Marty Lamb expected to announce candidacy at event in Southborough tomorrow

For the past couple of months, Republican Marty Lamb has been campaigning to represent the 8th Middlesex District at the statehouse, but he hasn’t officially announced his candidacy yet. That’s expected to change at an event tomorrow night in Southborough.

In a media advisory, Lamb’s representatives said he would announce “whether or not he will run” at Owen O’Leary’s Restaurant on Tuesday evening, but posts on his Facebook page calling the event a “kick-off” suggest his decision is to run.

Lamb will challenge Democratic incumbent Carolyn Dykema to represent the 8th Middlesex, which includes all of Southborough in addition to Hopkinton, Holliston, and part of Westborough.

In 2010, Lamb unsuccessfully challenged Jim McGovern to represent Southborough, among other towns, in the US Congress.

Tomorrow night’s campaign event runs from 7:00 to 9:00 pm. Tickets are $35 per person or $50 per couple and can be purchased at the door or by calling 508-429-3666.

(Photo: Marty Lamb campaigning in Westborough last week, contributed photo)

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Publius
12 years ago

Lamb seems to be a flakey candidate. Is he hardcore tea Party ? Does he have any support from elected officials ? The Representative seems to be doing a good job.

Frank Crowell
12 years ago
Reply to  Publius

What elected official supports Marty Lamb? This is laugh out loud moment. Well let’s see now……….how many are Democrats…….and there is your answer. One party rule in the legislature has really done us well here in Mass…………not.


Al Hamilton
12 years ago
Reply to  Publius

Lets see, someone who does not even want us to know his/her name is taking cheap shots at a candidate. Talk about dirty….

Ralph Zazula
12 years ago

Go Marty!

Joyce Rosen
12 years ago

I was at the kick off tonight. The place was packed. I’m glad I decided to go. I heard a lot in Marty’s speech that I liked. The beer was great, too!

Kelly Roney
12 years ago

Tea Party Marty has lots of supporters who can’t vote for him because they live outside the district.

Those of us who actually know Carolyn Dykema know that she’s a great State Rep.

Al Hamilton
12 years ago
Reply to  Kelly Roney

Kelly – Please tell us exactly what Ms. Dykema has done for Southborough. I’m curious.

SB Resident
12 years ago
Reply to  Al Hamilton

What she has done for Sboro is to help make us part of the greatest state in the nation. Everything in life shouldn’t be me, me, me. This statistic alone is pretty good proof of our state’s success.

“According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, average wages range from a low of $33,930 in Mississippi to a high of $53,700 in Massachusetts.”
http://www.foxbusiness.com/personal-finance/2012/03/21/worst-states-to-make-living-2012/#ixzz1plE1rYS2

You may have to pay taxes on it, but move and you’ll be making less, this way at least the money stays in the state.

I don’t like our per capita debt and don’t trust the dems to pay it down, but the one thing I know is electing a tax cutter sure isn’t the way to do it.

Frank Crowell
12 years ago
Reply to  SB Resident

You can do better then the wages argument……….right? Cost of living is pretty high here.



http://www.costoflivingbystate.org/



Oh, yes, I do think my taxes can be cut.

Certainly you got the right candidate if you do not want your taxes cut. Didn’t she support raising the tolls on the pike?


Kelly Roney
12 years ago
Reply to  Frank Crowell

Carolyn never supported raising Turnpike tolls. In 2008, she floated the idea of tolls on I-93 as a way to stop the then-proposed terrible unfairness of paying for the Big Dig predominantly out of MetroWest, especially given that North Shore and South Shore commuters get far more benefit from the Big Dig than we do. But ever since 2008, her opponents have been misleadingly claiming she supported raising Pike tolls.

