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Date: 6/14/2022
AMHERST – The Amherst Democratic Town Committee (ADTC) met on Zoom on June 9 where it voted unanimously to support the Fair Share Amendment following an update and question and answer session with state Rep. Mindy Domb.
Domb opened by saying one of the things she wants to focus on after the state House and Senate vote on the fiscal year 2023 (FY23) budget is more legislation addressing the impact of the likely Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
“We’ll have to see what exactly that decision looks like, as many of you know it’s not just about protecting reproductive rights,” Domb said. “If that draft decision signals what we think it does, it’s a frontal attack on privacy.”
Related to upcoming elections, Domb implored her constituents to not only be active participants Massachusetts campaigns, “but for everything that you do for Massachusetts, to do something for Ohio, North Carolina, Pennsylvania. Massachusetts is going to be OK in the midterms, but those other states are not going to be, and those states are going to affect us.”
ADTC member Austin Sarat asked Domb about the constituent service burden on her office, a question that Domb said she loves because she remembers Sarat asking the same question when she was running for office.
“We’ll do anything,” Domb said. “If somebody needs help understanding what the process is to get onto MassHealth, we’ll help with that. If they’ve gotten denied from MassHealth and they want to know what the appeal is, we’ll do that. During COVID[-19] when people were desperate for unemployment insurance, every single legislative office including mine was involved with helping people get unemployment.”
“If people come to us with issues regarding social security, immigration, passports, the IRS, we will refer them to [Congresman] Jim McGovern’s office and other federal kinds of things,” Domb continued. “But if it involves the state, we will do our best to make sure that we help to clarify the process, figure out what the status of the situation is, nudge the administration to complete it favorably and then stay on top of it.”
Domb then left the meeting, thanking the listeners and saying she was going to tune into the first public hearing on the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Ian Rhodewalt, the Western Massachusetts Regional Organizer for the Fair Share Amendment (FSA) presented the amendment to unanimous support from the ADTC. The amendment would place a four percent tax on everything that a Massachusetts resident makes exceeding $1 million a year. The first $1 million will not have any tax increase, and only 20,000 to 25,000 individuals will be affected by the increase while proponents assert everyone in the state will benefit. 2021 Census data reports over 6.9 million residents in Massachusetts, meaning that approximately 0.35 percent of residents would pay the additional tax.
“This will be on the ballot in November, and it will raise revenue for the state for public pre-K-12 education as well as public higher education, public transportation and infrastructure,” Rhodewalt said. “It does this by creating an amendment to the state constitution so that’s what will be voted on. As many of us have seen over the course of the [coronavirus] pandemic, the rich have gotten much richer. The working families continue to be hit hard so it’s time for the very rich to pay their fair share, hence the name of the amendment so we can create new jobs, grow our economy and make it work for everyone.
“We need these investments in our public schools to help students recover from the effects of the pandemic, we need to repair our state’s transportation infrastructure and make public colleges affordable again and improve access to vocational education,” Rhodewalt said. “The richest 1 percent of Massachusetts households can clearly afford to pay a little more to make the investments that we all need. The Fair Share Amendment will fix our unfair tax system and dedicate money to both schools and transportation.”
The Amherst Town Council and School Committee will also vote on the amendment with Rhodewalt saying that passing it at the municipal, school and Democratic committee level is key so that “when we win in November, we can have this coalition already together to pressure legislators to follow up with the equitable distribution across the state of the funds that will come in through the FSA.”
Wanting to vote in support of the amendment, the ADTC was two members shy of having a quorum. After sending texts to members out of desperation, Ross eventually recruited Council Vice President Ana Devlin Gauthier and Domb back to the call to have 13 members, the exact amount needed to vote.
Support for the amendment passed unanimously, with Domb thanking the committee for asking her to return to the meeting.
“Anytime I can vote for the Fair Share Amendment, I’m going to do it,” Domb said.