Lawrence Bailout....Or is is just a Loan?

Wow, My first post ever got promoted! (0.00 / 0)

I live in Methuen, and while the coverage of this issue by the Eagle Tribune is not "fair and balanced", some of facts that have been brought to light give me little confidence that the new mayor will be able to balance the budget, improve services for citizens, and act an ethical manner at all times. His actions during the campaign were quite unorthdox...(refusing to debate challengers, not responding to interviews requests, not to mention the ongoing issue of when / if he would resign his state rep seat)

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by: pcsmith32 @ Tue Feb 09, 2010 at 14:06:19 PM CST

This is Lantigua we're talking about, right? (0.00 / 0)

Maybe Marcos Devers can get over the primary hurdle with this issue for state rep. after trying and coming up short a couple times before.  Inside the party there is dismay that Lantigua is only a Democrat when it's convenient, even though he's a member of the State Committee too.

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by: Christopher @ Tue Feb 09, 2010 at 14:14:11 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Yes, Lantigua (0.00 / 0)

I was acutally somewhat optimistic after the election that he could be an effective mayor. It appears I could not have been more wrong.

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by: pcsmith32 @ Tue Feb 09, 2010 at 14:45:19 PM CST

[ Parent ]

I've always been surprised... (0.00 / 0)

...that there is not a law, or even constitutional provision, prohibiting the simultaneous holding of a local and state office.  There are not enough hours in the week to do both jobs justice; different people should be given the opportunity to serve; and holding both has the potential for conflict of interest written all over it.

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by: Christopher @ Tue Feb 09, 2010 at 14:08:01 PM CST

Pretty simple really. (6.00 / 1)

The lege claims to be "full time."  Simply don't allow a legislator to hold another full time job.  Make it verboten.

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by: stomv @ Tue Feb 09, 2010 at 14:08:14 PM CST

Does anybody know if it's legal (0.00 / 0)

for a person to hold two local offices?  Say school committee and board of selectman?  Seems to me that would be a conflict, but I hear rumors that someone in my area is planning on doing that.  

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by: lightiris @ Tue Feb 09, 2010 at 14:37:36 PM CST

Tim Toomey is a Cambridge CIty Council member and state rep. (6.00 / 1)

This has always been a bone of contention in Cambridge-he is shitty at both jobs, why not just choose one?

"None of us has gotten where we are solely by pulling ourselves up from our own bootstraps. We got here because somebody bent down and helped us." ~Thurgood Marshall

"Facts are stupid things."-Ronald Reagan

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by: Kathy @ Tue Feb 09, 2010 at 16:03:27 PM CST

[ Parent ]

I can see city council and state rep (0.00 / 0)

because their issues are not likely to cross.  But, by law, there is a productive tension established by separating school committee matters from municipal matters in order to make sure the interests of students are met.  How can this be possible if there's a fox in the hen house, so to speak?  

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by: lightiris @ Tue Feb 09, 2010 at 16:43:52 PM CST

[ Parent ]

They Cross All the Time (6.00 / 1)

Holding a state office and a local office can lead to the potential for conflicts on a daily basis.  For example:

1) As a rep you get a local office from which you can provide services, access, etc. that other candidates cannot providing a unique double incumbent advantage.

2) How and when should you recuse yourself?  Let's use Rep. Toomey as an example.  If there is a vote that would result in more money going to Somerville (in his district) at the potential expense of less money to Cambridge (also his district and his Council seat) how should he vote?  His Rep hat may say okay, but his Cambridge Council duty should say vote no.  One could argue that in this case he should recuse himself making him less than effective in his rep position.

3) Effort required.  I continually hear how much work it is to be a state rep or a councilor in a large city.  Trying to do both can only lead to less than your best at either of the positions.

4) Continuous campaigning.  The local positions are in odd years and the state positions in even years so there is no year in which you are not running for election / re-election.  How is this good for those whom you represent?

There is no law against holding both positions, but I would argue that the Commonwealth deserves more input and not politicians holding multiple positions.

Finally, with the special election for the Suffolk, Middlesex and Essex seat (Galluccio) with 3 current councilors running for the position (Decker and Simmons from Cambridge and Sal D. from Everett) I would hope that all would be asked whether they plan to resign if elected and if the say yes, come up with some means to enforce their campaign promise (I would favor a conditional resignation letter) or no do not vote for them.

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by: ConsEph @ Tue Feb 09, 2010 at 18:35:02 PM CST

[ Parent ]

It's not illegal. (0.00 / 0)

There was a gentleman in my town a few years back who served on both SC and BOS.

