State Senator Eric Lesser (D-Longmeadow) has written an interesting op-ed about how the factors that allowed Donald Trump to become our president are closer than most people in the state realize: in Central and Western Massachusetts.
He proposes that Democrats turn our attention inward, to our own state, and to work on solving these problems lest they fester and turn even more of our population into those who would follow a Donald Trump laden with hate and division. In other words, we need to present a working alternative to the problems that swung voters to Trump (including much of the middle of Massachusetts).
One of his ideas is infrastructure projects, especially transportation, which would better connect the regions of our state and would help mitigate the separation in regional economies. Another idea is increased job training, particularly vocational in the advanced manufacturing area, which would help our workers compete on the global market.
I think that his article bears discussion.
And you beat me to sharing it here. It touches upon many of the themes I’ve been discussing since this election and before it. Particularly the idea of leaving no family or city behind in this commonwealth, as we do too often outside of 495.
He had the right tack on the T and infrastructure too. Bring it to the people it doesn’t currently serve and you turn them into supporters instead of opponents. And the jobs will follow and help alleviate the population and job loss of those areas with new housing for folks displaced by the unaffordability of the Boston metro area.
And thanks for posting this nopolitician-I always enjoy your commentary and perspective.
Pay Wall and nope, I’m not interested in sending any cash to Mr. Henry.
Alas…”increased job training, particularly vocational in the advanced manufacturing area, which would help our workers compete on the global market.” is a dead end. The global market has skilled workers who are willing to accept $5 a hour. Why do you think Carrier is moving there?
I believe you can either clear your browser or open an incognito window to get around your limit.
THIS: A start would be property tax relief for seniors and continuing to expand the earned income tax credit. We also need to simplify the tax code by closing corporate loopholes, as well as end wasteful subsidies and insist the super-rich pay their fair share.
It is extended only to low income seniors, and too few of them own houses to avail themselves of it, but it is there.
And don’t forget, there is not a lot the state can do about property tax. It is local. My town has a tax rate about one-half of the adjoining town of similar size. We have done this with debt exclusions instead of overrides, rejecting expensive projects in favor of smaller ones, even buying police cars in October instead of spring annual town meeting so we can cash in on the new model year. We are reviled as cheap, but our tax base is over 90% residential so every tax hike hits an individual instead of a business and we just feel we are…frugal. Every municipality has radically different ideas on the subject, so it is hard for the state to intervene. Patrick talked about it but never actually did anything.
…by repealing Prop 2.5 outright. It’s been nothing but trouble IMO. If you want really radical go for a statewide property tax or delink municipal services from it anyway.
Firefox.
Education is part, it’s not the whole. Global competition is an equation, not a yes or no question. You’re not thinking marginally. If it’s marginally cheap enough–not worth outsourcing jobs–then they don’t move. We have jobs now in the skilled manufacturing area. We need people to fill them. As this article points out, there are reasons for manufacturing to be moving back to the United States, namely the fact that low-skill jobs will continue to be replaced by automation.
…since you seem to think about this.
To what extent is the collapse of manufacturing related not to wages and benefits, but to the outsourcing of pollution related to manufacturing processes? We’ve all seen the pictures of the unregulated Chinese ecology, with smoke that blocks out the sun. Did you know there is a big problem in China with individuals going into abandoned mines for fuel, and burning it for home use? The ground in honeycombed with illicit mines, and peopel die in collapses every year.
That will not be helped with a smokestack scrubber.
But so many of our regulations seek to depress the ability to manufacture at all in order to avoid pollution. We export our contamination to desperate 3rd world countries in exchange for cheaper goods. Even the automatons are built there. How long will the world be content to shoulder our burden, as we have jobs taxing our brains instead of dirtying our hands?
(And before NPPOW chimes in, I am not a fan of pollution, industrial or otherwise. I just think we need to recognize our own culpability here).
I don’t know the costs of pollution regulation on American manufacturing. (I’m sure there must be costs). I remember a brook from James River Graphics in South Hadley catching on fire back when I was a kid. One of my friends is the director of engineering for a Japanese subsidiary. If I see him over the holidays, I’ll try to remember to ask him. I don’t know enough to disagree with you and agree that what you say makes sense.
a qualified yes. I saw my friend who is the director of engineering for a Massachusetts subsidiary of Sumitomo. He and his wife were at our open house today. I asked him the question, and he had an answer. He was recently at meeting in Mexico where they were reviewing the future of NAFTA in light of You Know Who’s statements. They also reviewed the past.
Prior to NAFTA, we did export some jobs to Mexico to escape pollution regulations. After that, environmental laws changed and the economic advantage mostly disappeared. In short, we once exported our pollution, but not now.
.
regulations pertaining to the environment.
He visits factories in China, California, Mexico, Singapore, and at least one Central American country I can’t recall.
Of Scott Brown 2010
Different players same appeals. Same results.
Wages in Manufacturing in Mexico remained unchanged at 2.10 USD/Hour in September from 2.10 USD/Hour in August of 2016. Wages in Manufacturing in Mexico averaged 2.51 USD/Hour from 2007 until 2016, reaching an all time high of 3.60 USD/Hour in December of 2013 and a record low of 2.00 USD/Hour in February of 2009.
It’s rather rude (racist? bigoted?) to assume that the Mexican people are not intelligent enough to be trained to take on complicated tasks requited in manufacturing.
Through a company I once worked for, I spoke with a co-worker who went to Chihuahua Mexico where our company had sold equipment. He was there to go over basic maintenance recommendations and instruct their people how to run the machines – same thing we did with equipment we sold in the USA.
The manufacturing plant in this instance manufactured steering wheel assemblies. The facility was filled with state of the art equipment and people trained to operate it. He watched as one woman skillfully operated a high tech sewing machine and fabricated air bags, perfectly, one after the other. According to him, she made about $100 a week and worked six days a week. In other parts of the plant, skilled workers were assembling electrical devices, working with high quality leather work, and more.
To some extent, wages are related to cost of living. What does $2/hr translate to here? What does $2 purchase in Chihuahua?
When my dad died, I cleaned out his desk. In 1962, he was able to support a wife, mother-in-law, and 3 kids while owning a house on $5,600/yr. The dollar amount per se is not what it important, it is the value of it.
Holyoke Community College: $325. Now it’s more like $3000.
to think that the comparative advantage of cheap labor is the only variable in global trade. At present, the Chinese are building a factory to produce railroad cars in Springfield. I drive by the site everyday on my way to work.
Springfield building Chinese railroads when we can’t even connect it to Boston with public transit of our own. I’d take those jobs over the false promises of MGM Grand, but boy is they the kind of imagery Trump and his voters picked up on and not without reason. Of course it’s his party that blocked investments in rail, but it’s still a big part of the puzzle and the disconnect.
for the T. Not sure which line.
I don’t know how many jobs were created, but this is the kind of thing Eric Lesser has been working on. He’s done a lot in two years, from writing a bill for the Commonwealth to buy Narcan in bulk.
No sense in waiting for Richie Neal to retire, and he will eventually be wasting is talents in the legislature. That’s a campaign I could get excited about!
EOM
I believe that Springfield plant was a condition of the Chinese company getting the contract for the MBTA cars. There are no US companies building rail cars. The Springfield plant will build cars for both the Red Line and the Orange Line.
If you remove the “#comments” at the end of the link to the article, it will open at the top instead of at the end of the Op-Ed.
Here’s a new local face who I could get excited about in 2018. My few interactions with Lesser and his office, largely though our own Mark Bail, have proven to me he is a sharp policy mind who understands millennials and white working class voters and we will need to turn out the former and convert the latter to beat Baker.
He also didn’t strike me as the kind of guy who will stick up for Finnerans pensions or weep for DiMasi. Anyone who runs against Baker is likely to lose, I’d rather we run someone exciting like this who will have a better chance at pulling the upset than another bland retread.
from elective office in 2018. I hope to turn to organizing and educating .
N/t
I read it as:
“The key to winning rural votes is to subsidize our existence even more than you do now.”
