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Our members are the local governments of Massachusetts and their elected and appointed leadership.
Despite legislative leaders and local officials calling for the administration to release the full $300 million in Chapter 90 local road and bridge funding, the administration has issued its final answer: No.
In an Aug. 22 letter, and again at the Sept. 10 meeting of the Local Government Advisory Commission, Transportation Secretary Richard Davey and Administration and Finance Secretary Glen Shor said the administration will only release $200 million in fiscal 2014.
“I don’t think you see any additional funds for this fiscal year,” Davey told local officials at the LGAC meeting.
The secretary went on to say that the five-year transportation finance package enacted by the Legislature and signed by the governor in July is insufficient to support borrowing $300 million for Chapter 90 this year.
Municipal officials said they were disappointed by the administration’s decision, but vowed to keep the pressure on through the fall and into next year in hopes of changing the governor’s mind.
Braintree Mayor Joseph Sullivan, Attleboro Mayor Kevin Dumas and North Adams Councillor Lisa Hall Blackmer all expressed disappointment, but vowed to continue to make the case for the additional Chapter 90 funding.
“We will keep pushing for more money to be released,” Sullivan said. “We respectfully agree to disagree.”
Blackmer said the withholding of Chapter 90 funds creates a regional equity problem.
“We are paying for the Big Dig, we are paying for the MBTA, and we don’t use those services,” she said. “We’re paying taxes for that gas, but we’re not getting anything back.”
Following the LGAC meeting, House Speaker Robert DeLeo issued a statement to the State House News Service calling on Gov. Deval Patrick to reconsider.
“Chapter 90 funds are essential to providing stability and prompting economic growth in Massachusetts,” DeLeo said. “The Legislature reaffirmed its commitment to municipalities across the Commonwealth by passing a transportation finance bill that supports $300 million in revenue for Chapter 90 funding. I call upon the administration to reconsider its decision and release the remaining $100 million that the cities and towns in Massachusetts so rightly deserve.”
The Legislature unanimously passed and the governor signed a one-year, $300 million Chapter 90 bond bill for fiscal 2014 back in May, but the administration has released just two-thirds of that funding. The administration released $150 million on May 31 and another $50 million on July 30, but the result is a level-funding of the program, rather than the $100 million increase the Legislature intended and local officials were expecting.
Despite the Legislature’s position, decisions about how much Chapter 90 funding to release are ultimately the domain of the governor’s office.
A statewide survey conducted by the MMA late last year documents that the state’s cities and towns would need to spend $562 million each year to maintain local roads in a “state of good repair,” the industry standard, but communities spend far less due to inadequate resources. With this in mind, the MMA membership unanimously adopted a resolution at the association’s Annual Meeting in January calling for a 50 percent increase ($100 million) in the Chapter 90 program.
The importance of this reimbursement program has been a recurring theme raised by local officials to legislators during the MMA’s Legislative Breakfast Meetings being held around the state this fall.
The Legislature’s Joint Committee on Transportation is expected to release a multi-year transportation bond bill, with funding for a $300 million per year Chapter 90 program, sometime this fall.