The Dorchester Reporter

Commentary: State should put tax surplus to good use by investing in shaping our state’s future

By Bill Walczak, Reporter Columnist

September 7, 2022

In my 50 years as a Massachusetts resident, I cannot recall any time when the state was this flush with cash – billions of surplus tax dollars. Boston Globe columnist Shirley Leung’s Aug. 30 column – “Beacon Hill has a money problem: too much of it” – seems to make the case for a tax cut, and also that a flush Massachusetts does not need a so-called “millionaire’s tax.”

Conservative groups are pressing hard to give the money back to taxpayers and threatening to sue the state if an obscure law named 62F, passed via referendum in the 1980s, which would force the state to return $3 billion (of about $5 billion in surplus) to the taxpayers, is not adhered to. Most assessments say that this would return seven percent of your 2021 state taxes, estimated to be $250 for the average taxpayer, though more for higher income residents.

These arguments miss the elephant in the room: This is the state’s greatest opportunity to invest in the MBTA, the repair of our bridges, public higher education, universal pre-kindergarten, and climate change. Squandering the surplus by giving it back to taxpayers at $250 per head would be a Faustian deal.

Let’s face it, Massachusetts does a terrible job of maintaining its assets. We love investing in new things, then think they’ll last forever. We have not taken seriously Boston native Ben Franklin’s adage - an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. This applies to bridges as well as people.

We have billions of dollars of maintenance and infrastructure needs that have been ignored for decades. For example: A well-functioning MBTA is essential to the economic success of the Commonwealth, and it’s clearly a disaster, wrought by decades of disinvestment that were made much worse by decisions forcing the T to take on $3.8 billion in debt to complete the Big Dig.

This forced indebtedness, ironically forcing public transit to support a highway, is part of the reason the T continues to use 50-year-old trains, has limited its expansion, and, according to the Federal Transit Administration, spends way too little on maintenance, resulting in among the highest rates of “safety events and derailments” in the US.

As outrageous as it was to force the T to take on the debt of the Big Dig, even more irresponsible was to force the agency to take on more debt not only for capital projects but also for operating deficits. Today, the T is $7.6 billion in debt, and plans to borrow $600 million per year to cover operating deficits. This means that more than a fifth of the T’s budget is going to debt payments.

The agency needs a start-over, which could happen if the budget surplus dollars are used to retire much of its debt, thereby allowing normal spending patterns to emerge. One thing that can’t be allowed to happen is a failure to reduce the T’s debt. The alternative is to continue having the worst traffic jams in the country and public transit that is a joke.

Another disaster waiting to happen is shown by a Mass Budget Policy Center study of Massachusetts bridges reporting that 644 bridges (of 7,880 in total) meet the definition of being “structurally deficient,” which means that “at least one major weight-bearing component of these bridges has serious problems and is in need of repair or replacement.” The study also pointed out that the average bridge in Massachusetts is 56 years old (vs. 44 years nationally), and the average age of structurally deficient bridges is 73 years. You don’t have to travel very far to see this. Recent trips on Rt. 3, Rt. 495, and the Pike showed that nearly every bridge is significantly rusted, and some bridges have netting or wood underneath to catch falling concrete.

Another area desperately needing investment is higher education. Though not often thought of as “infrastructure,” I’d make the case that it needs to be seen as such. It’s often said that the only natural resource Massachusetts has for its economy is smart, educated residents. Failure to invest to continue having smart, educated residents will be very damaging to the Massachusetts economy. Yet, our state has been reducing support for higher education for the past 40 years. When I was attending UMass Boston in the 1970s, my tuition was $300 per semester, which allowed me to work part time and go to school full time. In 1980, the average student in Massachusetts paid 22.8 percent of the cost of his or her education; the rest was paid by the state. In 2020, the student cost percentage was 40.2 percent, with the result that Massachusetts public higher education students on average graduate with $33,457 in debt, the 8th-highest debt level in the US.

We need to make community college free, and increase scholarship dollars for the state's universities. No wonder the percent of Massachusetts high school students who intend to go to college has dropped by 10 percent in the past 5 years to 60 percent, as WGBH radio has reported.

Universal Pre-Kindergarten for three year olds is another essential ingredient to having good educational outcomes. Pre-K means that children will more likely read at grade level by third grade, which is a major determinant for student success. Currently New York City, San Antonio, Washington D.C., and the states of Vermont and Florida have instituted universal Pre-K.

We’re the education state.  We need to be next.

Or perhaps we could learn from other states on how to spend a surplus. California is using much of its surplus to pour money into an effort to become carbon neutral. Massachusetts is woefully behind schedule in that endeavor. If you need evidence to see the value of investing more in the environment, the meteorologist Dave Epstein reported that the average temperature for the Boston area from July 17 through August 6 of this year was 80.6 degrees, the warmest 21 days ever in 151 years of recorded temperatures.

To those who think that we are destined to abide by the 62F law, I have two thoughts. One is that it’s a bit disingenuous that nobody in state government knew that this law existed. If they were paying attention, they could have adjusted budgets to spend the surplus as it emerged. Be that as it may, since when is the Legislature required to abide by laws as written? Case in point: Several years ago, voters in Massachusetts passed a referendum to make charitable contributions tax deductible. It has, thankfully, never been implemented by the Legislature.

We’ve been kicking these infrastructure balls down the field for many years. With the current, and extremely rare, surplus, we have a chance to fix some very important problems. Instead, we’re looking at putting $250 into the pockets of taxpayers, good enough for dinner for four at a decent restaurant.

No offense to restaurants, but I’d rather have an MBTA that works, higher education with reduced debt, universal pre-K, bridges that don’t need nets below them to keep concrete from falling on cars, and better preparation for global warming.

Let’s hope that our governor and Legislature, many of whom seem gleeful at the notion of giving $250 to taxpayers, get their acts together.

Bill Walczak is a Dorchester resident and founding president and former CEO of the Codman Square Health Center. His column appears regularly in the Reporter.

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