The city of Boston is very limited in the ways in which it can raise revenue. Given that, what changes, if any, would you propose to make city revenue policy more progressive?
If you were given the power to substantially reduce the budget of two city departments and increase the budget of two others by that same amount, what departments would you cut from, and which would you add to?
Mayoral Candidate Responses
Michael Flaherty
Our budget strategies must be two-fold: we must determine how we can trim spending and we must identify measures to bring in more money. Conducting annual performance reviews will help us to reach both of these goals. Certainly, the city could bring in more revenue if it held itself more accountable for collecting unpaid tickets and property taxes. Reports have indicated that the city is owed millions. Another strategy to bring in more city revenue would be to modify the tax exemption status of our colleges and universities so that they are required to pay some portion of property taxes. The current system – which consists of voluntary payments – is not a reliable source of revenue, especially during an economic downturn. Other strategies that would free up city dollars are to eliminate high-paid consultants, put city workers on the state’s health insurance program and enroll city retirees into Medicare.
Through annual performance reviews, my administration would be able to make informed decisions about which city programs should be improved, consolidated or eliminated. Such a review would enable us to become a more efficient government and expunge wasteful spending and abuse. One area ripe for reform is the city’s Transportation and Public Works departments. Supposedly, they were merged over two years ago, and yet we still have a Chief of Public Works & Transportation, a Deputy Commissioner of Public Works, and a Transportation Commissioner on our payroll, with no savings or improved city services to show for it.
Savings identified through a more genuine consolidation of these two departments would allow me to put more money into our public safety departments and our Boston Public Schools (BPS). In addition, a shift to school-based management would redirect money from the BPS central office to our classrooms and students.
Thomas Menino
While we have finally secured a meals tax from the State (still lower than most major cities), more work needs to be done. I have worked to eliminate the telecom equipment property tax exemption and successfully lobbied the Governor and Legislature for residential property tax relief through classification. Early on in my Administration, we secured legislation exempting smaller businesses from the personal property tax. So we are constantly working, not just to raise revenue, but to raise it fairly. In the future, we need to look at the biggest owner of property in the city – the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and work out a better structure for in lieu of tax payments. I did that with Massport and we have a very good arrangement with them.
I’d like to see us reduce school transportation costs and health insurance costs. As a member of the Metro Mayors Caucus (Greater Boston area mayors), we’ve worked for years for the right to work together to lower health insurance costs. Governor Patrick agrees with us and hopefully soon, the Legislature will too.
I’ve always increased the budget for education and youth in our city and would love to do more. Nothing is more important to the future of Boston.
Kevin McCrea
Property taxes are inherently progressive, but the residential exemption, which seems progressive, is regressive, hurting renters. Yoon’s sales tax and Menino’s meals tax are regressive. People in poor neighborhoods often can’t get fresh food and depend on fast food. Menino even calls his meals tax a “hamburger tax.”
But we don’t need to be figuring out how to tax ourselves more. The little-understood fact is that Boston is not struggling financially. Because we are vastly over-taxed, our treasury collects more money than the politicians can burn. And we waste hundreds of millions a year on developer tax breaks and BRA give-aways. I’d reform our budgeting and taxation systems. I’d institute zero-based budgeting, where each item has to be proposed and justified every year, instead of just upping every department’s funding by some arbitrary percent. Reform first; then, I expect, we won’t need more revenue.
I’d eliminate the BRA, which is not a City department but deprives the City of hundreds of millions of dollars every year. That would liberate billions of dollars worth of property that the City could sell or lease, and at least $17 million a year in cash flow – about the cost of the entire Parks and Recreation budget — for other uses.
I’d go through the staffing of every department to clean out the phantom jobs (funding but no hiring) and the make-work jobs.
I’d phase out school busing, which would provide tens of millions for education, if we need it after cleaning out all the no-job jobs in the school department.
I’d increase funding for Parks and Recreation, which Menino has slashed over the years.
I’d increase funding for the Finance Commission, an excellent fiscal watchdog. Menino stripped their funding to the bone, to disable their investigations.
I’d invest in the Transportation Department, which is just a traffic and parking division, and start planning for some city-operated mass transit (while we wait for T reform). We are going to strangle in traffic otherwise, and development will grind to a halt. I would increase the development of biking lanes and making Boston friendlier for pedestrian, bicycle, moped and other alternative transportation devices.
Sam Yoon
The single biggest, untapped factor in Boston’s overall revenue picture is the Boston Redevelopment Authority. Billions of dollars of real estate – some city owned land – is controlled by this black box of an agency. I will eliminate the BRA and bring that revenue back into the city budget.
As you know, Boston has limited authority to raise its own revenue. As Mayor, I would be a staunch ally for progressive tax efforts at the State House.
Significant savings can be found in a number of areas – long outlined by independent reports. Curbing out of control overtime budgets for police, fire and public works will net tens of millions of dollars. Enacting long overdue reforms to the Fire and Public Works Department will also result in real money.
