By Matt Murphy

06/15/2010
BOSTON — Four times in the history of the United States — most recently, George W. Bush in 2000 — a president has been elected without winning the national popular vote.

A growing number of states, however, are moving to redraw the electoral map with a changed system that would hand over the keys to the White House to the winner of the national popular vote.

“Instead of those red and blue maps, you’d have a ticker counting votes, and Massachusetts voters would be courted and driven to the polls,” said Pam Wilmot, executive director of Common Cause Massachusetts, who is spearheading the effort. “The winner would be the candidate who got the most votes like every other election in this country.”

The state Senate is scheduled to take up the proposal next week after the House passed the bill earlier this month by an overwhelming 113-35 majority.

A poll conducted in late May showed that 72 percent of Massachusetts voters support the idea of using the popular vote to elect the president.

The bill would enter Massachusetts into a compact with other states that have agreed to pledge their Electoral College electors to the winner of the national popular vote instead of the winner in each state.

The law would only take effect once enough states have passed the legislation to control a majority of Electoral College votes — 270.

The bill was scheduled to get a vote in the Senate last week, but Senate Minority Leader Richard Tisei, R-Wakefield, tabled the bill questioning why lawmakers were wasting their time debating it with two years until the next presidential election.

He said lawmakers’ time would be better spent considering bills aimed at getting the economy moving and spurring economic development.

A total of 30 legislative chambers in 19 states have passed the national popular-vote bill, though it has only been signed into law in five of those states — Washington, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland and New Jersey.

Those five states control 61 electoral votes, 169 short of the 270 needed to guarantee the election of the popular-vote winner.

Massachusetts currently controls 12 Electoral College votes, though that number could decrease to 11 before the next presidential election should the state lose a seat in Congress based on the 2010 Census.

State Sen. Jamie Eldridge, D-Acton, co-sponsored the legislation in the Senate this year.

“At the end of the day, we want to make sure every American, every voter has the same influence with his or her vote,” Eldridge said. “The current system of winner-take-all gives certain key, smaller states and swing states more influence over the election.”

A switch to a national popular-vote system would force presidential candidates to campaign more in places like Massachusetts, where more than 4 million people are eligible to vote, Eldridge said.

Though the legislation would essentially allow states to circumvent the Electoral College, proponents say it is not an end-run around the U.S. Constitution. The Constitution explicitly gives states the right to determine how its electors are selected.

Forty-eight states use a winner-take-all approach in choosing their electors, but Maine and Nebraska still apportion their electors based on congressional districts.

Critics contend that Massachusetts would be forfeiting its say in the election by pledging its electoral votes to a candidate who voters here might not have supported.

Supporters, however, point out that Massachusetts voters would gain clout because their votes would be just as important as those of people in Ohio, Florida or Pennsylvania.

The national popular-vote bill actually passed in both the state House and Senate in 2009, but died as the clock ran out on the legislative session before the Senate could enact the bill.

The late-night push to get the bill approved was complicated by threats from Republicans to filibuster and jeopardize other pending legislation.

“We have five weeks left this time, and it could still be tight depending on how obstructionist our opponents want to be,” Wilmot said.

Eldridge said he finds it troubling that one Republican senator had blocked an up-or-down vote on a simple piece of legislation that has been debated for years.

“This is a bill that a lot of people care about and, with all due respect to Sen. Tisei, I find it ironic that we have one senator blocking a bill that would allow the majority of Americans to decide who is the next president,” he said.

5/29/2010
By Charles Breitrose

Opponents liken the state Senate measure to prevent illegal immigrants from tapping in to state services to the harsh law adopted recently in Arizona, but supporters insist it’s necessary to save money by stopping abuse of the system.

Republicans sponsored the budget amendment, titled Fair Employment and Security, which the Senate approved 28-10. The measure must still be worked out in conference committee with the House.