It shouldn’t be impossible to calculate
(a) total revenue to the state from each municipality, and
(b) total state expenditures in each municipality.
Yes, there are tricky questions about corporate taxes and such, but work it out.
My hunch is that just like rural states tend to be net recipients of federal dollars, rural towns tend to be net recipients of state dollars.
He wants to spend infrastructure money on Boston to Springfield rail. I want to spend money on North Station to South Station (or Charles to Bowdoin) rail. He wants to spend money on opioid addiction in rural areas; I want it spent on the Methadone Mile. He wants blue collar jobs in rural areas (to help “reduce housing costs in Boston”); I want to build more housing and the necessary transportation in Boston to reduce housing costs in Boston. He wants job training for manufacturing in Western Mass; I want job training for kids with a mere high school education in the city.
He’s hitting all the Democratic issues, but his solution is to spend the money to solve them in rural areas. And you know what, I don’t have a problem with that. But nowhere does he argue for investing money on those who are being left behind in the very places where housing costs are high; where it isn’t especially easy to hold a job if you’ve got a poor education because transportation options are difficult if your job isn’t 8-5.
He makes a pitch that spending more money on his constituents (and raising taxes on others — the high taxes won’t hit his communities) is good because Donald Trump and Wisconsin and stuff. It falls flat for me.
These communities are attracted to an anti-government and/or nativist/populist agenda since the prosperity of Greater Boston has left them behind. I see no critical differences between the economic malaise and social degradation I encountered in Leominster to what I saw in Chelsea. Both were worlds away from the Cambridge I grew up in, which is increasingly its own bleak split beteeen the haves and have nots with the middle hallowed out entirely.
A middle class agenda that appeals to the entire state is how we get the funding to lift the urban poor and communities of color out of poverty as well. The same brain drains and poverty traps affect Pittsfield as well as Mattapan, though arguably Mattapan is better off with easy access to Boston capital and jobs. Not to mention attraction for the next wave of gentrifiers. Expanding rural access to transit and services is exactly the way to make a truly universal constituency for progressive policies.
Look at the gas tax vote by municipality in 2014 and you see the real limits of a truly liberal constituency in this state. That’s our real starting point and turning those yellow communities that voted no into green communities that vote yes is Joe we actually get the legislature and governor we want. Doing this on a national scale is how we get the Congress, Senate and presidency we want.
Our republican form of government will always overrepresent rural and suburban interests over urban ones and since the Constitution prohibits fixing that dichotomy by design, we have to forge a rural/urban coalition to overcome it. And it’s been done before by visionary progressives from Bryan to Roosevelt to Kennedy and Johnson. It can be done again. But we can’t rely on demographics alone to save us from being relegated to a coastal party that runs up the popular vote but is shut out of government. There is a way to forge a new consensus without sacrificing one ounce of our principles.
That is where money is being spent now – you need only insert the word ‘more’ in front of each of your counter priorities.
IF you are satisfied with that, fine. In 2004, there were 19 GOP representatives in the House. Now, there are 36 and growing. That is the result of the current priorities. If you are satisfied, well and good.
It’s also where the people live, and where the revenue is being generated. Like I said, come up with
(a) total revenue to the state from each municipality, and
(b) total state expenditures in each municipality,
and let’s see what the flow actually is.
I think your cause and effect is overly simplistic.
My complaint with Mr. Lesser’s comments is that he’s arguing first to divide a same-size pie by giving a region more money, rather than an issue. Then, he throws in a little “but raise taxes on them” at the end.
Had he taken it by issues (drug addiction, keeping housing affordable, etc), I’m game. Which is why I wrote:
Don’t spend money in rural areas because they’re rural. Spend money on quality of social issues, safety issues, health issues, etc. because they are our priorities, and spend that money where the need happens to be.
I would still argue what Lesser is saying is that it’s more likely the drug treatment funding goes to the better connected part of the state, I don’t think he is really arguing spread more money here “because Trump”, but because these communities have been devastated and need support.
Did you see the Bourdain special on Greenfield and the opiate crisis? The explosion of drug abuse out there has everything to do with the deindustrialization of the region and its relative isolation to other parts of the state.
There are hurting communities all over the Eastern part of the state, but they have access to better transit and economic opportunities. Chelsea has a lot of problems and I’ve worked closely in that community, but it still has easy access to Boston which has stabilized its property values and makes it an attractive place to live for newcomers who will bring in much needed property taxes and civic engagement. Ditto Lynn, Lowell or even Lawrence.
Leominster and Fitchburg are going to have a rougher time since fewer people know they exist or care about their issues, and the gateway cities out west like Holyoke, Chicopee, Springfield and the areas in the northwestern part of the state really are feeling neglected and left behind. Investing to connect them to the rest of the state seems like an easy win-win for the environment and the overall economic. And it’s a means to many of the universal ends you’re seeking.
you seem to have a Bostonian’s understanding of Western Massachusetts.
Why do you think we’re all rural? There are four counties out here. Berkshire County, with the exception of Pittsfield, is rural. Franklin County is entirely rural. Hampshire County is rural, but less so with Northampton and Amherst as a corridor.
Hampden County has some rural areas, but is largely industrialized and urban.
Springfield, Holyoke, Chicopee, Westfield, and West Springfield are all urban. Springfield has Mass Mutual and Smith and Wesson. Westfield has Savage Arms. West Springfield has the Eastern States. There are obviously more employers that I don’t know or can’t list here. Eric Lesser, incidentally, represents parts of Springfield and Chicopee.
Your initial premise is false. Western Mass is not rural. Your assumption that Western Massachusetts deserves less because it is rural and produces less in taxes is chauvinistic and implies if we want better treatment by the state we should move out there. It would be more reasonable to encourage companies to move out here where housing is cheaper and there is ample room for development.
… Or, put on its head, why did western Mass go from all rural to some rural and some industrial? And, did it work?
In the link’d Op-ED, Representative Lesser cites Indian Motorcycles and Rolls Royce manufacturing in Springfield. Well, the Indian Motorcycle plant left Springfield in 1953… twenty two years after Rolls Royce closed their plant in 1931… The Globe story leads with art showing the Indian Motorcycle factory abandoned and unused…. in 1986! It certainly suggests very few factories are beating down the door to relocate to Springfield. Leominster used to be the “plastics capital” of the entire globe. Bausch and Lomb used to be huge. Now Leominster’s a fairly dingy wasteland of cottage manufacturing and injection molding and most of the oldsters rue the loss of farmland and rural beauty the factories supplanted. Maybe factories shouldn’t have located there to begin with…? Maybe western Mass should be all rural? Why do all new jobs have to be factory gigs?
Western Mass produces less in taxes, in absolute numbers, because it has less people and the people who live there, don’t always work there… I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. But the people pay the same level of state income tax and sales tax so they don’t really get or give either more or less in relative numbers… And with less people comes less infrastructure.
Massachusetts is the third most densely populated state in the Union. If you cut it in half by land and made two states out of it, the western half would be in the bottom of population density and the Eastern half would be the most densely populated state.. Furthermore, a great many people who live in Leominster, FItchburg, Worcester and surrounding towns outside of route 495 commute daily to the Greater Boston area. The only deliberately greater infrastructure is commuting infrastructure for bringing those aforementioned outliers into the Greater Boston area. And all I hear about that is complaints which, frankly, make no sense: Greater Boston carries a great deal of work infrastructure — offices space, parking, electricity, heating, etc — and all certain parts of central Mass have to do is assist paying for the commuting infrastructure so that people can disappear during the day and come back at night to spend money they earned in the city on restaurants and bars, movie theaters, housing and food grown even farther west. You’re paying the T a pittance to continuously inject Boston money into central and western mass… you are decidedly getting more than you give. That’s a good thing.
So I say, be rural. Indian Motorcycles left in 1953. They are not coming back. They’re not going to be replaced. Embrace the fact that you are rural. That’s a good thing.
your typical contrarian self or you’re just as ignorant and unthoughtful as Stomv on this issue. There may not be a practical answer to the economic disparities of the halves of our state, which have as much to do with hundreds of years of history as anything else, but if you believe in fairness or economic justice, you will try to understand our plight.
