Conservative advocacy groups and think tanks from across New England gathered for a summit in Boston Tuesday, positioning themselves as a counterpoint to left-leaning environmental activists and trading notes about the policy challenges they see.
Representatives from the groups said they share similar goals — chief among them, preserving both the competitiveness of their states and the reliability of the region’s energy grid. But they say they face different political dynamics on the ground.
In Connecticut, Bryce Chinault of the Yankee Institute said the tax burden and an overall high cost of living mean “the status quo just really isn't working” and have businesses and wealthy residents looking to relocate.
Meanwhile, Greg Moore, Americans for Prosperity’s state director in New Hampshire, said the Granite State benefits from “a side hustle, which consists of taking advantage of the bad policy decisions of our neighbors.”
He said there are realtors ready to sell border-community homes to high earners in Massachusetts wary of the new tax here on annual income over $1 million, and car dealers eyeing 2035, when other states plan to have phased out the sale of new gasoline-powered vehicles.
“The biggest problem we have in New Hampshire is that we don’t build enough housing,” Moore said. “All of you seem to want to move there.”
Moore said New Hampshire’s lower taxes and continued tax relief efforts make the state appealing to businesses.
The Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance, the group that hosted the summit, has been advocating for Gov. Maura Healey to cut taxes here, as she said she wanted to do during her campaign.
MassFiscal spokesman Paul Craney said that with the new income surtax now in effect — an extra 4% tax on the portion of income over $1 million, to fund education and transportation — Healey should go big when it comes to other tax cuts.
“Don’t do tax reform. Don’t do targeted tax relief. That won’t do anything. It has to be bold,” Craney said. “It has to be eliminating taxes altogether. I would start with the estate tax, get rid of it completely. Even Joe Biden’s home state of Delaware got rid of it. It pushes people to domicile elsewhere.”
State lawmakers last session considered, but never reached agreement on, a package of tax reforms that featured tweaks to the estate tax alongside breaks for populations including renters, seniors and caregivers.
Healey, in her inaugural address this month, called tax relief something she wanted to get done, pointing to lawmakers “several worthy tax cut proposals” from last year and her own plan for a child tax credit for every family. She also said she wants to build a competitive economy and partner with the state’s business community.
Craney said the groups that gathered at the Hampshire House in Boston’s Beacon Hill neighborhood — which also included the New England Legal Foundation, Maine Policy Institute, New Hampshire’s Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy, the Vermont-based Ethan Allen Institute and the Rhode Island Center for Freedom and Prosperity — believe voters care deeply about fiscal issues. He said he hoped the meeting marked “the start of trying to get the voters to be more focused on these issues” when they cast their ballots.
With tax cuts and reduced regulations typically seen as a conservative viewpoint, they face an uphill battle in Massachusetts, where Democrats hold all the state’s constitutional offices and wield supermajority control of the Legislature. But economic issues do resonate: In a UMass Amherst poll shortly before last November's election, 33% of respondents named the economy as the most important issue in their decision who to vote for, followed by 29% who said it was the health of our democracy.
Mike Stenhouse, who played for the Red Sox in 1986 and now leads the Rhode Island Center for Freedom and Prosperity, said there is a strong environmental left movement in Massachusetts that influences the state’s public policy. Massachusetts has committed to reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, and advocates have called for building out wind, solar and other renewable power sources to push the state along that track and away from fossil fuels.
Stenhouse said the region instead should be expanding pipeline capacity and bringing in more natural gas, to keep energy costs in check and stave off the risk of power shortages.
“I think the purpose of this meeting is to say on notice, yeah, there might be an environmental left movement out there, but there’s a freedom, pro-energy movement forming here in New England as well,” he said.