State Sen. Richard Moore, D-Uxbridge, who voted for the measure, said yesterday the amendment addresses concerns about undocumented residents getting state assistance.

“Anywhere where people seek government services, it will simply require them to be able to require legal identification to show they are here legally,” Moore said. “Anyone who is going to receive a benefit or driver’s license has to be in compliance with what the law requires.”

The amendment includes steps barring contractors from public projects if they violate federal law on employing illegal immigrants, requires state contractors to verify employee citizenship status, creates new penalties for falsifying state IDs and driver’s licenses, and prevents those legally eligible for public housing from being displaced by illegal residents.

The amendment also bans access to lower in-state tuition rates at state colleges for illegal immigrants.

Don Siriani, chief of staff for state Sen. Susan Fargo, D-Lincoln, said the poor economy means the state should watch how every dollar is spent. Fargo voted for the measure.

“(The amendment) has everything to do with making certain that the very limited state resources the taxpayers give for the operation of the state, that they are spent wisely,” Siriani said.

The amendment will actually increase expenses to state and local agencies, argues Sen. James Eldridge, D-Acton, who voted against the bill.

“We are cutting services now, cutting for education, protecting the environment and health care,” Eldridge said. “Yet we just passed language that will increase costs for agencies like the Division of Unemployment, Division of Transitional Services and public housing authorities across the commonwealth.”

Eva Millona, executive director of the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition, said she thinks the amendment mostly mirrors federal statutes, and worries it will have more effect on immigrants who are here legally.

“Though it as portrayed as going after undocumented residents our concern is this will affect those who are eligible for benefits,” Millona said. “It makes it harder for naturalized citizens to get benefits because undocumented residents are already barred.”

She anticipates the requirement to present proof of residency will increase costs to state agencies. Currently, people need to have just a valid Social Security number, which is checked on a federal database, Millona said.

“This will set up a costly bureaucratic system where (agencies) have to physically view, physically capture and physically store proof of citizenship,” Millona said. “Instead of having an automated system, they will have to open more than one office and hire a lot of staff.”

Eldridge said the proposals in the amendment were too close for comfort to the law recently passed in Arizona. Arizona’s law - which allows local police to ask for identification from anyone they suspect might be an illegal immigrant - has drawn loud protests from immigration rights groups and others around the country.

“I was very surprised and disappointed at how the amendment we passed (Thursday) was approaching what passed in Arizona,” Eldridge said.

The Massachusetts measure is different, Moore said, but it stems from the same frustrations.

“I don’t think it’s quite the same,” Moore said. “In Arizona, they are doing the same thing. They want the laws enforced in the absence of federal action, enforcement of both federal and state law. They are a border state and probably have more immigrants to deal with. I think they feel frustrated as well.”

The Massachusetts Legislature had to weigh in on the immigration issue because Congress has not, Moore said.

“The federal government has ultimate authority,” Moore said. “They need to meet their responsibility, address the issue on illegal immigration at the federal level. They haven’t done anything that is helpful.”

Many parts of the amendment bother Millona, but she pointed to one that she believes threatens personal privacy.

“One is the part of the bill that provides for a 1-800 number (to report illegal immigrants). This bill, erodes privacy and civil liberties for all,” Millona said. “Anyone from anywhere can report a person is undocumented and automatically an investigation begins about you, your immigration status. It gives people with a personal score a means to target people.”

The steps proposed in the amendment will not take effect until the Senate and House can agree on a single bill. A similar proposal lost in the House last month.

House and Senate leaders will try to hash out an agreement before the July 1 deadline.

Gov. Deval Patrick has not taken a firm stance on the amendment, though he said through press secretary Juan Martinez yesterday that the ban on in-state tuition for longtime state residents who are not in the country legally is unfair.

Patrick will wait and see what happens with the bill in conference committee before making a judgment, Martinez said.

