Governor's New "Municipal Partnership Package" Will Stifle Telecommunications and Harm Consumers

Massachusetts is ready to punish the critical telecommunications industry and raise taxes, while bizarrely construing it as "freedom." 

In so doing, the state is pioneering new realms in maintaining its derisive moniker "Taxachusetts." 

This month, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick and Lieutenant Governor Timothy Murray announced a "Municipal Partnership Package," which grants cities and towns greater freedom to raise taxes and other fees. 

Local mainstream media naturally applauded this new round of bigger government and tax increases, as the Boston Globe trumpeted the ludicrously contorted headline, "Patrick Seeks Tax Freedom for Cities, Towns."  Most Americans would interpret "tax freedom" to mean freedom from taxes, not greater freedom to tax. 

George Orwell must be grimacing in his grave at such use of the term "freedom." 

Governor Patrick's proposal would authorize local authorities to impose increased taxes upon telecommunications companies, at a time when the United States already trails other developed nations in broadband deployment.  In order to rationalize this new burden, officials mischaracterize the issue as one of "empowering local communities" and telecommunications providers somehow deviously utilizing "loopholes:" 

"The Patrick/Murray administration has been working to identify ways to ease restrictions on local communities to allow them more freedom to grow their local economies.  The legislation establishes a commission to consider ways to grant increased local authority in areas currently requiring home rule petitions...  Overall, the telecommunications industry in Massachusetts is avoiding an estimated $140 million in annual property taxes due to the loopholes and outdated language in the current law.  In addition, 'new growth' revenues that would normally accrue with the addition and replacement of property will be lost as telecommunications companies use the new law to keep once-taxable property off local tax rolls." 

There's nothing like higher local taxes and politicians' self-serving accusations of malfeasance to encourage telecommunications providers to expedite broadband technologies to Massachusetts consumers, right? 

Apparently, Massachusetts politicians and media slept through the 1980s, when free-market principles triumphed in sparking over twenty years of almost uninterrupted growth and defeated Communism.  While bureaucratic mires like Europe suffer stagnant growth, and high-tax states like New York, Michigan, and California lose businesses and residents to lower-tax and less-regulated states, Massachusetts leaders apparently believe they live in an alternative universe. 

Unfortunately, as always, consumers will pay the ultimate price. 

Punishing telecommunications companies by targeting them with tax increases will only weaken their incentives to build new networks and launch next-generation broadband services.  These telecommunications providers must invest hundreds of millions of dollars to lay wires and establish infrastructure, and must be confident that they can recover a return on those enormous investments.  If doing so becomes cost-prohibitive because of increased local taxes like those proposed by Massachusetts, they will have no incentive to spread new technologies and services to consumers in the first place. 

In other words, under the Municipal Partnership Package, local bureaucracies win, and consumers who need broadband and the latest telecommunications technologies lose.  It's as simple as that. 

At a time when America trails other nations in terms of broadband distribution and telecommunications advancement, Massachusetts consumers simply cannot afford to further stifle telecommunications providers with higher taxes.  Nor should consumers suffer inflated prices, limited choice and technological delay due to the tax-and-spend designs of local politicians. 

Massachusetts's innocently-named Municipal Partnership Package will only suppress telecommunications advances, inhibit economic growth, and punish consumers. 

What a terribly sad reversal of the 1773 Boston Tea Party.  It's time for Massachusetts citizens and consumers to stand up, just as they did two centuries ago.