House Minority Leader Faces 'Fiscal Crisis'

By Curt Lovelace
February 2003 Print Edition

Brad Jones (R-North Reading) is now the Minority Leader in the House after the retirement of Fran Marini. A member since 1984, Jones has been part of the Republican leadership since becoming Assistant Minority Leader in 2001. As head
of the 23-member minority in a chamber of 160 members, Jones has his work cut
out for him. MassNews sat down with him last month after he had been on the job
for two weeks.

MassNews: What is the Republican agenda for this session? Jones: I think the Republican agenda has got to be to work to solve our fiscal crisis. It's not a particularly creative agenda. It's one that's forced on us by circumstances. It's probably a crisis of our own making, and I say that in the collective sense of the legislature, for getting on the path of spending at a rate of growth that was probably, if one took a step back and looked at it, was really unsustainable. MassNews: Can you blame it on the economy?

Jones: Of course it was exacerbated by the downturn in the economy; further compounded by September 11. I say that not because I want it to be a convenient excuse, but it certainly did have an impact on financial markets and Wall Street, psychologically. It really amplified the amount that we relied on capital gains. So I think we were already headed down the slope when September 11 just accelerated that process.

MassNews: What's the course of action for righting the fiscal situation?

Jones: We're going to have to follow some difficult leads, some things we may not have been willing to look at in the past. I refer to them as "sacred cows." These are things that Republicans and Democrats perhaps have been protective of. We need to look at each one and if we decide it's a sacred cow for good reason, okay, fine. One example would be public employee health insurance. The fact that we contribute 15 percent, which I think is a rate pretty hard to find anywhere else. That may be one of the sacred cows that may need to be revisited.

MassNews: Any other sacred cows up for review?

Jones: We need to revisit the whole idea of sentencing guidelines. We need to pick up the debate where it left off last year on 40B [low income housing]. This is of increasing importance to an increasing number of legislators.

MassNews: How do you view the call by Gov. Romney for cuts to local aid?

Jones: Unfortunate, but necessary is how I view them. The majority party passed the budget last year, which the Chairman of Ways and Means said was probably some $300 million out of balance. Then Gov. Swift vetoed about $300 million in that budget to bring it back into balance, using some of the rainy day money to make it look somewhat in balance. Then the legislature overrode some $100 million in vetoes. And some Republicans voted for some of these overrides. In doing that, we put ourselves in a 9C position, where the governor was forced to make certain cuts along the way. Then the circumstances of the year just compounded that. Revenues weren't coming in. Gov. Swift made about $200 million in 9C cuts in the areas of the budget that she had control over.

MassNews: What's a 9C cut?

Jones: 9C is the statutory authority that the governor has to make unilateral cuts in spending when it's determined that revenues are not sufficient to meet the levels of appropriation. So, with the cuts that Gov. Swift made, now Gov. Romney is faced with the prospect that we may have a deficit for the remainder of the year of as much as $600 million. So the governor is saying, "If I have to cut $600 million more out of the limited area I had in the budget, some of the cuts are going to be rather draconian. Is there a way we can expand that authority to try to encompass a broader array of options? I think that's the power he was seeking and was essentially the power he got last week.

MassNews: Are there any ground rules for these local aid cuts?

Jones: I think he laid it out so that the cuts in local aid will not be more than one-third of the remainder of what the cuts will be. So if we have to have $600 million in cuts, obviously that would be a $200 million ceiling. Obviously if revenues come in like we hope, then those cuts would be dramatically lower.

MassNews: What areas are most likely to be impacted by those cuts?

Jones: I think that the three key areas you can look at in terms of the magnitude of the cut would be lottery distribution, Chapter 70, although there are some issues with Chapter 70 in certain communities with foundation budget, and then probably additional assistance. Collectively, those make up the vast majority of local aid.

MassNews: Will the cuts be equal in all communities?

Jones: I certainly hope so. I think he [Gov. Romney] will do that. I certainly hope that he does that. I know that there's some concern that some cities and towns rely more heavily on local aid to make up their budget. In some communities the local aid in the budget may be as high as 50 percent. In other communities it's 5 percent, or even less. I think that those communities don't derive as much money from local aid and are perhaps managed more efficiently. I don't think they should be penalized for that. I think that those communities that rely less on the local aid, yes they are more affluent, but I think they also send more money to the state than they ever get back and I think we need to be cognizant of that. This needs to be a part of the data that's used.

MassNews: By embracing these budget cutting powers for the governor, are Democrats simply giving Gov. Romney enough rope to hang himself?

Jones: Absolutely. I have no doubt of that. I have no doubt that some Democratic members made that calculation. Maybe that's too bad, but I think it's an admission that, more importantly, that they're unable, unwilling or incapable of making the tough decisions. Harking back to the last few years, we've not had a good track record in getting the budget to the Governor's desk, so the Governor can issue vetoes and the legislature can take up those vetoes. In my mind that all needs to happen by July 1. I think the Governor is cognizant of this fact, and is probably figuring it may be tougher for him to take this course in the short term, but it may be easier in the long term to have this power to make these cuts.