By Matt Murphy, mmurphy@lowellsun.com Updated: 05/27/2010 06:36:17 AM EDT

BOSTON — State senators yesterday shot down a proposal to require all applicants for public benefits to submit to background checks, but passed a more targeted law focused on welfare and unemployment benefits.

The debate was colored by comments made early in the morning by the head of the Anti-Defamation League that outraged senators, who were accused of using inflammatory language to promote legislation aimed at curbing benefits, such as food stamps and public housing, to undocumented immigrants.

Derrek Shulman, executive director of the New England Anti-Defamation League, described the rhetoric being used in the debate over illegal immigration in Massachusetts and around the country as bordering on language used by “racists, neo-Nazis and white supremacists.”

The remarks drew a strong condemnation from Senate President Therese Murray and Sen. Steve Panagiotakos, D-Lowell, who said the comments “have no place in our conversation.”

The Senate yesterday rejected an amendment to the budget that would have required all people applying for state-funded public benefits tied to housing, education and social services to provide proof of citizenship or legal residency. Democratic leaders cited the cost of requiring background checks and the protections already in place at many state agencies to prevent those living here illegally from receiving aid.

A similar proposal was defeated in the House last month when lawmakers voted to send the amendment offered by Rep. Jeff Perry, R-Sandwich, to a study.

Instead, the Senate passed, 32-6, a more limited measure that instructs the state Department of Unemployment Assistance and the Department of Transitional Assistance to require applicants to produce proof of citizenship.

Noncitizens living in the country legally are required to provide documentation from the Department of Homeland Security or be subjected to a background check through the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program, or SAVE.

The new laws do little more than codify what many state agencies, including MassHealth, already do for applicants to programs that receive federal money, according to lawmakers. The measure stops short of restricting access to state subsidized public housing, but not federal Section 8 rental housing or food stamps.

“The underlying amendment would be expensive and require more paperwork,” Panagiotakos said. “Our amendment isn’t just tough. It’s smart on fraud.”

The state cites a 1977 federal court case against the city of Waltham that prohibited local housing authorities from denying eligibility for housing to a person because he or she is not a citizen. Though the case specifically references noncitizens living in the United States legally, the state has since stopped verifying applicants’ immigration status.

Emotions in the Senate peaked even before debate began.

At a morning press conference, Sens. Jamie Eldridge, D-Acton, and Sonia Chang-Diaz, D-Boston, gathered immigrant advocates at the Statehouse to lobby against the series of Republican-sponsored amendments targeting benefits to illegal immigrants.

“It’s a very expensive solution in search of a problem,” Eldridge said.

He said requiring background checks — $6 apiece through the Department of Homeland Security — will cost millions of dollars and create delays for legal residents applying for benefits such as food stamps.

Republican advocates have been unable to quantify how much the state could save. Eldridge pointed to a similar law passed in Colorado that ended up costing that state an additional $2 million in one year, and produced little to no savings by eliminating public benefits for undocumented immigrants.

By Todd Wallack, Globe Staff  |  May 27, 2010

The state Senate voted 38 to 0 yesterday to disclose the names of filmmakers, dairy farmers, and other businesses that receive an estimated $245 million a year in refundable tax credits.

The measure, a budget amendment proposed by Senator Benjamin Downing, Democrat of Pittsfield, was one of several proposals to make more information about the tax credits public.

Unlike traditional tax credits that simply reduce a company’s state income tax bill, refundable taxes are particularly lucrative because they can be transferred to other companies or sold back to the state. Companies can use them even if they owe nothing.

Information about some of the credits is already available because they are approved by boards or public officials who make them public. But most of the tax credits are handled solely by the Department of Revenue, which says it is required to keep tax data confidential. It has declined, for instance, to identify recipients of $125 million a year in film tax credits.

Under the measure passed yesterday, the state would be required to create reports on refundable tax credit programs to help evaluate their effectiveness. But in a last-minute change, the Senate decided to remove a provision that would have required reports on how many jobs are created by each company.

