In which I partly agree with Barbara Anderson(!) … Commonwealth mag's new cover story is on the budgetary dire straits many towns are experiencing these days, especially because of rising pension and health care costs. We've heard at length on this site about Stoneham's problems; add West Boylston, Saugus, and any number of other towns that are really struggling.
The downward spiral of rising costs and their toll on quality of life should be obvious. For instance, posit that the single biggest problem in our state is the cost of housing, and retaining young families: How can these towns afford to educate the children of new families if they can't even afford to educate the kids who are already there? If there's a high level of anxiety about muni finances, that simply adds to the already-high resistance to new development.
Anyway, here's St. Barbara:
“Communities have been underfunding their libraries, their public works programs, their recreation programs for years,” says Geoff Beckwith, executive director of the Massachusetts Municipal Association, the statewide lobbying group for cities and towns. He calls it a “quiet crisis” that has been building over time.
His cry of crisis finds an echo from a most unlikely corner. Barbara Anderson was one of the architects of Proposition 2 1/2, and she remains the state’s most prominent anti-tax activist. But even Anderson says municipal government is in a true state of peril. “[It’s] not just the usual ‘the sky is falling’ that you hear all the time,” she says. “This time I think the sky really is going to fall.”
Fiscal problems aren't limited to older cities. They are now hitting middle-class suburbs too.When the leader of the Massachusetts Municipal Association (a group whose initials are mocked by critics to mean “more money always”) and the state’s leading anti-tax advocate agree that cities and towns are in trouble, people should pay attention. But what to do about the crisis is where the agreement ends. While Beckwith and other municipal advocates invariably point to the need for more revenue—from an increase in state aid to its former levels, from Proposition 2 1/2 overrides, or from new options for raising revenue—Anderson sees it as a spending problem, with communities unable or unwilling to get a handle on things like public employee salaries and benefits.
Well, they're both right. It's a revenue problem, and it's a spending problem. Cities and towns are facing the same problems the airlines (or state and federal governments, for that matter) have had with pensions, and the same problems the automakers have had with skyrocketing health care costs. Just saying “cut costs” means cutting people's benefits; I wish Anderson would be so candid.
Now, Gov. Patrick was elected in an atmosphere of grave concern about cities and towns, but it seems like the legislature is sleepwalking through the whole thing. I'm still amazed at how Speaker DiMasi simply rules out the local option meals taxes, and ending the telco tax exemption, and on and on. The towns may be in crisis, but legislators are clearly not feeling much urgency:
“The state has been more than generous and more than an equal partner with every single city and town in the state,” Rep. John Binienda, a Worcester Democrat, told the State House News Service in September. “[Municipal officials] should be thanking us.”
Mmm, nice … can't you just smell the entitlement? I'd love to help you Mr. Mayor, but I tee off in an hour …
To be fair, the article also includes some quotes from muni officials indicating contempt for their constituents as well:
More common is pure disinterest in the number-crunching. According to Ragucci, the Stoneham administrator, most people, particularly younger ones, don’t want to delve into the “very dull and boring” world of municipal finance to better understand how their tax dollars are spent. “You have young families out here who are going out and buying those beautiful, 42-inch flat-screen TVs, and when the time comes for an override, they say, ‘My taxes are going to go up 200, 400 bucks a year. I can’t afford that.’”
You know, that kind of talk really doesn't help matters: Quit whining. But that's instinctive reaction of people who have gotten really comfortable who are finally confronted with an inescapable problem. As Mike says, time for the adults to take charge.
PS: I should also mention that on the spending side, legislators were plainly cowed by the muni unions in approving only a watered-down version of the health insurance/GIC bill, avoiding the messy business of forcing them into the state's insurance system. They may well have to revisit that, for everyone's good; it certainly doesn't help the unions to put their employers into a fiscal crisis.
…Barbara Anderson had a point. But since then (that was when Prop 2 1/2 was on the ballot) she has started to sound more and more like a buffoon.
