Left In Lowell

[UPDATE: and here it is! Have at it, oh ye wonks!]

Well, for all the state budgetary wonks out there, this will be a banner year. Patrick’s administration has promised transparency in the budget process, and David says that includes comparisons with past spending, searchability, and the ability to download the spreadsheet. Very nice.

David also posts summary information from the Patrick administration, both on resolving the deficit, and why the deficit happened in the first place.

There’s one thing that seriously bugs the crap out of me. As David says, this budget is hardly a spending spree. He cites:

Interesting true fact: the Governor’s proposed budget is only 4% higher than last year’s General Appropriations Act (GAA) as enacted, and less than 1% above last year’s total spending (including supplementals). Not exactly a spending spree.

But according to the idiots on Channel 7 it is. That’s the phrase - “Spending Spree” they used to start their broadcast early this morning on the budget news item, completely with Patrick photo. Because we all know, pandering to stereotypes is easier than actually doing the thinking work and explaining the facts. Here’s my letter to Channel 7:

I was watching your channel news this morning (early AM, around 6:15) when I spotted a misleading and biased headline. It was on a story talking about the Patrick budget announcement.

A picture of Patrick, and underneath, the phrase “Spending Spree” accompanied the story.

You leave the impression that you wish to further the false impression that Democrats are just “tax and spend.” If it were a Romney budget proposal I doubt you would have used this pithy, untruthful, and rather damaging phrase. You should be more concerned with accuracy than cute headlines that appeal to stereotypes, for once. Maybe you’d stop losing viewers.

First, how misleading was the use of “spending spree”? Well, Patrick’s budget is just 4% of an increase in spending, barely more than inflation. After the severe cuts to local aid, universities, education, public parks, and numerous other services of the Commonwealth under 4 years of the absent Mitt Romney, it’s like we’ve taken three steps backward, and finally one step forward. And because of [those previous cuts], we’ve had increases in property taxes across the Commonwealth, we now rank nearly dead-last (behind Mississippi!) in spending on higher education, when so much of our economy depends on it.

You call that a “spending spree”? And you news people wonder why the decline in news viewer and readership, when you pass off frivolity as news on serious issues like the discussion we should be having on our budgetary priorities?

You can send them their own email if you like.