Left In Lowell

Lynch Answers Sullivan and Nutter

27 Responses to “Lynch Answers Sullivan and Nutter”

1. K-R-S Says:
   July 19th, 2010 at 12:30 pm

   Lynch’s response was great..:0)

2. joe from Lowell Says:
   July 19th, 2010 at 4:13 pm

   Bambi vs. Godzilla.

3. nextyearishere Says:
   July 19th, 2010 at 5:47 pm

   If we can skip over the personalities and look at the finances we might see some danger signs - the increase in tax levy and fees is outpacing the “GDP” of the citizens.

4. Lynne Says:
   July 19th, 2010 at 6:44 pm

   The trickle down effect in reverse - declining revenues on all levels, coupled with federal budget cuts that result in budget deficits at the state level resulting in cuts to local aid resulting in municipal budget deficits…

   If things turn around (all right, there’s no guarantee, but it looks that way) then the “pie” grows, then revenue grows, then budgets get a boost…I think these projected deficits are probably pessimistic given that there’s a great big chance we’ve “hit bottom.”

   Then again, it gives us pause, to understand that if we haven’t hit bottom, we’re screwed.

5. Prince Charming Says:
   July 19th, 2010 at 7:53 pm

   Ya know, Bernie, if you named it the “Sullivam Garage” you’d never hear from him again.

6. Say Whaaaat? Says:
   July 19th, 2010 at 9:04 pm

   What if we haven’t hit bottom? Or what if the recovery never really brings us back anywhere close to where we were because people have cut back on spending and are actually putting money into savings and paying off credit card debt instead of the reckless consumer spending that gave us a false sense of a strong economy even though all of our good blue collar manufacturing jobs have gone overseas?

   I know that might be a bit pessimistic and wordy, but its a very real possibility. If government doesn’t curb its costs and the rate of its own reckless spending, that pie will never be enough to feed the monster.

7. Lynne Says:
   July 19th, 2010 at 9:14 pm

   It’s certainly possible, one might even say fairly even odds to happen, but the signs in the economy show some cautious optimism. Frankly, the fact of optimism itself is recovery. In economics, perception is often reality. If people feel more secure, they spend. That in turn creates demand, so more jobs are created to fill the orders. And so on. And so forth.

   The government spending isn’t the problem here. Deficits do not cause recessions. Private sector’s easy access to credit which then creates an economic bubble which then bursts causes it. Decreased revenues from the decreased economic activity causes the budget deficits (well that, and unnecessary wars and tax cuts for the rich). Anyway, if we want to decrease the deficit from spending cuts, I suggest we take the ginormous and inefficient Pentagon budget and start slicing. No one on god’s green earth needs to spend the money we do on defense. The cold war is over peeps.

8. joe from Lowell Says:
   July 19th, 2010 at 10:02 pm

   Monster? Is that what you see when you look at the Lowell City government?

   What monster? The one that switched the trash bins and reduced costs by six figures while increasing recycling rates?

   The one that’s paving your street?

   The one that reduced crime more than any other city in America during the 1990s?

   Real estate taxes is this city are the biggest bargain imaginable. I can’t believe how little we pay for the amount of house we get. Kwitcherbitchin.

9. New Lowellian Says:
   July 20th, 2010 at 7:12 am

   Has anyone ever checked into how many millions of dollars the city was left in debt when Sullivan left the job of city manager? I’ve heard that the debt he left was impressive.

10. Lynne Says:
    July 20th, 2010 at 9:32 am

    Though, NL, it might have been capital investments - sometimes debt is the only way you can make large one time investment. Similar to taking out a mortgage. No one in their right mind would say that a person with a good job capable of paying a mortgage shouldn’t invest in owning a house. But no one has $250K+ in their pocket to buy it outright, unless they are truly rich.

    But yeah, one wonders where the guy gets off bitching. As is evident by the response from Lynch - where he outlines how Sullivan basically did a lot of the things that he complains about.

11. Say Whaaaat? Says:
    July 20th, 2010 at 10:11 pm

    Yes Joe. Monster. We now pay more for our trash service, a lot more. In addition, by recycling more we’re saving a lot more money for the city. Not a penny of that has come back to our pockets. Pretty simple math to be honest. You pay more. The city saves more. None of it comes back to the taxpayer in the form of money. Sounds a lot to me like it all goes back into feeding the monster. I’ll keep my constitutionally given right to bitch, thank you, just as you do.

