Entries by Eileen McAnneny

FY2026 Consensus Revenue Hearing – Forecasting of Revenues is Tricky Business

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The next major event on the legislative calendar is the FY2026 Consensus Revenue Hearing on December 2.  At this forum, several experts make projections about how much money will be available for the fiscal year that begins on July 1, 2025.  Making projections several months in advance for a budget that extends 18 months out (fiscal year ends on June 30, 2026) is difficult.  Who can say what the economy will look like then with a new president, a tense global environment and an economy that has defied recession?  At the hearing, experts use data from credit agencies, the U.S. census and economic literature to make their best guesses.   This is a useful, if imprecise, exercise because it gets […]

Massachusetts Job Market Bears Watching

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The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ most recent national jobs report made headlines because it indicated the US economy added just 12,000 jobs in October, falling far short of the expected 112,500-job gain. While the number is preliminary and could be revised, it got me wondering about how the Massachusetts job outlook stacks up in comparison. The state’s economic growth hinges on its employment outlook because the state’s talented workforce tops the list of our competitive advantages, fueling past economic growth.  Massachusetts talent justifies our high average weekly wage, contributes to the wealth of the Commonwealth and is the backbone of our innovation economy.  Like federal data, recent state data show there may be some cracks in the armor. The following […]

McAnneny October Monthly Musings – Ballot Initiatives

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Election season is upon us.  In a few short weeks, voters will go to the polls and vote for our next president and a slate of local officials.  They will also decide on five ballot initiatives.  It got me thinking about the whole ballot initiative process, why it is necessary, how you get a question on the ballot and what kind of impact ballot initiatives have on the legal and regulatory landscape in the Commonwealth. Below is a summary of the five questions that will appear on the ballot on November 5th.  But first, I wanted to provide you with an overview of the ballot initiative process, significant laws that have been passed using this process and why it has […]

Is Massachusetts at a Turning Point – 10 Data Points That Give Me Pause

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Massachusetts tops the charts in many studies.  Best public education system, great quality of life and its highly educated population come to mind.  More recently, there have been several statistics that may provide early warnings that the Bay State may be facing some headwinds.  Any one of these stats by itself is not cause for alarm. Rather, it is the totality of them that is a red flag for me.  The following data points bear watching and indicate the need to adopt new economic growth strategies.   1. The legislature’s languid approach to economic development, as evidenced by the delay in passing an economic development bill, indicates to investors, entrepreneurs and others considering Massachusetts as a business situs that economic vitality […]

Wrap Up of the Massachusetts Legislative Session – Or Is It??

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The Massachusetts Legislature meets for two years beginning in January after an election year and continuing until the last day of July of the following year. The 193rd session of the General Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as this legislative session is more formally known, ended its formal sessions for the year last week, but the 40 Senators and 160 Representatives hitting the campaign trail this summer will not have a lot of legislative accomplishments to highlight for their constituents. That is because several pending legislative initiatives, touching on everything from the state’s economic development plan to the phase out of natural gas and the scrutiny of drug prices, are in limbo. Governor Healey has urged the legislature to […]

Massachusetts Affordability and Competitiveness Ranking is in Freefall

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Each year, CNBC ranks the 50 states on 10 broad categories of competitiveness using 128 metrics.  The categories are weighted based on how frequently states use them as a selling point in economic development and marketing materials.  In other words, states are judged on the attributes they use to sell themselves.  For example, Massachusetts most likely touts its talented workforce, public education system and quality of life as key attributes. 2024 Category Ranking  Weight MA 2024 Ranking  2023 Category Ranking Weight MA 2023 Ranking  Drop in Places 1 Infrastructure 17% 44 Workforce 16% 34 31 2 Workforce 15% 38 Infrastructure 15.60% 13 4 3 Economy 14% 40 Economy 14.40% 26 14 4 Quality of Life 13% 9 Life, Health, Inclusion […]

The Economic Development Bill Starting to Take Shape; It Makes Big Bets on Life Sciences, Clean Technology and Applied AI

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The Massachusetts Senate debated S.2856, its version of the biennial economic development bill, last week.  The Senate pared down H.4804, the $3.5 billion version of the bill the House enacted last month and H.4459, the proposal Governor Healey filed back in January, by over $1 billion.     With the full Senate debate on the bill concluded, a conference committee must resolve the differences between the two branches before adjourning on July 31st, and the Governor must still sign the resulting legislation into law before the plan is finalized.  Some provisions are common to the House and Senate versions and are likely to be in the final version. They include an array of modest investments in municipal infrastructure programs such as: $400 […]

Is Free Community College What Massachusetts Needs?

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The Massachusetts Senate proposed making community college tuition free for all residents of the Commonwealth as part of its FY2025 budget. Pioneer explores whether this program is what Massachusetts needs to prepare its residents for gainful employment and how it interacts with the state’s extensive workforce development infrastructure.