First of all, Western Mass is a very general shorthand for our area. Lesser op-ed is using this very general shorthand. Western Mass is not a distinct political entity. I don’t know Berkshire County well. I haven’t been there in years. It breaks into a more working class North, and a more upper class South. A lot of New Yorkers own second homes there. I know some people who commute to Albany and New York for work.
Franklin County is extremely rural and extremely depressed. Greenfield is the “city” in the county and the population is about 18,000. The other municipalities are extremely small. Rowe, which is really tiny, is losing population because there’s no cell phone or internet access. There are no jobs in Franklin County. Their tax revenue is down.
These two counties are truly rural, and you should care about them. (Telling them to “embrace the rural” is fucking obnoxious). The people have lost jobs. They are losing wealth as their property values stagnate and drop.
Hampshire County has some poor communities, including mine. We are better off than those in Franklin and Northern Berkshire County, but we have UMass, Amherst, Mount Holyoke, Smith, and Hampshire Colleges, which drive our economy in our county. Our part of Route 9 doesn’t look like it looks in Eastern Mass, but it’s getting there in Hadley and Amherst.
Hampden County, which is the main employment zone for Western Mass, isn’t rural. It is mostly Springfield, Holyoke, Chicopee, West Springfield, and Westfield. As No Politician has written before, homes are losing value in Springfield. When that happens, people lose the wealth they have in their homes. Sometimes buildings stand vacant because they are too expensive to fix up. So the tax base shrinks. Most of middle-class wealth is in their homes. Those people are losing their wealth.
For your information, Indian Motorcycles, as you so glibly note, went out of business in 1953. That’s the primary reason its gone. They still have Mass Mutual and Smith and Wesson and Baystate Medical as large employers.
For the most part, we live where we live by accident. Some of us, like Tom, may move where we want, but many of us end up not far from where we grew up. You and Stomv talk like taxes are the price of admission, and since we’re poorer, we get the cheap seats and should like it. This is precisely the asshole attitude that people associate with the Democratic Party. Colossally insensitive, relatively ignorant, and completely unhelpful.
If everyone lived where they live by conscious choice, people in rural areas and Western Mass in general would be remiss for not trying to live in Eastern Mass. Of course, this is both practically and theoretically impossible. If we actually did try to move out there, your property values would skyrocket and housing would become less affordable. Property values would plummet here. People would compete for the same jobs. As is true in the Rust Belt, people just aren’t that mobile.
Everyone has to live somewhere and we live where we live. Everyone deserves a fair share, not an equal share, but enough to survive and prosper. That includes us and it includes Worcester.
The chauvinism on display in the aftermath of the Trump victory is really disheartening, and Op-Eds from leaders like Eric Lesser are pointing us in the right direction. Empathy, not condescension, is the way to win back these voters. And winning them back is the only option.
This demographics is destiny bullshit was soundly disproven on Nov 9th. Calling these voters swines, bigots, or uneducated losers-as many supposedly liberal, empathetic and tolerant people have in the past three weeks-is exactly what Trump wants you to do since it makes his task of dismantling the social safety net and civil rights infinitely easier.
Since we’re poorer we get the cheap seats and should like it sounds a lot more like the Republican rather than the Democratic attitude. Democrats are much more open to redistribution to alleviate such circumstances. I’m all for investing in these areas, but yes, I’m still in chauvinistic mode too. I’m tolerant of who people are, but not necessarily what they believe, especially if it’s not grounded in reality. I have long said the only people I do not tolerate are those who do not tolerate. If it walks, looks, and quacks like a bigot…
A family friend was the manager of Yankee Atomic. I actually got to go through the plant to see how it operated. The closing of that facility- which never had a safety violation – was another blow to the area as those were good paying jobs in a beautiful area.
up there. It’s pretty country, but there’s absolutely nothing there. The most I’ve done there is white water rafting. My cousin’s husband works at a nuclear power plant up there in Vermont. I don’t know if it’s the same one. If it isn’t, they are closing it anyway.
I have friends in Heath too. They had a general store, but it closed and the guy running it went to work for one of the towns up there.
I think one of the facts that people miss is that we in the middle class tend to do what the rich do: we pass along wealth. We do so on a much smaller scale, but that’s part of our financial well-being. We also depend on our families for less financial things. People don’t have that much choice about where they live. Like anyone else, they want jobs. My friend teaches at Mohawk Trail in Buckland. People up there think teachers are rich. In East Longmeadow, they they think that we’re poor.
Yankee Atomic opened in 1960 and operated until about 1990. And the fact that you never knew it was there is an indication to me of how well run it was as opposed to problem child Pilgrim.
But it made Rowe a company town and when those jobs vanished I imagine the area was economically devastated. But hey, if they ceased to generate enough revenue it’s on them.
mark — you’ve taken a number of horsecrap potshots on me on this thread. So I’ll go pointwise.
1. Downrating a difference of opinion is an amateur move around here.
2.
I didn’t make any such statement. But as a region, the four Western Mass counties are decidedly rural by Massachusetts standards. 12.6% of the population, 41.8% of the land. Sure, Springfield is the third most populous city in MA, and you’ve also got the 22nd (Chicopee). That’s it for the top 25 by population state-wide. 42 percent of the land, only two of the most populous 25 communities in the Commonwealth. Western Mass is a rural region that happens to have a single gateway city. I’m not sure why you’re opposing that idea.
And the idea that Hampden County is “largely industrialized and urban” is nonsense. It hasn’t been industrialized in decades, if not a half-century. While the Census does consider a portion of Hampden County to be an urban area, it also considers virtually all of Essex, Middlesex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Plymouth, Bristol, Barnstable, and the bulk of Worcester to be urban, because the Census Bureau’s definition only divides urban and rural, and includes the decidedly suburban parts of the country (like most of the denser parts of Hampden County) as urban. And while the employers you listed are important (and not exhaustive), their combined ~6000 full time employees (4300 + 1453 + 201 — 500) does not a city make. Hampden County is formerly industrialized and decidedly suburban. It’s population density is 751/sq mi. Bristol, Essex, Middlesex, Norfolk, Suffolk,
tied tied with Plymouth.
Western Mass deserves less because fewer people live there. The four Western Mass counties make up 12.6% of the Massachusetts population. That doesn’t mean that it deserves less per capita (although I’d argue that due to differences in local government costs of real estate, goods & services, and wages, it well might). But Mr. Lesser’s argument is that we should spend more on that region, just because, you know, Trump.
I’m not arguing that we shouldn’t necessarily spend more money in Western Mass because it’s rural. I’m arguing that we shouldn’t necessarily spend more money in Western Mass because (a) we should focus on priorities, not places, and (b) not many people live in Western Mass, so not much money should be spent in Western Mass.
You want more money? Get more people. You love rural life? Great. I’m happy for you. But don’t whine when you don’t get much money from Beacon Hill because you don’t have many people.
Fine. “HEY COMPANIES, LOCATE IN WESTERN MASS WHERE HOUSING IS CHEAPER AND YOU CAN BULLDOZE GREENFIELDS.” Feel better? It won’t work. Know why? Because the industries for which Massachusetts can currently offer a competitive advantage value workers who want to live in urban areas or for which gain synergy by being located near other companies. Cheaper housing and more greenfields may make Chicopee a better deal for industries than Quincy, but it’s still generally a better deal still to locate in Summerville SC or Lake Jackson TX, to say nothing of overseas.
See, this is the issue. You (and perhaps Mr. Lesser) see the halves as Eastern and Western. I see the halves as have and have-not. I’m interested in spending money to combat drug addiction, as the need calls in both Berkshire County and Boston. I’m interested in a living wage in both Springfield and Salem. I’m interested in safe, functioning infrastructure in Somerville and in South Hadley.
That may be. Many of the people in urban areas live where we live because we chased opportunity. We sadly left behind our families and our comforts. We migrated as the economy changed. Some choose not to do so, and that’s fine too, but you seem to be suggesting that folks in Boston Metro were born owning a floor on a three-decker and a graduate degree. For many, many families in Eastern Mass, it remains a struggle. One paycheck away from eviscerating savings, a 3 month unemployment stint away from losing a home, just like in Western Mass.
