Advertisement
Remembering Taxpayer Advocate Barbara Anderson
Resume
As you wrap up your tax filings this week, there's one woman who has had a tremendous impact on them: Barbara Anderson.
As head of the group Citizens for Limited Taxation, Anderson was passionate and plainspoken about taxes and how they would affect average citizens. She died on Friday, after battling leukemia. She was 73.
She successfully backed several ballot initiatives in the 1980s and in 2000: She's the reason property tax increases are capped at 2 1/2 percent of fair market value and the state's income tax was rolled back from 5.85 percent.
Guests
Chip Ford, longtime partner of Barbara Anderson.
Joe Malone, former Massachusetts State Treasurer and currently a business development consultant with Malone & Malone.
More
Salem News: Fighting Pirates With The Lost Boys
- "If, despite my living will and various plans to control my dying, I end up hanging around, then I curse the government for the last time, though certainly not the only."
Lawrence Eagle Tribune: Barbara Anderson, Tax Reform Champion, Dies At 73
- "Anderson, of Marblehead, was no Reagan Republican – she generally espoused libertarian to conservative views but was not a member of any political party – but the law she championed had a major impact on local government's ability to tax people, invoking the same kind of low tax-small government philosophy Reagan supported."
The Boston Globe: Barbara Anderson, 73; Was The Voice Of Limited Taxation In Mass.
- "A master of forcefully turning complex public policy into something anyone could understand, she played a highly visible and influential role in Massachusetts politics for more than three decades as the longtime executive director of Citizens for Limited Taxation."
The New York Times: Lobbying Group Seeks Tax Repeal
- "Her enthusiasm for cutting taxes has given her high visibility among the electorate and in the Statehouse, where she is a registered lobbyist. She has access to the Governor's policy advisers, but no access to the Governor. Therein lies a story."
This segment aired on April 11, 2016.