Massachusetts Speaker of the House Thomas Finneran (D-Suffolk) painted a picture yesterday of the Bay State’s economy that was anything but rosy at a meeting of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation.
“That the economy is going through some kind of change, and that we’re in a period of uncertainty, is unquestionable. … I’m not sure that we’re into a grim economy, but it is at least uncertain,” Finneran said. “I hate to tell you folks, but we haven’t even hit the tough sledding yet. The tough sledding comes next year, and perhaps the year after that.”
Finneran said education and health care reform, particularly the latter, were the two major drains on a state budget already depleted by tax cuts.
“We are now locked in on an auto-pilot rate of [descent] on tax cuts, and it is troubling,” Finneran said.
Finneran said the cost of health care “will … unfortunately, replace everything else on the public radar screen,” in the coming years. One of several Taxpayers Foundation reports that Finneran said should be “read and reread by every citizen in Massachusetts” predicts the state will be forced to add an additional $425 million in Medicaid payments and employee health benefits by 2002.
To stave off future financial problems, Finneran hinted at favoring privatization of state health care programs.
“I know this is heresy for a Democrat, but I’m attracted to the idea of the market providing a more rational approach to health care,” Finneran said.
Finneran also called for increased efficiency, rather than increased spending, for the state’s embattled education reform law.
“For people to equate the pouring of billions of dollars into education [with] a solution is absurd. … Education begins at home,” Finneran said. Finneran added later that images of violence in the media are as detrimental to education as a lack of funds, calling prime time television “as explicit as a freakin’ porn flick.”
In addition to increased spending and an economy he repeatedly referred to as “uncertain,” Finneran lamented what he saw as a lack of experience in the Legislature.
According to Finneran, representatives who have served for less than six years comprise 60 percent of the state legislature while 85 percent have served less than 10 years. Finneran said these legislators have served during an unusually prosperous period in the Commonwealth’s history, a time when the legislature has been able to be, in Finneran’s words, “all things to all people.”
This prosperity, Finneran said, has not prepared legislators for the tough financial decisions they may soon have to make.
“It is not an instance for experience, it is not a teaching or a learning moment,” Finneran said.
Finneran said the recent resignation of Rep. Joseph Moakley (D-Mass.) would hurt Massachusetts.
“Joe Moakley’s retirement will hurt, no question about it,” he said. “You don’t replace that kind of experience over night.”
To avoid an economic downturn, Finneran prescribed the cautious, sensible fiscal policy he said was exemplified by the state’s tobacco settlement trust fund.
Finneran said it is “incredibly important to treat [the settlement] as you’d treat any other windfall. … You can go on a consumption binge or you can put it in a trust, and we opted to put it in a trust fund.”
Although the fund holds more than $1 billion, Finneran called on the state to commit more money to such “rainy day funds.”
“It sounds staggering, and it is, when you compare it with what we did in the `80s, which was zip,” he said, adding, “It’s not staggering when you consider we have a budget of $22 billion.”
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