Boston's Campaign: A Pun Against a Promise

Tomorrow Boston voters will elect a new mayor for a city that is sick. Patronage pressures have expanded the city payroll to extravagant size, boosting the city budget. The incredibly high real estate tax--now $101.20 per $1000 assessed--has discouraged new building and driven some long established business to other cities. As they leave the tax base shrinks, and the city is forced to increase the tax rate for those who remain. And Boston faces other, secondary problems too: public transportation, inadequate parking, the "abatement racket," and juvenile delinquency, to name just a few. As the suburbs enjoy booms in homes, stores, and factories, the "core city" is decaying.

But, in the mayoralty campaign between John E. Powers, president of the Massachusetts Senate, and John F. Collins, Suffolk County's Register of Probate, the issue of a dying city has nearly been forgotten. The campaign's chief feature, aside from a daily round of recriminations, is a simple pun, which Collins works to exhaustion:

"Stop Power Politics."

Plastered over billboards, on the face of a thousand campaign posters, repeated many times daily over radio and television, this catchy play-on-words has caught the voters' attention. Asked to define a "power politician," Collins called him "one interested in helping himself rather than the city, who has a big campaign chest, and who in the final days of the campaign will try to submerge the issues under a flood of newspaper advertisements and radio-television appearances."

And Collins has given specific examples. Referring to Powers' instrumental role in defeating the pay raise proposal for the University of Massachusetts faculty, Collins accused him of the "boldest and most cynical attack" on education in the state's history.

Furthermore, Collins cites his opponent as "sponsor of the law that legalized pinball machines in the Common-wealth--which a Federal Court has ruled to be gambling devices." And, says Collins, Powers has "refused to explain why he voted against the Massachusetts Crime Commission." Finally, the Register of Probate charges that Powers' "unlimited supply of campaign funds is constantly unexplained and mysterious."

Under the punning slogan of "Stop Power Politics," Collins thus implies that his opponent values his own career more than such matters as education, that he either deals with or at least sympathizes with gamblers and underworld figures, and that hidden sinister sources are supplying his financial support. In response, Powers claims that he can "do more for Boston," in short, that he is effective as a politician. Of course, he denies any dishonest dealings.

"No amount of campaign window dressing," Collins lashed out, "no amount of political endorsement by respectable names--who themselves may have been misled or incompletely informed--no amount of glib talk by college professors as advisers, and no amount of pretense can alter to any degree, or for a single moment, the true nature of a candidate's background."

And Powers has replied in kind. Collins, he said, was "a disciple" of the insurance companies against the interests of the "working man." In the Senate, said Powers, "not a day went by when we didn't have to hold up a rollcall to wait for him to come from trying cases against the working man and woman before the industrial accidents board." To this charge of "perfidy," Collins said he had never tried such cases, and, on the subject of labor, that his opponent was vice-president of a non-union wholesale food supply house.

Second, the Senate President accused Collins of accepting legal fees of $65,000 from the Boston Housing Authority under curious circumstances. Yes, replied Collins, he had done legal work for the Authority, but had never received the sum mentioned. In a counterattack, he said Powers had pocketed $140,000 tax-free from the proceeeds of a testimonial dinner held last March.

As all these charges were being prepared and delivered the real issues took second place, although the candidates did present vague, nearly similar programs. Both recognized the central problem: to reduce the city payroll, and to institute sound, efficient accounting and auditing methods.

Both proposed a gradual reduction of the payroll through a "no-fire, no-hire" policy, although observers say that Powers might settle for a "no-fire, limited-hire" program. As employees drop from the payroll through death or resignation, the job simply will not be refilled. Obviously, exceptions are necessary: for indispensable officials, and for city departments that already operate on a relatively tight budget.

Second, both candidates agree on the need for strict, modern accounting of city expenses.

Third, Powers has suggested that tax payments might be made in two installments--a simple proposal that would free the city from carrying expensive short-term loans for operating expenses.

The central issue, however, is Boston's abnormally small tax base, and the resultingly high tax rate. Of the twenty largest U.S. cities, Boston is the only one which relies solely on real estate taxation to provide operating funds each year. And the large amount of tax-free property within the city itself--Boston College, Boston University, Simmons College, several large hospitals, numerous churches--imposes an additional burden.

In an attempt to extract money from some of these institutions, Collins has suggested that, without altering their tax-exempt status, they should pay to the city a "donation in lieu of taxes," similar to the procedure that both Harvard and M.I.T. follow in Cambridge. But this proposal is not as simple as it may sound, for, while the city is poor, so are the colleges.

Governor Foster Furcolo has proposed a more sweeping solution: imposition of a limited sales tax throughout the state. Receipts from this three per cent levy would be redistributed to the cities and towns of the commonwealth. In an effort to win Boston support for his proposal, Furcolo developed his program of redistribution so that the city would receive more than a generous share. It was said that such an indirect subsidy to Boston could cut the real estate levy--now $101.20--by as much as $20, a considerable improvement if possible.

Despite the obvious attraction of Furcolo's proposal for Boston members of the legislature, Powers bitterly attacked the sales tax idea, and threw his 28 years of political savvy into the fight. It was not passed. And when the Governor tried several times to revive his proposal, Powers' opposition and the natural reluctance of other congressmen to impose new taxes killed it.

To many, Powers' position seemed poorly supported. But others, such as Arnold M. Soloway, assistant professor of Economics and a member of Powers' "brain trust," doubt that Boston would, in the long-run, benefit from the sales tax revenue. "The city is like a sponge," Soloway says. If Boston got a windfall from the state, various groups of city employees would pressure for wage raises; this patronage pressure would soon soak up the additional funds meant for easing the tax burden.

"No additional funds from the outside can help Boston," Soloway believes, "and any lasting relief must come by means of internal reform within the city itself."

Boston already collects more taxes per capita than any other city in the nation--and nearly all this money comes through a real estate levy that is both too high and unequally assessed. The answer to the problem, says Powers, is not new sources of income, but reforms within the city itself. "Any proposed new tax would only be an intolerable hardship upon the people," he says.

But this ambitious hope raises the question: does Powers have the political courage--or rather, strength--to stand against the demands of many pressure groups? Last year, Mayor Hynes approved a "white paper" which called for a no-fire, no-hire policy. It has been collecting dust in his desk drawer; due to political pressure, the experiment came to naught.

Collins too favors radical economies. Poetically, he demands that the city eliminate "the drones, the fakers, the coffee-break takers." In addition, however, Collins has taken the politically dangerous position of endorsing a sales-tax program similar to that proposed by Governor Furcolo and defeated through the efforts of Senator Powers. In his campaign speeches, Collins has reiterated this idea constantly: even with the most rigid economies possible in the city government's operation, only a few dollars could be saved; additional revenue--i.e. the sales tax--alone can and must be found to reduce the tax rate and to end the upward spiral.

On the contrary, Powers seeks only economy, always a popular slogan. Unlike his opponent, he did not5GOVERNOR FOSTER FURCOLO