Who is a member?
Our members are the local governments of Massachusetts and their elected and appointed leadership.
Her Excellency Maura Healey
Governor of the Commonwealth
State House, Boston
Delivered electronically
Dear Governor Healey,
On behalf of all 351 cities and towns across the Commonwealth, I write today to express our deep appreciation for your support of local government and offer our continued partnership as you develop your fiscal 2027 state spending plan. We look forward to working with you, your team, and the Legislature to craft an investment plan that supports municipalities in providing the essential services that residents rely on and eases the local fiscal pressures felt across Massachusetts in our city and town halls.
As we prepare for a new budget year, we understand that the Commonwealth continues to navigate several economic obstacles. Concerns regarding slower economic growth for the state remain from last year, now with added consequences from federal policy changes and new uncertainty posed by potential 2026 ballot questions. We share these concerns and recognize the unique challenges you and your team face in creating a fiscal 2027 blueprint that accounts for these realities while honoring a shared commitment to support the well-being of residents served by our cities and towns.
Our recent report, A Perfect Storm, outlines how municipalities across the Commonwealth are confronting many compounding cost and revenue pressures. With a tightly capped property tax that limits municipal revenues, inflation that has outpaced growth, and discretionary state aid that has not recovered from the 2008 Great Recession, cities and towns are struggling to maintain the core services vital to economic success and competitiveness. And this reality is still true notwithstanding important and critical investments in recent years, especially in education aid and municipal roads and bridges.
To maintain these essential municipal services — education, public health and safety, emergency response, secure elections, environmental stewardship, maintenance of local roads and vital infrastructure — cities and towns require adequate and reliable state aid. Navigating the Storm, our companion report, outlines several policy recommendations intended to bring targeted relief to the pressures communities are facing. We strongly urge you to take inspiration from these reports and the following requests, as you propose fiscal 2027 budget investments.
Unrestricted General Government Aid: $351 Million for 351 Cities and Towns
As you know, the Unrestricted General Government Aid program (1233-2350) is a central part of the state-local partnership. Allocations can be flexibly deployed by a municipality to address a community’s unique needs on the ground. UGGA, if strategically boosted, is positioned to mitigate many of the fiscal pressures felt by cities and towns while reducing municipal overreliance on the property tax. We urge you to use the fiscal 2027 budget to strategically increase this essential discretionary aid to cities and towns.
Few events have reshaped local finances in Massachusetts as profoundly as the 2008 global financial crisis, and the fiscal impact to the state budget. Deep cuts were made to programs, including UGGA, to address state revenue shortfalls. In the years that followed, the Commonwealth eventually regained its fiscal footing, but funding for UGGA never did. The gap created from 2008-2011 became a long-term structural hole in the limited municipal revenue base. In fact, even without adjusting for inflation, UGGA funding just surpassed its 2008 levels in the fiscal 2026 state budget, 18 years after the reductions.
We strongly urge you to take strides toward stabilizing this historical partnership between state and local government by increasing the investment by $351 million in fiscal 2027, which restores the trajectory of the program since the Great Recession and renews commitment to the well-being of cities and towns.
A “$351 million increase for the 351 cities and towns,” as proposed in our report, would provide immediate and meaningful support for local budgets statewide while providing relief and security to local taxpayers. It would help municipalities stabilize budgets strained by rising costs and uncertain revenues, while also restoring a critical component to the state-local fiscal partnership.
We know that you and your team understand the vital work of municipalities and the importance of stability for our city and town halls and downtowns. We look forward to the Healey Administration’s continued commitment toward a discretionary aid framework that reflects this understanding and stabilizes the Commonwealth from the ground up.
Chapter 70 Education Aid
We deeply appreciate your and the Legislature’s commitment to funding our public schools and urge you to prioritize these investments in the fiscal 2027 budget. We support continuing the promised investments to education aid that are outlined in the Student Opportunity Act (SOA) scheduled rollout period.
Chapter 70 is critical to ensure a high quality education in all corners of the Commonwealth and should be sufficiently funded to allow school districts to reach their foundation spending requirement without initiating untenable minimum required local contributions. Districts with increases in required local contributions that exceed the growth of local revenues may be forced to cut funding for other essential municipal services. We urge you to propose reforms to the required local contribution aspect of the SOA, to protect critical non-school services alongside education investments. We look forward to the forthcoming report on this topic from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.
We further support increasing the minimum per pupil aid in fiscal 2027, to ensure that districts across the Commonwealth are equipped to continue to provide high-quality school programming. Cities, towns and districts are deeply appreciative of last year’s increase to $150 per pupil, which provides relief to three-quarters of school districts. As more and more districts receive the minimum aid increase, this support is critical to help districts meet student needs as costs continue to climb (1596-2438).