Senator James Eldridge, Democrat of Acton, objected, arguing it would make it impossible to know if all companies receiving subsidies are creating jobs.

Regardless, the measure is likely to become law in some form. The House has already passed a measure similar to the one the Senate approved, and Governor Deval Patrick included language calling for more disclosure in his budget proposal.

By Todd Wallack, Globe Staff  |  May 26, 2010

Massachusetts lawmakers are edging closer to lifting the veil of secrecy over hundreds of millions of dollars in tax subsidies to film companies, dairy farmers, medical device makers, and other businesses.

While information on some subsidies is already public, the state Senate is scheduled this week to consider measures that would require the state to disclose the recipients for all so-called refundable tax credits.

Unlike traditional tax credits that simply reduce a company’s state income tax bill, refundable tax credits can be used by companies that owe little or no taxes, because they can be sold to others or traded back to the state for cash.

“At a time when we are cutting services and local aid, we want to measure the effectiveness of these tax credits,” said Senator James Eldridge, a Democrat from Acton who wrote one of the proposals and cosponsored another. “I’m deeply concerned that they are so secret, and neither the Legislature nor the general public has access to this information so we know if we are spending public taxpayer money wisely.”

The largest refundable tax incentive is for the movie industry. Designed to lure filmmakers to Massachusetts, the credit is worth up to 25 percent of the cost of making a movie, television show, or commercial in the state. The state estimates that film tax credits alone will amount to $125 million this year. Other refundable credits include $3.5 million for medical device makers and $50 million for firms renovating historic buildings.

The film tax credit in particular has garnered controversy because of its impact on the state budget. A state Department of Revenue study estimated that the measure generated just 16 cents in new tax revenue for every $1 given up in tax credits. But supporters argue it has spurred filmmakers to spend hundreds of millions of additional dollars in the state and has created many new jobs.

Altogether, the refundable credits amount to about $245 million a year in lost tax collections, according to the Department of Revenue.

Some of the refundable tax credits are a matter of public record, because they must be approved by a separate state board or agency. But most of the tax credits are handled solely by the Department of Revenue, which contends it is obligated to keep all tax information confidential.

The Massachusetts Life Sciences Center, for instance, announces its awards to life sciences companies, including the value of tax credits given to each firm.

Eldridge’s proposal, offered as an amendment to the new state budget, would require the state to publish reports on each tax credit program, including the identity of each taxpayer, the amount of tax credits received, the date of the award, and additional data.

Last month, a broader version of Eldridge’s measure was rejected by the Senate. Senator Karen Spilka of Framingham, who helped lead the opposition to the proposal, said it would have required municipalities to do too much work to track the credits. But Spilka has since agreed to support a more narrowly defined measure from another legislator, Senator Benjamin Downing of Pittsfield. Similar to Eldridge’s latest proposal, the Downing amendment would require additional public disclosure, such as the number of jobs created by the credits.

“I think it is important that we achieve transparency,” Spilka said.

If the Senate approves one of the measures, it is likely to become law in some form. The House approved a similar proposal last month.

And Governor Deval Patrick has included a public disclosure measure with his budget proposals for the past two years.

“We want to promote greater accountability and better public information about how tax dollars are being spent,” said Jay Gonzalez, state secretary of administration and finance.

Some business groups lobbying against the disclosure measures argue that tax information should remain confidential, as it historically has.

“These proposals represent a fairly dramatic change in that policy,” said John Regan, executive vice president of Associated Industries of Massachusetts.

However, the current proposals would address some of AIM’s concerns because they would apply only to tax credits awarded in the future. That way, Regan said, companies will know ahead of time that their names will be released if they apply for the subsidies.

The group that represents medical device makers said it has no objection to the proposals.

“It seems to me that information should be made available to the public,” said Thomas Sommer, president of the Massachusetts Medical Device Industry Council.

“Massachusetts is one of the last states to provide that information.”

Todd Wallack can be reached at twallack@globe.com.