MassNews: Is there a downside to giving the Governor these powers?

Jones: I have my reservations about the legislature ceding its authority, and more importantly, its responsibility to make these decisions. But being in the minority, we have to be cognizant of the fact that we haven't exercised our responsibility in a way that would bring us accolades. There are things that we've done, by choice, or occasionally by kicking and screaming. For instance, I think having a rainy day fund that has allowed us to get this far along, was probably a good thing and I think we deserve some credit for that. I don't think passing budgets extraordinarily late is one of the things we should get kudos for. With this pharmacy tax, we had people saying "I didn't think that," or "I didn't know that." Well, the debate on the floor indicates that at least people who listened to the debate, and I think that's something they should do, were aware that this was going to be a tax, that it was going to get passed to the people, and that if it wasn't clear to them that this was going to get passed on to the consumer, it should have been.

MassNews: The budget process is already different this year, with a budget review meeting happening this week, some two months early. What else will be different in the budget process?

Jones: I'd like to think that one of the things that'll be different will be the number of amendments. I say that for two reasons. One is that I don't think there'll be as many creative ideas for new programs. Also, historically, in the first year of a session, when people still feel there's some legislative opportunity to get their legislation advanced in the normal course of things, they don't necessarily feel an obligation to file an outside section and say this is my only opportunity to bring it to the floor and have a dialogue, to have a debate. I think we had 1300 last year. I expect to have dramatically less than that.

I think that we started to go in a generally better direction last year by taking the amendments and trying to sit and talk with members about them. I'm not convinced that the way members draw up amendments is the best thing.

MassNews: Do you think that the leadership style of the majority party forces attempts at legislation by outside section?

Jones: Absolutely. I do.

MassNews: Are there issues that are generating a lot of constituent calls already in this session?

Jones: The pharmacy issue is the single issue that I've gotten the largest amount of calls on.

MassNews: Not many calls about the legislative pay raise or local aid?

Jones: A few calls on local aid. On the pay raise, I think I had five or six calls. I had two people say, "You work hard, you should take it." Then there were two or three people who said that given the financial situation, we should forego it.

MassNews: Did you file a death penalty bill this year?

Jones: Yes, we did. Probably the exact same one we filed last year.

MassNews: Any changes in the hopes of getting it passed?

Jones: No. Probably less hope of getting it passed than in previous times. I think the makeup of the House is probably somewhat opposed. If we were 12 or 13 votes down, I would expect us to be 15 or 18 votes down. But, if I only filed bills that I thought I had a majority vote on, I wouldn't file too many bills along the way.

MassNews: The last time we talked you told me that the Republican caucus is the "incubator" for ideas for the other party. Is that still the case?

Jones: I think so. If you look at the recent rules debate in terms of amendments, we got probably 10 or 11 amendments adopted. I think if you look back at the CPA [Community Preservation Act], a lot of what we proposed in our bill they took and expanded upon, in some ways I didn't particularly care for.

MassNews: How about the income tax?

Jones: Look at their tax package last year when they came back with this replacement on the phase down of the income tax to 5.0 percent. They put a construct in place which is based on so much growth. It will finally kick down and theoretically have the potential of getting to 5.0 sometime around 2010. The proposal to do that was something we had offered in 1999. Not exactly the same, but the concept was, as long as the economy is going along, let's just ratchet it down, 5.8, 5.7, 5.6, etc. That was resoundingly defeated in 1999, when it was offered by the Republican leadership. One year later, it was modified and incorporated into the Democratic House budget, as the Speaker's proposal. The Senate said "no." Then the citizens got fed up, as they often get in this state, and took it upon themselves to put their own plan in place, which is in three years we're going to phase it down. The tax proposal that they put out in May, 2002, that is now the law, as opposed to the CLT-sponsored, voter approved is back to this ratchet down, economic indicators. So the idea that the Republicans offered in 1999, which was rejected, is law in 2002.

MassNews: What have you learned in the several weeks you've been Minority Leader?

Jones: I was aware of this, but maybe not as aware about the amount of time involved. There's a certain amount of administrative side to the position, in terms of having a staff, filling some vacancies. And some times you get caught up in the mundane, like, do you want to continue the coffee service? Also, there's a greater awareness now that, in a sense, I serve two constituencies, the constituency that elects me to the office of State Representative, that is four communities on the North Shore, and the constituency that elected me Minority Leader, the Republican Caucus. I think that my constituency back home is a little more demanding, although they are rivaled on occasion. Hopefully my being able to serve as the Minority Leader will be of some help to the constituency back home. One of the good things is, having worked down here with [former Minority Leader] Fran [Marini] and having been included, it's not like I was coming in from never having been in here and not knowing what's going on.