I disagree. Firstly, we all do chose where we live. We have reasons to live where we chose, foregoing some things to have more of other things. I think if your a 17 year old and objective is to have a steady, secure job in the middle class, I wouldn’t encourage you to get a job at Smith & Wesson, because I don’t think it will be in Springfield 20 years from now. If you want to be an entrepreneur and try your hand in the tourism industry, Western Mass is great. If you’ve got ailing parents, you’re might well not be moving away, period. I get that, and I have no problem with it.
With due respect, in your absurd example, given a 35 year process, Eastern Mass (say, Worcester and parts east, but include a bit of southern NH) could indeed absorb the entire population of Western Mass (~825k). I assert that because, well, the Boston MSA has grown from 3.9M in 1980 to 4.7M in 2014 — a growth the population of 2014’s Western Mass.
I agree. Nothing I’ve written is contrary to that statement. But you deserve that not because of where you live, but because you live. Divvying out money based on geography doesn’t make any sense. Let’s divvy out money according to need. If that means that cherry sheet formulas need to be revised, let’s go for it. If that means a progressive tax system, you bet. If that means changing the premise of Prop 2.5 to deal with cities like Springfield, sure. But let’s made decisions on doing what’s best for people irrespective of geography, not because of it. That’s all I’ve argued, and I believe it’s contrary to the themes in Mr. Lesser’s op-ed.
They were aimed at Petr, but my aim was careless and included you. Please accept my apologies.
I’m leaving out the stuff out migration, etc. What I wrote was half-formed, and I don’t want to sort out my wheat from the chaff. If you want to continue that part, I will, but I’m not sure it would be necessary to do so.
Here’s what set me off in what you wrote:
1. The utilitarian aspect of your argument. “Western Mass deserves less because fewer people live there.” I don’t know if you actually believe this or you’re just picking up on my choice of words. If you mean “deserves,” then I guess you really don’t get it.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but you say the Boston area makes the most money per capita so they should get the most per capita. Need doesn’t enter into the equation.
Later you say, that you care about what’s best for people “irrespective of geography,” and at one point you list issues that should be addressed everywhere. This is good as far as it goes, but along with your per capita income equation, it suggests a proportionality that doesn’t work where need is greater or where issues may differ.
Boston has a lot of synergy. I get that. It’s also the location of the money that buys attention and influence. Politically, synergy works against Western Mass. That’s where the special interests and government are all there. We may have killed the Olympics in Boston, but we don’t have the people like that to even get a project like that on the table. We are disadvantaged politically, not just economically, and the political disadvantage builds on geography and the the social capital that comes with being in the state capital.
Lesser is arguing that like people in the Rust Belt, people in Western Mass are being left out and feel left out and thus supported Trump. That’s the Trump part you missed. Franklin County is never going to be a hotbed of development, but Hampden County can be. We have the educated populace, we are connected to Hartford, CT. We have brownfields and other non-greenfields to be developed.
Lesser wrote an op-ed, not a white paper. And in fact, he mentions his signature issue of East-West rail as an example of an issue. He also wrote the bill that allowed the state to purchase Narcan in bulk. I’m sure he’ll have more proposals coming forward. He’s not talking about throwing a few bucks our way or dividing the “same-size pie a different way.” The point is, Western Mass gets ignored, and like the Rust Belt, we deserve some attention.
FYI: we have two gateway cities, Holyoke and Springfield. In terms of rural anr urban, there is no actual definition of rural. To label Hampden County rural reflects an Eastern Mass perspective, a lack of understanding of who we are where we live. No one here considers Springfield, Chicopee, and Holyoke rural.
As the USDA suggests the census definition of rural is arbitrary, “Many people have definitions for the term rural, but seldom are these rural definitions in agreement. For some, rural is a subjective state of mind. For others, rural is an objective quantitative measure. The USDA, Economic Research Service, provides insight to rural definitions with an article, Defining the “Rural” in Rural America: The use of different definitions of rural by Federal agencies reflects the multidimensional qualities of rural America.”
Some companies do locate here. We need more. Would tax incentives work? Maybe. Would better transportation infrastructure help? We’d like to find out. We now have rail service from Vermont all the way through Massachusetts. I understand comparative advantage and synergy. No one thinks Springfield is going to become Boston. No on thinks Worcester is either.
But your idea of spending money proportionally on the population isn’t going to help us. Boston needs renovated and updated infrastructure. We need infrastructure. We don’t have it. It may be cognitively convenient to work on an issue-by-issue basis and spend proportionally on population, but we have different needs.
Folks from rural areas all over the country make this claim in reference to their major cities and/or their capital city. I’m skeptical that it’s true there, and I’m skeptical that it’s true here.
It’s true that we don’t talk about Western Mass as much as we talk about Boston Metro, for two reasons: (1) it’s way smaller in terms of population, economic activity, yadda yadda, and (2) it’s issues aren’t extreme: y’all need a bridge to span the Housatonic; Boston needs the Zakim — big problems naturally draw attention.
And this is why I ask the question: where is the money flowing? Because if the money is flowing from where it’s being raised to another part of the state, that part of the state is by definition not being ignored. This is my viewpoint, and why I ask for the analysis. My (evidence-free-at-this-time) hunch is that more money flows to Western Mass than comes from Western Mass. That suggests that the Commonwealth, rather than ignoring Western Mass, is investing in that region due to need, politics, or whatever. Is it enough? Nope. But that’s my point too — we’re not investing enough in Boston Metro either — a place with wages just as low for the working class but much higher costs of housing, transportation, and services.
Strictly speaking, you have three (Pittsfield, population 44k).
When one characterizes a region, that doesn’t mean that every square inch meets that characterization to a tee. Of course Springfield, Chicopee, and Holyoke proper aren’t rural. Similarly, Wyoming is rural, but Chyanne isn’t. And I’m not arguing that the region is rural — I’m simply pointing out that it’s a mix of rural (e.g. much of Berkshire) and suburban (e.g. much of Hampden), with the exception of Springfield. I hang out in Pittsfield every every year. It’s a suburban city — North Street (and a few others) have some multystorey brick buildings, but one street back it’s 1&2 family houses.
We don’t either, which is why I argue for issues-based and not location-based.
Indeed. So let’s talk about funding needs, not funding regions.
Why is this so hard?
but ask where the water is flowing from.
In the 1930’s 3000 people were removed from their homes, farms and churches (some forcibly by the sheriffs) in western Mass. It was to create a reservoir so the people of Boston could slake their thirst, local people were not allowed to tap into the systems. The water was only for people within ten miles of Beacon hill.
Next time you take a drink think about the implications of inter-regional cooperation, and historical resentment.
This is no different than logging, farming, fishing and any of a dozen other activities where resources in one region are moved and consumed in another. ‘slake their thirst’ is merely editorializing…
Strictly speaking, not true. Local people were not able to tap into the system because there was no system to tap into. That’s what it means to build infrastructure where none previously existed. The water was only for people within a certain distance of Beacon Hill because that was the physical extent, in 1938, of the man-made water distribution system. There were no Romans here before us, building and leaving aqueducts and infrastructure to build upon.
When the towns of Dana, Enfield, Greenwich and Prescott were dis-incorporated they razed the buildings, leaving only the cellars intact. Only the cellars. No water pipes were left, because none were there to leave. There was no underground infrastructure like that which we associate with modern life. The people had settled there, in the first place, because it was at the confluence of several rivers and provided them an abundant source of water. What made it a nice place to live was the very thing that made it attractive as a reservoir. The surrounding, remaining towns, couldn’t possibly have ‘tapped into the system’ because they didn’t have much in the way of systems of their own to connect or municipal functionaries to run them. This was the time that such systems were being invented and Boston was one of the cities doing the inventing.
I don’t think the resentment is warranted. At all. The creation of the Quabbin reservoir did not supplant any existing infrastructure, which is the underlying assumption you make. It created it.