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by: Christopher @ Tue Feb 09, 2010 at 16:39:17 PM CST

[ Parent ]

How do they deal with executive session (0.00 / 0)

issues?  A select man then has knowledge, say, of labor negotiating that he would otherwise not have, or of pending litigation.  Did anybody challenge the ethics holding both offices formally?  

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by: lightiris @ Tue Feb 09, 2010 at 16:41:57 PM CST

[ Parent ]

I don't know how they handled it... (0.00 / 0)

...and I'm not aware of anyone pursuing the ethics charge.

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by: Christopher @ Tue Feb 09, 2010 at 20:58:00 PM CST

[ Parent ]

heard on WBUR news (0.00 / 0)

That Lantigua did not attend the hearing today, neither as Mayor of Lawrence nor as a member of the Ways and Means Committee on which he sits.  That's pathetic- it's remotely arguable that it could be to Lawrence's advantage to have the Mayor also be an influential state rep, but not if he's going to just blow off BOTH jobs at this crucial juncture for the city.  In this case, it seems each side is somehow are getting the short end of the stick...except, of course, Lantigua who is collecting two paychecks.

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by: Scout @ Tue Feb 09, 2010 at 14:50:30 PM CST

Question: (0.00 / 0)

If Lawrence is in such dire straits, why not cut the mayor's salary to $1?

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by: stomv @ Tue Feb 09, 2010 at 15:03:33 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Well, (0.00 / 0)

I suppose because sometimes you get what you pay for and because running the city should not only be left to people who are already so rich they don't need the income.  However, if they do put in a state-run control board, they might as well reduce the salary to zero because that's how much power the Mayor will have.

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by: Scout @ Tue Feb 09, 2010 at 15:16:35 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Not permanantly. (0.00 / 0)

Just for the next two years.  They're already stuck getting far less than what they're paying for: half time work for $100k plus bennies.  Why overpay?

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by: stomv @ Tue Feb 09, 2010 at 16:23:56 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Unless (0.00 / 0)

Lantigua starts displaying some extreme competency ASAP, I may have to agree with you.  This disturbing quote from the Globe article about the hearing indicates that things are much more likely to go in the other direction and blow up into a full-fledged scandal for Lawrence and Lantigua: "Aides to Lantigua said they did not know where he was and did not offer a reason for him not attending the hearing."      

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by: Scout @ Tue Feb 09, 2010 at 17:45:27 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Unacceptable (0.00 / 0)

He should have been there if he was only the rep and also if he was only the mayor.  His disdain for the people of Lawrence appears to know no bounds.  If I was voting on Beacon Hill his absence would be reason enough for me to vote no on the loan / bailout.

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by: ConsEph @ Tue Mar 09, 2010 at 11:01:34 AM CST

[ Parent ]

How about letting Lawrence go bankrupt? (0.00 / 0)

THEN seat a FCB and restart city finances from scratch.  That assumes it's impossible for Lawrence to successfully self-manage its own fiscal recovery.  

As I read it, municipal salaries and pensions (and pension liabilities) exceed tax receipts.  Start over.

Any other "solution" is likely to cause massive public disapproval to rain down on Deval.

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by: bostonshepherd @ Tue Feb 09, 2010 at 15:30:08 PM CST

Precedent set (6.00 / 4)

First, precedent was set in Springfield in 2004. In exchange for a state loan, the city got a Finance Control Board for 5 years. The FCB should be appointed as soon as loans are granted, not after 1 year. Fair is fair.

Second, municipal bankruptcy is not something to take lightly. It is an extremely rare event. Vallejo CA is the biggest and most recent example. I don't think it could achieve much. What could it do? Let Lawrence default on bonds? Let them eliminate pensions? Let them cut the salaries of employees, the best of which will just seek work elsewhere?  

Third, Lawrence shows the problem that comes with receiving 70% of your budget from the state  --  massive boom/bust cycles. A town that gets 10% of its revenue from the state gets 90% from property taxes, which rise at least 2.5% per year, and usually more when new growth is factored in.

Property tax levy never goes down -- you can bank on it -- despite what Lawrence is claiming. Excise tax can go down, but not property tax levy, unless their city council decided to not collect all it was allowed. Perhaps it just did not rise as much as in the past, as new growth has surely been curbed. That's the other edge of the sword -- poor communities don't get much growth.

