Nice to see her finally lose one.
Misguided millionaires tax was a nonstarter - The Boston Globe
The court's opinion was pretty good:
Misguided millionaires tax was a nonstarter - The Boston Globe
Even the attorney general can’t wave her magic wand and turn an unconstitutional ballot question into a winner just because she likes it and wouldn’t mind currying favor with the progressive activists who supported it.
“The attorney general has not articulated a common purpose between these spending priorities [education and transportation] beyond the abstract determination that both purposes are ‘broad areas of public concern,’ ” the opinion noted.
So is the opioid crisis, for that matter, but it doesn’t mean it should be tied to an income surtax.
Raise Up Massachusetts, aided and abetted by an attorney general who chose to be more tax hike cheerleader than objective arbiter of that which properly belongs on the ballot, did itself a huge disfavor. If it truly believes the state’s wealthiest — and dare we say, most productive — citizens need to be taxed more, it could have proposed a clean surtax bill.
Instead the group outsmarted itself and wasted the past three years. But then again, it’s what they deserve.
The court's opinion was pretty good:
In other words, art. 48 was designed to safeguard the rights of the voters to be presented with a coherent, single statement of public policy, rather than be misled by efforts to "wheedle or deceive [them] into granting the privileges that our representatives never would permit" by presenting "measures that become law through the . . . wording of titles or . . . catchy provisions . . . that the people had previously rejected." Carney I, 447 Mass. at 227 n.20, quoting Constitutional Debates, supra at 567. It is hard to view a proposed "constitutional amendment" that one of its proponents said was deliberately "very differently constructed" from prior similar amendments, and where "because it is focused specifically on money for education and transportation will stand a better chance of being approved," as other than the precise type of wheedling and deceiving that the delegates had in mind when they adopted the relatedness requirement.