In Rep. Dykema’s words:

As you may remember, back in 2009, the tolls on the Mass Turnpike were going to increase dramatically to pay for debt costs related to the big dig. Commuters from the communities I represent were going to be unfairly burdened with paying for this debt through toll increases, even though the project clearly has state-wide benefits. During the FY2010 budget, I joined a coalition of legislators that fought to make sure toll fares would no longer be used for big dig debt and pushed for a more equitable solution to meeting the state’s big dig debt obligations.

Frank Crowell
12 years ago
Reply to  Frank Crowell

Gas tax increase it is for Ms. Dykema………………toll increase on the pike?……….restore the tolls in the west – that would be a toll increase by my reckoning.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MmKDxZHugI



Property tax relief? 



How did the Sal DiMasi vote work out?



To be fair, she did vote “to slash the collective bargaining power of municipal workers.”



http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/news/x1934472329/Unions-blast-House-vote-on-health-care



I believe this is a benefit to Southborough. 
That vote could not have been easy.

Kelly Roney
12 years ago
Reply to  Frank Crowell

Fair correction, Frank, thanks. Restoring tolls in Western Mass, not increasing tolls on Metrowest commuters – unless they were commuting to Albany or Springfield.

Average state and local taxation in Massachusetts as a percentage of income is moderate – below the national average, in fact.

What do we get for our tax dollars? The best public schools in America, 100% health insurance for children, 98% health insurance for adults, a central place in all the major new technologies of the past three decades (due in no small part to our strong emphasis on education), concomitant high incomes, low crime, and low incidence of most social problems.

Does government long-dominated by Democrats get credit for all of that? Of course not. But the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and we’re eating pretty well, in part because we have an active government.

Frank Crowell
12 years ago
Reply to  Frank Crowell

Kelly – Never sure where you get your facts from.



http://www.census.gov/govs/statetax/05staxrank.html



As for the rest of your post, I simply do not know where to start so I wont.


Al Hamilton
12 years ago
Reply to  Frank Crowell

Kelly

The Mass Tax Burden (State and Local) (as a % of per capita income) is rated 11th highest in the country as of 2009
http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxdata/show/460.html. Far from the worst but well above the average. We can argue about whether we are getting our monies worth but our tax burden is high as a % of income particularly considering that our incomes are well above average.

As for the Pike, I believe that Ms Dykema failed so I can’t give her any credit. If she had succeeded then that would be a strong case in her favor but she didn’t. Maybe if we has all slipped the Speaker $10 it would have helped.

Kelly Roney
12 years ago
Reply to  Frank Crowell

Here’s a link on our tax burden at the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center. 33rd as a percentage of income, 9.8% compared to the national average of 10.4%.

The Tax Foundation numbers are a bit puzzling. I only had time for a glance at their methodology document, and it has numbers and ranks that differ from the front page.

The 2008 numbers in the methodology doc show Massachusetts at 9.5%, a rank of 23rd, while the front page numbers show Massachusetts at 10.2%, rank 12. Maybe the Foundation could explain the discrepancy. (I didn’t use the 2009 numbers because they are not in the methodology document.)

The Mass Budget and Policy Center notes:

Since FY 2009, Massachusetts has increased several types of state taxes, most notably the states sales tax. At the same time, however, with ongoing revenue shortfalls, 29 other states have enacted tax increases of their own since the start of the recession.3 Therefore, while nationwide data more current than 2009 are not available, it is likely that Massachusetts’ ranking still remains below the U.S. average, even given Massachusetts’ recent tax increases.

So that’s where I get my facts.

One more point: Massachusetts government has not been the passive recipient of private activity. It has been actively involved in achieving a high-value economy drastically better than we had 40 years ago.

The success of that transformation is founded on education, public and private.

What’s important to you? Taxes as low as possible, or moderate taxes that help spur higher incomes and wind up profiting all of us?

Al Hamilton
12 years ago
Reply to  Frank Crowell

Kelly

We could argue endlessly about Mass’s place in the tax burden list. Lets just stipulate we are somewhere in the middle. Not the worst, not the best.

