Marlborough residents are receiving two early Christmas gifts from the state in terms of positive economic data.

Officials from the Department of Revenue are announcing that that income tax rate will be lowered on Jan. 1, 2012. The rate, currently at 5.3 percent, will fall to 5.25 because state tax collections rose at a sufficient rate to trigger the reduction.

“This is great news for the taxpayers of Massachusetts,” said state Sen. Barry Finegold. “Growing revenues have allowed the state to give taxpayers a break, something that is much valued in these tough economic times. Being that this is the first tax cut in 10 years, I think that says a lot about the stability of the Commonwealth at this time.”

The second piece of good news comes from the Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development, which announced Massachusetts businesses added 5,000 new jobs in the month of November, helping to slice the unemployment rate in the Bay State to 7.0 percent. That’s down from 7.3 percent in October, 8.3 percent in December 2010.

Locally, lawmakers are seeing positive signs of a recovering economy.

“Metrowest is a region that is still attracting companies and employees, and I’ve attended a number of ribbon-cuttings for new businesses in Marlborough recently,” said State Senator Jamie Eldridge. “When I’ve attended Chamber of Commerce events, some small business people express cautious optimism about their businesses growing. These are all good signs that the local economy is on the mend.”

These numbers indicate the lowest the Massachusetts unemployment rate has been since December 2008, but there are still many without jobs who desperately need them.

“On the other hand, I do talk almost every day to someone who is unemployed, or underemployed,” continued Eldridge.” Just the other day, I met with the Littleton Job Seekers, a group of local unemployed workers, about their lives and concerns. Some of these people have been searching for a job for over two years; others have just recently been laid off.”

Though the recent news is encouraging, Eldridge said the economy has a ways to go.

“So although I think we’re moving in the right direction here in the Metrowest, there’s still cause for concern and work to be done to grow our economy when this many people are unemployed,” he said.

Gambling is on a roll. Faced with mounting budget deficits, more states are expanding gambling options and loosening restrictions in a grab for revenue. Critics warn that the winnings are fool’s gold, not worth the potential social and financial ills. But that’s not stopping many states from getting a piece of the action.

Even once-reluctant Massachusetts recently approved the construction of three casinos and a slots parlor after 20 years of debate. Clyde Barrow, director of the Center for Policy Analysis at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, predicts the casinos will collect $1.5 billion to $2 billion a year. Legislators said they anticipate receiving $300 to $400 million in tax revenue to chip away at the state’s projected $1.8 billion 2012 deficit.

Casinos and lotteries make up at least 2 percent of revenue in states that have them, the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government recently reported, and have provided steady returns after a brief recession dip. That revenue has proven irresistible at a time when 46 cash-strapped states have made cuts in programs for health care, the elderly, the disabled, or in education since 2008, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Massachusetts trimmed all of the above.

Massachusetts State Sen. Jamie Eldridge (D) fears the gambling push will come up snake eyes in the long run. He worries that patrons’ discretionary income would go to casinos instead of local businesses, bleeding communities dry.

“It’s a very flawed economic model,” Eldridge said. “This is one of the worst decisions when the economy is bad.”

Gambling usually provokes passionate debate on both sides, but few could dispute that the industry is on a winning streak. In 2009 and 2010 alone, 37 states pushed for increased gambling outlets, according to Sam Skolnik, the author of “High Stakes: The Rising Cost of America’s Gambling Addiction.” Meanwhile, casinos have stepped up their promotions to attract groups that tend to gamble more.

“One of the tragedies is that many of the gamblers enticed by this marketing … can ill-afford to lose the money,” Skolnik said.

Gambling advocates have marshaled their lobbying power and the promise of jobs and a quick profit stream to make giant inroads. In a wheezing economy, the conditions are ripe. While the federal government chokes on $972 billion of debt, states face a combined $95 billion deficit for 2012.

