Ordinarily, monthly breakfast meetings of the Franklin County Chamber of Commerce are a good time.
The food is always tasty, and it provides a chance for business leaders to catch up and reconnect. The speakers are almost always engaging, and I’ll go to almost any event where current Chamber Board President Linda Dunlavy is the MC.
A recent exception, however, was the March 24 breakfast, where, fortunately, there were no sharp knives on the tables.
The speaker on that day was new Mass. Taxpayers Foundation President Eileen McAnneny, who delivered a 30-minute state budget presentation so ominous it would have, in the words of Ron Silver’s Bruno Giannelli character from “The West Wing,” made “the cast of ‘Up With People’ sit down on the floor and cry.”
“Massachusetts is facing a trifecta of fiscal issues,” McAnneny said. “We’ve had a good period of revenue growth, but it’s slowing about nine years into the economic recovery, and it’s not where it once was.”
A recovery that, by the way, not a whole lot of us in western Mass. have enjoyed quite as fully as our counterparts in the east.
“In addition, the cost of services is outpacing that growth, and we don’t have sufficient cash reserves,” she added. “So when the next downturn occurs, and it will, we’re really not well positioned to weather that storm.”
Depressed yet? I was too, until I remembered from where the message was coming.
Whether delivered by a cool lawyer-type like McAnneny or a crusty academic like former President Michael Widmer, most MTF presentations contain a certain amount of financial gloom and doom. These guys are the ultimate budget contrarians, whose sole purpose is to present realistic fiscal analyses from the perspective of taxpayers, not politicians.
What made this speech somewhat different, and even more ominous, was the fiscal elephant which is in the meeting rooms at just about every level of Mass. government these days — the rising cost of health care, specifically the MassHealth program, for which the feds currently cover about 50 percent of the cost, at least for now.
“It’s outpacing every other part of the budget in terms of growth,” McAnneny said. “In many ways, it’s the reason the fiscal 2018 budget is really a health care budget.”
And one that McAnneny says will suck up six out of every ten dollars of new revenue growth, the estimations for which seem to differ depending on who you talk to.
“The numbers the Legislature is working off of may be significantly higher than what expect to see,” McAnneny said. “If not, that’s good, but it may not be the case.”
And all of this is before the Republicans at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue really start breaking out the budget hacksaws. The commonwealth may have temporarily dodged a bullet following the implosion of the GOP’s most recent health care reform bill, but there are plenty of other areas which are likely to get tagged, including the Community Development Block Grant programs, which a lot of towns depend on to cover programs specifically geared toward low-income residents, and to eliminate slums and blight.
McAnneny outlined a number of other issues, including an especially onerous Baker Administration “fair share assessment” intended to force business owners to assume $700 million more of the MassHealth burden. If you want to hear more about it, I suggest you check out the full speech at GCTV.org.
One tip, though, assuming you are of age — pour a couple of fingers of Chivas Regal while you watch. It might make the message easier to tolerate.
On a more positive note, if you’ve ever wondered what life in the major leagues is like, you can find out Sunday afternoon from one of our own.
Former Montreal Expos center fielder Peter Bergeron will speak at 1 p.m. at the Greenfield Public Library as part of a fundraiser being organized by the Friends of the GPL, in memory of Bergeron’s late mother, Janice Bohonowicz.
“Janice loved the library and Pete wanted to do something to honor her,” Friends spokesman Terry Ruggles said. “He has an amazing story, and we look forward to hearing it.”
A raffle will also be held for a set of Red Sox-Tampa Bay Rays tickets, and I’m sure a few autographs will be signed by one of the truly good guys and arguably the greatest athlete to ever come out of Greenfield High School.
Hope to see you there.
Chris Collins, who worked in local radio in a number of capacities, has observed political life in Franklin County for years. He also is a former Recorder reporter and a Greenfield native.