However, I am very skeptical about the claims that Mass policy has a big positive impact on the private sector. Politicians love to take credit for our relative prosperity. However, I doubt that they have done much if any thing to assure it.

Our role in the national/global ecosystem is as an innovator. Businesses are born here and grow to adolescence and then leave. Whether it is textiles, integrated circuits, or firearms eventually competitive dynamics force companies to move out of Mass because, we are a high cost, union friendly state. As products mature, they commoditize and manufacturing costs take on a greater priority vs innovation and we are far less competitive in this area.

I don’t mind this role it is probably why I moved here. This is a good place to live and raise a family. I also don’t really mind paying my fair share of taxes. We need roads and schools, firefighters and teachers. However, I have made my living in high tech for 30+ years and I cant think of a single state policy that has benefited any of the companies I have worked for. The few times I have had interactions with State bureaucrats I have been very unimpressed. With one minor exception my enduring impression has been of meeting political hacks marking time until they can collect their pensions.

Kelly Roney
12 years ago
Reply to  Frank Crowell

Al, turns out I should have read the whole page on the MBPC site, which states this under Technical Notes:

The Tax Foundation, like MassBudget, uses the basic structure of comparing taxes as a share of income. The Tax Foundation, however, makes a number of adjustments to the data. Two of these adjustments are particularly important. First, the Tax Foundation attempts to project current-year taxes as a percent of current-year income (which we don’t do because we choose to report actual data — which lags by several years – rather than provide projections). Second, it seeks to estimate the taxes paid by residents of a state rather than taxes collected in the state. The second adjustment means that property taxes paid by a Massachusetts resident on a vacation home in Maine would count as Massachusetts taxes.

This is also interesting:

Finally, one important shortcoming in the state personal income data (compiled by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis) that are used for calculations in this fact sheet is that these data omit income derived from capital gains. The tax data (compiled by the U.S. Census), by contrast, include all taxes, including the taxes paid on capital gains income. As a result, the measures presented in this fact sheet overstate the share of economic resources paid in taxes, making public services appear more costly to state residents than they in fact are.

Since Massachusetts is a state whose residents have high capital gains, both sets of numbers overstate the percentage of our income that goes to state and local taxes. Of course, that’s no comfort for people who don’t have capital gains.

I found a few policy claims that the state government gets credit for, although you may want to put them in the not-screwing-up category. Mass Hi Tech Council (I think) liked an R&D tax credit from the 1990s, for example.

In my high tech job role, I don’t see tax policy or, for that matter, infrastructure regulation. I would think that most people in the computer industry would similarly not notice policies.

The key impact in my view is strong and effective public policy in support of K-12 education. Our advantage as a state is not textile manufacturing, although innovative manufacturers may still succeed here, it’s knowledge work, and we’ve built on that.

Al Hamilton
12 years ago
Reply to  SB Resident

I think the vast majority of the credit for our relatively high incomes should be given to the people of Mass, the companies that operate here, and the universities that we have.

If you want to credit Government then you might say that they have not screwed it up.

So, my question remains what specifically has Ms Dykema done for the town or the people of Southborough?

Kelly Roney
12 years ago
Reply to  Al Hamilton

Al, it’s absolutely a fair question, and I’ll have answers for you when I have a little time, but here are a couple:
– healthcare cost containment: authority for local governments to move their employees into the state plan to save them money (and the predicted savings have happened)
– many pro-veteran bills, amendments, and initiatives, not to mention conscientious person involvement
– opposition to casinos (ultimately unsuccessful)
– votes for many reform bills, notably state pension reform
– taxation: $140/yr in sales tax increases to preserve Local aid and Chapter 70 education funding, Prescription subsidies, tax programs and home care for seniors, Funding for libraries, Environmental protection, and Supports for the disabled and their families
– taxation: lower income tax rates for all of us; lower corporate tax rates

She’s also ahead of the curve on water resources and on overall healthcare cost containment.

