Tax cuts and the rising cost of everything | Boston faces lawsuit for stonewalling records requests | Newton real estate firm goes bankrupt, High Court to weigh tariffs, and other Quick Hits |
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Something has got to give: As the cost of housing, health care, and energy soars across Massachusetts and beyond, pressure also rises for tax cuts
Families, seniors, young adults just trying to make it, you name it, are out of their minds right now with the rising cost of everything.
So let’s just say opponents of a proposed state ballot question, which would knock the Massachusetts income tax rate down to 4 percent from 5 percent, are playing with a weak hand right now.
“You couldn’t have a worse time for this to happen in the middle of the Trump administration, when we’re getting billions of dollars of cuts,” Phineas Baxandall, director of research and policy analysis at the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center, told The Flipside, Yawu Miller’s new publication.
But guess what? Massachusetts has been there and done that, with voters in 2000 giving a green light to a statewide ballot question that reduced the state income tax from nearly 6 percent down to 5 percent, its current level, albeit over several years.
And the sky didn’t fall, nor did the state go bankrupt, notes a new report out today from the Pioneer Institute, part of a coalition of business and taxpayer groups behind the current tax cut ballot question.
The Legislature’s Joint Committee on Taxation even warned back then, in an official voter guide, that the earlier tax cut approved by voters in 2000 showed “a reckless disregard for the state’s economy” and lacked the “necessary prudence.”
That reduction in the state income tax, for a variety of reasons, was done in a series of gradual step-downs that took two decades to accomplish.
Yet after each drop, state “revenues were neutral or positive year-over-year, and annual revenues soon surpassed the previous highs in both nominal and real terms,” the Pioneer report notes.
A recent Fiscal Alliance Foundation poll found strong support for the tax cut ballot question, as well as for a similar proposal that would lower the threshold for a multibillion-dollar rebate to state taxpayers.
Support for tax cuts comes as home prices and rents, healthcare costs, and energy bills go through the roof in Massachusetts, and now, increasingly, in many other states as well.
Let’s not forget college tuition and day care - two other budget-busting items for families as well.
Meanwhile, a succession of Bay State governors and legislative leaders over the past quarter century have failed to move the needle on housing costs, with the escalation in home prices, if anything, gaining more momentum over the past few years. Our elected leaders are also late to the game on rising electric and gas bills.
And lip service is paid to reining in health care costs, but that’s about it, with premiums for a family plan now eclipsing mortgage payments and rents.
Stonewalling records requests: Wu administration faces another lawsuit as Boston officials flout public record laws
Having ignored and stonewalled public records requests, Boston faces lawsuits from The Boston Globe and the MassLandlords group.
Now a South End resident, battling to rein in the drug activity as it spreads from the city’s notorious Mass and Cass intersection, has taken on City Hall as well.
Brian McCarter has filed a lawsuit in state court against the city, public records director Grace Jung, and the Boston Police Department.
McCarter’s lawsuit cites seven different public record requests he submitted in 2025 that he contends the city either denied or ignored.
In all seven cases, city officials ignored orders from the Massachusetts Supervisor of Records Office to cough up the records after successful appeals by McCarter, the lawsuit notes.
In one March 5 request, for example, McCarter asked for “all emails, reports, meeting summaries, and call summaries” related to the shooting of a knife-wielding man a few days before in the Chick-fil-A restaurant on Boylston Street.
After getting nowhere with the city, McCarter appealed to the state’s public records supervisor, who, on April 29, gave city officials 10 days to respond to the South End resident’s request.
That deadline expired nearly six months ago, but McCarter has not heard a word from the city.
“They are telling us and parading to the world it’s the safest city in America, yet they won’t hand the details to a normal guy,” McCarter told The Boston Guardian. “It’s just so frustrating. It’s not safe.”
Quick Hits:
Trump tariff case to go before U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday: “Supreme Court Confronts Trump and His Tariffs in Test of Presidential Power” New York Times
Government shutdown leads to bankruptcy of Newton-based real estate firm with space rented to lots of federal agencies: “Newton Office REIT Files for Chapter 11” Banker & Tradesman/Steve Adams
Sad news: “Setti Warren, former Newton mayor and candidate for governor, dies at 55” Boston Herald
No inflation surge, but also not as much as expected in tariff revenue, either: “How the U.S. Economy Has Defied Doomsday Predictions on Tariffs” Wall Street Journal