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ON THE OTHER HAND, regarding Communities have been underfunding their libraries it is not required that every town in the state have a Taj Mahal as a town library. A year or so ago, Wellesley opened its Taj Mahal, whose building cost on the order of US$40m. That was after Weston and Newton had built their Taj Mahals on higher budgets.
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Who do these idiots think they’re kidding. Books only need warehousing and indexing. (While the Wellesley library was being built, the books were stored in vans, which were easily accessible and, given computerization, quite well indexed.) Towns construction of Taj Mahals is preposterous.
They function as reading areas, study and research areas, multimedia viewing/listening areas, community rooms, lecture rooms, and more.
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I’m not explicitly arguing for Taj Mahals and I do tend to think that their capital budgets are too high and their operations budgets too low, but to suggest that a library is a book warehouse is really misunderstanding the functionality and importance of a public library.
Libraries are much more than book warehouses They function as reading areas, study and research areas, multimedia viewing/listening areas, community rooms, lecture rooms, and more
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Public libraries may be marketing themselves as such, probably for budgetary purposes, but much of that is duplicative of services that can easily be provided by public schools–the federal equal access laws, remember? And by private entities–hotels oftentimes have conference rooms that can be rented. For a fee, of course. Are you really going to suggest that public libraries should be competing against private entities?
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Now, let’s go back to some of your other points. Regarding study and research areas when I was an undergraduate student, I had a desk in the stacks in the physics department library. No Taj Mahal, I can assure you.
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Regarding multimedia viewing/listening areas, that has largely been dealt with above. If you want libraries to become movie theaters, say so, but I don’t want to pay for them. If you are suggesting that libraries provide WiFi Internet connections for their customers’ laptops, I’d have no objection. That doesn’t require a whole lot of high-cost Taj Mahal infrastructure, though.
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Regarding community rooms, lecture rooms I’ve dealt with that above. School classrooms and private conference rooms can do just as well.
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The only unique service that a public library provides is warehousing of books. And that isn’t even particularly unique–witness the Boston Athenaeum..
Much of city and town structures are redundant. My community recently built a Taj Mahal high scholl which they say they now cannot afford to keep heated to 70F. Terrible and egregious planning re our long standing energy issues- yet at all the meetings the building committee was not listening to “energy conservation”. Why can’t one or two school building share a portion of that structure as a common public library and school auditoriums as a municipal lecture hall. The problem nationwide is poor municipal planning and fiscal responsibility.
…when I was in HS back in the middle ages of the 1960s, we had not only the HS at the site, but also the JrHS (what would here be called the middle school) at the same site. (I don’t recall, but I may have attended JrHS at the same site.)
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We had a decent school library–actually, it was pretty good. Unfortunately, to access our county library system we would have needed to have a car, but even our closest branch was very good.
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We also had decent instruction–nobody would have even considered teaching “creationism” in any biology course.
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A couple of asides
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My community recently built a Taj Mahal high scholl which they say they now cannot afford to keep heated to 70F.
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The community in which I was raised actually did do a bit of experimentation. Relatively open floor plan–no fourth walls onto the corridor from some classrooms. CCTV instruction. Language labs (that’s where I learned Spanish). The first two didn’t work out–the language labs did–but they didn’t destroy us either.
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BTW, as my spouse would tell you–he went to the New Britski CT HS in the middle ages. They didn’t heat very well either. But, they learned how to cope: put on sweaters and wear mittens.
Do you remember when kids had to walk to school bus stops instead of having the bus stop and wait in front of every house?
There were forty odd kids in my third grade class. Mrs Hoffman made a drill instructor look like a mother hen. You learned or you sat there and absorbed something by atmospheric osmosis. Affluence has brought us the results of the Law of Unintended Consequence. When humans are given more, they want more.
We seemed to have done better with less. We didn’t live in a perfect world, but it seemed better than this present cauldron.
I am working on an analysis of what regional authorities on more than just schools would do for our cities and towns. It is ridiculous that towns like Dracut, Dunstable and Tyngsboro for example each have their own Police, Fire and Highway departments. That is true across the state. Other states don’t do this. They have unincorporated county areas that take on these tasks. I think this is where our problem lies, in all seriousness. I just don’t have the time to work it completely out right now. We have 351 cities and towns with, save a few towns that use the state police, 351 Police Departments, 351 Highway Departments, 351 Trash Collection policies, 351 Fire Departments etc…
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There are real savings here and they need to be looked at.