Publius
12 years ago

Al, you are correct, I do see myself as a modern day Hamilton. What does Marty offer ? he had some some pretty extreme views during his losing run for Congress and his conduct was odd at times, these are not meant as cheap digs but are facts.

C. Nicholas Ellis
12 years ago
Reply to  Publius

Not to nitpick, but on the internet facts aren’t facts unless they’re backed up by hard evidence. Or, in internet slang: “Pics or it didn’t happen.” I don’t care whether you post anonymously, but no matter your name claiming something you perceived as fact does not make it so.

As to SB Resident, personally I don’t know about either candidate enough to make a decision at this moment, but I do not think asking “What has this Representative done for us, specifically,” is a bad query. After all, it’s why we elect people in the first place – to represent our specific needs. I believe your response is what we like to call a “red herring?”

Al Hamilton
12 years ago
Reply to  Publius

I think of myself as a Hamilton as well. Give me some specifics of his extreme views or odd conduct.

Let’s deal with specifics here not vague mud slinging.

Publius
12 years ago

I submit Marty’s barf bag as one of those gimmicks last election. Got Fox news attention but little else.

Publius
12 years ago

And I submit following the Congressman after his speech and presenting him with a pair of scissors is odd if you are a serious congressional candidate.

Carolyn Dykema
12 years ago

Hello to all – and thanks to Susan for hosting this forum which I always find informative. In looking through the comments, I think one of Kelly’s responses provides many of the initiatives that I would consider accomplishments over the past three years. I spent significant effort on cost containment, including voting for pension reforms expected to total $5m over 30 years, transportation reform expected to save $2m over 20 years, and a partnership that I initiated between the state and EMC that resulted in immediate savings from prompt pay discounts of $250,000. The municipal healthcare bill referenced above has already generated hundreds of thousands in savings to municipalities across the state (see Mass Taxpayers Foundation for details) I’ve also supported efforts to reduce costs on local small businesses – that support many local families – by supporting an unemployment insurance rate cap, sales tax holiday, and legislation to provide lower cost health insurance options. Many residents receive my quarterly newsletter via email which provides regular updates on the issues I’m working on, on Southborough’s behalf. Here is a link to the most recent version. http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs077/1103044049537/archive/1109274283713.html

If you’d like to be added to the distribution, please email the office at carolyn.dykema@mahouse.gov

Al commented that my efforts with respect to the Mass Pike tolls failed, but I have to respectfully disagree. As a result of legislative advocacy, commuters from Southborough and other metrowest towns were not required to shoulder the burden of big dig payments through a large proposed toll increase. Instead, we passed legislation that would require dig debt to be paid for from a state-wide source – the sales tax – which is appropriate since the project provides benefits that accrue to the state as a whole.

If there are issues that I haven’t addressed, but that you are interested in, I hope you’ll let me know. And I would certainly appreciate your support in the November election.

Sal Giorlandino
12 years ago
Reply to  Carolyn Dykema

Thank you for all of your great work Representative Dykema.

Jerry C
12 years ago

Carolyn,

A little more than a year ago I contaced you regarding the UMASS bone marrow donor scandal. You responded back to me immediately (the same day I emailed you). We had a great discussion on the matter and you said you would handle it.

Job well done! They were hit with a stiff fine. It shows that government can work… as long as you have the right person in government.

Michael Bakshi
12 years ago

I want to second what Sal just said!

Whenever I’ve run into an issue, and have contacted her office about it, I’ve always gotten a response.

Please give Rep. Dykema a chance before you listen to what others say about her.

Frank Crowell
12 years ago

These two stories might be of interest to most voters.



http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1061120050



http://www.bostonherald.com/news/politics/view/20220324pols_reforms_on_books_extensive_and_transparent/


Ruth
11 years ago

When I had a concern over nursing homes, Carolyn Dykema was right there for me. She is compassionate, which is something I don’t see too much anymore.

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