DeLeo says state may get tax hike
Comes on heels of $18M in lawmaker raises
House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo — long the bulwark in the struggle between the anti-tax governor and protax Senate president — is now saying tax hikes are on the table for his budget proposal, raising the potential of a heated debate just weeks after the Legislature gave itself a controversial $18 million pay raise.
“In terms of next year’s budget, I’m not ruling out the possibility of any increase in taxes,” DeLeo told reporters yesterday, before calling a broadbased tax hike the “least thing that I’d probably want to do.”
“But on the other hand,” the Winthrop Democrat said, “I think it’s only fair to give people the proper ability to raise the concerns about the budget, (including) for those who wish to talk about increased taxes. ... I think that’s only right and proper in this case, in this fiscal year.”
DeLeo’s reluctance to swear off new tax proposals is an abrupt departure from past years, when he was quick to align himself with Republican Gov. Charlie Baker and declare his opposition to new taxes in the state budget.
But while DeLeo has often reaffirmed that stance in his annual address to House lawmakers, he chose not to deliver a speech this year. That’s raised questions of whether he would shift the balance of power in the budget debate and more closely align with the more progressive state Senate, where there’s always an appetite to seek out new revenue.
It also comes on the heels of lawmakers’ controversial override of Baker’s veto in order to pad their own pay, a move that raised DeLeo’s and Senate President Stanley C. Rosenberg’s salaries by nearly 50 percent to $142,500 a year.
The awkward timing of raising taxes and their own pay in the same year won’t be lost on voters come re-election time next year, critics say.
“If we have $18 million to throw around, we don’t need a tax hike. That’s outrageous,” said Chip Ford of the group Citizens for Limited Taxation, which advocated against the pay-raise package.
“The arrogance, it’s just beyond control. They actually believe that there will never be any repercussions. But I think they’re going to see repercussions in 2018,” Ford said.
Rosenberg defended the pay-raise package, saying lawmakers have the money in their budget to cover their own pay hikes, meaning they only need to find the dough to cover the $25,000 raises for judges and clerks included in the new law.
“There are some people who would never accept legislators getting pay raises under any circumstances,” the Amherst Democrat said. “We understand that.”
A new tax on short-term rentals, such as those through Airbnb, seems all but guaranteed to appear in next year’s budget and was included in Baker’s own spending proposal. But the Swampscott Republican has repeatedly said he’d oppose any across-theboard tax proposal.
“I’m going to do the best I can to talk my colleagues in the Legislature out of raising taxes,” he said in December.