Municipalities across the commonwealth are increasingly facing tight budgets, sending a steady stream of home rule petitions up to Beacon Hill. Those are local policy tools that let individual cities and towns make decisions unique to them, like imposing special taxes or asking for extra liquor licenses beyond the regular limit. State House News Service reporter Colin Young explains the municipal perspective on these financial workarounds and why local officials say they need home rule petitions for their very survival.
Colin Young, SHNS: Yeah, this is something that is always playing out on Beacon Hill, but it has been a particular sore spot this session, where cities and towns are really feeling the squeeze. Their costs for everything are going up, and the aid that comes down from the state level hasn't been increasing at the rate that municipalities would like it to be. And so the cities and towns have to come up with the answers themselves. They're sort of the end of the road.
Cities and towns have been really pleading with Beacon Hill to provide more aid, to do something to make things easier on them so they don't have to fire teachers or lay off firefighters. And so towns are coming up with individual ways that their situations might be made a little bit easier.
Carrie Healy, NEPM: So let's talk strategy. With the legislative session pushing through complex policy packages, what's the current temperature inside the State House on actually moving these municipal carve-outs?
It depends who you ask. If you are a representative or senator who is sponsoring one of these home rule petitions, where one of your communities is trying to get something done, then you are working long and hard to try to make this happen. But this is sort of the traditional August recess for the Legislature. They're kind of on vacation. They're maybe not thinking about some community far from their district and what it needs right now.
So it's a kind of tough game for these lawmakers to play, where they have to really get people's attention. It kind of goes back to old-school politics. Who are your relationships with? Did you call a favor in? That sort of thing. Part of the challenge is just getting it on people's radar.
Right. So where is leadership drawing that line? Are there specific economic or political precedents that make the speaker or the Senate president hesitate?
Well, we've seen a real hesitancy to allow individual communities to exercise new or additional taxing power. What we see much more commonly are things like allowing individual towns to change the distribution of their liquor licenses. Just last week, we saw one pass to let the town of Topsfield ban the sale of nips. But beyond that, Beacon Hill usually doesn't stray too far into tax territory.
Yeah. Topsfield is on the North Shore. In western Massachusetts, there's one home rule petition from former Representative Natalie Blais and Senator Paul Mark. It would let Charlemont, a hilltown of fewer than 1,200 people in Franklin County, impose a 3% tax on commercial recreation — things like rafting, skiing and ziplining. They would use it to fund emergency services. So the bill has moved forward in committee this year. Colin, will Charlemont get the green light to tax outdoor tourists?
I'm going to be watching this one all fall, Carrie, because on its face it seems to make a lot of sense. And it also seems to fit in with a trend that Governor Maura Healey has been promoting, which is to give communities more power to address the issues within their borders themselves.
This is one where, if you could get some people on board, I could see this one moving through. At different times over the years, both the House and Senate have given this bill initial approval. So the challenge is just getting some momentum behind it and actually getting it moving.
I mentioned Natalie Blais. The First Franklin District has been without a representative for seven months since Natalie Blais left, and Speaker Ron Mariano chose not to call a special election. Tactically, why leave this rural seat vacant for nearly a year? And for the three women now running for it, should they be worried about their district's leverage on Beacon Hill?
Yeah, the candidates running for this seat are going to have a lot that they'll want and probably need to address as soon as they get into office, with this seat being vacant for so long. But the reason that decision was made, I think, goes back to the cost issue we were just discussing. Representative Blais' district would include 17 or 18 communities that would have to hold a special election to fill that seat. That's a lot of cost!
Special election costs are one of the things we hear from municipalities every session: that it's an added expense for them. And so I think that was part of the calculus there — that it could be quite a burden on some of those towns just to hold the election itself. Instead, they're left with the burden of not having representation in the House.