Revenue from Nevada’s brick-and-mortar casinos has not stopped the state from sinking into 13 percent unemployment and a debt of $1.2 billion that is 37.4 percent of its operating budget. Still, the state’s looking to beef up gaming, recently accepting applications from five firms to implement online poker for state residents. Nevada’s move comes with supporters’ hope that a federal ban against interstate gambling on the Internet will eventually be lifted. Jon Porter, a three-term former Republican congressman from Nevada, said tight regulations to weed out the under-aged and addicted can make Internet play work.

“I don’t think gaming targets anyone,” said Porter, an adviser for the Poker Players Alliance. “Whether you’re gambling in a casino online or on Wall Street, certainly there are people who have a weakness and we try to prevent that from happening.”

Many states are rolling the dice: New Jersey is mounting a constitutional challenge to a near-total federal ban on sports-betting. On the lottery front, Minnesota is allowing patrons to play online.

Missouri last week rolled out the welcome mat again for admitted problem gamblers. Gamblers who had voluntarily asked to be expelled from the state’s casinos — previously a life-long ban — now may return after five years. Compulsive gamblers cost the country $6.7 billion a year, according to The National Council on Problem Gambling.

Yet, it’s not as if gambling suddenly appeared. Forty-one states have casinos, according to the “American Casino Guide,” and 43 have lotteries. But the urgency created by joblessness and foreclosure has made consumers more susceptible. Lotteries dangle the carrot of instant riches. Casinos offer the potential of a quick buck on the pull of a slot machine. Skolnik estimated that in 2007 alone, at the start of the recession, Americans gambled away $92 billion.

At the manufacturing end of the gambling industry, companies such as Bally Technologies and IGT are creating more slot attractions to entice patrons. Bally paid an undisclosed amount for the rights to create a Michael Jackson slot machine that is expected to draw huge lines when it debuts next summer. But the biggest potential moneymaker is the server-based slot machine. If a machine loses patrons at a certain time of day, casinos can change the machine’s theme, value and payout at the push of a button. IGT operates server-driven slots in 50 casinos. Through anecdotal information, IGT estimated that the casinos are seeing an 18 percent increase in daily take after making the switch. Older casinos will have a tough time retrofitting the technology, but most of the new casinos will be buying in, said Steve Bourie, author of the “American Casino Guide.”

All the bells and whistles aside, Barrow, the UMass-Dartmouth researcher, sees a lasting future for a casino-enhanced Massachusetts. The lottery will suffer temporarily but will bounce back, he predicted. Gambling-related crime will be less of an issue because theft and other crimes tend to happen on casino grounds and not in the surrounding neighborhoods, he said. As for assertions that casinos take money from the disadvantaged, Barrow answered that the lottery was already doing that at the state’s 11,000 convenience stores. Casinos draw more customers above the median income, he said.

Barrow, who has been criticized for being a paid consultant for a New Hampshire golf course’s casino study, said Massachusetts’ plan will include hotel and entertainment venues to attract non-gamblers as well. He said that 20 percent of New Englanders who visit casinos do not place any bets.

But Eldridge isn’t buying into the feel-good forecast. Since Gov. Deval Patrick (D) signed the casino construction bill on Nov. 22, promising that the commonwealth would not be compromised, Eldridge said he has refocused his efforts on ensuring that the legislation is not weakened to where it could further endanger community commerce and public safety.

A few states have bet against the gambling wave — at least for the time being. Maine residents scrapped two casino-expansion referendums in November. The Illinois House also voted down an expansion bill, and New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch (D) vowed last month to veto any measure aimed at adding casinos.

Eldridge has seen a different outcome in his own state of Masachussetts, however. He said fellow lawmakers wanted to be able to say they’re creating jobs and income for the state. Eldridge’s office pointed to a 2000 study covering 19 years that concluded casinos create crime instead of merely relocating it. It also reported that 8 percent of crimes in a casino county can be directly linked to the casino.

The legislator fears Massachusetts has struck a Faustian bargain that isn’t worth the risk. Eldridge said, “We’ve living in desperate times.”