Senator James B. Eldridge, Democrat of Acton, said the measures could also create new delays for the elderly and others who do not carry driver’s licenses or other traditional forms of identification.

“It’s going to end up not only costing the state a lot of money but hurting a lot of legal residents and elderly people, as well,” he said.

By Maria Sacchetti, Globe Staff  |  May 25, 2010

Senate Republicans are preparing to battle this week for controversial budget amendments that would limit illegal immigrants’ access to state benefits, just weeks after a similar measure failed narrowly in the House.

Republicans say the legislation will save money and reduce waiting lists for high-demand services, such as public housing. Democrats and immigrant advocates counter that the measures attack a problem that does not exist, since illegal immigrants are already ineligible for such services. Debate is expected to start tomorrow, and the senators could vote as early as that day.

“I don’t think it’s asking for a lot,” said Senate minority leader Richard R. Tisei, the main sponsor of the amendments, who is running for lieutenant governor with gubernatorial candidate Charles D. Baker. “In a time of limited resources, you can only do so much. We have to do first for the people who are here legally.”

On Friday, the Republicans filed a Senate version of an amendment that nearly passed in the Democrat-controlled House in late April, only a year after it was easily defeated, a sign of a burst of new energy in the GOP since the January election of Republican Scott Brown to the US Senate and the passage in Arizona of the toughest immigration law in the country.

The measure, originally filed by Representative Jeffrey D. Perry in the House, would require that adults applying for public benefits supply proof of legal residence, such as a state driver’s license. Otherwise, they must produce an affidavit saying they are here legally and be checked through the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlement program, or SAVE.

The Senate Republicans also filed separate measures barring illegal immigrants from receiving state aid for higher education, health and human services, and public housing. Tisei said they hoped to get at least one of the measures through the Legislature.

Democrats, who were taken aback in April by the close vote over Perry’s amendment, scrambled this week to prepare for a heated debate. They said that state agencies already run checks on immigrants for many public services, and that the measures would create a needless bureaucracy that could cost millions.

“I think that we will have to duke it out,” said Senator Sonia Chang-Díaz, Democrat of Boston. “But I think that the facts are 100 percent on our side on this one. This is something that the state already does.”

Senator James B. Eldridge, Democrat of Acton, said the measures could also create new delays for the elderly and others who do not carry driver’s licenses or other traditional forms of identification.

“It’s going to end up not only costing the state a lot of money but hurting a lot of legal residents and elderly people, as well,” he said.

Democrats and others who oppose the measures are holding up Colorado, the inspiration for Perry’s measure, as an example of how the measures can go wrong. In 2006, Colorado passed a bill restricting immigrants’ access to public services that gained national attention as being one of the most stringent in the country.

But less than a year later, officials found that the state spent more than $2 million and did not save money, according to news reports and an analysis by the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute, a Boston based nonprofit that produced an analysis of Perry’s amendment this month.

Massachusetts lawmakers “should think very long and hard about the cost implications and the negative impact on US citizens,” said Patricia Baker, a senior policy analyst with the institute.

The state Department of Transitional Assistance and the Division of Unemployment Assistance are already enrolled in the SAVE program and run thousands of checks every year, according to US Citizenship and Immigration Services, the federal agency that administers the program.

But Republicans say they are taking up an issue Democrats have long ignored, even as thousands of people are on waiting lists for public housing and other services. Republicans say they have tried to get the Democrats to study the scope of the issue in the past, without success.

“We should not be enfranchising people who are in the country illegally with the benefits that others worked hard to get and to be eligible for,” said Senator Bruce E. Tarr, Republican of Gloucester.

Tisei said he was confident that the measures would save the state money if they pass, by barring illegal immigrants from public benefits. But he said the state should invest in the system.

“It’s money well spent,” he said. “It’s certainly not going to break the budget, and the savings that will be reaped from it will more than make up for whatever the cost is.”

