Posted by:
Steve Dubb
Boston group calls on hospitals to up payments to city
In Boston, nonprofits academic hospitals own $2.4 billion in property. If their property was taxable, the city’s eight biggest teaching hospitals would have owed $64.2 million in city taxes. Instead, according to report Community Labor United, they made voluntary payments of $4 million. Community Labor United recently issued a report titled the Nonprofit City that examines these issues.
A Boston Globe article on the report notes that Mayor Thomas M. Menino, who has said the city faces a $140 million budget shortfall, announced last month that he is forming a task force aimed at increasing the voluntary payments by hospitals and universities, called “payments in lieu of taxes,” or PILOTs. Mary Jo Conelly, Research Director of Community Labor United, noted that if hospitals paid only 25 percent [of the property tax rate], “we could save 115 firefighters” from layoff. City officials have argued that hospitals should pay at least 25 percent of the property tax rate to cover the cost of providing city services.
In their defense, Boston hospitals have responded by saying that they spent $175 million on community programs last year in programs such as clinics that serve low-income patients. In addition, the hospitals note that they attract more than $1 billion a year in federal research money and provide free care to people who cannot pay on their own.
The report’s analysis focused on big hospitals, including six of the 10 biggest employers in Boston: Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Tufts Medical Center, Boston Medical Center, and Children’s Hospital. Also examined by the group were the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Caritas St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center.