The stunning information that the do-nothing, Democratic-dominated Massachusetts Legislature has handed solely 10 legal guidelines this 12 months is definitely nice information for beleaguered taxpayers.
Two handfuls? Even that’s an excessive amount of for our lawmakers, whose favourite factor is to meddle with voter-approved legal guidelines and saddle residents with much more taxes.
The much less ridiculous payments House Speaker Ron Mariano and Senate President Karen Spilka conjure up and inform their flunkies to vote for, the higher for us all.
The 10 legal guidelines handed this 12 months, most of them minor, are the least in a long time, however should you have a look at the numbers, this isn’t stunning.
The Massachusetts Legislature commonly delays enterprise till the very finish of the two-year session, when it often passes a flurry of ill-conceived and little-studied payments that lawmakers don’t even learn. Asking them to move legal guidelines this early within the 12 months is a bit a lot for our overworked representatives.
And getting them to fulfill in the summertime or on Mondays and Fridays or throughout trip time is much more fruitless.
We all know that in actuality, it is a part-time Legislature that hardly ever meets in formal periods or holds votes. In the month of May, there have been no formal periods in any respect. The hallways of the State House are even emptier than typical.
Our state senators and representatives needs to be paid like part-time legislators however sadly their salaries are spiking greater than ever.
For that, the least we are able to do is ask them to remain out of the individuals’s enterprise. Go hunker down of their personal regulation places of work if they need, or chase ambulances, however keep out of the Statehouse.
The solely ones upset with the Legislature making few legal guidelines are liberal particular curiosity teams whose mission is to burden us with extra taxes and charges.
Do we actually need the Legislature to be passing new legal guidelines like congestion toll pricing – making motorists pay extra for driving throughout peak hours?
Or permitting prisoners like murderers and rapists the flexibility to vote whereas doing time? How about giving in-state tuition to immigrants right here illegally?
Do you want the concept of approving extra charges on insurance coverage, in order that it will get handed right down to customers? Or including a “mansion tax” on house gross sales? And this 12 months a bunch of liberal lawmakers has proposed rising the minimal wage once more, though it was simply elevated.
Or how about obliterating Chapter 62F, the voter-approved referendum which triggered almost $3 billion in refunds to taxpayers final 12 months?
Mariano and House leaders have proposed a invoice to alter the regulation that voters needed in order that these paying extra in taxes received’t get extra in rebates – in different phrases wiping out tens of millions in refunds to wealthier taxpayers.
Those are the sorts of nice legal guidelines that get handed within the General Court. And with a Democratic governor now sitting within the Corner Office, there isn’t any one to cease Democrats within the Legislature from ramming by legal guidelines like hire management and rising company taxes.
So please keep house, legislators. The much less we see you, the higher.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”