took yet another plunge last month, ending the financial year $180 million below even the dourest projections and forcing leaders to choose between draining the state’s reserve account and making further cuts in a budget approved just last week.
But no. Here's the 2010 budget compared to 2009:
| SPENDING CATEGORY | FY2006 Expended |
FY2007 Expended |
FY2008 Expended |
FY2009 Expended |
FY2010 GAA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wages & Salaries | 3,838,756 | 4,092,090 | 4,306,665 | 4,246,441 | 3,989,175 |
| Employee Benefits | 1,114,725 | 1,182,179 | 1,011,388 | 1,148,498 | 1,205,011 |
| Operating Expenses | 1,396,846 | 1,217,032 | 1,968,672 | 1,171,741 | 1,068,951 |
| Public Assistance | 10,779,003 | 11,663,047 | 12,590,650 | 13,118,165 | 13,000,239 |
| Grants & Subsidies | 5,350,815 | 6,055,275 | 6,185,698 | 5,808,427 | 5,719,110 |
| Debt Service | 1,832,219 | 2,008,220 | 1,989,968 | 2,045,025 | 2,063,525 |
| TOTAL | 24,312,364 | 26,217,844 | 28,053,041 | 27,538,297 |
27,046,010 |
From 2009 to 2010, a 1.7% reduction in spending.
1.7% ! Got that? In the face of a 23% drop in revenues the State budgets a 1.7% spending decrease.
All the while, they're boasting of reform. Isn't reform a meaningless slogan without seriously addressing the failure to cut costs, or, painful as it is to this fiscal conservative, communicate the need for higher tax?
Great that the Legislature reformed the silly rules: credit for library trustee, 23 and out, extras for not running for re-election, ethics, no gifts to politicians, rearrange a handful of agencies, etc... . I can sleep well knowing that some random Representative from Bumfarksville, Mass won't get the extra $200 a month added to his pension because he served as a Trustee on the local library for 5 years.
Isn't it just great that your Rep can't accept gifts. You're life's been made full. Or that the Transporation Authority that hemorrages red ink is doing it as a State Board and not as an Authority. It's nuance that make the Commonwealth great.
For every day that passes without meaningful reduction in spending, reserves grow smaller and the deficit snowball larger.
Solution, said the leaders, add a sales tax. That's an extra $900 million in cash, a smidge short of the $3.0 billion shortfall.
Neither the Governor nor the Legislature are addressing where to find the $2.6 billion. By ignoring that short fall, and focusing on the meaningless (i.e. immaterial money savings) they're guilty of pure negligence.
Where to cut? Three places for government: 1) transfer payments (i.e. welfare, medicaid,) 2) employment and benefits 3) local aid, which then translates to employment and benefits, but at the town level.
Transfer payments are temporarily off limits for the most part because of Federal money coming in although the rumblings are louder that the universal healthcare boondoggle is a target. Already dental is gone from MassHealth coverage, and certain legal aliens are excluded from Commonwealth Care coverage. Local aid has been reduced.
What's left is state employment.
Headcount in State government has been locked at 85,000 to 86,000 for many months now. Despite layoff anecdotes, the state appears to have a stealth no-layoff policy in place.
Every 10% cut in heads means approximately $500 million in savings; no cost in unemployment because of Federal $.
The real call ought to be 'savings before revenue'. Reform is meaningless if it means no dollars saved.
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