House opens debate on fiscal ’03 budget

$1.06b tax hike passes easily

by Daniel J. Fitzgibbons, Chronicle staff

s it turns out, last week's 134-24 vote by the House to raise taxes by $1.06 billion may have been the easy part. This week, House members began what could be a fractious battle over how those additional revenues will be spent.

     According to the Boston Globe, House members have agreed to set aside as much as $370 million from the tax package for K-12 education and another $82 million is likely to go to the departments of mental health and mental retardation. Lawmakers are also expected to restore $20 million for community policing programs and $73 million for the Department of Public Health's disease prevention and control efforts.

     That leaves about $500 million for a variety of state programs ranging from public safety to human services to higher education and the court system. It also explains why House members last week filed more than 1,600 amendments to the budget bill.

     "We've got more than $2 billion in requests, and we've restored a billion," House Ways and Means Committee Chairman John H. Rogers (D-Norwood) told the Globe.

     "We're still going to have to say no to members, to the tune of a billion dollars, simply because the money is just not there."

     With the available funds so limited, many of the groups, including the Save UMass coalition, who lobbied on Beacon Hill in recent weeks for the tax hikes may still end up on the losing side.

     As debate opened, the University system faced a cut of 5.6 percent, or $25.8 million, in its maintenance appropriation, as proposed by the House Ways and Means Committee.

     The panel also called for reducing funding for Commonwealth College by $85,750 and the Toxic Use Reduction Institute at UMass Lowell by $85,872. The budget plan also reduces funding for the Advanced Technology Center in Fall River by $300,000 and level-funds the Star Store project in New Bedford. Both initiatives are under the aegis of UMass Dartmouth. The Ways and Means Committee did not include any funds for the faculty chair endowment incentive.

     In related areas, the state scholarship program faces a $17.2 million cut, while the Education and Reference Materials reserve for higher education was eliminated, a loss of $5 million. Two years ago, the reserve stood at $14 million.