It will soon be small, weak, and despised enough.
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Oh right, that’s the plan.
says Grover Norquist, field marshall of the Bush Plan
regional solutions to get some economies of scale. Sounds like a good direction.
It is the only way out I think. I haven’t had a chance to read the full article. Myself and a county commissioner from another county were discussing this when we were in unincorporated Baltimore County for a Sox Game.
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I think this is something that a true consensus(damn that’s a hard word to spell) between Rs and Ds. I just don’t know if the people of the Commonwealth as parochial as we are would support it.
Other states don’t do this. They have unincorporated county areas that take on these tasks..
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Don’t bet on anything like that being it any more efficient. This was in our northern suburb of Cincinnati. We had the Northern Hills Fire Department–then a volunteer fire department. We had the Finneytown School District. We had a private trash collection operation (Rumpky’s dump (sp?)) that was–after I left–cited for severe environmental problems. We had a county library system–the Hamilton Cty system–that wasn’t too bad, but it required a car to get to the nearest branch. We also had a county park system.
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And god knows what entity performed the policing function.
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Each of these operations had their own “mil” levy on the ballot. If the school district voted down a mil levy (which supported the schools based on the property valuation–hence “mil”) the schools would reduce their spending. Do you know what happened? They would require the students–or their families–to pay for school buses.
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If the voters refused to pass a park levy, the parks would require people to buy permission to travel on the parks’ roads.
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I sincerely don’t know what the Hamilton Cty library system would have done if their mil levies failed. Actually, I do.
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Returning to They have unincorporated county areas that take on these tasks in point of fact, you don’t have the slightest idea what you are referring to. Some of us who have lived in such unincorporated areas do. It’s a nightmare.
Tyngsboro Selectman here. There actually isn’t much efficiency to be had from combining those functions.
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Fire:
all volunteer dept, we spend practically no money on it.. regional aid agreements are already in place with neighboring towns.
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Police:
24 sworn officers.. sounds like a lot but adds up to 3-4 officers on 24×7 when you do out the shifts and take out the specialists (chief, asst chief, detective, court liason, etc). We already share a canine officer with Westford. We could maybe gain some efficiencies by sharing the detective and court officer responsibilities with neighboring towns, but not very much. Regional aid agreements in place here as well.
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Highway: staffed to workload. I don’t really see the difference between consolidated/separated depts, this is a job that comes down to man-hours of labor. Maybe we could pool some of the less frequently used heavy equipment.
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Now, if you combined DISPATCH between the towns you could talk about some savings, but you’d still be talking maybe 4-5 full time positions at the high end. This is actually a case of bureaucratic inertia… we’ve talked about it amongst ourselves and with selectmen from neighboring towns informally but it seems like we never have all of our union contracts up at the same time, nobody’s really made it their crusade and pushed hard enough to even make it an issue.
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Meanwhile, our heatlh insurance line item is almost 2.5 million and it is inflating at 15% a year — that engulfs all of your efficiencies from merging in a single year, let alone the fact that it compounds.
that small town managers have at their finger tips. New England town meetings are the very distillation of “civic engagement” as far as I’m concerned. My Dad made all of his seven grown children attend town meetings every single February and we learned that our town government was the place everyone worked together to accomplish things that no individual resident could do alone like building a new school house and buying the new fire truck, and then figuring out the fairest way to pay for them. Besides he need every vote he could get.
structure do for you. I think it should be studied. What does your chief, dunstable’s chief, and dracut’s chief each make on the police department. What do the backroom staff make. What about physical infrastructure like stations etc.
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What about physical equipment for the highway department. Are there pieces of equipment that you have that sit idle for periods of time that perhaps the three towns would make better use of.