The vast majority of immigrants in Massachusetts are in the country legally, but about 1 in 5 immigrants, or 190,000, are here illegally.

By Matt Murphy
05/14/2010

BOSTON — The Senate came through yesterday with a package of reforms to the state pension system that builds off previous attempts to rein in abuses of the system.

The reforms were part of piece of legislation aimed at giving municipalities relief from their budget woes by providing options to save money.

The bill, which included more than 40 new laws, passed unanimously, 37-0.

Among the reforms included in the bill was a cap on public employee pensions of $125,000.

The bill included eight changes to the pension law, highlighted by the cap and the elimination of the Section 10 early-retirement provision for new state employees that previously allowed state workers who lost their jobs to claim early benefits as a safeguard against politically motivated firings.

“This is going to make a difference in making government more efficient,” said Sen. Jamie Eldridge, D-Acton, chairman of the committee handling the bill.

Other pension reforms included:

* A ban on salary spiking limiting the annual increase in pensionable earnings to 7 percent

* Pro-rated retirements for employees who have served in different employment groups, preventing members from taking a high-paying, high-risk job for a few years to boost their retirement.

* A requirement for Supreme Judicial Court justices to pay into the state pension system. Justices currently do not contribute to their retirement.

The Municipal Relief Act also included new laws that will allow cities and towns to join statewide mutual-aid agreements for public safety, makes regionalization of services easier and offers some early retirements packages to municipal employees.

The bill now heads to a conference committee where House and Senate leaders will negotiate the differences to their respective bills. The House did not tackle pension in a version of the bill passed earlier this year.

“People turn on the tap, and they don’t think about where their water comes from and the cost that goes into maintaining clean water,” said the commission’s chairman, Senator James B. Eldridge, an Acton Democrat. “If anything comes out of what happened this weekend, I hope that people are thinking about that more.”

5/4/10
By Martin Finucane, Beth Daley, and John R. Ellement, Globe Staff

Governor Deval Patrick has announced that the “boil-water” order has been lifted for the dozens of communities that lost their supply of fresh drinking water on Saturday, ending a crisis that, at one point, had inconvenienced nearly 2 million people in the Boston area.

The governor said the water supply was now clean and safe for all purposes in all of the communities served by the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority

Patrick said he was relieved that repairs to a failed pipe bringing water to the area that could have taken weeks were accomplished within 72 hours. He also promised a review of how the breach occurred.

“Now that service has been restored, we will work with the MWRA board to investigate the cause of this event to prevent anything like this from happening again in the future. If there is fault to be found, we will find it and we will hold those responsible accountable,” Patrick said.

The decision to lift the order, which required residents to boil water for a minute before using it for drinking or cooking and sent hordes of people racing to the store for bottled water, came after more than 800 water samples at 482 locations were tested, the governor’s office said. The tests showed no contamination that could threaten public health.

“If there were a sink in here, I would take a glass from the tap and drink it myself. I’m very confident,” Patrick said at a news conference in Chelsea this morning.

The state issued instructions to residents on how to flush their water systems to make sure that any possibly contaminated water in their home plumbing is removed.

Patrick, who was joined at the news conference by MWRA Executive Director Fred Laskey and other state officials, said he was “relieved that the inconvenience to 2 million of our citizens has been alleviated. I’m gratified that it was inconvenience and not something more serious. And I’m incredibly proud of all the people standing behind me.”

He thanked a variety of people, ranging from state and federal officials who worked on restoring water service, to the National Guard and the Teamsters who helped distribute bottled water.

State officials reported Monday that workers had successfully repaired the rupture in the massive water main in the town of Weston that had caused the crisis. The 10-foot-diameter pipe was a crucial link in the MWRA system, which brings water from central Massachusetts reservoirs east to Boston.

In Washington Monday, President Obama signed a disaster declaration, clearing the way for federal reimbursement of up to 75 percent of the cost of responding to the crisis. The state has not yet tallied how much it has spent on such costs as alerting residents, repairing the damage, and buying truckloads of bottled water that were still being distributed Monday night to the elderly and other vulnerable populations.

