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Briefly, everyone who works for local government is against Proposition 2 1/2, arrayed against a large percentage of those who find employment elsewhere. The referendum would cut the permissible level of property taxation--the only form of tax a Massachusetts locality can levy--to 2 1/2 per cent of the total assessed value of property in the community. William C. Wheaton, an associate economics professor at MIT, assessed the magnitude of the cut in a report prepared late last month. Bay State tax revenues, Wheaton said in his under-publicized study, would fall from around a current figure...
...charging a higher percentage of property values as taxes so they can provide public housing and bilingual education. In the suburbs, where people own expensive homes and the major policy questions are how many swimming pools the new high school needs, many communities are already at 2 1/2 per cent. For them, the referendum means no pain, only a chance to publicly display their gleeful conservatism...
...referendum begin the same way; angry sounding men reminding listeners that Massachusetts has "the highest property tax rate in the nation." True enough, but total state and local taxes in the state are actually lower than California, New York or even Minnesota, and are only 13 per cent above the national average, not bad for a state which supports social engineering programs like welfare...
...rule; even counting this year's jump, city taxes have increased far less than the cost of living (and governing) during the past decade. Wheaton's study confirms that the same is true across the state. "Real (inflation-adjusted) tax collections, therefore, have fallen by 20 per cent in the last three years ... back to the level they were in the late 1960's ....Local governments seem to be responding on their own to what they perceive as taxpayer resistance." Even with this year's big boost, budget season was unpleasant in Cambridge. "In one night I've wiped...
Without any changes the applicant pool could decline by more than 17 per cent because of the end of the baby boom, the report said...