Friday, December 08, 2006

It's Tax Time for the Patrick Crowd

Here comes the tax and spend crowd. Deval Patrick's new A&F chief Leslie Kirwan suggests that local governments, entities of fiscal sobriety, will be given broader taxing authorities. They'll be able to raise taxes on meals and hotels. Is this what the people voted for? Kerry Healey was right: Governor Deval will raise taxes. And now his chief says that all that wasteful spending Deval talked about just isn't there.

BOSTON --Gov.-elect Deval Patrick's new budget chief said Thursday that local option taxes on meals, hotels and other services should be one of the things the state considers as it seeks to create a stable long-term financial picture.

Leslie Kirwan also said she isn't sure she can find the $735 million in wasteful spending Patrick said he wanted to eliminate during this fall's gubernatorial campaign.

At the same time, the outgoing financial official for the Massachusetts Port Authority said she isn't sure the state can cut property taxes, as Patrick said he hoped to do when he said he opposed a rollback in the state income tax rate during this fall's gubernatorial campaign.

Kirwan, a former aide to Democratic Gov. Michael Dukakis and Republican Gov. William Weld, did say she will undertake a top-to-bottom review of state finances so they can plot the most financially secure course for achieving the governor's policy
goals.

"I think it's a matter of how you approach them and what the ramp-up is, and I think there will be options for introducing these policies in the first budget and building on them over time," Kirwan said as she joined the governor-elect at a news conference in a downtown hotel.Patrick himself said he wants his new Administration and Finance secretary to "lean forward" as she seeks creative solutions to state financial problems, and to improve the state's relationship with city and town governments.

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