Massachusetts Legislature Procrastinates Once Again

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There are less than seven weeks left to the Massachusetts Legislature’s formal sessions with much unfinished business to attend to.  Analogizing Massachusetts legislators to students, they are waiting until the night before a 10-page paper is due to begin the assignment that was given early in the semester. While some students can thrive under that type of pressure and hand in a top-rate assignment, for most students, procrastination does not lend itself to high-quality work.  That is likely to be the outcome for this legislative session given the sheer number of meaty bills that have passed both branches in different forms and still await resolution by conference committees before the July 31st deadline. It would be one thing if the […]

An Open Letter to the Governor’s Transportation Task Force

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An Open Letter to the Governor’s Transportation Task Force: As members of former commissions, we wish you much success as you embark on the important assignment of figuring out how to adequately finance the state’s transportation system.  With respect to MBTA, this will be the fifth major commission analyzing its operations since 2007, and while each commission had a slightly different charge and scope, common themes have emerged that you need not revisit.  To jumpstart your work, we have summarized past findings so you can bring a focused and forward-looking  approach to your task. In summary, revenue has been provided and reforms introduced in the past, but neither were sufficient to make a difference.  So here we are in 2024 […]

Thoughts on Outmigration and Competitiveness

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?Thoughts on Out Migration and Competitiveness   A picture is worth a thousand words. This heatmap lays out the key areas Massachusetts’ needs to focus on to stem net outmigration and improve its competitiveness relative to other move-to states. This analysis shows the competitive advantage the 11 top outbound states enjoy over Massachusetts based on 10 key drivers. The blue (higher numbers) indicate that the competitor state is outperforming Massachusetts, while the red (negative numbers) indicate Massachusetts is outperforming the competitor state. The higher the number, the greater the move-to states competitive advantage. Massachusetts outperforms these top designation states in only three measures – healthcare quality, education, and overall economic conditions.  We perform weakest in three measures – housing cost, […]

Commentary On The Senate Ways And Means Committee FY2025 Budget 

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The Senate Ways and Means Committee (SWM) released its FY2025 budget on May 7th.  This spending plan totals $57.9 billion, an increase of $1.8 billion over the FY2024 General Appropriations Act (GAA).  Like the Governor’s and House’s versions of the budget, the SWM budget is based on the consensus revenue estimate of $41.5 billion in tax revenue – a decrease of $208 million from last year’s consensus figure.

Statement: Pioneer Institute in Support of Accessory Dwelling Units

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Pioneer Institute Statement in Support of Accessory Dwelling Units May 2, 2024 BOSTON – This Wednesday, the Boston Globe editorial board endorsed the accessory dwelling units (ADUs) provision in Governor Healey’s Affordable Homes Act, her $4.1 billion housing bond bill.  Pioneer Institute has long championed ADUs as a potentially important piece in the policy puzzle of how Massachusetts can provide sufficient supply to attract and retain a high-quality talent pipeline. In addition to opinion pieces and media appearances, the Institute’s work on the issue is grounded in data-driven research, including Getting Home: Overcoming barriers to Housing in Greater Boston (2003), Residential Land-Use Regulation in Eastern Massachusetts: A Study of 187 Communities (2005), Housing and Land use policy in Massachusetts (2007), […]

Outmigration and the Labor Force

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Boston University researchers just released new demographic and financial outmigration data that is cause for concern about recent trends in the Massachusetts labor force.  Among the key facts from the BU research are: In the last decade, annual net out migration has increased by a stunning 1,100 percent to 39,000 people.   There is a growing exodus of prime-age workers (24 to 54)  High wage earners are leaving Massachusetts, too. The incomes of over half of those leaving the state range from 1.3 to over 2.6 times the state average. Wealth and tax revenue collections are leaving with them. The report of Prof. Mark Williams and graduate students Yuhan Liu and Linglan Xu at the Questrom School of Business builds on […]

Mayor Wu’s Commercial Property Tax Proposal: A Solution or a Snuff?

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Boston Mayor Michelle Wu is considering shifting more of the property tax burden onto commercial property owners as a way to close a potential budget gap of $1.4 billion by temporarily increasing the commercial property tax rate to 200 percent of the residential rate.  To do this, Mayor Wu would seek approval from the City Council and state legislature to allow Boston to temporarily exceed the 175 percent shift cap allowed by state law.  It would then be phased out over a four-year period by reducing the rate by 7.5 percent annually. When initially introduced, this local option higher property tax rate cap was intended to protect residential property owners from double-digit tax rate increases stemming from the steep rise […]

Milton Shuts the Door
on Multifamily Housing Plans

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The MBTA Communities Act, passed in 2021, provides that the 177 communities serviced by the MBTA must create multifamily zones to spur housing development close to public transportation. But the issue is an emotionally charged one, with passions high on both sides. And Milton residents in February rejected a plan to create such housing ‚ choosing a loss of some state funding over an approximately 25 percent increase in their housing stock, along with the possibility of greater congestion.

My Musings on Massachusetts’ Fiscal Picture

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Since the start of FY2024 on July 1, 2023, the state has experienced six straight months of revenues falling short of expectations. The single biggest factor is the unprecedented growth of the state budget since FY2021. The $15 billion increase in state spending contextualizes the seemingly modest projected revenue growth of 1.6 percent for FY2024 by highlighting that the base is very inflated.

Massachusetts Split Property Tax Rates – Considerations for the Current Economic Climate

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Many taxing jurisdictions distinguish among the various property types and treat them differently. Common property classifications include: residential, commercial, industrial, and agricultural.

A majority of states, some 60 percent, use some kind of classification, but those classifications vary in scope and effective tax burden (i.e., the actual amount of tax paid after credits, deductions and other changes are taken into account.) Classifications are also operationalized differently among states. Some use a set rate for different types of properties and others use a ratio of assessment and market values.

Senate Tax Package Misses the Mark on Competitiveness

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The Senate tax package, S.2397, is heavy on provisions that reduce the tax burden for certain taxpayers, thereby helping those that qualify for the expanded credits and deductions. The bill, however, is light on provisions that will improve the Commonwealth’s competitiveness.

Gov. Healey’s Tax Plan: Not Enough on Competitiveness

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In an effort to deliver “an affordable, equitable and competitive tax structure for Massachusetts,” Governor Maura Healey on Feb. 28 unveiled her tax package. While her proposal makes significant strides in addressing affordability and indirectly improves equity, it does little to address the issues of competitiveness.