Will Brownsberger -- State Representative, Democrat, 24th Middlesex District

These funds are flowing directly from the federal government through state executive branch agencies to schools. They are apparently not subject to legislative action at either the state or local level.

It’s not exactly that the bulldozers are starting their engines, but the string of appeals and long-shot funding ideas seems to be running out on the silver maple trees of the Belmont Uplands.

The two year formal legislative session, now ended, has been a mixed bag. Perhaps the best news about the session is that we got through it.

There is a growing belief among serious economists that we, as a country, face a large and unsustainable gap between our financial resources and our financial expectations. Current deficit spending by the national government and a failure to control long term debt, pension and health care costs at all levels of government will lead to [...]

Read this post for an official overview of the accomplishments of the 2009-2010 session.

I spoke earlier this week with Sue Clippinger, the traffic planner in Cambridge. She said that she was working on getting the application together for a truck ban on Blanchard Road. She said that she had all the necessary data at this stage. She said that she foresaw little objection in Cambridge since most of [...]

The conference committee negotiating a municipal relief package reported a bill last night and the House accepted the report on what turned out to be straight party line vote.

After two days of debate, the house passed a bill facilitating the siting of land based wind facilities. The vote was 101 to 52 and I voted in the majority.

There’s been a bit of press about the drive to repeal the sales tax on alcohol. Personally, I’m not crazy about paying an extra $1.25 on a case of Harpoon IPA. I have some questions (which I can’t find answers to on the state web site) and a suggestion. Questions: What other taxes are there [...]

Felling a small river floodplain forest in this age of global warming and annual flooding increases, nullies any wording to describe the criminality of such an the act directed against the local communities that surround Aleiwfe.March and June rains were torrential and flooded the Alewife flood plain, surrounding the silver maple forest up to the [...]

Will I know you are doing all you can to save this beautiful area – a gem in such an urban area.  Why can’t the government use the money they are giving the developer, to save this area?     There certainly are enough people who are passionate about this forested area so that if it were [...]

I attended an information session on health care reform ran by Representative Hogan, Jessica Constantino of AARP and Deb Thompson of the PASS Group (Public Advocacy and Support Strategies) a couple of weeks ago. The material that was handed out and the presentation given were very informative, and I thought what I learned could be useful to constituents, especially for senior citizens and those on Medicare.

I thought work was going to start  this spring on making a real trail out of the Alewife to Brighton Rd bike path? I biked on it today and it’s still the same dirt path it’s been.

I am interning in Will’s office this summer and recently attended a hearing on sewer flows into Alewife Brook and the Charles and Mystic basins, which provided a helpful status update on projects to improve water quality.   The hearing was to extend the variance allowing for a certain level of Combined Sewer Overflows (CSO) into [...]

There’s a thoughtful discussion on On Point today about how to handle guaranteed pensions in the face of economic volatility: http://www.onpointradio.org/2010/07/pension-crisis They touch on pensions’ contributions towards budget deficits, how some public employees game their respective systems, and how public salaries differ from private salaries.  It’s worth a listen if you’re interested in the issue.