Gas tax hike clashes with transportation, energy goals, Patrick says
by Statehouse News ServiceDecember 20, 2006 -- Raising the gas tax, an idea contemplated by a state commission eyeing ways to address a huge backlog in transportation maintenance problems, runs counter to the push for energy efficiency and independence, according to Gov.-elect Deval Patrick, who nonetheless backed off a campaign pledge against such an increase.
“We need to be much, much more efficient in the use of hydrocarbons for energy reasons, for reasons of independence, for reasons of our dependence on foreign oil and gas, on hydrocarbons generally,” Patrick told the News Service during an interview at the waterfront law office he is using as a staging area for his administration, which moves into power on Beacon Hill in two weeks.
“If we’re trying to cultivate here in Massachusetts an energy-smart economy, then the notion of relying for additional revenues on something we’re trying to break our dependence on doesn’t seem to me to be a formula for long-term success.”
During the interview, Patrick also made it clear he’s eyeing cost-cutting and revenue-generating plans, expressed hope that a strong stock market will drive state tax revenues in December, and described a “smooth and cooperative” transition from the Romney to the Patrick administration, while acknowledging he hasn’t met with Gov. Mitt Romney since the day after his election.
Without being specific, Patrick said he’s looking at ways to decrease gas consumption. “If we want cars that get more miles, and we want more people out of their cars and using public transportation, that’s not a very promising set of circumstances for raising more revenue through the gas tax,” he said. “So there are other dials on this board that have to be turned and adjusted and thought about . . . ”
But Patrick said outstanding transportation needs, estimated by the Transportation Finance Commission at more than $17 billion over the next 20 years, make him pause before ruling out a gas tax hike, which he opposed while campaigning this summer.
“If anything, if that number is right, it’s an indication of the scope of the disinvestments in public transportation. So I want to look at the report before I express a point of view about whether I want to support that recommendation.”
The long-overdue report has not been released yet. When news of the commission’s intention to recommend a 9-cent gas tax increase leaked in early October, Patrick quickly swatted it out of a campaign that his rival, Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey, was trying to pivot around the Democrat’s alleged tax-hiking propensities.
During an Oct. 9 campaign appearance in Revere, when he was asked whether he would rule out gas tax and toll increases, Patrick replied, “Yes, I do.”
On another energy topic, Romney’s approval Tuesday of two offshore LNG terminals, Patrick said Romney had informed him that he was required to rule by year’s end. While saying the state needs “a diversity of energy sources and supply,” Patrick said of the offshore plan: “My concern is the impact on the Gloucester fisheries and the fleet and I just don’t have a sense of what the conclusions were about that impact or what the reaction has been from the Gloucester fleet.”
Patrick estimated 7,000 people had attended meetings of working groups he convened statewide to field ideas for governing Massachusetts. The ideas are not all spending initiatives, he said, and also feature ways to “engage” the private, non-profit and volunteer sectors of Massachusetts.
“There’s some low-hanging fruit economically in HHS [Health and Human Services] and I’m trying to gather all of that, things we can do now that will simplify life and cuts costs and maybe generate some revenue too,” Patrick said. “I’m not gonna – I’m just going to tease you with that. I’m not going to break that news right now.”
On the heels of a string of high-level personnel announcements, Patrick said “the beauty” of the working group reports, the last of which he expects to be filed today, is that he can now “mark them up” and distribute them to top advisers who can draw up implementation plans. Patrick said he has reviewed issue-specific transition memos and is distributing them to Cabinet secretaries as they’re appointed.
The governor-elect said he has had “really good conversations” with Romney’s top economic adviser, Ranch Kimball, and that his own administration and finance secretary, Leslie Kirwan, and her team “have been all over the numbers.”
Patrick said the budget outline Romney promised him the day after the election hasn’t yet been delivered, although Patrick said he expects it soon. “I think the transition’s been smooth. We’ve gotten a lot of information,” he said. “I appreciate that.”
In the wake of more than $400 million in mid-year budget cuts made by Romney, cuts that Patrick is being pressured to restore when he takes office, Patrick said Tuesday that he is concerned that state tax “revenues are not as strong as I’d like or as anybody would like,” although November collections exceeded expectations and, he hopes, the same will be true this month.
“Most of the revenue growth has come from capital gains and not from more people working or working for higher wages,” Patrick said. “The market’s been very strong as the year’s been closing out so I’m anticipating that December is going to be strong. I certainly hope it will be.”
Recruiting talent to help him run a $25.7 billion state government has been a full-time job, Patrick said, but he’s tried to get around the state since his election and plans to keep doing so. “I didn’t think that the campaign was just an exercise in salesmanship,” he said. “It was about building a relationship with the public and I need that relationship not just to win, but to govern.”
Patrick added: “I don’t think I’m transitioning out of campaign mode. I said on the campaign what I believed. I’m still saying what I believed.”
Patrick intends to meet with members of his economic development working group Wednesday and to talk to reporters, with some top appointees, after the 10 am meeting at 400 Atlantic Avenue in Boston.
During the interview, he said he supports the economic sales team the Romney administration is putting in place. “I want to keep that in place,” he said. “I don’t know whether those people, but I want to keep that apparatus in place and perhaps those people. I think that’s a judgment that [appointed secretary of housing and economic development Dan O’Connell] has got to make.”
Asked about his reading choices as he prepares his inaugural speech, Patrick said he regretted not having read much of late beyond Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals account of the Lincoln White House and a host of briefing materials. Some of the letters he’s received from people who were drawn to his campaign were, he said, “amazing” and may find their way into the address.
“I may look to one or two of those stories as a jumping-off point,” Patrick said.
When a reporter asked Patrick, who was joined during the interview by two newly minted press aides, whether he hoped US Sen. Barack Obama, the Illinois Democrat who is a friend of Patrick’s and campaigned for him, would run for president in 2008, Patrick smilingly ended the interview without giving a direct response.