We need to reinvest these resources I youth and education programming.
At-Large City Council Candidate Responses
Felix Arroyo
Compared to other cities across the U.S., Boston falls woefully short in the diversity with which it raises revenue. The city is far too dependent on property tax. In order to weather any financial storm, and to improve our quality of life even in the best of times, Boston must lessen its reliance on property tax while at the same time working to increase the payments-in-lieu-of-taxes (PILOT) paid by our abundant non-profit institutions, which own over 50 percent of the city’s land. I support recent efforts to establish a meals tax and a hotels tax, and would work as a City Councilor to diversify our revenue further and also to improve PILOT payments. I will always be looking for ways to make the tax system more progressive.
I would cut from the BRA and add to Public Health and the Boston Public Schools.
John Connolly
We need the ability to share savings across the capital and operating budgets so that we can incentivize the city to invest in energy-efficient longterm solutions that will help reduce our operating expenditures as well as utilizing better use of technology to sve money and deliver better, more responsive city services. On the revenue side, a consistent, better push for PILOT Agreements with our larger institutions is the best way for the City to increase revenue. At the same time, the City is overly-reliant on the property tax, and I would favor a home rule petition that would enable the city to create new revenue streams and local options that would open the door to a more progressive tax structure within the City.
I would provide additional funding to expand recycling and to better fund our schools. For our schools, I would dedicate the lion’s share of any additional funds to our schools, but I would insist that such funds be used for specific improvement plans to upgrade programming, and physical plant, particularly at our underperforming schools. In terms of recycling, I would expand what is recyclable curbside as well as expanding access for recycling of noncurbside materials including certain hazardous materials and CFLs. I would also expand single stream recycling not just to all residents, but for business districts for whom I would also creat composting accessibility.
Ego Ezedi
I support allowing all municipalities to raise local option taxes: telecommunications, hotels, meals, etc. I also support a property tax that is graduated and includes exemptions for people with various disadvantages. Additionally I believe we need to find a solution to the current exemptions that universities and hospitals across Boston receive under their non-profit status.
Having served as the Executive Director of the Roxbury YMCA, I am very familiar with organizational budgeting and financing. At this time, any response I offer pertaining to the city’s budget would be ill informed and uneducated. The reality is that a deeper, more thoughtful collaborative review of the budget is required to accurately and appropriately assess our city’s budget challenges.
Tomás Gonzalez
Interestingly enough, the city now has the ability to levy local taxes on hotels and restaurants as well as charging a property tax for telecommunication poles. The local options tax would allow the city to generate roughly 100 millions dollars in revenue to be used to offset the cuts to local aid received from the state. Moreover, realizing that property tax accounts for the majority of the taxes raised in the city, I would also look at larger nonprofits paying their fair share of property tax to the city for infrastructure and public safety cost.
If given the power to reduce the budgets of two city departments, I would consider limiting the Mayor’s Office from hiring special assistants and consultants and use those discretionary dollars towards strengthening the Mayor’s Youth Council and creating new employment opportunities for high school students. I would also consider merging the city’s recreation program and community centers into the Boston Public Schools. This would increase the presence of community centers throughout the entire city and enable the schools to provide recreational opportunities and more structured after-school time for BPS students.
Tito Jackson
The tools currently available to the Boston City Council to promote a progressive revenue policy are both few and relatively blunt. While property taxes are the largest revenue component, raising the property tax rate would likely most substantially impact middle-class families in Boston who, in the current economic crisis, already face enough difficulty making ends meet.
One indirect way to implement a more progressive revenue policy is to ensure that non-profit organizations making Payments in Lieu of Taxes are being effective community partners. World-class schools, hospitals, universities, museums and other non-profits are among the features that make Boston such an attractive place for residents and visitors. As an At-Large City Councillor, I would promote efforts to make sure that organizations that are able to take advantage of PILOT provide benefits and services to all Boston residents, specifically to low-income employees and residents.
When it comes to funding, my top priorities will be creating jobs, making housing affordable and ensuring first class public education. Budget cuts can lead to reductions in services that are valuable to their respective constituencies. Before recommending any changes to currently proposed budget allocations, my first step as City Councillor At-Large would be to work with each of the departments to identify more efficient, lower-cost ways of achieving stated department goals. For instance, one third of Boston residents are aged 20-34. That represents a pool of 200,000 young people who could serve as volunteer mentors for Boston students, helping them to receive a truly first-class public education without placing undue stress on the budget.
Andrew Kenneally
Given the current budgetary crisis facing the City of Boston, the city would be remiss to not explore ways of working with tax-exempt institutions to increase revenues. While our city’s universities, for example, all use the same services as non-tax-exempt establishments and individual residents, they are currently not paying their fair share in taxes. As city councilor, I would work with our city’s tax-exempt institutions to increase their payments to the city.
