Friday, October 26, 2007

CommonWealth Mag: towns in trouble

The public policy magazine CommonWealth weighs in with a cover story recounting the troubles in Stoneham and other towns and concludes that municipal finances are in big trouble.

The pro-Patrick Blue Mass Group links here with some chatter. The full magazine is here (registration required). An excerpt:

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.”

Posted by David Dahl, Regional Editor at 07:33 PM

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