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There are a lot of questions to ask. I picked Dracut, Tyngsboro, and Dunstable only because I grew up in the Merrimack Valley, and know these three towns are very similar in makeup and demography. I could have just as easily have said Salisbury, Newbury, Merrimac and Newburyport; or Shrewsbury, Boylston and West Boylston.
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Can someone point me to a resource with data on each towns municipal budgets in an easy to see place.
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There are savings here. No matter how small that would help overall.
Many states have county police, fire, rubbish and schools.
Again very poor fiscal planning. How many police departments are their in Boston? Boston PD, Boston Housing police, the school system has cops now, the MBTA, The county sheriff etc. Poltical paronage, patronage, patronage, fraud, waste, and abuse.
…I am not particularly familiar with the structure in MA, but I will give you a few counter-examples from our little hovel in Germany.
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Point one. Police. Maybe some states have county police (I suspect that they are actually sheriffs, which is very different). In MA, as far as I can tell, if towns want to joint together to provide for a regional police force, there is nothing preventing them from doing so.
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On the other hand, as far as I can tell, in Germany, each town has its own police detachment. The public transporation system has its own police detachment. The Bund (the federal government) has several police detachments–the most famous of which is the BundesKriminalAmt (the BKA), which is something like the US’s FBI. Unlike the US, the German system is completely integrated–that is, they work together.
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Point two. Fire. Despite the fact that the town has approximately 25000 residents, the Feuerwehr (fire department) is Freiwillig (volunteer). Given the structures of the buildings (even interior walls are thick brick) it is unlikely that a fire would migrate from one room to another.
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Point three. Schools. If local school districts in the US were not so protective about the socialization of their kiddies, perhaps schools could do what they’re supposed to do: educate. The unfortunate fact that you have is that local school districts in the US have been using public schools to more socializization than education. That’s far less true in western Europe.
Teachers don’t recieve social security, they get pensions. They aren’t paid as well as the private sector, but they typically (although, certianly not always) have better health insurance. There’s a balance here that can’t be changed, unless cities and towns are going to be ready to pay the average teacher 15-20 thousand more a year, or more.
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The only thing this state – and country – can do is to eliminate the current system of paying for health care. There’s no way to save cities and towns as long as HMO Blue is increasing its premiums by 10% or more every year. We need a national health care system or it’s a bust. Even the GIC is a bandaid approach – and there’s a reason why many unions are skeptical, the deductables are way more. I still think DiMasi should pass a better GIC bill, but deductables may need to be changed to make it fair – the GIC is only better for teachers than most of their insurance policies if they stay healthy, which is, given the human condition (mortality), sadly impossible.
There’s a tendency to talk about teacher salaries as compared to the “private sector” as if teacher salaries should be compared with lawyers, engineers and doctors. I’m not saying that’s what you are doing, but it does make me wonder about the validity of your claim. The only meaningful comparison is with private sector teachers, and there, the public sector salaries are higher. From IES:
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Yes, some private sector teachers get benefits like lodging. But not all. And while still uncommon (although becoming less so on the west coast), governments do provide housing assistance for teachers. Some through low-interest mortgage programs; others through building housing exclusively for teachers.
the education and certification requirements on public teachers are much higher. Check the percentage of each with a masters in teaching. Check the percentage of each which go to workshops every summer to improve their subject knowledge and/or their teaching skills.
That private schools have better results. I don’t blame the teachers. They are being forced to teach self esteem rather that read’n and ritmatic. Ever look at textbooks today. They are ridiculously PC. Time for a reality check.
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Leaving aside the question of results measurement being different, which can be debated, the private schools results are different because they have an admissions process that can screen out potential drags on the curve and screen in curve lifters: The results differ because they are private and are not obligated to take every student.
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Having two children in public schools, I can attest that this is not true. If it were, I’d either be 1) even more involved in their schools than I already am; or B) looking into private schools.
I have no knowledge of any teacher who has never had another form of employment. Teachers SS pensions are reduced by 60%.
When teachers work twelve months out of the year with zero vacations is when they get paid more.