…it seems at best a little odd that water gets carried practically across the state to get to Boston while the still-extant neighboring towns to the reservoir were not given access. I can easily see how people would resent having their part of the state reshaped for the benefit of a relatively distant city without seeing any tangible benefit themselves.
Christopher, the still-extant neighboring, rural, towns were likely using wells and cisterns for their water and outhouses for their waste in 1938. There was very little to which this purely hypothetical ‘access’ could have been hooked up. ‘Twas not the greed of a distant metropolis but the pace of invention that prevented ‘access.’
Another town devastated by Boston’s need for water, earlier than Quabbin. If Boston didn’t have the great water they have they wouldn’t be able to entice GE to come there. They wouldn’t have the great water if Beacon Hill weren’t willing to kick people off their land for Boston’s greater good. People moved to that area(Dana,Enfield) and created the infrastructure they wanted (houses, churches, roads) and were happy.
So Boston decides the area isn’t being utilized the way Boston wants, let’s drown the town, create some infrastructure we think is best (a reservoir). Screw the infrastructure the people there created we know it’s better to have water there. My friend owns 30 acres in West Boylston, part of it designated as being in the Wachusett watershed. That means he is supposed to get Boston’s permission if he cuts down a tree on his own land. The watershed must be maintained and pure so Boston can give GE good water. He has well water.
” There was no underground infrastructure like that which we associate with modern life.”
You sum up the Boston perspective exactly. Shays rebellion never really ended, we’re just regrouping.
… but as far as I know, neither the culinary arts nor the botanical sciences have yet found a way to make the one into the other, either palatably or interchangeably… I think rural should be rural and urban should be urban. I make distinctions, but not comparisons, between the two declining to say that one is ‘better’ than the other.
I think your notion of my contrariness informs a contrariness on your part. I was, in fact, trying to describe the plight. The upshot of the Op-ED by Senator Lesser (and I realized I mistakenly called him Representative Lesser earlier: my apologies to him or his constituents whom I slighted by this mistake) is that the once-rural areas of the state are insufficiently industrialized. His thesis is that, like the Rust Belt, coal country Appalachia and Pennsylvania, the industrial jobs were taken away. My point is that industry never got sufficient purchase. This can be seen in the fact that Rolls Royce left in 1931 and Indian Motorcycles in 1953… and they weren’t replaced.
Others on this blog have gone round and round about coal miners… whose jobs are, indeed, actively being taken away… and who are not happy about it. But coal mining jobs are being taken away because of economic pressures around pollution of the planet and energy prices in the competition for supply. Those are entirely different problems from the problems besetting the western part of the CommonWealth. The fact is that coal mining was a thriving, highly trained, profession that some families could capably do for generations. This situation has never obtained in Springfield… yet people, including the State Senator, pretend that it did and make explicit comparisons and invoking the ‘Trump voters’ to explain a situation it doesn’t explain.
True, the examples Lesser referenced are not the most relevant. Rolls Royce leaving in 1931 is not important.
What about Danaher Tools leaving around 2002? What about Milton Bradley leaving, gradually, over the course of the last 20 years? What about American Bosch leaving in 1980? What about Package Machinery leaving maybe 20 years ago? What about Westinghouse moving? What about several dozen paper companies moving from Holyoke over the past 30 years?
There are dozens of dozens of examples, so many I can’t remember them all. The fact of the matter is that Western Massachusetts has been a significant industrial player, and it has been deindustrializing for a long time, and the state doesn’t seem to give a rat’s ass because, hey, Boston! We rock!
This perfectly illustrates the devolution of the Democratic Party. “Screw you idiots, it is your fault for not living in Boston and working in a high intelligence job”. If that is the new Democratic attitude, I don’t want to be a part of it.
… by the author of the Op-Ed and by the Globe itself, in its choice of art.
You mistake me. I’m saying, I thought rather clearly, that rural is not urban, and doesn’t have to be industrialized to be worthy. I am, in fact, saying the exact opposite of what you purport to put in my mouth: It’s ok not to be industrialized, and rural areas have much worth. I’m certainly not saying that the only legit work is ‘high intelligence’ (whatever it is you think you mean by that… I consider driving an 18 wheeled vehicle a ‘high intelligence’ job) in Boston. I’m also pointing out that by chasing industrialization, and bemoaning its loss, it is you, and not I, who is unfavorably comparing the former rural areas to the industrialized and commercial spaces of Boston.
I am a little amazed that you are classifying, via some bureaucratic technicality, Western Massachusetts as “rural”, particularly when your economic suggestions center around true rural activities such as farming – ignoring the fact that there is plenty of areas of density out here.
No, it’s not Boston – but again, this is the closed-mindedness elitism that pisses so many people off both in this state and across the entire country. “You’re not urban because you’re not a world class city like Boston. You don’t have a subway. You don’t have skyscrapers”.
Is this not urban?
What about this?
Your suggestion that Western MA is a rural place that unsuccessfully flirted with industrialization, but really should just have stayed in its rural place, is astoundingly condescending. It ignores the fact that so many industrial developments for this country were centered in Western Massachusetts. A large driver of that was due to the US Armory, which operated in Springfield until 1968. A lot of innovation came out of the work done there. Another large driver of industrial activity was due to Springfield’s beneficial location between Boston, Hartford, and Albany.
Senator Lesser is calling attention to the fact that Western MA has been deindustrializing for decades, and that without some kind of help or acknowledgement from the state, the western part of our state is in deep trouble. And you are posting here “just let it become rural because there’s nothing wrong with that”?
I would like you refer you to my comment on the “Coal Worker” thread:
And stomv’s reply:
So within the span of two weeks, Stomv says this:
The state helped GE relocate to Boston – how about a little help like that out here? How about, at the very least, sending government back-office services out our way instead of plopping them in Boston?
Both petr and stomv seem to say “don’t focus on a region, focus on a problem”, but the problems are amplified because of the regions, and specifically because of a lack of jobs and state resources.
You want to talk about need? Hampden County has the busiest Superior Court in the state, and it does this with a budget that allows for 65 ADAs. Middlesex and Suffolk each have more than 140 ADAs. Our district attorney convinced every other district attorney in the state to forgo increases in their own budgets so that Hampden County could get an increase. What happened? The Senate refused to do that.
Oh, and P.S., Rolls Royce was replaced, by Westinghouse, which operated until the 1970s. There is actually an academic book written about how, during the 1980s, state legislators basically ignored the deindustrialization that was occurring because the thought was “industrial activity is so old-school, we are a high tech economy now”, and plowed the state resources into the 128 corridor.
I mean, seriously, is this the new Democratic Party? “I’ve got mine, Jack”. “If you’re not successful, it’s your own fault.”. “Why should my dollars go to subsidize you?” What’s next – a school policy that says “well, Poor School A is getting 10% more money than Rich School B and it is still failing, so maybe we should cut its money because we’re just wasting it on those poor kids”
This is why people voted for Trump, because they were told, in no uncertain terms, that they didn’t matter. After reading this discussion and both the animosity and/or lack of interest in Western MA, if the election was held right now, I’d vote for Trump just to burn the place down.
I think it is true that problems are amplified in certain regions. My question is if this is so because one region is trying to be like another… going against the ‘natural grain’ of things, so to speak? I think there are things about a given region that support or oppose certain things. The underlying assumption of Sen Lessers Op-Ed was, to put it bluntly, ‘why can’t Springfield be more like Boston?” That’s what is, precisely, meant by “being left behind.” I don’t know that I accept those terms. I think that’s my point. I’m not going to speak for stomv, he’s rather capable of doing that for himself.
But I certainly reject the characterization that I make the statement that because Springfield is not Boston it must be naturally inferior to Boston. That’s not what I’m saying at all. I can understand why some might think I’m saying that, and I apologize for a lack of clarity. but I’m most certainly not saying that.
