Affordable Housing Institute : US

By: David A. Smith

 

Just as bad facts make for bad law, bad laws make for bad behavior and bad administration.  Nowhere are these contradictions more visible than when adjacent jurisdictions that have a shared interest in macroeconomic health think they can get away with boundary exploitation by taxing more on our side of the fence than those on the other side of the fence.

 

The absurdity of this is brought home when those who make the laws that they expect others to observe flout their own handiwork, as did unlucky Massachusetts state representative Michael J. Rodrigues, who discovered the damning evidentiary power of a cell phone camera, and didn’t like it.  As gleefully reported by the populist Boston Herald:

 

State Rep. Michael Rodrigues, inset, a Westport pol, was spotted over the [September 1, 2009 – Ed.] weekend piling booze into his car – emblazoned with his ‘House 29’ Mass. license plate – at a tax-free N.H. liquor store.

 

A Westport lawmaker who voted to hike the state sales and alcohol taxes was spotted brazenly piling booze in his car – adorned with his State House license plate – in the parking lot of a tax-free New Hampshire liquor store, the Herald has learned.

 

This is not Michael Rodrigues’ car, and any inference to the contrary is unjustified

 

Savor the scene: a guardian of the public trust smuggling booze into his home state, caught red-handed violating a law he personally helped make more onerous:

 

Michael J. Rodrigues’ blue Ford Crown Victoria, emblazoned with his “House 29” Massachusetts license plate, was parked outside a Granite State liquor store on Interstate-95 South over the weekend, according to a witness who provided pictures to the Herald.

 

The witness, who requested anonymity, claimed he approached Rodrigues, noted his State House plate, and asked if he was on personal or official business.  

 

Fear of retaliation from the apparently powerful is universal.  Good government is about eliminating potential retaliation.  Worse, those in power tend to use intimidation as a shield.

 

Rodrigues, who was loading booze into his car, snapped “mind your own business,” the witness said.

 

“Rich, you’re giving smugglers like me a bad name.”

 

The witness’ account was also posted yesterday on Citizens for Limited Taxation’s Web site.

 

And it’s a doozy:

 

As my family and I were driving back from York Beach my wife asked me to pull off at the NH liquor store on 95 south at the Mass border. When I pulled around to get a parking space you can imagine my surprise to see what I could only assume to be a Mass state rep’s car. He also had a Deval Patrick/Tim Murray sticker on his back window – so I assume he’s a democrat who voted in favor of the recent sales tax hike.

 

Our citizen journalist is right on both counts.  Mr. Rodrigues is a Democrat, and he voted yes on the tax hike.

 

How Mr. Rodrigues would prefer to be seen

 

The Westport Democrat, whose family owns a rug business, was among the lawmakers who voted in an unpopular 25% sales tax hike for Bay Staters.

 

Like any other level of government, states are businesses; they have to make their revenues match their expenditures.  When the economy shb

 

The increase pushed the sales tax to 6.25% and slapped that same levy on booze – the first time alcohol has been subject to retail sales tax.

 

 

So the guy comes out with a couple of cases of booze in his carriage and loads them into his car. I asked him if this was “official” business or personal. He was surprised by my questioning and asked what business is it of mine as to what he’s doing. I told him I was a Mass citizen. He said it was personal – I pointed out the state car with official plates and he said it was “his”.

 

“That car is mine, not the state’s”

 

A far cry from Harry Truman, who smacked a stamp onto any personal correspondence he wrote when he was President.

 

I didn’t ask him why he was in NH purchasing alcohol instead of supporting Mass businesses and the 6.25% tax they just levied on us common folk…

 

Observe that Mr. Rodrigues’s district is about as far from New Hampshire as it’s possible to be in Massachusetts.

 

Why didn’t he shop in Rhode Island, which is literally next door?  Perhaps because Rhode Island’s sales tax is 7.00%, even higher than Massachusetts’ recently boosted rate, which was enacted

 

The state Senate voted last night to increase the sales tax, lift the sales tax exemption on alcohol, and allow cities and towns to raise meals and hotel taxes, brushing aside criticism that higher taxes would hurt Massachusetts businesses by driving consumers over the border, particularly to tax-free New Hampshire.