I serve on my town’s finance committee. I have been very vocal about it and continue to believe it is the the state’s failure to lead to all of our communities having serious financial problems. State leaders and legislators continue to support a low tax rate and some even push for a lower tax rate, while our communities face budget shortfalls and continuous proposition 2 1/2’s. As I see the needs and demands of my community, as well as the hard decisions that we need to make, it is clear to me that the state is failing in its responsibility to set a tax rate that we can survive on, so that they can go to get re-elected.
No one wants higher taxes,and everyone wants a government to be lean and efficient, but the continuous regressive local property tax increases to compensate for the failure of the state to provide proper funds are killing our communities and still coming up short. Just my two cents.
Put you in receivership.
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I have lived in my community for thirty five years. We to this day have a reasonable tax base, we do have periodically done some serious belt tightening. We have never had the need for a 2 1/2 override. The community has only made a terrible blunder with building a new high school which is riculously ostentaious and now everyone regrets because it is impossible to heat. That being said, the folks in this community are all working stiffs. I would venture to guess that 80% of the community is blue collar and tight with a buck. Departmets heads perpetually whine for more money, but when push comes to shove, tey do without and make do. The biggest whiners are the firefighters who manage to have a lot of time off and only seem to get sick on work days—because they are entitled to it.
…in the mid-1980s, shortly after we moved to Wellesley, I became involved with town government. Specifically, a town insurance committee. We had a number of people on the committee who were familiar with the insurance industry (no, no conflict of interest) and some of us were lawyers.
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I watched the activities with interest. The corruption was palpable. We produced a number of recommendations, which we presented to the town selectmen. We had one session with our idiot town manager and an insurance broker, at which the insurance broker gave the idiot town manager a refund check for the overcharges of the insurance premiums, and the idiot town manager looked like he was having an orgasm because he got a refund check.
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Fast forward a couple of weeks. We presented our report. The selectmen thanked us for our endeavors. And they promptly put the report into the vertical file. And it became clear to me that town government was irretrievably corrupt.
This quote from the Commonwealth piece really pushes my stupid button:
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As I’ve said elsewhere, the only “critics” who say such a thing are on Beacon Hill–mostly legislators, staffers, and hangers-on.
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In the Beacon Hill – o – centric view of the universe, cities and towns are Not Invented Here and always have their hands out. And they can’t even offer high-paying jobs to bored legislative leaders.
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Let’s be clear. Cities and towns are subdivisions of the commonwealth, not illegal aliens from outer space. State law sets the terms of how they function. They must provide a “maximum feasible benefit” to any student that needs it, regardless of cost; must reward law enforcement personnel with pay increases for taking night classes, may not assess motor vehicles for the damage they do to streets, and on and on and on.
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It is state law that sets the terms of labor-management contract negotiations, state law that allows and prohibits practices to pay for and control health-care costs, and state law that says cities and towns must rely to the degree they do on the property tax. And, of course, that tax is capped at less than the rate of inflation for government services.
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I am not saying that those are all bad things. But to set up this framework and then dump on the cities and towns for the consequences is cynical and rude. Only the legislature has the power to change the fiscal dynamic, and it has chosen not to do so.
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So yeah, entitlement. It doesn’t smell, it stinks.
and I’ll front page. Great points, and really getting at the core of the article, and the whole dynamic on Beacon Hill — it’s all Someone Else’s Problem.
I thought was being long-winded. But will give it a shot. Maybe not tonight, though.
And all of these laws and mandates are done piecemeal, thus not allowing for long term planning and consequence.
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There is obviously a finite pool of revenue. You can only take so much before it has a negative effect on the economy and prosperity. Essentially you put yourself out of business. To pass laws and mandate expenditure “regardless of cost” is unrealistic, inappropriate and essentially crazy. We need to redefine how we do every facet of public business and its funding because the house of cards will fall—sooner probably rather than later and we must be realistic. Like Hillary Clinton said, ” I have all kinds of good ideas, we just can’t afford them”.
Crossposted at The Eisenthal Report
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The current issue of Commonwealth Magazine, a publication of the Massachusetts Institute for a New Commonwealth, has an article called Municipal Meltdown.