Here’s my thinking detailed by an entirely innocuous and completely banal, but interesting, parallel: just today, at work, a co-worker confessed to being from Ohio AND a Bruins fan. Seems strange, no? Well, when he grew up, hockey wasn’t readily available in Ohio. It was more or less confined to those place in which it was cost effective to run skating rinks six or eight months of the year. The closest available to him was Detroit and he couldn’t condone the behavior of the Detroit fans. So he became a Bruins fan. I mentioned to him that I still think it’s nuts that places like LA, Arizona and Florida have ice hockey teams. He agreed with me. Winter sports belong in winter places. A younger co-worker, for whom a strictly northern US/Canadian NHL was unknown, thought we were crazy. His reply was that if technology allows people to, cost effectively, run skating rinks in the middle of summer in sweltering sunny Fla… more power to them. I reminded him that the central question of the original ‘Jurassic Park’ was ‘just because you CAN do something, does it mean you SHOULD do it?” When I was growing up a skating rink in Florida was an insurmountable problem: the region actively discouraged it. Now it’s less of a problem, but does that mean it’s a solution?
All I’m saying is that the very notion of ‘industrialization’ means concentration. It means collecting resources from all over the place and focusing them in one place. There are a lot of wide open spaces and far flung populations — the very opposite of ‘concentration’– in western Mass. So I think the region and the very idea of this kind of industry are at odds. I think the inability of industry to get a decent purchase is indication of this. I don’t think this is a failing of western Mass. I think the wide open spaces and far flung populations are much of its charms and I think it is the breadbasket to Boston. I think Springfield is not at all like Boston, nor should it be. Nor should anyone define that inability-to-be-like-Boston as ‘you’re not successful.” I think that’s a mistake.
Western MA as a breadbasket is a bit of an anachronism. While there is more farming there than in Newton, the vast majority of our food comes from industrial Midwestern farms where economies of scale negate any additional costs for shipping. Maine has far more agricultural because it had remained in production while western MA abandoned many farms in favor of manufacturing which had now left (and I invoke my hobby horse of exporting industrial pollution here).
Secondly, you speak of the are as too far flung to have the concentration of housing, workers, etc. that exists in the 128 belt to make business viable there. But that lack of concentration is offset by the prohibitive costs of land for facilities, cost of worker housing, etc. that make eastern MA so expensive for business.
….with climate change and the growing water shortages in California, agriculture is starting to return to parts of Massachusetts. We’ve got water and now with global warming, we’ve added a week or two at each side of the growing season.
I am looking at a state map of population density by town. Boston certainly stands alone as far as density goes – but Springfield and Chicopee are as dense as Belmont, Framingham, Newton, Dedham, Woburn, Wakefield, and certain neighborhoods in those communities (plus Holyoke) are as dense as parts of Cambridge or Brookline. The rest of the communities surrounding Springfield (Agawam, West Springfield, Longmeadow, East Longmeadow, Holyoke, South Hadley, Easthampton) have densities resembling Lexington, Marlborough, Burlington, Billerica.
Surely you aren’t saying that only cities as dense as Boston can have commerce or industry?
Something to remember is that Springfield has lost 25,000 residents since 1960. Holyoke has lost 12,000 people since then. Chicopee has lost 10,000 people. Why? Because the jobs went away. The infrastructure still exists for more people out here – the job market just doesn’t allow that to happen. A lot of it was due to neglect – I can’t begin to tell you how many apartment blocks literally burned to the ground in Holyoke in the 70s due to arson – but they were in horrendous shape. Springfield manages to tear down at least a hundred housing units per year, most of which is in the older denser neighborhoods. There is little investment in improving existing housing – a large amount of which is owned by Boston-area landlords since it is so cheap compared to Eastern MA.
But back to your thoughts, Boston is booming, sure. It has specific problems because of that, primarily the cost of housing, but also congestion. You propose that we focus state energy to artificially force housing to be cheaper and to deal with the congestion – instead of focusing state energy to encourage some of that development to be elsewhere. That is a deliberate choice, not a natural law.
I will bring this up again: the state appears to have over 85,000 employees. Why can’t more of those employees be outside of greater Boston? Sure, many of those employees have to physically service the population in Boston, but plenty do not. There are plenty of back-office positions housed right in Boston. The first one I looked up, MA DOT, is at Park Plaza in Boston.
There was a great example just last year: the state closed a call center in Springfield for the Department of Unemployment Insurance, laying off 57 workers, and one in Worcester, laying off a number more. It kept centers open in Brockton, Lawrence, and Boston. It did this because “unemployment was down”. Springfield’s unemployment rate at the time was 8.3%, double that of the state. Why not downsize at the Boston office instead?
Why not come up with a longer-term plan to shift state departments to the Gateway cities? Surely there are some departments that could operate independently outside of Boston. The amount of savings on salary alone would probably be substantial – no need to pay someone to live in a $400k house when they can live in the same house for $150k.
The reason I posted this article is that we have a very real situation in this country in that a lot of people voted for Donald Trump. In the past month we have seen how bad that is – but his voters are unrepentant. They feel neglected and they wanted to shake things up. A large swath of Massachusetts also voted for Donald Trump. They echo the same things that people in our Midwest echo.
Trump is going to “help” them in a very specific way, a way that I think will actually hurt them. Why don’t we, as a state, choose a different model and apply it right here in our state? That is what Senator Lesser is saying. But what I have mostly heard here is “we shouldn’t even bother to help the distressed parts of our state”. Even though there are employers clamoring for skilled manufacturing, “nope, we shouldn’t train people on that, the Western part of our state just can’t or shouldn’t support that kind of work because it is ‘rural'”.
How can I not feel like people here are just saying “f*ck you, Western MA”?
It seems to me that there are three distinct parts of Western Mass (density wise) and every time somebody writes about one region, nopolitician or mark decry that other portions are different. So, here we go:
1. A significant amount of the land area in the western four counties is rural. That’s easy to see, easy to understand. By definition, not very many people live there.
2. A significant portion of Hampden County is suburban. It’s clearly not rural, but it ain’t urban either. And no, Holyoke isn’t urban, not even 530 Main Street (see above). A three story brick building with no street level activity located next to one story buildings does not urban make. Holyoke is suburban. Loads of 1 and 2 family homes, some 100 years old some newer, with small side setbacks and sidewalks. That’s a suburb, easy peasy. Same goes for development of the strip malls along a state road. Urban doesn’t mean rural but with smaller lot sizes.
3. Western Mass does have Springfield, which is urban, and it’s immediately surrounded by suburbs.
So there are three different subsections of Western Mass in terms of density and land use. This “but hey another part of Western Mass is different” argument is lame and unhelpful.
And P.S.: find me a single post that takes the tone or tact of your penultimate paragraph. Because I can’t find one. Nobody is saying that Western MA doesn’t deserve help. Folks are arguing that it doesn’t deserve additional merely because it’s Western Mass. All parts of the state want, need, and deserve more resources. If we grow revenue, everybody will get more, and we should argue about how to divvy up the new revenue. If we don’t grow revenue, than more for Western Mass means less for some other place. In that context, if you’re arguing that Western Mass should get more and you don’t care if that means that my part of the state gets less, then don’t be surprised when the response comes off as a four letter word, because the request, as phrased, is remarkably egocentric.
but I find the whole tone of this take needlessly antagonistic, stomv. Is Lesser arguing for a greater share of the same pie? Or is he arguing that we should make the pie itself bigger — which I think most of us would support?
I hear all the time that the reason we can’t get significant support for the MBTA is that people outside of 128 don’t perceive a benefit. If Western MA buys into transport expansion, that might become part of a bigger deal.
The diabolical cleverness of austerity-politics is to get us fighting over scraps, while the wealthy enjoy endless tax cuts. If we’re fighting over a finite/limited pie for who gets necessary expansion, we’re begging that very question.
And “egocentric” … I think we can lay off the personal stuff.
Well, two points.
The town of Bourne voted to join the MBTA to bring services to the Cape down from Kingston. The track is there. The MBTA refuses. So lack of support flows both ways.
Pretty much everything Mark wrote applies to the Cape and Islands as well, with different examples, and we even pay more for our cheap seat tickets.
