Springfield City Councilor Sean Curran is urging Gov. Maura Healey to restore $3 million in casino mitigation funds. The city and other local communities have relied on these funds, generated by MGM Springfield and other casinos, to fund public safety, infrastructure and community projects. Curran says restoring the money is critical to honoring promises to Springfield, which bears the largest share of casino related impacts. State House News Service reporter Colin Young explains the state gaming commission did not intend the community mitigation funding to be phased out in this way.
Colin Young, SHNS: I don't believe the plan was for them to go away entirely, but when they were put in place, part of the purpose of these mitigation funds was to mitigate the impacts specifically from the construction of these facilities, and we're now well down the road. The issue here isn't so much a change from the Gaming Commission as it is a change from the Legislature. The Legislature decided that they would stop the flow of casino revenues to this mitigation fund. So really, the well that the Gaming Commission was spending from dried up on them.
Carrie Healy, NEPM: Last week, the Massachusetts Municipal Association released research from Tufts University's Center for State Policy Analysis highlighting a revenue crunch facing local communities. The report says, “rural towns and gateway cities lack the local income and wealth to respond at all to rising expenses.”
In western Mass. many residents encounter state government through town budgets. Those pay for schools, roads, employee health care and things like that, and these town expenses all seem to be just going up. Colin, as you know, local revenue rests on property taxes and state aid. There's so much in this report. What can state lawmakers and elected leaders take away from it to ensure that there's funding for what matters locally?
Well, Carrie, I think what state lawmakers should be taking away from this report is that municipalities are feeling a lot of the same pressures that the state is feeling, right? Municipalities are saying the level of government above us isn't doing enough to help us. And that's exactly what the state is saying about the federal government that, hey, the federal government is cutting funding to us! We're now having a harder time. And of course, that's trickling down to municipalities as well. So, I think the real takeaway for lawmakers is just that everyone is feeling the squeeze right now. And those small measures, you know, patchwork attempts at fixes here and there, might not be enough! This report really reads as something that's calling for a more comprehensive overhaul in the sort of relationship between the state budget and local budgets.
Finally, Colin, at the end of this week, the Legislature's Joint Committee on Revenue is slated to hear a number of bills related to transportation, telecommunications and utilities. And there are measures that deal with the gas tax, with broadband taxation, with bundled cell phone taxes. How could these proposed bills, among many impact residents, and could the Massachusetts Municipal Association report (and other current political dynamics) shape the chances of their passage?
You know, I don't think they have a great chance of passage to begin with. I don't think the Legislature is all that interested in touching tax policy right now. But I think the hearings on these bills, the testimony the lawmakers hear on them, it all adds to this much larger conversation that revolves around affordability, cost of living, taxation level at the state and local government point, and I think all of that, at some point, is going to have to come to a head here on Beacon Hill.
