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EDITORIAL
OP-ED; Semantics aside, you still pay for it
Thomas M. Keane Jr.

03/05/2003
Boston Herald
All Editions
031
(Copyright 2003)

Imagine this news story:

In a bold move, the city of Boston announced it plans to abolish all taxes.

All major thoroughfares into the city will now bear signs, "Welcome to tax-free Boston," declared the city's mayor, Thomas Menino.

Beside each sign will be a city official collecting a new $25 entrance fee into Boston.

The city's move came after a declaration by Gov. Mitt Romney's administration that while it is not acceptable to raise taxes, increased fees for various services are fine.

"Taxes are very distinguishable from fees," said Eric Kriss, Romney's chief of administration and finance. Fees are for items that are "generally considered voluntary."

As an example, the Romney administration cited its plan to expand the state's bottle bill from just carbonated beverages to include all drinks. Choosing to drink water or juice, of course, is entirely voluntary.

In response, Menino made his historic announcement.

"The property tax is no more," proclaimed the mayor, standing in front of historic Faneuil Hall. With a giant pair of scissors, Menino symbolically cut in half a large piece of paper bearing the words "Tax Bill."

In a later announcement, the city unveiled plans for what it described as a "property fee." The new charge, which officials say will not fall under the state's Proposition 2 1/2 restrictions because it is not a tax, will be assessed as a percentage of a property's value.

"We expect that Boston will raise more through these new property fees than it ever did with the property tax," Menino said.

The mayor stressed that the new charge on property fit carefully within the Romney administration's definition of a fee. "No one is required to own property in the city of Boston," Menino said. "It is entirely voluntary."

Menino, once emblematic of the tax-and-spend wing of the Democratic Party, said he had turned over a new leaf. "No more taxing for me," he said. "It's all fees from now on."

The tax/fee distinction has given new life to long-standing city proposals to raise revenues by increasing the charge for towing vehicles, imposing a surcharge on entertainment (such as movie and theater tickets), and collecting an additional 1 percent on meals at city restaurants.

"We were such fools," said one Boston official. "We presented all of these as if they were new taxes. Now we're going to have to submit a whole new package to Beacon Hill, labeling everything a fee. That's the problem with being a city worker. You just don't have the sophisticated understanding of the language that guys like Mitt Romney have."

Under Romney's proposed budget, $1.4 billion will be raised from various revenue measures, according to an analysis prepared by the Massachusetts Taxpayer's Foundation.

"I don't think Shannon O'Brien would have understood the tax/fee difference either," admitted a spokesman for the state's Democratic Party. "Maybe it's that we're Democrats and we think everything should be taxed. Thank God a Republican won. Otherwise, we'd have been raising taxes instead of fees to cover the state's budget deficit."

I trust the point is clear: The wisdom of various revenue- raising measures should not rest upon semantics.

While the above is fiction (although all quotes from the Romney administration are real), the underlying notion is quite serious. The Romney budget really does contain $1.4 billion of what Kriss calls "revenue enhancements." And each of those enhancements will end up coming out of someone's pocket.

Government fees, taxes or whatever you wish to call them amount to unwanted impositions on citizens. Some of those charges - say, for space at a state parking garage - are so narrowly drawn and so directly related to what's provided that we might view them in the same way we view charges for goods and services from the private sector.

But others are broadly based and touch virtually everyone. That's certainly true of an expansion of the bottle bill. It is also true of a host of other items in the administration's budget: increases in college tuitions (projected to fetch $50 million annually), new charges on the sale of used cars ($10 million) and higher fees at registries of deeds ($230 million). Education, automobiles, real estate. All three touch the lives of most everybody.

And localities such as Boston also have to be puzzled by the administration's word games.

The Romney administration has looked askance at Menino's proposals to boost local revenues, decrying them as taxes. Boston's individual revenue-raising measures may or may not be smart public policy, but surely measures such as higher towing fees or surcharges on entertainment are no broader or more intrusive than the so- called fees the administration itself is planning.

If the state can do it, cities and towns must be wondering, why can't we?

Tom Keane can be reached at tomkeane@tomkeane.com.