    Lynne, not only do deficits help cause recessions, they also curb government’s ability to respond to them. Look no further than what’s happening in Europe. We’re not that far off in the States from what’s happening there. I agree about the cost of prolonged war being extremely harmful to the economy at this point, though we can agree to disagree about the necessity. I’ll also agree with you on the need for some cutback in defense spending eventually. However, there’s no denying defense spending creates jobs. Look no further than the protests of those bastions of liberalism, Ted Kennedy and John Kerry, anytime a president tried to cut back on defense spending by taking some of that money away from Massachusetts. If Uncle Teddy and his little mini-me in the Senate fought for the money to keep coming home, you know there’s at least some economic or job creation benefit coming out of the defense department.

12. Lynne Says:
    July 21st, 2010 at 2:40 pm

    Oh give it up. Lowell’s trash fee was long long out of whack with expenses. It hadn’t been increased to keep up with inflation for ages. There was a HUGE deficit in the trash budget. You want your trash to be picked up? Someone has to pay for that. Simple math to be honest.

    You are deluded if you think that the Obama deficit (which by the way he INHERITED) is causing this recession to worsen. Our lack of spending is what is causing it - the private sector and consumers are not spending, and the government cut its spending off at the knees too quickly. If no one spends at all, then NO economic activity ensues. Thus a recession.

    There is time enough to worry about the deficit when we are no longer diving headfirst into a jobless recovery. Cutting spending WILL NOT HELP the economy, and neither will tax cuts. Increasing taxes modestly will not halt the recovery, either. End of story. If you think otherwise than you are not reality-based. Facts and history have proven this out time and again, but I love how the conservatives just live in their own little universe with different rules than the rest of us.

    By the way, the ONLY leaders who have ever fixed wide deficit problems in the last three decades were DEMOCRATS. Back when Clinton had his first two years, and had Dems in the majority, they set a course to reduce the deficit and pay down debt. (Slight increases in tax rate for the wealthy, and modest cuts to spending in the form of toning down military spending, primarily.) By the end of his term, that course closed the largest deficit in history (until Bush the Lesser came along…)

    I predict that if the Dems are in power beyond 2012, you’ll see them be the responsible stewards of the budget and bring it back into line. HOWEVER, that has to be AFTER we fix our immediate problems with jobs and the poor economy. Cutting spending now will only make the budget WORSE in the long run as tax receipts fall.

    I’ll revise my initial statement - deficits do not *usually* cause economic meltdown. An instance where it might have (or at least, exaggerated the one that existed) was, for instance, Greece. But that is an extreme example and one that does not apply here. Our deficit vs GDP is far, far above that of little Greece. No, I don’t want to become Greece. But we’re no where near that. Honestly, a little perspective please.

13. Mary Says:
    July 21st, 2010 at 3:47 pm

    I hate to state the obvious here Lynne, but when did you become an expert world economist? Aren’t you an artist of some sort? What are your credentials in the field of economics?

    Many “true” experts in the field would argue that deficits do in fact hurt the economy. Out of control spending is not the answer nor is increasing taxes that decimate job creation capital. President Obama may have inherited a mess but he has done NOTHING of substance to reverse course. Any spending post Bush is Obama’s spending plain and simple. You can’t blame the last guy for current spending when the credit card has been handed off to you.

    If deficits don’t matter, as you profess, it would have made no sense for President Clinton to balance the budget and eliminate the deficit. Which resulted in him governing over one of the most prosperous economic expansions in our lifetime and the country’s history. He should have just spent to his hearts content, gave everyone what they wanted, and been the hero. As much as I did not like him as a President I respected him on this very major point.

    You’re clearly delusional.

14. joe from Lowell Says:
    July 21st, 2010 at 4:22 pm

    You pay more. The city saves more. None of it comes back to the taxpayer in the form of money.

    Oh, is that what the government is for - to give you money? What a monster this government is - they do things better instead of handing out money! They expect you to clean up your own mess!

    Boo hoo.

15. joe from Lowell Says:
    July 21st, 2010 at 4:26 pm

    Many “true” experts in the field would argue that deficits do in fact hurt the economy.

    Not during a recession, no. You would be hard pressed to find even a single economist who would claim that running a deficit during a recession harms the economy.

