Massachusetts: Jay Kaufman

House One as filed by Governor Deval Patrick suffers from the same deficit as every other piece of legislation in this State - Legislation without appropriation. Changes are made by the outside sections, but no one knows what they will cost, such as the changes to C.L.c119 embedded in outside Section 41.  Unfortunately, this happens all the time in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

For example, in House One, line item 0321-1510 which funds all court-appointed counsel for the indigent, both civil and criminal is reduced by over $20,000.000 from this year's appropriation.  Yet, line item 0321-1510 was just handed an enormous new area of mandated appointments by the passage of Chapter 521 of the Acts of 2008, also known as "The Uniform Probate Code" or "UPC".