State aid to cities and towns has taken a roller-coaster ride over the past 10 years. It has been flat a lot of that time. Other years it went down. Sometimes it went up a lot. Here is how Lawrence fared in general government state aid from 2000 to 2009:

FY00: 18,303,833
FY01: 20,443,914 (+11.7%)
FY02: 21,592,579 (+ 5.6%)
FY03: 20,865,194 (- 3.4%)
FY04: 18,453,515 (-11.6%)
FY05: 18,555,984 (+ 0.6%)
FY06: 21,287,736 (+14.7%)
FY07: 25,437,152 (+19.5%)
FY08: 25,993,151 (+ 2.2%)
FY09: 26,270,060 (+ 1.1%)

See the problem on the municipal side? Wild swings and no predictability. So what happens is that things get deferred for years, and then a binge happens when the aid starts flowing again.

Chapter 70 is a little different because it goes to fund the state-mandated foundation budget (poor communities usually fund very close to the minimum -- whereas wealthier communities usually fund substantially above the minimum). Here is Lawrence's numbers:

FY00: 102,774,704
FY01: 105,776,517 (+ 2.9%)
FY02: 115,575,489 (+ 9.3%)
FY03: 121,064,867 (+ 4.7%)
FY04: 122,608,865 (+ 1.3%)
FY05: 123,694,906 (+ 0.9%)
FY06: 118,931,368 (- 3.9%)
FY07: 125,391,804 (+ 5.4%)
FY08: 130,669,777 (+ 4.2%)
FY09: 138,049,776 (+ 5.6%)

Leep in mind that state aid fills 70% of Lawrence's revenue. Look at a wealthy community like Dover. Here is Dover's revenue, only 10% of which is from the state:

FY00: 15,079,911
FY01: 16,324,399 (+ 8.3%)
FY02: 18,150,143 (+11.2%)
FY03: 18,883,518 (+ 4.0%)
FY04: 21,736,050 (+15.1%)
FY05: 22,977,082 (+ 5.7%)
FY06: 25,081,564 (+ 9.2%)
FY07: 26,857,140 (+ 7.1%)
FY08: 28,642,744 (+ 6.6%)
FY09: 29,283,987 (+ 2.2%)

Just so no one complains that I'm not comparing apples to oranges, here is Lawrence's total revenue for the same period:

FY00: 174,099,742
FY01: 183,027,999 (+ 5.1%)
FY02: 196,623,234 (+ 7.4%)
FY03: 210,625,504 (+ 7.1%)
FY04: 209,169,195 (- 0.7%)
FY05: 210,435,315 (+ 0.6%)
FY06: 221,622,966 (+ 5.3%)
FY07: 227,980,659 (+ 2.9%)
FY08: 239,102,737 (+ 4.9%)
FY09: 248,915,181 (+ 4.1%)

[Again, the total revenue picture needs to be taken with a grain of salt because most of Lawrence's state aid comes in the form of Chapter 70 money, and this goes to fulfill a state-mandated foundation budget. In FY08 (the last year actual expenditures are available) Lawrence was required to spend $133m on its schools. It spent $140m on education that year. Dover was required to spend $5.2m on its schools. It spent $15.2m on them -- almost 3 times as much as required. My point there is that although Lawrence gets a lot of Chapter 70 money, it is basically earmarked by the state to fulfill mandates. It makes it hard to compare, but the disparities still show up.]

So taking the total amount including Chapter 70 with a grain of salt, do you see the difference between Lawrence and Dover? Dover has a high of 15.1% revenue growth and a low of 2.2% Lawrence has a high of 7.4% and a low of  negative 0.7%. From 2000 to 2009, Dover increased its revenue by 94%. Lawrence increased its revenue by just 43%. And while I'm sure that a lot of Dover's revenue increase was due to new construction, which brings along new spending requirements (more residents), with million-dollar homes, Dover is likely "turning a profit" on those residents whereas any new growth housing built in Lawrence is likely in the "affordable" range, meaning lower dollars per new resident. I know that in Springfield, residential units in multi-unit buildings can be valued as low as $30k apiece. With a $18 mil rate, the $540 in property taxes from that unit barely covers the cost of trash service.

What's the solution? Increase revenue options for cities and towns. Relying on state aid is not reliable because the state cuts back too often. Relying on a single sanctioned revenue source -- property tax -- benefits only some communities and leads to a perverse fixation on building expensive housing. If municipal revenues were more diverse, communities could raise revenue based on their strengths.

