budget and local aid updates, community preservation act, financial outlook, local aid policy, priorities/requests, resources, revenue, taxes
On Thursday, the Senate passed legislation to provide funding to continue current transportation-related projects through Fiscal Year 2013. The Chapter 90 funds appropriated by this bill for local projects, including roadway and bridge repairs, will support the infrastructure of the Commonwealth’s cities and towns. This appropriation of $200 million (equivalent to last year’s appropriation) represents …
Continue reading “Transportation Bond Bill Passes Senate with Funding for Localities”
The consensus revenue estimate underlying the budget appears slightly optimistic and is more uncertain than in some years.
The 2006 education aid reform was designed to allocate aid based on a better model of community ability to pay. It was intended that the new model would be phased in over 5 years. Since 2009 (Fiscal 2010), as a response to the financial crunch, we have made formula modifications that have tended to preserve …
Starting in Fiscal 2002, the state moved away from reliance on the statutory Chapter 70 formula, distributing education aid based on annually changing formulas written into outside Section 3 of the annual general appropriations act. It was increasingly recognized that, although Chapter 70 had been fairly successful in reducing disparities in education spending, it was …
During the financial crunch, the state abandoned some formula elements that were designed to better match aid to community ability to pay. The result over the past four years has been an erratic pattern of aid increases which does not treat communities of similar wealth in similar ways. An additional feature of the erratic pattern …
The three pages linked to at the bottom of this page explore the implementation of the education aid reforms of 2006 through the financial crunch and consider alternative implementations for FY2013 and beyond. Education aid was formerly distributed to communities pursuant to Chapter 70 of the General Laws and “Chapter 70” is still shorthand for …
