State House: II

Like a small child caught smoking his father's old briar, state legislators can come up with the most impassioned irrelevancies. When the Blanchard Report recently appeared, implying that the Dever Administration corporation taxes were responsible for the flight of local industry from the Commonwealth, everyone started yelling. In the debate, no one has faced the main problem--how to end the State's progressive industrial anemia.

Instead of studying whatever solutions the Blanchard Report might offer, the Republicans are busy trying to discredit the Democrats and the Democrats are trying to cover up the report. Those with a consistent interest in the problem of Massachusetts industry, like the Business School's Professor Teele, have long since withdrawn from the fracas.

Powell M. Cabot '18, chairman of the Industry and Development Commission, received the Report first; he refused to release it until all his fellow commissioners had studies it. Although this was reasonable, the Boston evening newspapers played it up as wicked censorship. When the Report, still unreleased, was farmed out to various local economists, like Professor Teele, it became obvious that the papers were correct and that the Administration feared its release. By this time Cabot's superior, Labor Commissioner John J. DelMonte, had begun to gather up and hide some of the Report's six copies.

Actually the Report's contents are no secret at all. State House leaks have made its contents widely known, and its release is no longer a significant issue so far as the problem of Massachusetts industry is concerned. However, the arguments have gone on so long that neither side can back out. The Republicans have moved to file contempt charges against DelMonte, and Dever has announced that he will fully pardon his Labor Commissioner of any penalty that the Senate may propose.

The Senate GOP has much to gain by airing the Report which has had enough publicity to make it a powerful weapon against the Administration. The Democrats would probably like to wait until they can issue a new report based on Blanchard's document and their own answers.

This Report is only one of many that have indirectly attacked Dever's tax policy, but it is the first one to stir up a real controversy. This is hardly encouraging, however, because the debate is purely partisan. With elections a full year away, the legislators can afford to forget politics and work on solving the most pressing problem Massachusetts now faces. If the State House does not find a way out soon, there will not be enough industry left in the State to even write reports on.