Attention, meanwhile, turned to the mystery of what caused a seam connecting the two large pipes in the major drinking water artery into Boston to sever on Saturday morning. The rupture, near the intersection of the Massachusetts Turnpike and Route 128, spilled 265 million gallons of water and pushed enormous amounts of soil into the Charles River.

MWRA officials said their focus remains the restoration of clean water to residents. But authority officials also began poring through records to determine who designed, built, and installed the seam and why it failed.

“Early on we made a strategic decision that every minute that we spend . . . trying to figure out what happened is an hour that was wasted that couldn’t be used to get the problem resolved,” said MWRA executive director Frederick A. Laskey. “There’ll be time afterwards to sit down and figure out where this all goes.”

Workers poured a concrete encasement Monday over a newly welded steel collar reconnecting the two sections of pipe to ensure that it would not fail again. Emergency repairs went far more quickly than authorities had expected, and by 6 a.m. Monday, the state said all the water flowing into affected communities was once again coming from the Quabbin Reservoir in central Massachusetts.

But the officials had warned people not to drink from faucets just yet because they feared the supply might still include water from the Chestnut Hill Reservoir, used to supplement Greater Boston’s water supply over the last few days. The Chestnut Hill water might contain harmful bacteria or might have an unpleasant taste from the large chlorine dose added to treat the backup supply.

There are multiple theories for what might have caused the pipe rupture. Charles Button, the MWRA chief engineer, said one theory is that the bolts on the collar exterior could have rusted off, but that would be unexpected because the collar was installed just seven years ago and the region’s soil is not particularly corrosive.

An alternative theory is that heavy rains in recent months eroded the soil underneath the pipe, leading the collar to break. But Button said there was no evidence of such erosion.

The search for a cause has been complicated because workers have not yet found the steel collar, which washed away when water began gushing out of the pipe.

Button and other engineers suspect it is nearby, buried in the Charles River under hundreds of cubic yards of sediment that now rises above the river surface near the rupture site. Officials hope to start excavating the sediment mound today.

It is also possible that there was a problem with the design, construction, or installation of the pipe collar, which is a large version of a standard component of public water systems.

Al Bonfatti, manager of Harding and Smith, a Walpole-based construction company, said that his firm has installed collars for several large MWRA projects, but that he was unsure whether his company installed the one where the break occurred.

“If there was a defect, it would not have passed quality control testing,” he said. “The whole thing has me puzzled.”

House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo, who has called for an investigation of what went wrong, said he would wait until “things settle a little bit” and the drinking water is back on line before convening hearings.

Environmentalists said the rupture highlights the need for greater attention to water infrastructure. There is an estimated $8.5 billion needed to ensure clean drinking water in Massachusetts, advocates said.

A new state commission, the Water Infrastructure Finance Commission, is hoping to find a way to fix crumbling pipes, older water-filtration plants, and antiquated monitoring equipment. The panel is scheduled to hold its first meeting tomorrow.

“People turn on the tap, and they don’t think about where their water comes from and the cost that goes into maintaining clean water,” said the commission’s chairman, Senator James B. Eldridge, an Acton Democrat. “If anything comes out of what happened this weekend, I hope that people are thinking about that more.”

Noah Bierman, Carolyn Johnson, Sean P. Murphy, and Maria Sacchetti of the Globe staff contributed to this report.

By Livia Gershon
4/23/10

To most Massachusetts residents, the Bottle Bill is simply a fact of life. Drink a soda, return the can for a nickel. Or hand it over to a Boy Scout troop or a homeless person in an effortless act of generosity.

But a new effort to extend the law to noncarbonated beverages like bottled water and energy drinks is reviving arguments from the early 1980s, when it was originally passed.