Not knowing the details, that certainly sounds sucky. I have no idea what the levelized net cost per rider was though — and for a system constrained by finances, that’s a metric I might use: will this route lose more or less money per passenger than most of our other routes? Will this route allow for further additions that will improve the levelized net cost per rider on this route? Will this route increase the levelized net cost per rider on other routes?
All of which is to say, I’m all for expanding mass transit in a way that’s fair but also financially prudent: if you’ve only got enough funds to expand a little bit, try to do it in a place that’s both deserving (whatever that means) and that won’t break the bank on a per-passenger basis.
And, as I said, I have no idea where the Bourne proposal would have stacked up. If you’ve got a link worth reading, I’m very intrigued.
But I think that I was not antagonistic on it’s face, and that maybe there’s lots of negative energy that’s been building and assigned to folks like me that I didn’t personally earn. My very first post (that seemed to pop this puss filled zit) was that “I don’t have a problem” spending money in [should have written Western Mass instead of “rural areas”]. But I also want more money spent in Boston Metro areas too — where there’s need, there’s need.
Mr. Lesser doesn’t argue for spending in Boston Metro, but rather exclusively in his neck of the wood. Whereas we’ve heard from multiple folks advocating for Western Mass that we Boston folks just don’t get them, where’s the two way street? Where are the Western Mass folks advocating for the Boston Metro needs I mentioned? Mr. Lesser doesn’t do it, and neither does mark-bail or nopolitician, etc. Further, Mr. Lesser’s angle of the op-ed isn’t on making the pie bigger, but rather on how some folks feel (note the lack of analysis) that they’re being ignored, and the solution to winning their trust is to send more money their way (again, with a lack of analysis), irrespective of either absolute or relative need when compared to Boston Metro.
I think that’s just poor public policy.
I do too. And I’ll continue to hear it and shrug. And yet, when I point openly question if more tax dollars are flowing westward than eastward (to point out that Western Mass just might not be being ignored), I’m accused of not caring about Western Massholes, of “pay to play”, of all kinds of the exact quote you just made about how Boston can’t get what we want because the others don’t see a benefit. So rather than calling it out, I’m expected to be magnanimous?
Bah. Demonstrate need on specific issues, and lets fund those issues in accordance with the need, in all parts of the state — east and west, rural and suburban and urban. Don’t come to me with feelings and geography and say give us more if you want our support, free of analysis or consideration for anyone else in our Commonwealth.
played out. It certainly is as far as I’m concerned, but I think your demands for Lesser’s editorial are not realistic.
He wrote an op-ed, but you keep finding fault with what he didn’t say. This is a common problem in book reviews.
Lesser has had one term as a state senator. Aside from doing a lot of things that don’t have his name on them, he accomplished one major thing: he wrote a bill that allowed the state to buy Narcan in bulk saving communities across the Commonwealth to save money. That’s the whole state. This is a big accomplishment for a freshman senator. His other signature issue was studying the feasibility of rapid rail transit from Springfield to the Eastern part of the state. Baker shitcanned it. It was a good idea. He represents his district, but also serves the people of Massachusetts.
The op-ed puts us on the mind of Eastern Massachusetts, at least for a while. That’s one reason I and, I think, NoPolitician cheered it. The other thing is did was to connect the Rust Belt to Western Massachusetts, which is valid.
Some parts of the state need more help than others. I’m not saying that Boston doesn’t need help – but when you look at how Boston is doing compared to how Springfield is doing, it is night and day. Springfield’s average household income is $34,731. Boston’s is $78,800. Boston’s property value has gone up 42% in the past 8 years, since the crash. Springfield’s has decreased by 1.9% in the past 8 years.
Springfield has been at the Proposition 2.5 ceiling for the past six years. It had to cut property tax levy – Springfield collected $170m in property taxes in 2010. It then collected $166m, $169m, $167m, and $172m the following four years. Springfield’s growth in tax levy has been 12% over 7 years, or 1.7%. Boston’s growth in tax levy in the same period has been 33.9%, or 4.8% per year.
Let’s talk unemployment. Boston’s is 3.7%. Springfield’s is 7.6%. Springfield peaked at 15.4% in 2010. Boston peaked at 8.4% in 2009.
Springfield got hit with a tornado in 2011 which took out hundreds of properties, most of which were not rebuilt because the owners didn’t have enough insurance (or they were bank-owned and uninsured). Did the state do anything to help the tornado-stricken communities? I can’t recall a single thing.
How about state aid? Both Springfield and Boston saw an 8.1% increase in unrestricted general government state aid from 2010 to 2017. Springfield has been the beneficiary of more educational aid in that time, a 22% increase in Chapter 70 money. Boston’s has gone down, but I’m not sure why (maybe fewer students?)
If you want to argue for helping communities by need, then you need to actually look at the needs of those communities. Stop wearing blinders. Springfield (and Holyoke, and to a lesser extent, Chicopee) are struggling massively. People in Boston don’t seem to comprehend this. Boston is booming. It’s problems are largely due to its own success – too much congestion and too little housing. That isn’t that bad a problem to have. A bad problem is not being able to plow streets in every snowstorm because you don’t have enough money. A bad problem is having your schools taken over by the state, not because they are being run poorly, but because your city has an abundance of homeless children, transient children, and children living in abject poverty, and those kids don’t test well. A bad problem is having to live next door to abandoned houses which tend to get burned down in the winter because homeless people light fires inside to keep warm.
So I’m all for helping out communities in this state and prioritizing by need. Come out to Hampden County and see the need for yourself. Again, relating this back to Trump – Democrats have been proclaiming that our economy has been great lately. It is – if you live in Washington DC, Boston, New York, San Francisco, and a handful of other places. It still stinks nearly everywhere else. That is what propelled Trump – big-city Democrats who were completely out-of-touch with the rest of the country, and then when shown that reality, an attitude that those people were somehow to blame for not being educated and living in a big city.
Again, let’s fix the problems in this state and be a national example instead of pretending that everything is OK and we just need to ride out the next four years talking about climate change, equal rights for trans-gendered people, and atrocities in Syria.
Depends on what you man by “parts”. Do you mean people or families? You bet. Occasionally, entire cities or towns run into a jam, perhaps of the doing of a few elected or appointed government employees, and those “parts” need help too.
Certainly the per capita number of people who need help in one region of the state need more help than in other regions. No question there either.
And, some problems have epicenters that are clearly geographic. A disease outbreak, massive layoffs in the same relatively small area, a natural disaster. But in all these cases (and others) the argument shouldn’t be “we feel ignored so send us money” but rather “this is the specific problem we are seeking to address, this problem is significant relative to other parts of the state, and therefore enacting these specific spending (or other) policies are important” is a long way from a general, analysis-free us-not-you missive.
So you did that, in as much as can be done in a blog post (although averages are tricky things — the very wealthy of Beacon Hill don’t make the struggling families of Dorchester any less hungry). And I agree. Springfield’s Prop 2.5 problems are the stuff of legend, brought on at least in part by policy that ignores Springfield’s specifics, and the state should partner with the city to take specific actions to grow Springfield’s property values faster than city expenses, including revising how state aid is assigned.
This isn’t about me wearing blinders. This is about folks like Mr. Lesser handing out blinders rather than eye-opening arguments. And I admit, I’m more data/analysis driven than many, which is why I wrote how I read it, not how everybody may interpret it.
On another note,
I don’t think that’s the attitude. I agree that folks in cities don’t see enough of people’s day-to-day in the ‘burbs and rural areas farther away from the biggest cities. I also think the reverse is true — that (as I wrote earlier) there’s this idea that the cities are filled with (a) wealthy hipsters, and (b) Trump’s ghettos. What gets lost is all the middle — people who are one paycheck away from spiraling into severe social problems like homelessness. People who are living in substandard housing, who have unsteady work, who aren’t able to afford meds and food and rent. The big cities have loads of those people too — just like Western Mass — but somehow their existence isn’t acknowledged.
And that’s why I argued that it should be about specific issues of social good, putting the efforts where the need is, and geography be damned. The problems aren’t regional — Springfield’s 2.5 problem isn’t North Adams’ problem either.