December 8, 2011
By Mary Wagner While the issue of unemployment surges in the national debate, one local politician recently addressed how it affects local towns during a question-and-answer period.

State Sen. Jamie Eldridge, D-Acton, attended a Town Hall session run by the Littleton Job Seekers on Nov. 29 to discuss unemployment in the state.

Eldridge listened as residents brought up their frustrations with job searching and the effect unemployment has had on their families during the two-and-a-half-hour session at the Reuben Hoar Library. Hot topics included the state’s handling of unemployment, health care, inadequacies of the interview process and more.

Lee Davy, the former owner of a child development center that closed in 2006, expressed his aggravation with the state’s standards for receiving benefits. Since he was self-employed when his business closed, he did not qualify for unemployment benefits. He and his wife have paid bills by tapping into savings and retirement accounts and working six jobs, but they are growing increasingly concerned with their health care costs, which according to Davy now exceed their monthly mortgage payment.

“If we worked the equivalent of one less job, we would probably qualify [for MassHealth] all the way up to dental and everything because we probably earn about $10 an hour over the limit,” Davy said. “Where do you go when you earn too much to be on MassHealth but don’t earn enough to live on? It’s like they’re saying we’re not unemployed enough.”

Jill Beech, who works in information technology, regularly attends networking meetings to gain support from others in similar situations. She noted that a lot of attendees are “in the same boat … everybody wants to help everybody else.”

Beech reminded Eldridge that unemployment can come on suddenly and unexpectedly for anyone.

“It’s unbelievable how fast you can slip over that edge,” Beech said. “It makes you understand how these highly-educated homeless people end up where they are.”

Beech asked Eldridge what he thought unemployment “looked” like, and if his expectations differed from the people who participated in the session. Eldridge said he was not surprised to see highly educated professionals in the crowd.

“The communities I represent are mostly middle class, and there are a lot of middle class who are out of work,” Eldridge said. “Sometimes I think that people think that those who are unemployed are those that have dropped out of high school or something and it’s their fault. But, I think it’s mostly, especially in this area, middle class professionals.”

Eldridge also described the political roadblocks that exist when trying to address the state’s unemployment issue. Eldridge, who said he prefers public sector solutions to unemployment issues over investing taxpayer money to attract businesses, believes many unemployment benefits need to be revisited so that these programs can provide the best assistance for job seekers.

“I think what’s frustrating to me is there is not a sense of urgency at the State House to take action,” Eldridge said. “I think too often there’s a sense that there are already generous benefits or we already have workforce training programs so therefore we’ve done that. But the point is that many of those laws and programs are from the New Deal or the benefits haven’t been updated properly in decades. Trying to communicate that to everyone from the governor to the leadership in the House and Senate so we would actually pass this legislation is what I focus my energies on.”

The Littleton Job Seekers meet every Thursday from 2 to 4 p.m. in the Couper Room at the Reuben Hoar Library. Beginning Jan. 4, the group will run a six-week Job Search Boot Camp every Wednesday evening from 5:30 to 8 p.m. For information, contact Job Seekers Facilitator Cindy Filipe at 978-540-2602 or log on to littletonlibrary.org.

Beacon Hill appears ready to roll the dice.

A Statehouse committee working on a final casino bill is hammering out a deal.

Lawmakers go home for the year on Wednesday. Now, both sides are working to beat the clock.

There’s a lot they agree about, but there’s one hot-button issue that’s still dividing lawmakers.

By Krista Kanos
November 3, 2011

A local legislator is working with other lawmakers and good government groups to have Massachusetts join eight other states in allowing eligible voters to register on election day.

Sen. Jamie Eldridge, D-Acton, Sen. Cynthia Creem, D-Newton, and representatives of MassVote, Common Cause and the League of Women Voters testified in support of election day registration at a hearing of the Joint Committee on Election Laws yesterday.