Sure, I can hear the anti-tax crowd screaming now, but unless you take the position that the residents of poorer communities don't deserve the same level of services as the residents of wealthier communities (I know many feel that way), then the bottom line is that poor communities need to raise more revenue -- not only to be in line with most other communities (Dover spends $4,500 per resident, Lawrence spends $3,003 on a population that needs more services),

The real underlying problem here is the economic segregation that is rampant in this state. Lawrence residents are generally poor. They can't afford much in property taxes. Yet the city doesn't exist in a bubble - it can't pay its teachers, firefighters, police salaries that are proportional to their residents' incomes. It has to pay them "market rate". So a community like Lawrence, with a median household income (1999) of $28,000 has to fund employees at the same wages as a community like Dover, which had a median household income (1999) of $142k.

Think hard about that for a minute. $28k vs. $142k. And Lawrence residents need more services like police (higher crime), fire (more people heating with space heaters), code enforcement (to inspect multi-family units), schools (harder to educate student population).

That is why some cities and towns struggle constantly -- because the distribution of residents -- the way we "sort ourselves", to quote Grover Nordquist [he touted Proposition 2.5 as a way to achieve such sorting] -- leads to some communities with lots of assets and few liabilities, and others with few assets and many liabilities.

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by: NoPolitician @ Tue Feb 09, 2010 at 22:43:20 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Great post. (0.00 / 0)

Worth 5.95.  You never mentioned
Population Lawrence (2000): 72,043
Population Dover (2000): 5,558

In FY09 Dover had 1/8th the revenue but 1/13th the population -- and of course because the median income is so much higher, nowhere near the need for social services.

I agree on the "different revenue" angle to a point.  What's great about the property tax is that it's stable.  Good year?  Bad year?  5 years later?  We know almost exactly what the property tax revenue will be.  That's really important when other portions of the budget can swing.

As you come away from property tax, you run the risk of the budget swinging harder from year to year.  Methinks it's important to find other revenue sources which are also very stable.

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by: stomv @ Wed Feb 10, 2010 at 06:52:02 AM CST

[ Parent ]

How about complimentary? (0.00 / 0)

The revenue only needs to be stable across all sources. So if housing goes down, maybe some percentage of lottery tickets goes up. Or maybe alcohol sales goes up. Diversification is the key.

I'm sick of living in what is considered a "poor city". Imagine if the state changed the rules and said that property taxes could not be more than 20% of a budget, and that sales tax now makes up the majority of the revenue. Look at which towns would be considered "poor" then. Those towns would have to cut services and cities would be able to offer them, and people might want to move from towns to cities.

As much as people decry taxes, how many people are choosing to live in low-tax, low-service communities? Property values in those communities are not nearly as high as in high-tax, high-service communities.  

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by: NoPolitician @ Wed Feb 10, 2010 at 17:45:37 PM CST

[ Parent ]

The AG needs to take a look at what is going on in Lawrence. (3.25 / 4)

Not just this ahole getting checks for both full-time jobs, but also all the other shenanigans going on there. How about that new High School which Lawrence gets away with without paying anything for (thanks to the State and the Feds). Is that a reward for having such a fucked up city?

Go in there and clean house. Wouldn't take too long to put this guy in jail... he's dirty!

Baker/Tisei in 2010... Charlie Baker on why people "have been" leaving MA, "It's not the weather here, it's the climate"

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by: JohnD @ Tue Feb 09, 2010 at 18:23:26 PM CST

Proof? (0.00 / 0)

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by: af @ Tue Feb 09, 2010 at 22:26:00 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Take any day of the week and review comments on BMG... (0.00 / 0)

how many times have you asked for "proof" for statements and opinions people make? Need examples?

Baker/Tisei in 2010... Charlie Baker on why people "have been" leaving MA, "It's not the weather here, it's the climate"

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by: JohnD @ Wed Feb 10, 2010 at 08:45:24 AM CST

[ Parent ]

people ask for proof.. (5.33 / 3)

...when the comments or commentator defy credibility.  It's why you get challenged all the time.  

By now, everyone knows you very often make shit up to suit your narrative.

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by: huh @ Wed Feb 10, 2010 at 09:05:05 AM CST

[ Parent ]

So all towns should just stop paying their bills ? (5.00 / 1)

The state needs to take over, there should be consequences to incompetency. I believe this has been going on for a long time. I know the school system spends a huge amount of money per student with poor results and poor administration.

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by: roarkarchitect @ Wed Feb 10, 2010 at 16:49:38 PM CST

Sayonara... Lantigua to step down as state rep. (0.00 / 0)

Lantigua to step down as state rep.

Lawrence Mayor William Lantigua, who holds dual offices, will quit his post as a state representative, an aide said today

Baker/Tisei in 2010... Charlie Baker on why people "have been" leaving MA, "It's not the weather here, it's the climate"

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by: JohnD @ Fri Feb 12, 2010 at 15:32:46 PM CST