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Sen. Karen Spilka and fellow senators took their oaths of office in 2019 prior to Spilka's election to her first full term as Senate president. State House News Service Photo | Sam Doran
After alluding to tax reform in an address to her colleagues last week, state Senate President Karen Spilka sketched out a few more details of her approach to taxation over the weekend.
In two Sunday television show appearances, Spilka said she wants everything to be on the table when it comes to new taxes and reiterated her support for taxing incomes over $1 million, an idea that requires passage of a constitutional amendment.
Spilka, who as she was sworn into her first full term last week laid out an agenda that includes tackling education funding, transportation, climate change, income inequality and health care costs, stopped short of calling for new or higher taxes.
She told WBZ-TV’s Jon Keller that she was “not necessarily saying we need broad-based tax increases right now,” and on WCVB’s “On the Record” said she thinks there are “lots of ideas without new taxes” around education and transportation.
“What I would like to do is have whoever is chair of the Revenue Committee on the Senate convene a group of senators, experts in the field,” Spilka told Keller. “Our economy is growing so rapidly with so many technological changes, we haven’t been keeping up, we’ve been doing it piecemeal. We make laws to change in how we tax the home-sharing or the ride-sharing businesses, but we’re years behind. You know the legislature moves slowly, it takes time, so it not only decreases our tax revenue but in terms of regulation and handling all the new economy, the new technology, it creates a lot of confusion for the businesses, government officials, consumers themselves. It would be great if we could figure out some way to do it more proactively, look at what a 21st century tax system should be.”
Last Wednesday, after her colleagues elected her Senate president, Spilka said the state must create “an economic development and tax framework for the 21st century where innovative technology-driven businesses can develop and thrive here, but where we also capture new revenue to continue providing essential services, and fund our vision for our future.”