Charter School Impact Mitigation Payments
We support fully funding charter school mitigation payments (7061-9010) according to the SOA implementation schedule. Assessments levied on local school districts impose a growing financial burden on cities and towns and reduce resources available to the vast majority of K-12 students that attend local public schools. SOA mitigation payments are a helpful offset to this burden, however, additional reform is needed to fully offset the burden that charter school costs impose.
Special Education Circuit Breaker
We strongly encourage you to include full funding of the Special Education Circuit Breaker program (7061-0012) in the fiscal 2027 budget. As you know, the SPED circuit breaker program provides support to districts to help meet the needs of high-cost special education services. Costs for such services can be extraordinary and unpredictable as districts work to meet the unique, complex, and multi-faceted needs of special education students.
Cities, towns and districts are incredibly grateful for the $675 million that has been committed for the last few school years through the fiscal 2026 budget and surplus surtax supplemental budget. We appreciate your partnership to ensure that all students’ needs are met and cities and towns are able to navigate any extraordinary expenditures associated with this effort.
Rural School Aid
We strongly support funding for rural school districts and request funding for the Rural School Aid account (7061-9813). This program was reduced to $12 million in fiscal 2026, leaving rural districts in need. Increasing this funding will further the state’s progress toward the $60 million recommendation put forth in the 2022 A Sustainable Future for Rural Schools report published by the Commission on the Fiscal Health of Rural School Districts. Rural School aid provides grants to schools facing declining enrollment to regionalize districts and certain school services. These grants are a helpful tool to ensure that students across the Commonwealth receive a high quality education, no matter their zip code.
Student Transportation Reimbursements
We are grateful for the investments in student transportation reimbursements in recent budget years, and fully funding for these accounts remains a priority for fiscal 2027.
The fiscal 2026 budget funds $103.7 million for regional and out-of-district vocational school transportation costs: $53.7 million for regional school transportation (7035-0006), and $50 million to support both regional school and out-of-district vocational transportation (historically funded separately through line item 7035-0007). In addition, $8.1 million was included in the recent surplus surtax supplemental budget to support fiscal 2026 regional school transportation needs.
The fiscal 2026 budget includes $28.6 million for reimbursements for the transportation of homeless students under McKinney-Vento (7035-0008), intended to cover 58% of anticipated claims for the year. We urge you to elevate this support that provides much-needed relief to districts working to ensure stability and continuity of education for students experiencing homelessness.
We appreciate your ongoing partnership and efforts pursuing policy solutions targeting some of the growing cost drivers in student transportation. This trend remains a concern, and makes full funding for these accounts even more critical in this fiscal environment.
Payments in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT)
We are grateful for the forthcoming convening and deliberation of the Commission on Payments in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) for State-Owned Land. Thank you for calling attention to the need to review the pilot funding process to ensure adequate compensation to all cities and towns for state-owned land within municipal boundaries. We support full funding of the Commonwealth’s obligations and commitments to the program for payments in lieu of taxes for state-owned land (1233-2400). This is also particularly important for the cities and towns that host and provide municipal services to state facilities that are exempt from the local property tax.
Summary
Thank you for your steadfast leadership during this era of unprecedented change and uncertainty. Every day, you and your team have shown a deep commitment to the well-being of cities and towns and the residents that make up our communities.
This is a delicate time for cities and towns in all regions of the Commonwealth. As detailed in our reports, communities are contending with the convergence of inflationary pressures and considerable constraints on local revenue generation. Like state government, municipalities are also contending with the implications of federal policy actions on local economies and operations.
Massachusetts depends on the fiscal strength of its cities and towns. When municipalities are stable and resilient, the Commonwealth is better positioned to grow, innovate, and support its residents. A strong state-local partnership is more important than ever to ensure that communities persevere and our Commonwealth thrives. We look forward to working with you to ensure that every region of the state has the resources and support to propel the Massachusetts economy forward.
If you have any questions or need additional information regarding any of these municipal priorities, please do not hesitate to have your office contact me or MMA Senior Legislative Analyst Adrienne Núñez at [email protected] at any time.
We thank you very much for your unwavering partnership and everything you do for the municipalities of Massachusetts.
Sincerely,
Adam Chapdelaine
MMA Executive Director and CEO
cc:
The Honorable Kimberley Driscoll, Lieutenant Governor of the Commonwealth
Secretary Matthew Gorzkowicz , Executive Office of Administration and Finance
Senior Deputy Commissioner Sean Cronin, Division of Local Services