Opinon: Question 5 is an Attack on Our Public Services by Billionaires

Ballot Question 5, the “State Revenue Limit & Rebate,” is a stealth attack on our public services. Its sponsors promise it will return money to taxpayers by reducing the cap on state tax revenue. What they don’t mention is that by slashing state revenues by around $2 billion a year, it would require big cuts to public education, transportation, healthcare, food aid, fire stations, and other essential services. The harms caused by these cuts would more than outweigh the small rebates to households, which would be $200 or so annually on average (and substantially less than that for taxpayers who aren’t rich).

Follow the money. Question 5 was spearheaded by the Massachusetts High Technology Council, a secretive alliance of our state’s corporate elite. As of May the Council included 47 corporations and consulting firms (since May it has wisely removed its member list from its website). Among them were Fidelity Investments, Pegasystems, and Suffolk Construction, whose three CEOs have a combined net worth of over $40 billion. Question 5 would deliver billions in savings to the state’s wealthiest people in the coming years. And since few of them send their kids to public schools or ride the buses, they are unbothered by cuts to the services that ordinary people depend on.

Question 5 is their response to the Fair Share Amendment, or “Millionaires Tax,” that Massachusetts voters approved in 2022. By levying a small annual surtax on incomes over $1 million, Fair Share has raised over $9 billion for public education and transportation. That money pays for school meals for children, free community college, free bus service through the PVTA, and much more.

After we won Fair Share, the rich didn’t just slink away in defeat. They devised Question 5 as a way of clawing back most of the Fair Share revenues. They formed the progressive-sounding “Taxpayers for an Affordable Massachusetts” to advocate for it. To entice voters, they included modest tax rebates for ordinary people, while falsely claiming that the cuts won’t harm “important services like education, transportation, or healthcare.”

Question 5 has slipped under most people’s radar. I urge readers to vote No and to spread the word.

Kevin A. Young teaches history at UMass Amherst and is a member of the Massachusetts Society of Professors and the Massachusetts Teachers Association, both of which have formally condemned Question 5.