 

Place-based taxation is predicated on the assumption that consumers cannot flee the law’s grasping hand.

 

Lifting the sales tax exemption on alcohol sold at package stores would raise another $80 million for those services, senators said.

 

Assuming people don’t change their behavior.  But they do:

 

Mike Cimini, owner of Yankee Spirits liquor stores in Sturbridge, Attleboro and Swansea, said he’s lost about 10% of his business since the booze tax went into effect Aug. 1.

 

10% dispirited since August 1

 

That’s the problem with static taxation; if you squeeze too hard, you get a bigger slice of a much smaller pie. 

 

Actually, Massachusetts takes only half that 1/8 slice

 

Discontinuous laws, such as variations across state lines, always create edge effects – people gain a macro benefit for a microscopic shift in their actions. 

 

The hike has been blasted by business owners, especially those on the New Hampshire border, who say the increase has driven business north.

 

Not only do such edge effects or borderline behaviors cut into taxation, they shrink the state’s economy in favor of its low-tax neighbors.

 

At 6.25%, Massachusetts would have the second highest sales tax rate of the six New England states plus New York. Only eight states nationwide have a higher rate.

 

So Mr. Rodrigues, instead of buying his liquor at the new 6.25% tax rate he imposed on us as well as himself, took advantage of his New Hampshire jaunt to load up tax-free:

 

At least live sales-tax free

 

In an online interview with The Standard-Times in New Bedford, he acknowledged buying the booze during a bathroom stop while he and his wife were on a weekend getaway in New Hampshire.

 

Aside from the potential hypocrisy, Mr. Rodrigues might have violated Massachusetts law:

 

State law prohibits transporting more than 20 gallons of malt beverages [Beer – Ed.] or three gallons of any other alcoholic beverage.

 

It’s unknown how much Rodrigues purchased at the New Hampshire store.

 

Pity the scofflaw?

 

That’s a government-legal parking space

 

Poorly designed laws inspire even more poorly-designed enforcement remedies.  (My favorite example of belligerent process-fixated legislation are laws making it illegal to have a radar detector in your car – or even more absurd, to use it.)

 

Prohibiting people from transporting beer or alcohol has no public purpose except to compel people to pay a gratuitous ‘captive-resident’ tax.  Aside from being parochial mercantilism, it criminalizes rational behavior.

 

Police have the authority to detain and charge anyone illegally importing booze into the state.

 

Poorly-designed enforcement remedies inspire intrusive administrative laws.  Under the Fourth Amendment, police may not conduct unreasonable search and seizure, legislation that has its roots in colonial America, particularly Massachusetts. 

 

In questing for more taxes, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts drives its citizens to shop out of state, makes smugglers of vacationers, and turns the Staties into the temperance police.

 

Keg-smuggler!

 

Authorities have also cracked down at the border, targeting Bay Staters seeking to avoid paying state taxes by crossing into New Hampshire to shop.

 

Doesn’t this sound like a banana republic?

 

Back to our citizen journalist:

 

He had his wife with him. I left ahead of him and as I was driving down 95 into Mass doing the speed limit, he blew by me doing about 75 in the left lane.

 

I guess those who pass the laws need not abide by them. You would think that hours of testimony from Mass businesses, saying how the increased tax and the alcohol tax would hurt them by causing people go to NH, would have had an effect on these weasels. But, alas, it’s proof again that they have no conscience and only serve their own interests and themselves.

 

So, who was this guy?  I didn’t even want to make him feel good or important by asking.

 

Mr. Rodrigues fell back on a well-known defense.  When caught red-handed, blame the witness.

 

He also blamed the brouhaha on “Republican demagoguery.”

 

Such demagoguery: his license plate says, Expect the best.

 

“Unfortunately, I think that’s why the Republican Party is in such bad shape in Massachusetts,” Rodrigues is quoted as saying. “The electorate here is smart enough to figure out what they’re up to.”

 

The late great Leona Helmsley may have expressed this attitude best:

 

 

“We don’t pay taxes.  Only the little people pay taxes.“

 

Is that what the people are smart enough to figure out?

 

You tax take my New Hampshire booze when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.

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