disability access

Matt Murphy in the State House News Service reports here on the message from the Admininstration -- delivered on Thanksgiving Eve.

THE STATE HOUSE — Heavily into planning for next year’s state budget, Administration Finance Secretary Jay Gonzalez on Tuesday said the Patrick administration plans no new broad-based tax increases in fiscal 2013, and will have to find ways to cover surging demand for social services that is expected to outpace revenue growth.

“Even though tax revenues are growing modestly, and we may have more resources next year, the demands in our safety net programs and health care costs generally, the rate of growth in those areas exceeds the growth in resources,” Gonzalez told the News Service during a 20-minute sit-down interview in his office.

Through mid-November, tax collections of just over $7 billion since the start of the new fiscal year in are up 5.8 percent over the same period in fiscal 2011 indicating that the Massachusetts economy continues to rebound from the recession that began in 2008 and forced rounds of budget cuts.

“Tax revenues have been growing and we expect them based on economic forecasts to continue to grow so I think next year’s budget will be bigger than this year’s budget, but probably only modestly,” Gonzalez said.

It's great to hear about advocates raising their voices in support of their priorities!

Every organizer's challenge is to leverage a current public policy debate into a moment of political theatre in order to illustrate and illuminate a related injustice and to advocate for their proposed solution.

Props to two grassroots membership based organizations who have been smart and savvy enough to insert themselves into the debate around our share of the federal stimulus money, get some good press and do some good public education at the same time.

First the Disability Policy Consortium has forcefully reminded the Patirck Administration that 20 years of hard work improving access by the Commonwealth's disabled citizen activists improve access  to our public spaces might go down the toilet. All they have to do is comply with current law regarding accomodations for the disabled. 

Second, the the ON The Move Coalition, the T Riders Union and Mass PIRG held a cake sale at the front of the State House yesterday to point out that if somebody didn't do something soon about the $161 million hole in the T's budget Greater Boston T riders would be faced with drastic fare increase and draconian cuts. Hence a bake sale featuring home made cookies and cakes that raised $200. The T hasn't decided whether to accept it or not.