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The article, written by staff writer Gabrielle Gurley, argues that Massachusetts cities and towns are in serious fiscal trouble. Gurley examines the particular cases of the Towns of West Boylston, Stoneham, and Saugus. She writes that
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Gurley goes on to write that opinion leaders as divergent as Massachusetts Municipal Association Executive Director Geoff Beckwith and anti-tax activist Barbara Anderson are in fundamental agreement on the seriousness of the problem.
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For this observer, the use of the term “municipal meltdown” exaggerates and mischaracterizes the fiscal difficulties that Massachusetts cities and towns face. The Commonwealth’s local governments do face significant fiscal pressure – and much more pressure than they should be facing in a relatively good economy. While a number of communities are operating at the fiscal edge, many others are managing their resources reasonably well – providing services while maintaining sufficient financial reserves. A good example of such a community is the City of Chelsea (a client of mine), which – ever since it emerged from receivership 12 years ago – has done a very good job of managing its resources in such a way to provide high levels of service, maintain its infrastructure, and retain strong financial reserves.
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The most important fiscal problem for Massachusetts municipalities – as is true for most sectors of the economy – is health care. The recently approved provisions of the Municipal Partnership Act allowing municipalities to join the state’s Group Insurance Commission should provide some level of relief. However, real control of health care costs is necessary to address fiscal pressures on local government – and this is matter that needs to be addressed nationwide.
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Massachusetts communities could face a meltdown if the economy were to deteriorate significantly. Imagine if, for example, the stagflation of the 1970s returned. The revenue limits of Proposition 2 1/2, combined with severe pressures on the Commonwealth’s local aid budget, and galloping costs could produce a real meltdown.
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The question remains what is to do be about those communities that are on the fiscal edge. To some extent, these are local problems that must be solved locally. Some local governments may need to improve their credibility with their voters so that they can obtain overrides of Proposition 2 1/2. Such credibility enhancers might include adopting Section 18 of Chapter 32B of the Massachusetts General Laws, which requires retirees to enroll in Medicare. Another might be negotiating higher employee contributions to medical insurance plans. A number of communities have already taken one or both steps. The Commonwealth needs to continue to step up on local aid – the $220 million increase in Chapter 70 aid in fiscal 2008 was not a bad step. And health care costs need to be controlled.
The Romney 9c cuts (first round in 2003) ripped into the core of local services. Having read the whole thread upstream I would like to agree that there may be cost savings and improvement of services in regionalizing. Not necessarily by county lines, but more pramatically through neighboring communities with similar needs. Education has potential for improvement in regionalizing special education services. Designating a public school as the regional experts for autism or dyslexia or non-verbal learning disabilities and figuring out a state formula to fund transportation. This suggestion would require hurdling FAPE and the parochial idea that every child is best educated in her/his community. Not so. Schools need to stop being required to pay for medical services that insurance companies should be covering. No more pt and ot paid from school funds. The state should mandate the services be provided to the children and force the appropriate payer to pony-up.
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Boards of Health have enormous responsibilities since 9/11. Many of the town boards are volunteer and professional staff is part-time or under-resourced. Regionalizing LBOHs could be a realistic step in managing some of the emergency preparedness requirements. Systemic infrastructure is desperately needed along with sustainable funding that meets the directives.
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Most communities that I am aware of have mutual aid agreements in public safety. Practicial, efficient, necessary and functional. Regionalizing purchases of large capital items such as highway and fire equipment….that’s a maybe depending on geographical factors and my not be functional.
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One of the serious legs on this stool that needs to be addressed, is the plethora of unfunded mandates that are passed on the state and federal level and slapped to the local level. That is the thief in the night. It would be revolutionary to see a serious dissection of MGL to identify and review all unfunded mandates. If the unfunded mandate was determined as criticial then a funding source must be identified and sustained by the legislature. Even elected officials with municipal experience seem to forget where they come from when the contract Golden Domenesia.
Casinos solve none of the above issues. Under the Administration’s plan, the property tax payouts and lack of dedicated local aid or education funding only serves to exacerbate the tensions between municipalities and taxpayers. Bad bill.