Reductions from: HR, Auditing
Increases to: Education, Centers for Youth and Residents Jobs Policy
Steve Murphy
I’ve been working on changing the way the Payment in Lieu of Taxes is calculated so that there is some tax fairness on the issue, as well as some added revenue generated for the City. In light of my work on this issue for the last several years the Mayor appointed me to the Task Force charged with making changes to the current PILOT payment program. We will see some change on this particular issue this year. That alone will generate much needed revenue for Boston.
I also support the meals and hotel tax, as well as a telecom tax. These important options will yield an additional $30 to $40 million per year in much needed revenue.
In the last three years I have worked with my colleagues to reduce the overtime budget of both the Fire Department and the Police Department. Neither department is being realistic in their current operating manner (in regards to overtime). We forced them to reduce their overtime budgets and I think that is a great step in saving the City money.
If I could increase the budgets of two city departments I would actually add to three (in no particular order):
- Boston Centers for Youth and Families
- Public Health Commission
- The chronically underfunded Parks and Recreation department.
Hiep Nguyen
As city councilor, I would not be opposed to raising taxes such as the meals tax if it meant that critical city services would be continued. However, in this tough economic environment where working families and local businesses across our city are struggling, imposing a tax increase (no matter how small) would put an additional burden on them.
The ideal approach in this current situation would be to identify areas where cost savings can be effectively achieved. As city councilor, I would ensure that internal audits would be performed to identify areas to reduce unnecessary expenditures. For example, any duplication of efforts would be eliminated.
If necessary, I would explore other avenues to attain additional revenues. I would negotiate with the tax-exempt organizations so that they would make additional contributions to share in the costs of running our city, while respecting the contractual obligations that may already exist.
After the above options have been taken, rather than eliminating any particular department, I would proportionately reduce the budgets of all departments.
Cost savings and revenues raised from implementing the above recommendations would be used to assist our schools, public safety programs, and youth programs.
Ayanna Pressley
54% of all property goes untaxed in the City because of our current tax laws surrounding non-profit entities. However, many of these organizations, such as colleges and hospitals, maintain hundreds of millions (some even billions) of dollars in endowments and are reaping astronomical profits. Studies have shown that their “donations” back to the city for the services they are using equal just pennies on the dollar compared to their tax paying counterparts. These are outdated laws that are hurting small businesses and working families throughout the City of Boston. I will work diligently to negotiate creative and long-term solutions that benefit our communities, including our non-profit community.
I do not necessarily agree that the money would have to come from two other departments. Like President Obama says, we must comb through our budget line by line to achieve the cost savings we need, and I can not commit to drastically reducing the budget of any of our already stretched thin departments.
Like working families across the City, we must find a way to sharpen our pencils and find cost savings wherever we can. Are there departments that can be combined that currently have redundancies in their responsibilities? Are we effectively using the internet and telecommuting in order to cut down on costs related to fee collection and staffing? Is there surplus property or equipment that can still effectively be used by other departments or non-profits? These are the questions that must be asked in order to effectively manage our budget.
Sean Ryan
If by a “progressive” revenue policy, you mean one that deliberately redistributes wealth to those whom politicians have decided deserve or are entitled to it – such as a large underclass whom the government has conditioned to depend on involuntary charity; large, corrupt banks and corporations; and favored industries for whom the government is the only or principle buyer (the military industrial complex and health care industry) – then I do not support such a policy. I reject all forms of collectivism, including Marxism, as affronts to individual rights (plank #2 of the Communist Manifesto refers to this issue). If I were allowed to make cuts to the budgets of two city departments, I would abolish the BRA (even though it’s technically “off budget,” which I believe is criminal, since it’s a governmental organization over whom we lack the power of the purse) and phase out centralized control of public schools, by returning to the neighborhood model.
Bill Trabucco
One answer, universities with Multi-billion dollar endowments need to pay their fair share. Then there is no budget deficit.
Scotland Willis
I am certain that we can reduce our budgetary concerns by encouraging more local business ownership. We need to have user friendly policies for local business owners. Dollars stay in the community longer when a business is a local business. It also offers a particular culture that makes neighborhoods more appealing. In addition I believe we need to ensure that licensing and permitting is a more seamless process so that when a business is prepared for growth, the city entities support that by having more online services available and functional for the business owners. I would also strongly support growing the green economy. There are thousands of jobs that are and will continue to be available. At the end of 2008 GE had back orders of windmills of over $12 billion (as of August 2008). In addition to that the sustainable energy field has grown by 30% year over year for the past 8 years. This has opportunity written all over it and we need to train and prepare our workforce for this industry before it is established elsewhere. More green housing also means population growth which translates into increased revenue bases. I would cut the budget of the BRA after deeper review to ensure that the revenue streams go to neighborhoods and the city itself rather into the agency. I would also look at spending in city administration where multiple concerns come including personnel increases of $416 m. My question is are we getting over $416 in productivity to offset that expense? An annual independent audit that produces a public report is important to transparency.