Me too, 100%, with laser focus. And if a few communities happen to be in the same region, all the more reason. And hopefully we can find structural approaches so that in a few years those resources can be re-dispatched to address other problems elsewhere.
I don’t mean to suggest that Mr. Lesser’s op-ed relegates his entire efforts to the bin. On the contrary, I find his rhetoric frustrating precisely because I believe that he’s a net positive not just on Western Mass, but on the state as a whole.
And this is the context in which I find his op-ed so frustrating. But we’ve hashed that out 😀
The jobs that paid well in this region did not pay well because they were “manufacturing” or because they worked with steel or anything of the sort. The reality is that these jobs are still being done, but being done elsewhere. So why would a job done in Michigan in “manufacturing” not pay the same great wages in Chihuahua or Greater Noida based on the premise that it’s “manufacturing” therefore is pays well?
No, these jobs paid well because the citizens who provided the labor had a voice in their government and political leverage.
What’s decaying and rusting in the USA is not steel, it is democracy.
A concrete example would be the recent GE real estate deal in Boston, which got a lot of uncritical coverage in the Globe.
This despite (among other things):
1. The deal pulled the rug out from under the economy of another community in New England. and:
2. Western Mass got the shaft from GE in the form of serious, long term river pollution.
I don’t know where the anger on my part came from. I think I might actually feel this way since I don’t have any personal problems at the moment. As you know yourself, it is maddening to be misunderstood, and quite frankly, I don’t think you or Stomv understand our perspective. You are welcome, of course, to disagree.
Hampden County is not rural! Developing this area would provide jobs for Hampshire and Franklin and part of Berkshire County. No one is talking about developing Southwick or Ashfield or other remote places. We’re not chasing industrialization. We’re chasing jobs.
Yours and Stomv’s responses are exactly what pisses people off about Democrats. Granted, this BMG commentary and wonkishness is fair play, but you happened to catch No Politician and me being two of “the people,” not just commenters.
I know I am sometimes too blunt and sometimes draw with a broader brush than is pertinent. You’re right and I don’t know that I do fully understand your perspective. My responses are attempt to add my perspective and I guess I don’t know, very well, how to do that without seeming to outright deny your perspective. But please understand, that’s not my intent in this instance. (aware, as I am, of the seeming irony of having deliberately challenged posters perspectives in other instances…) I think maybe we need more categories besides ‘rural’ and ‘urban,’ — and to maybe to stop seeing them as dichotomy — to inform our separate perspectives. Maybe I need also, in a more general sense, to watch for those assumed dichotomies and constricting lack of categorization…
There are a few posters here, regardless of where they might differ from me, whom I always read. A while ago I developed the occasional habit of going to various posters pages first to see what they’ve posted recently. It was a habit I started with your comments.
thank you too.
This is the exact division that cost Democrats the presidency (and probably to a lesser extent, the governorship).
Stomv, you are basically saying “my urban area is fantastic, prosperous, and I don’t want to help anyone else. Let them move to my urban area if they want to do better”. In other words, “I got mine, Jack!”. You’re there, you have bought in, and you’re now looking to solidify your position, to grow your wealth. Screw those bumpkins who don’t live here. Take their tax dollars and use them to make the problems in your area (caused by tremendous success) better.
You are advocating for more inequality. Shouldn’t our state be concerned with the entire state, not just the parts that are doing wildly well and are experiencing problems because of that?
That’s not what stomv is saying, and disagree with that characterization. He is saying that proportionately this part of the state already gets a decent amount of money per capita and to invest more in it is a parochial form of politics that rewards voters for their misguided grievance politics, particularly when urban communities, especially communities of color, in the eastern part of the state are also hurting.
He is saying target poverty, income inequality, and lack of mobility and infrastructure on statewide basis with statewide policies rather than picking and choosing which gateway cities to help based on political considerations.
Lesser, Mark, you and to a lesser extents myself are arguing that the government is already picking winners and losers and has decided to write Western Mass off as losers. It’s likely we are both right, and it’s likely the solution is somewhere in between.
I happen to think Lesser and you are making the point about why specific voters in a specific location voted for Brown, Baker and now Trump and what specific policies can help alleviate their pain and anger and bring them back to the progressive fold. I don’t think he or you are proposing that this investment happens at the expense of needed priorities elsewhere in the state.
I’m advocating for services going to these kids, not these ones. I have no idea why you and mark-bail have this notion that everyone living in Boston Metro is a 30-ish hipster riding his fixie to his $90,000 desk job downtown. The fact of the matter is that there are more than ten times more people living in poverty in Boston Metro than there are in Western Mass. The implicit argument you’re making is that the poor people in Boston should be passed over because they happen to live within 3 miles of rich people.
Certainly not NB, NP, or Eric Lesser. If anything they are arguing that poverty and working families not within that radius are forgotten which is wrong. I’d rather be poor in Chelsea than poor in Springfield, and I say that from having experience campaigning in both places. There is simply easier access to jobs, capital, and social services the closer you are to Boston. Obviously I think we should help the poor people in either locale get the help we need, your the one making it an either/or dichotomy.
Arguing for money for a region is doing exactly that. Arguing with numbers like average household income is doing exactly that. Complaining about the collapse of factories decades ago in your community but ignoring the collapse of blue collar industries in other parts of the state (e.g. taxi drivers in Boston Metro) is doing exactly that.
Quote it. Because unlike the folks I listed, I have gone out of my way to point out that we should address the problems wherever they may be, whereas the folks I listed have argued solely that Western Mass should get more with no consideration at all for the rest of the state, despite limited resources.
Lesser isn’t saying “help Western MA just because”. He’s saying “help Western MA because it needs help, and isn’t getting it”. He is saying “The entire state’s economy is not mirroring Boston”. He is saying “neglecting regions and their citizens caused the backlash which got Trump elected”. Yes, help people in need, but recognize that people are in need for different reasons. Someone who is poor in Chelsea – a community surrounded by massive economic opportunity – probably needs something different than someone poor in Springfield – a community with a dearth of economic opportunity.
Median household income is an incredibly important figure because it provides the context between regions. Springfield’s median (not average) household income is half that of Boston. That should be viewed as a quantitative problem. Sure, it costs more to live in Boston, but not twice as much as Springfield. A gallon of gas costs basically the same in both places. Food costs basically the same. The cost of putting a roof on your house costs basically the same. Electricity, gas, and oil costs the same. The main higher cost in Boston and its surrounding areas is housing. That could be solved relatively quicky by eliminating zoning bylaws which would spur denser construction where it is in demand – but of course people wouldn’t stand for that.
On another note, I was pleased to find this op-ed on Vox: Let’s relocate a bunch of government agencies to the Midwest
It is as if someone was reading my comment here from yesterday. Deindustrialized cities have infrastructure to handle a lot more capacity, but don’t have the jobs to drive the growth. The coasts are overcrowded and booming. The government can shift its workers from the expensive coasts to the cheaper middle regions and can both save money and get people in those regions working again.
So how about it? How about a push to move state services to Gateway cities? Not in a disruptive way, but still make it a state goal.
Lesser’s agenda sounds a lot like Deval Patrick’s.
Tim Murray
to being one of the most consequential legislators on Beacon Hill. He was just elected to second term.
Were Patrick or Murray ever consequential?
On environment stuff, they were damned consequential. Countless other things too, of course. Had there been more legislators like Lesser, P/M would have been even more consequential.
I haven’t read all of these, but they may be what you’re looking for. See the 2007 BMG post from Dan Bosley below:
https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2015/09/09/business-costs-remain-high-statewide-but-state-regional-economic-disparity-grows/Rykv9FpQAlOnYDWrjVQt3N/story.html
http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2013/11/study_shows_extreme_income_and.html
http://archive.boston.com/business/articles/2011/08/21/away_from_the_boston_technology_hub_the_poor_only_get_poorer/
And here’s Dan Bosley, writing at BMG: http://vps28478.inmotionhosting.com/~bluema24/2007/08/regional-state-spending/