Environmental Concerns

Proponents say the revision would keep plastic out of the landfills and incinerators, keep roadsides cleaner while bringing in as much as $20 million in new state funds.

But some retailers and bottlers say that complying with the current law is already costly, cumbersome and not that effective in protecting the environment. And, opponents say, expanding the bill’s reach would only increase inefficiencies.

One argument for both the existing bottle law and its expansion is increased recycling. Janet S. Domenitz, executive director of the Massachusetts Public Interest Research Group, says that, while only about 30 percent of the state’s non-redeemable containers are recycled, 75 percent of redeemable ones are.

“It’s the most effective recycling program that exists in our state,” she said.

But Chris Crowley, executive vice president of Worcester’s Polar Beverages Inc. and president of the Massachusetts Beverage Association, says the bottle bill’s status as the “baby” of the environmental movement is thoroughly unjustified.

“Their baby in the crib is very ugly from an environmental standpoint,” he said.

Crowley argues that the logistics of redeeming bottles with a deposit are far too complicated. Customers must bring their bottles back to grocery stores. The stores must rent reverse vending machines or set aside sorting rooms. And distributors like Polar have to pick up and haul the bottles off for recycling.

“The carbon footprint to recover these resources is very high,” Crowley said.

He said the current redemption program covers less than two percent of the waste stream, and an expansion would budge that figure only slightly.

Crowley said municipal recycling programs are a much more efficient system, and initiatives like Worcester’s pay-as-you-throw trash collection system, which encourage curbside recycling, make much more sense than redeemable containers.

Beyond its environmental significance, one of the major arguments for the original Bottle Bill - and its expansion - is its value as a money-making device for Massachusetts. When cans aren’t returned, the extra nickels go to the state government.

State Sen. Jamie Eldridge, D-Acton, said the proposed expansion, which Gov. Deval Patrick has included as part of his plan for balancing the state budget, could generate $20 million. The money would fund other recycling efforts, including grants to help municipalities pay for their recycling costs, Eldridge said.

Different Times, Different Drinks

On both financial and environmental counts, Eldridge said, expanding the Bottle Bill simply makes sense because Massa-chusetts residents now quench their thirst differently than they did during the cola wars of the 1980s.

“What has happened in the past 10-plus years is that there’s more and more glass and plastic bottles that are the sports drinks, the juice drinks, the bottled water,” he said.

But to many retailers, a redemption charge is simply a 5-cent tax, and an inefficient tax at that. Crowley claims that the price to industry of collecting and recycling containers vastly outweighs the money that the state gets in unclaimed deposits.

Border Issues

Any sort of new state-specific cost tends to be particularly grating to those near border of New Hampshire, which has no bottle bill at all.

Darshan Patel, the owner of Ashburnham MarketPlace, a small grocery store, said many of his customers either buy their soda in bulk from club stores or head over the border.

A new deposit fee on water bottles and other drinks would probably dent his business more, he said.

“Always people try to buy in a cheaper and cheaper way,” Patel said.

If Patel’s customers are buying drinks in New Hampshire and redeeming the bottles in Massachusetts, that’s fraud.

And it’s not uncommon. Crowley said he knows of one case where a Central Massachusetts recycling hauler drove truckloads of bottles up to Maine, where noncarbonated beverage bottles have been redeemable since 1991, and made $1,900 every few weeks.

Hal Prince, director of Maine’s Division of Quality Assurance and Regulations, which administers the state’s redemption program, acknowledged that it’s vulnerable to fraud.

While the general redemption rate for the state is 85 to 90 percent, he said, the rate in towns along the New Hampshire border often approaches 100 percent, almost certainly reflecting people turning in bottles bought out of state.

Prince said the state is working to crack down on fraud, levying high fines and making examples of some large-scale offenders.

Ultimately, though, he said Maine is happy enough with its redemption system.

“We’ve been dealing with the expanded Bottle Bill for years and years right now,” he said.

“It’s kind of second nature to us.”