Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney Delivers 2005 State Of The Commonwealth Address

Massachusetts Governor Romney Delivers 2005 State Of The Commonwealth Address

Focusing on education, calls for more accountability, help in troubled urban districts

January 13, 2005 -- Governor Mitt Romney, citing a turnaround in the state’s finances and major government reforms, declared in his 2005 State of the Commonwealth address that the state is “strong and growing stronger” and that “Massachusetts is back.”“In the last two years, we’ve saved the taxpayers millions of dollars through consolidations and efficiencies,” Romney said, speaking in the historic chamber of the House of Representatives. “We’ve modernized outmoded systems that hadn’t been touched in decades. We reformed transportation, reformed public construction, reformed school building assistance to speed new schools. We launched landmark housing policies, created merit-based college scholarships and restructured departments and agencies. And we achieved these goals without raising taxes.”

Romney vowed to work with the Legislature in a bi-partisan effort to enact the Education Reform Act of 2005, building on the significant progress made in our schools over the past decade by now turning the focus to accountability and helping lower-performing urban schools.

“Kids in our urban schools, most of them minorities, are not succeeding at anywhere near the rate of their counterparts in the suburbs,” Romney said. “And let me be clear: The failure of our urban schools to prepare our children today for the challenges of tomorrow is the civil rights issue of our generation.”

In the 20-minute live televised address, Romney laid out his agenda for 2005, which includes extending health care coverage to more people, introducing stricter welfare to work requirements, moving to the next stage of auto insurance reform, leading the way for greater control over our ocean resources and merging the Turnpike Authority in a way that provides substantial and meaningful toll relief.

“For the last two years, I have asked for the Turnpike Authority to be merged into the state Highway Department,” Romney said. “You know I don’t give up easy. So, it’s coming again, but with a big difference: This year, I will propose that all the savings from the merger go toward toll relief. The toll burden on the people of Western and Central Massachusetts is simply unfair and we all know it.”

Merger savings that will be redirected to toll relief are estimated at $170 million in the first year and $20 million every year thereafter.

Saying that the budget he submits later this month will be structurally balanced without drawing on reserves or relying on one-time funds, Romney said there will still be room to lower the income tax from 5.3 to 5 percent consistent with the will of the voters.

“Let’s continue to fuel the recovery by giving the people of Massachusetts the tax rollback they voted for,” Romney said. “It’s good for working families. It’s good for small business. It’s a powerful stimulus for the economy. And, it’s our job to listen to the people.”

Romney lauded the progress that has been made in creating new jobs and said he would propose to further stimulate job growth by filing a jobs bill in February. Among its features will be the expansion to other industries of the measure approved in 2003 that provides medical product manufacturers with a payment equal to one-half the income taxes paid by new workers.

He also called for reducing by thousands the waiting list of adult immigrants who have been denied a seat in English as a Second Language (ESL) classes, beefing up the state’s sales force to bring more jobs here and lowering unemployment insurance costs by bringing benefits in line with the rest of the nation.

“Our state program is so far out of line, it makes California’s seem inexpensive,” said Romney. At $586 per employee, Massachusetts currently has one of the most expensive unemployment insurance costs in the nation. California’s unemployment insurance rate per employee is $343.

The Romney jobs program will also include measures to stimulate more housing, add new capital projects and streamline permitting for business expansion.

For our senior citizens, Romney said he supported providing property tax relief consistent with Proposition 2½ and said he would propose maintaining the state’s Prescription Advantage program to fill in gaps with the new federal Medicare prescription drug benefit once it takes effect in January 2006. This move will still allow Massachusetts to save money, while providing the state’s seniors with one of the most generous prescription drug benefits in the nation.

For schools, Romney praised the success of the Education Reform Act of 1993 for pumping more money into public education and introducing testing as a standard for graduation. He proposed a new Education Reform Act of 2005 with some of the following key features:

* Extending the school day in our most troubled districts with a provision for special help, study hall and sports;
* Paying our best teachers more;
* Providing financial incentives to attract math and science teachers to the teaching profession;
* Making science part of the MCAS requirement, along with English and math;
* Improving teacher training and mentoring;
* Making it easier to fire teachers who are not qualified to be in the classroom;
* Lifting the cap on charter schools;
* Raising the bar for our institutes of higher education to better prepare the educators of tomorrow; and
* Requiring parental preparation classes in our failing school districts.

“Education is the investment our generation makes in the future,” Romney said. “And education reform is the job of the Legislature and the Executive. We are ready to do that job.”

Romney closed his address with a special tribute to all the Massachusetts men and women who have answered the call to go to war, singling out two members of the Massachusetts National Guard who were seated in the family gallery with the Governor’s wife, Ann.

Sergeant First Class Andrea Couture, of Sterling, a wife and a mother of two children, was deployed to Southern Iraq for 15 months beginning in March 2003, leaving her family behind.

Sergeant Peter Damon, a Brockton native, husband and father of two small children, was wounded while serving in Iraq in October 2003 when a tire he was changing on a Blackhawk helicopter exploded. As a result of the incident, Sergeant Damon lost his right arm above the elbow and his left hand and wrist.

After honoring Couture, Damon and all those who serve our nation, and pausing to remember the 15 Massachusetts men killed in Iraq in 2004, Romney said, “We are humbled by the sacrifice and inspired by the courage.”

The evening program was kicked off with the Pledge of Allegiance, which was led by the Bergquist siblings of Norwell. Brittany, age 14, and her brother Robbie, age 13, founded “Cell Phones for Soldiers,” a non-profit organization that provides pre-paid calling cards for soldiers deployed overseas in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait. Their older sister, Courtney, age 18 and a student at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, helps out, too. Since its inception nine months ago, Cell Phones for Soldiers has provided nearly $300,000 worth of calling cards and donations to soldiers serving overseas, an achievement that Romney wanted to recognize by inviting the youngsters to tonight’s speech.