<p>To fundingfather, zoosermom and others unsure about Romney. Chevda and others, feel free to chime in with more details if you have them. </p>
<p>To understand how Romney as the Governor of the state personally screwed up the finances, you have to understand a little about how Massachusetts works. Back in the late 80’s or early 90’s, proposition 2.5 was enacted that prohibited towns from increasing their property tax collected on existing residential construction to 2.5% per year. It doesn’t matter if inflation is 1% or 15%, the revenue a town can collect from residential property tax, excluding new construction, can only go up by 2.5% per year. Pretty stupid eh? Pretty quickly, towns were unable to meet their obligations and a system was set up where the state provided “aid to cities and towns” that would allow the state to make sure the cities and towns could function. Since people’s incomes generally go up with inflation, it was a reasonably stable way to fund from state income tax revenues. </p>
<p>Romney championed an income tax cut and then slashed (he’s the governor, he makes the budget) the amount the state sent to the cities and towns. What happened was a financial Katrina, because the cities and towns had no means to raise the needed revenue. Romney just iced the puck and pushed the problem down to where it was least able to be solved, at the local level.</p>
<p>The cities and towns only have a mechanism to replace the lost revenue using Proposition 2.5 “override” votes for each expenditure. These often fail to pass because the average person thinks the towns are wasting money if you need an election each year, but if inflation is 5% and revenue only goes up by 2.5%, something additional must be cut every year on top of what was cut the year before. For some towns it was schools, for others it was police and fire, for others it was road repair. After a few years, it’s all of the above. </p>
<p>There are firehouses staffed by one fireman. People have died in fires that shouldn’t have; there was a recent one in Gloucester where that happened. If your town’s fireman (yes that’s singular) is already on a call, other towns must cover from much further away. School funding has been cut to the bone. Special education is mandated by law at the level each special needs student requires, but regular education is not, so that’s what gets cut. Gifted education was cut in most places a long time. Health care costs have skyrocketed. I’ve replaced 4 tires and 3 rims last year costing much more than I saved in income taxes or my share of the road repair. It was all a total disaster. </p>
<p>This IS Romney’s fault. He didn’t fix the problem, he just threw it off his desk onto the cities and towns. The current governor is trying to restore the cuts, but the damage caused by a failure to maintain infrastructure like roads and maintenance on public buildings will cost a lot more to fix now. </p>
<p>Just wanted everyone to understand why Romney would have gotten so few votes if he had the nerve to run for reelection as Governor. He didn’t have that nerve.</p>
Did you see Edwards on David Letterman last night, by any chance? If not, you can catch it on YouTube. He did mention that he represented the “grown-up” part of the Democratic Party at the debate. So true. I realize Obama feels he needs to defend himself up there, but he did himself no good getting stuck in it with her the other night. Both Clinton and Obama were just embarrassing; the whole thing was a little weird, but sure made for good TV.</p>