“It’s estimated that it would increase voter participation by 5 percent,” said Sara Brady, policy director of MassVote. “It means a lot to those people. In 2008 (for the presidential election), more than 10,000 people (in Massachusetts) missed the voter-registration deadline, and those are people who wanted to vote.”

Eldridge’s bill, titled An Act to Modernize our Voter Registration System, includes additional provisions he hopes would increase voter participation by allowing 16- to 17-year-olds to register to vote before their 18th birthday and allowing online registration for people already on file with the Registry of Motor Vehicles.

“Last year there were 2 million people eligible to vote who didn’t vote,” Eldridge said. “I’m sure we all have talked to someone who went to the polls to vote and came back without voting for some technical reason.”

Pam Wilmot, executive director of Common Cause, said the legislation would mostly affect people such as new renters in Boston who often miss registration deadlines and go to the polls only to be turned away.

“Election-day registration (results in) the highest percentage increase in turnout of any reform that you could pass,” said Wilmot, noting Maine, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana and Iowa have same-day registration.

Linda Freedman, elections and voting specialist for the League of Women Voters, said Minnesota, Maine and Wisconsin had average turnouts 12 percent higher than the national average and election-day registration has worked in Maine for 30 years.

Maine has recently joined a number of states cutting back on same-day registration and other regulations aimed at making voting easier. Seven states already require voters to present valid photo ID at the polls. Opponents, mostly Republican lawmakers in other states, say such laws make it easier for voter fraud.

Freedman disputed the claims.

“Maine’s current governor overturned same-day registration on charges of voter fraud, but it was investigated by the secretary of state and found to be false,” she said.

Voter fraud, which Freedman called a “red herring,” is the main argument against election-day registration, but she said independent studies have found that voter fraud is as low in states with election-day registration as it is in states without it.

In 2007, Creem submitted a same-day registration bill that passed with bipartisan support in the Senate, but the Legislature adjourned in July 2008 without a final vote from the House.

The committee has until March 21 to act on the legislation, at which time they would give it a favorable or unfavorable review or send it for further study.

Only three committee members were present as a result of conflicting formal sessions for the House and the Senate. But Senate Chairman Barry Finegold, D-Andover, was receptive to the legislation, agreeing with many of Wilmot’s points and questioning why Massachusetts doesn’t have election-day registration already.

The Massachusetts Lottery wants to be paid $3,695 before it releases information that should be free and available to the public.

A Freedom of Information Act request – which any citizen can file to get a copy of many govern- ment documents – has been met with foot-dragging at the state Lottery’s Braintree headquarters for the better part of a year.

The records request comes from a group of con- cerned citizens who are worried that the Lottery’s marketing and advertising strategy targets low- income media markets, where poorer residents tend to spend a greater share of their income on scratch tickets and other lottery products than do wealthier segments of society. That’s certainly been demon- strated in other states and it’s in the public interest to find out if the state Lottery is indeed preying on poor people.

Even if you accept the Lottery’s claim that most of the processing fee it wants — some $2,500 — is to duplicate DVDs and other electronic files, it doesn’t appear that the Lottery is genuinely inter- ested in complying with the spirit of the Freedom of Information Act request. The fact that the Lottery took six months just to send a cost estimate from the group Stop Predatory Gambling makes us skeptical — 10 days is the required turnaround time for a pub- lic records request under state law.

It shouldn’t be this hard for the public to get pub- lic information. But it too often is.
The state’s public records laws haven’t been updated since 1973, well before the era of email, the Internet, and easily accessible digital data. Several proposals on Beacon Hill would update those laws, and are long overdue.

One bill would require state agencies to post public documents online whenever possible, which would also cut down on administrative costs and time associated with processing public records requests (a frequent complaint among government clerks).

Another bill seeks to reduce the often prohibitive fees that requestors must pay to obtain records, and permit requestors to obtain attorneys’ fees if they have been denied access to public records without valid reasons. Another provision would update the pricing of public records requests – current regula- tions allow government workers to charge 20 cents for a photocopy and up to a dollar for a black and white printed sheet.

