Democratic State Committee Sponsors Forum; King Details Tax Bill in Luncheon Address

About 1000 local politicos attended the Massachusetts Democratic State Committee's (DSC) first "Policy Makers' Forum" Saturday at the Park Plaza Hotel in Boston.

The forum, patterned after the national party convention held in Memphis, Tenn., last December, included 19 policy workshops featuring Gov. Edward J. King's newly-appointed cabinet secretaries and a luncheon speech by King.

"It's one of the biggest party events ever held in the state," Sissy Weinberg, ececutive director of the DSC, said Saturday. "I think the enthusiasm and the turnout is evidence that this committee is going to be different than any in the past," she added.

In his address to the convention, King said his two major goals in office are to cut taxes without cutting "essential" services and to foster the development of a healthy, growth-oriented economy."

"I don't know if government can handle the ever-increasing demand for services that you people are pressing upon us," King said, adding, "I think the private sector is going to have to be involved."

To encourage economic growth, King said, his administration has established a "social contract" with 89 high technology firms to create a healthier business climate in the state.

"If the Commonwealth can arrange its affairs," King said, "then these businesses may expand, creating 60,000 jobs directly in high technology firms and another 90,000 indirectly."

King said the first stage of his three-part program to reduce taxes began February 9 when he introduced a bill to limit local taxes by "capping" city and town levies and expenditures at their fiscal 1979 levels. The remainder of the program will be unveiled February 28 when King releases his budget recommendations for fiscal 1980.

Seventy members of Massachusetts Fair Share, a citizens' lobby group, attacked King's tax-cutting proposal at a "Tax Caps" workshop moderated by Edward T. Hanley, Secretary of Administration and Finance.

Carolyn Lucas, a Fair Share spokesman, said the bill deprives communities of fiscal autonomy by giving control over city and town expenditures to a Finance Appeals Board staffed by gubernatorial appointees.

Under this bill, the governor is not only the governor, but he becomes the mayor of every city and town in Massachusetts," Lucas said.

"The governor's proposal takes away our town meeting," another Fair Share representative noted, "and that is an extremely radical concept that we shook off 200 years ago with the other King'."

In another well-attended discussion, Joseph Fitzpatrick, Secretary of Energy, said New Englanders need to expand off-shore oil exploration, construct refineries and develop alternative energy sources such as hydroelectric power and nuclear fission.

In response to a question concerning the environmental problems created by off-shore drilling. Fitzpatric said, "It's been 18 years since a refinery has been built on the East Coast; we need one, and neither the bald eagle or the great white whale care a white about the crisis in energy."

Fitzpatrick said the King administration did not support the use of the controversial Construction Works in Progress (CWIP) changes to finance construction of the Pilgrim II power plant in Plymouth. "We're not dead against CWIP," he said, adding, "If it helps our people and reduced costs then we'll consider it."