Boston Municipal Research Bureau confirms what I have been saying: No proper fiscal management at City Hall

***Boston Municipal Research Bureau confirms McCrea’s calls for Financial Responsibility***

Today the Boston Municipal Research Bureau put out a report which confirms what I have been saying throughout the campaign: City Hall is not being prudent with our money. (http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/report.pdf)

All three of my opponents have been complicit in this expansion of the City Payroll without being responsible about the long term financial considerations. In the last four years, the Mayor has added 1200 new jobs to the City Payroll, of which only 200 are police officers and 100 are teachers. That is 900 non-essential jobs. The City Budget has grown at twice the rate of inflation.

Councilors Flaherty and Yoon have done no better. In the past four years the City Council budget has increased by 20%. In the past two years they voted to increase City Council Central Staff by 8.5%. Now they give a reason for running for Mayor is because the City Council has little power to affect change. If the City Council has such little relevance, why did they increase the money spent on an area of government which is not essential? Michael Flaherty voted for the budget every single year until this one. Sam Yoon voted against the budget because he wanted to increase amounts spent, and he wants to implement a regressive “five cents for safety” sales tax on top of our already increased sales tax.

As I have been telling interested voters, we are facing 10 percent increases in property taxes in both fiscal year 2010 and 2011 because of the bad fiscal management at City Hall combined with the downturn in commercial real estate. Meanwhile the Mayor continues to give away our valuable assets like Hayward Place ($23 million) for free to connected developer friends. This needs to stop.

When I am elected Mayor I will:

• Eliminate the BRA and reclaim the hundreds of millions of property and revenue Menino has given away
• Save on health care costs by moving municipal employees to the State Plan
• Sell all excess property the City owns at market rates
• Make non-profits pay the suggested PILOT payments or suspend zoning and building permits
• Eliminate tax breaks for rich developers such as $8 million for One Beacon Street and $2 million for JP Morgan Chase
• Install zero based budgeting at City Hall to eliminate the waste, fraud and abuse of our resources
• Eliminate over 4 years the $80 million spent on busing, and reinvest that into the schools

Three years ago I put together a power point presentation “Show me the Money” which I disseminated around town which the Boston Globe reported on (http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/11/26/their_mission_overthrow_the_bra/). I outlined exactly the fiscal crisis we are in now. My three opponents ignored the warnings. “It is time to elect someone who will watch the publics’ money as closely as his own.”