“The basic value behind this is my belief that open transparent government is essential for a healthy democracy,” said state Sen. Jamie Eldridge, an Acton Democrat, at a recent public hearing on the bills, which are before the Legislature’s Joint Committee on State Administration and Regulatory Oversight.

Another point raised at the hearing is that the Legislature exempts itself from the open meetings law – which just opens the door to the kind of cor- ruption scandals we’ve seen, including three con- secutive House Speakers convicted on felonies, and more recently, the indictments of two additional high-ranking state officials.

Some lawmakers at the hearing expressed the usual reservations about complying with the pub- lic records laws – specifically, that public employees are already overworked without having to fill pub- lic records requests.

That’s the kind of excuse-making that politicians and government bureaucrats have used to hide behind for decades, as well as the justification for throwing up cost impediments when citizens ask questions. Open, transparent government is essen- tial for a healthy democracy – and the public records law is a vital part of that transparency.

As Rosanna Cavanagh of the New England First Amendment Coalition put it: “A taxpaying member of this state should not be charged for the informa- tion their tax dollars have already paid to create.”

I don’t want to traumatize anyone, but I have to let you in on a little secret: Massachusetts politics has been known to be beset by patronage every now and then.

I’ll let you absorb that one for a moment before I continue. …

I know, I know. It’s shocking, but patronage has been known to happen in this state.

Once or twice.

A week.

So why were state senators so taken aback when, during debate of the casino proposal this week, one of their own — Jamie Eldridge, a Democratic senator from Acton — proposed setting some rules for elected officials leaving the Legislature then getting jobs in the state’s burgeoning gaming industry?

Eldridge, who is against the state building three resort casinos but realizing it’s all but a done deal, filed an amendment to the casino proposal that called for a five-year moratorium on the gaming industry hiring former legislators.

Sounds perfectly reasonable, doesn’t it?

What he’s saying is, hey, go ahead and vote the casinos in, but while you’re at it, show the public that you’re not doing it because of the promise of a job after you leave the Legislature.

And in this day and age of former speakers of the House going to jail for extortion, and former senators and city councilors imprisoned for taking bribes, and former probation commissioners accused of raising campaign money for a former state treasurer to help secure a job for his wife, and former directors of special-education collaboratives hiring former school superintendents at six-figure salaries to throw away taxpayer money … need I go on? … you’d think elected officials would jump at the chance to show that their vote can’t be bought for a job in one of the three casinos that will inevitably be built.

As Eldridge said, the casino bill should not be “an economic development bill for lawmakers” and that the Legislature should “make sure we don’t have legislators that, as soon as this bill becomes law, are going off into the casino industry.”

You can disagree with Eldridge’s stance on casinos — in fact, I do — but you have to give him credit for trying to bring some transparency into the debate.

His colleagues’ shock and chagrin, as feigned as it was, at the proposed amendment only shows how out of touch they are with the public.

They tripped all over each other trying to project outrage that one of their own would imply that any of them would vote for the casino package just because of the promise of a job later. Imagine the gall!

You’d think they’d want to accept Eldridge’s amendment — if even grudgingly — just to show there are no shenanigans.

But, no, they went the other route, chastising him for “contributing to the cynicism” (casino supporter Stanley Rosenberg’s words) and for launching “an attack on his colleagues” (casino supporter Gale Candaras’ words).

They claimed Eldridge only created the false impression that some would stoop to patronage.

Here’s news for you: Eldridge doesn’t have to create the impression. You guys are doing a good job of that yourselves. If it were indeed a false impression, then they should have gladly accepted Eldridge’s amendment.

In the end, senators approved a one-year “cooling-off period” for legislators getting jobs within the gaming industry.

So instead of feeling good about our elected officials for a change, instead of thinking for a change, well, hey, at least we know they’re not in it for their own personal gain, we’re left wondering who will be the first hired by the casino industry.

