Fielding questions Wednesday from concerned, sometimes hostile Boston Herald web site visitors, Gov. Deval Patrick pivoted from a question about his inability to lower property taxes to encourage constituents to pressure lawmakers not to cut local aid.
“Local officials tell us that, with limits on local aid from the state, the reason property taxes go up is because they have no other way to raise revenue or contain costs,” Patrick wrote during an hour-long chat on BostonHerald.com, describing his administration’s “limited impact” on property taxes, which he pledged to reduce in his 2006 campaign. “The Legislature is talking about cutting local aid in the budgets they will present over the next few weeks. If you care about the quality of our schools, local services and keeping the pressure off the property tax, you should let them know that you do not want to see local aid cut.”
While they haven’t unveiled spending priorities for next year, House and Senate leaders have indicated local aid could be cut as much as $200 million next fiscal year, and municipal leaders say they’ve already borne a disproportionate share of the budget axe amid the economic downturn, citing $724 million in reductions to local accounts, including regional school transportation and police training grants.
During the chat, Patrick was accused by participants of backing free college tuition for illegal immigrants – he hasn’t – supporting health care subsidies for illegal immigrants – he doesn’t – and was accused by one reader under the moniker “DemsScrewU_Again” of offering “canned answers” to “softball questions.”
“Pulleeeze!” the governor responded that that last charge. “The answers are coming slowly because I type slowly. Otherwise, I will let the partisan blog name go.”
Patrick even fended off a charge that his grammar and spelling was too perfect. “I don't blog a lot,” he replied to the questioner identified as “Sam.” “But I was an English major, so I can't help but try to get the punctuation and grammar right. Deal with it.”
Patrick spent much of the chat correcting what he said were mistaken descriptions of his policies.
He called the label Taxachusetts “stale” and said “it wasn’t my idea” to raise the sales tax from 5 percent to 6.25 percent last year, saying he approved the proposal only after lawmakers passed three reform bills.
Patrick signed the sales tax proposal after lawmakers quashed his move to raise the state gas tax.