    Out of control spending is not the answer

    Indeed, big spending during a recession to increase aggregate demand after it’s collapses is the answer.

    nor is increasing taxes that decimate job creation capital. That’s probably why the Democratic Congress enacted Obama’s proposal to provide the largest middle-class tax cut in American history, and the administration has delayed its plan to increase taxes on the top 1% until after the recession is over.

16. Lynne Says:
    July 21st, 2010 at 4:28 pm

    I hate to state the obvious here, but I can read, understand what I read, and decide for myself between competing points of view and the data each side states to back themselves up. I am also married to one of the smartest people I know, and we spend hours and hours debating, talking about things, and oh yes, actually gleaming some level of understanding out of it. I know, hard to believe.

    The fact is, there is no evidence for trickle down ever working. The fact is, stimulus spending works, and produces far more bang-for-buck in economic recovery dollars than tax cuts. But hey, I guess the people at the Congressional Budget Office aren’t smart enough for you?

    What was surmised is that deficits are currently the problem. What is truly wrong with the economy right now is a decrease in spending. When 2/3s of your economy is based on consumer spending, WTF do you think is hurting the economy the most?

    And what broke the economy to begin with?? That would be fake money being betted on by fake money. A bubble that basically was created out of greed because the market wasn’t regulated enough. It had little to do with the deficit one way or the other.

    It’s a damned long way to go to from saying, huge structural deficits over the course of a decade aren’t really that great, to saying that any budget deficit is automatically bad no matter what circumstances exist. OF COURSE balancing things in the long run is good. What I am saying is, if we worry about the deficit RIGHT NOW and cut spending, we might as well kiss our recovery goodbye. And again, if you really want to fix the deficit, fix revenues by getting the richest Americans to go back to actually doing their part instead of getting tax cuts. But I digress.

    But if you want to continue to not face actual reality, no one, not me, not the CBO, not Noble-winning economists, not a 100 years of historical data to look at, is going to convince you.

17. Lynne Says:
    July 21st, 2010 at 4:30 pm

    Joe - re government giving out money - well, unless you’re socialist Alaska, they give out money every year.

18. Mr. Lynne Says:
    July 21st, 2010 at 4:30 pm

    The markets reacted to Clinton’s addressing of the deficits. The markets are not reacting to the current high deficit. That is, if the deficit is a real concern, the markets haven’t noticed.

    Yglesias:

    Instead of worrying about CBO projections, people should worry about financial markets. If market concern about the deficit is pushing up interest rates or leading to problematic inflation, then you should worry. And of since you probably can’t reassure markets with one-off budget stunts, you probably need to enact measures with some enduring bite. This is what was done in 1990 and in 1993, and it worked out great. But what we need to be worrying about all the time is growth. That means stimulus when needed, it means deficit reduction when needed, and it means all the time striving to make the tax base more efficient, to improve education & infrastructure, and all the rest.

19. Say Whaaaat? Says:
    July 21st, 2010 at 9:03 pm

    “What was surmised is that deficits are currently the problem. What is truly wrong with the economy right now is a decrease in spending. When 2/3s of your economy is based on consumer spending, WTF do you think is hurting the economy the most? ”

    How about a little common sense reasoning here Lynne. If what’s truly wrong with the economy is a decrease in consumer spending (your words), doesn’t it stand to reason that higher taxes equal less consumer spending? It really is quite simple. If you have $100 to spend, but someone takes $40 when they used to take $30, you will spend $10 dollars less.

    Same with your theory about deficit spending. At some point, you spend yourself out of the ability to recover, which is where we’re getting dangerously close to. Think we’re that far off from Greece? Check out this little tidbit from a liberal source:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/12/business/economy/12leonhardt.html

    BTW, I never once called it Obama’s recession. You did. I never once used the words trickle down in trying to prove my point. Please don’t put words in my mouth in an effort to reframe the argument.

    As for trash removal, the city is taking in a lot more today from fees and from recycling savings than it did two years ago. If they were able to provide trash service in 2008, they can keep doing it today and still provide a little relief to taxpayers. Oh, that’s right. I forgot. They needed to give Paul Georges another $1 million in the latest budget so his members wouldn’t have to give any concessions yet again.

    And then you wonder why the average Joe is growingly increasingly frustrated.

20. Say Whaaaat? Says:
    July 21st, 2010 at 9:09 pm

    “Oh, is that what the government is for - to give you money? What a monster this government is - they do things better instead of handing out money! They expect you to clean up your own mess!”