The safe money says it won’t be Eldridge.

The state Senate gave itself a black eye on Tuesday, demonstrating not just an obliviousness to ethical concerns but an aversion to open, transparent debate as well.

It came when Senator James Eldridge, Democrat of Acton, offered a perfectly reasonable amendment to forbid lawmakers from working for casinos for five years after leaving office. Gambling interests have flooded Beacon Hill with lobbyists and money, and the public deserves reassurance that the possibility of future employment will not influence how lawmakers vote now.

Yet the very notion that public appearance needed to be addressed infuriated some of Eldridge’s colleagues.

Ways and Means Chairman Stephen Brewer took “very serious umbrage” at the implication that lawmakers weren’t people of intelligence and compassion. In a unique bit of logic, Senator Stanley Rosenberg, the point person on the gambling bill, said that passing such a no-revolving-door amendment would actually contribute to public cynicism about lawmakers by creating the impression that such a restriction was necessary to protect the public trust and ensure integrity. Why, it was tantamount to rewriting state ethics laws, fumed Senator Gale Candaras, Democrat of Wilbraham — and those laws were the strictest in the nation.

That’s debatable, and anyway state laws, at least in this area, aren’t strict enough. An ethical cloud hangs over Beacon Hill. After all, former Senator Dianne Wilkerson is currently serving a stint for corruption in federal prison, while former House Speaker Sal DiMasi will soon start his own prison term. And that’s to say nothing of the various ongoing probes of state government.

It’s telling that the Senate refused to talk through Eldridge’s amendment in an open forum. Instead, Senate President Therese Murray quickly called a recess and ushered her Democratic charges into the privacy of her office, where the exchanges are said to have been heated. After Democrats reworked the measure behind closed doors, senators returned to the chamber and quickly passed the revised amendment, with no public explanation and no further debate on it. The new amendment slices the waiting period to one year.

The entire sorry episode shows precisely why the restriction that Eldridge proposed is sorely needed. And though what the Senate adopted is better than the House bill, which contains no waiting period, a one-year interval is so short as to be almost meaningless.

The debate isn’t finished yet, which means the legislation could be strengthened. Governor Patrick’s office has made vague noises in support of unspecified ethics measures. But there is a clear danger of a revolving door between Beacon Hill and the Massachusetts gambling industry that lawmakers are now poised to create. Patrick should take a tougher stand.

Think lawmakers are feeling a wee bit sensitive about their reputations these days?

Sen. James Eldridge (D-Acton) touched a nerve — big time — when he argued this week that lawmakers should be banned from going to work for casino interests for five years after leaving the Legislature, if the gambling bill now being debated in the Senate becomes law.

Sen. Gale Candaras (D-Wilbraham) characterized the proposed amendment as an “attack” by Eldridge on his colleagues. “We’re creating a presumption here that the people in this body cannot operate with integrity,” she said.

Not to put too fine a point on it, Senator, but can we really blame an amendment for creating that presumption?

Sen. Stanley Rosenberg (D-Amherst), who has led the casino effort in the Senate, noted that his colleagues “all are hardworking effective people with integrity.”

But the roll call of lawmakers who have left the State House in disgrace casts a shadow over those statements. And let’s face it, the revolving door at the State House is certainly well-oiled.

Now, we really don’t see the same need as Eldridge — a casino opponent — to single out casino jobs for a cooling-off period of extraordinary length. Why not adopt the same rule for the biotech field, say, or health care?

Lawmakers who become registered lobbyists for any interest are now prevented from lobbying their former colleagues for one year after leaving the Legislature. And since lobbying is the likeliest avenue if they take a job at a casino (let’s just say we don’t see many lawmakers being tapped as croupiers) it seems reasonable to apply the same type of standard, which the Senate did in adopting a compromise amendment.

And those senators who were so deeply offended by the suggestion that any of their colleagues might race for the revolving door — or that any lawmaker’s services can be bought for the right price — really ought to drop the theatrics.