Pets and a 'surplus' - Boston Herald
It is reassuring that the balance in the state's rainy-day fund will soon top $1 billion, putting Massachusetts on the top rung of states with healthy stabilization accounts. After four years of heavy withdrawals to make up for cratering revenues, the Patrick administration wants to deposit $300 million of surplus tax receipts from fiscal 2010 into the rainy-day fund.
Ah, but no supplemental budget offered by this administration would be complete without a slew of new "investments" — in this case, oh, a mere $160 million worth.
See, it turns out that taxpayers dutifully forked over nearly half a billion dollars more than Beacon Hill budgeted in the fiscal year that ended June 30 — that's what a surplus is, of course.
But instead of depositing all of it in the rainy-day account (or heaven forbid — rebating it to seriously distressed taxpayers), Patrick has proposed sprinkling bits of it around to some of his favored accounts.
Some of the appropriations seem reasonable — say, the $10 million in additional funds to help cities and towns damaged in the June tornadoes. We suppose Patrick could make the case that the $35 million for "shovel-ready" capital projects that missed out on state funding last year would be a jobs boost (though why we needs a new, separate "infrastructure development fund" to support it is unclear, not unlike the $15 million "innovation" fund).
But the governor also wants to use $15 million of the surplus to create a "Health Care Workforce Training Fund" to train workers in a new health care payment system — that doesn't even exist yet!
There's $500,000 for his pet "volunteer" project, Commonwealth Corps, which uses state tax dollars to pay individuals to work at nonprofits.
And there's $9 million to pay for youth summer jobs . . . in 2012. An end-run around the current budget that the governor signed just over a month ago.
The administration points out that it is using the one-time surplus revenue mostly to fund one-time spending. But why taxpayers were left off the list of grateful recipients of that one-time money is a mystery. And if a rebate wasn't in the cards, then the rainy-day account is the next best place to park funds that were never anticipated.
29 Aug, 2011--
Source: http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&usg=AFQjCNGRBYsYgtCQ_jYMIYRu9uLdCpmJlA&url=http://www.bostonherald.com/news/opinion/editorials/view/2011_0829pets_and_a_surplus/
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