    No Joe, I’m under no illusions. This city government is obviously here to take my money, a lot more of it than it used to. Somehow though, the level of service per dollar spent is deteriorating while.

21. Huh Says:
    July 21st, 2010 at 11:16 pm

    So the fee went up by $25. Have you considered that maybe the cost of trash removal has gone up over the years? What about how much state iad has been lost? What’s that $18-$20 million? How many city employees have been let go or jobs not filled? How much has health costs gone up because the state lawmakers don’t try to help the cities and towns. My taxes have gone up about $230 since 2008. Not a bad deal for the services we get especially compared to other places. I just think Say Whaaat likes to whine

22. Mr. Lynne Says:
    July 21st, 2010 at 11:25 pm

    “At some point, you spend yourself out of the ability to recover”

    Markets don’t think where anywhere there. In the short term, employment and growth are far more important.

    “…doesn’t it stand to reason that higher taxes equal less consumer spending?”

    Depends on who your talking about. Strictly speaking, tax cuts can be stimulative, but the bang of stimulus you get per dollar cut depends on who’s dollar it is. Moreover, there can be a point of diminishing returns - where other uses of that dollar would be more stimulative than just cutting taxes.

    As to your NYT article, we’re not Greece… and the markets illustrate this profoundly.

23. nextyearishere Says:
    July 22nd, 2010 at 8:13 am

    Spending is good for the economy, but bad to the degree that it runs up the deficit, both provately and publicly. So if we are to spend, the issue should be is it spent wisely.

    The most egregious spending in the past decade has been the waste of $1T in a war that never should have been waged. A lot of spending with very little stimulus, and the lingering effects on the servicemen and women and their health care.

    Tax cuts may do some good, but a lot of that money had ended up in China, or in the bank accounts of people who already have more money than they can possibly spend as stimulus to the economy.

    ARRA spending has been stimulative in many areas, in particular for energy and education, but questionable in other areas such as too much money into asphalt plants.

    Coming back to the City level, it seems like the administration has done well to control spending to offset the reduction in State aid, but there are still increases in taxes and fees that are increasing at a faster rate than the incomes of its citizens. Just like escalating health care costs, that is not sustainable over the long run. We should learn from the situation we are now in, and when the economy does improve the City should direct any excess revenue into reserve funds rather than increasing the structural costs in its budget. In that way, the next “bad time” can be handled better than it is today.

24. lowell gal Says:
    July 22nd, 2010 at 5:53 pm

    I think the richest Americans are doing their part and more. According to the Joint Econonic Committee the richest half of taxpayers pays nearly 97% of all income taxes, 54% is paid by the top 5%, the richest of the rich, the top 1% pay a hefty 34% of all personal income taxes collected by the Federal gov’t and 14 million LOWER INCOME Americans have been removed from the income tax rolls since 2000 due to the earned income tax credit and other tax cuts. IT’S THE SPENDING and the out of control government programs. It takes $8.00 -$9.00 in overhead to administer $1.00 in these “welfare” programs. How about
    Acorn, that was a real bang for your buck! If we just cut the payroll tax (no administrative cost there) and gave everyone an immediate raise it would be an boon to the economy.

25. joe from Lowell Says:
    July 22nd, 2010 at 8:24 pm

    “If what’s truly wrong with the economy is a decrease in consumer spending (your words), doesn’t it stand to reason that higher taxes equal less consumer spending?”

    YES! Higher taxes, particular higher taxes on the lower-income people who spend most of their income of consumer good, definitely equal less consumer spending.

    That’s why Obama and the Democrats slashed taxes as part of the Recovery Act, deficits be damned. That’s also why he delayed his proposal to raise taxes on the top 1% of earners in order to cover the cost of those tax cuts - because we need spending, not lower deficits, to get out of this recession.

    “Somehow though, the level of service per dollar spent is deteriorating while.”

    Bull crap. I think you just miss the G.O.B. skim that used to come off the top.

26. joe from Lowell Says:
    July 22nd, 2010 at 8:26 pm

    We should learn from the situation we are now in, and when the economy does improve the City should direct any excess revenue into reserve funds rather than increasing the structural costs in its budget.

    Amen. I’ll add, pay off the most expensive bonds. Free up so much bond capacity that we can greet the next recession - and some day, there will be another recession - without having to lay off people in the midst of a terrible job market.

27. Tommy Says:
    July 24th, 2010 at 7:10 pm

    Round 2 is in the books

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