Who is a member?
Our members are the local governments of Massachusetts and their elected and appointed leadership.
Speaking to mayors from across the state yesterday, Gov. Deval Patrick said that he is receptive to the idea of a multi-year transportation bill with funding for the Chapter 90 local road and bridge program.
The comment, during a meeting of the Massachusetts Mayors’ Association in Newton, came in response to a question from Braintree Mayor Joseph Sullivan, a former House chair of the Transportation Committee when he served in the Legislature.
“We would like to get that three-year-commitment – a billion-dollar program over three years,” Sullivan said. “We could get some consistency and predictability.”
Patrick replied, “I’m open to that.”
For fiscal 2013, the governor and Legislature are advancing a one-year, $200 million Chapter 90 bill. The state also made just a one-year Chapter 90 commitment for the current fiscal year.
During a question-and-answer session that lasted about 30 minutes, the governor touched on a range of other topics, including the municipal health insurance reform that he signed into law last summer, the $4 million in innovation grants that were awarded to cities, towns and regional entities recently, and the deficit facing the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority.
Since the Municipal Health Insurance Reform Act was signed into law in July, he said, more than 100 municipalities and school districts have taken advantage of provisions of the law, with many modifying employee health plans without going through the full collective bargaining process or shifting health insurance to the state’s Group Insurance Commission.
In discussing the problems besetting the MBTA, the governor said that officials are likely to rely primarily on fee increases to close the budget gap, rather than emphasizing cuts in service.
“Most of the service cuts will be avoided,” he said. “But not all of them.”
Referring to the impasse over transportation-related funding at the federal level, Patrick said, “We have to have a grown-up conversation about what we want government to do and what we don’t want it to do – and how we’re going to pay for it.”
He later suggested that some people “take an outsized level of excitement from what we’ve been able to accomplish in Massachusetts. The difference is, I have partners in the Legislature. … [The president] is trying to drive exactly the same agenda – it’s all about education and transportation and infrastructure. But Congress won’t give him the tools that he needs. At least not often.”
Several mayors praised the Patrick administration, including Richard Alcombright of North Adams, whose city suffered significant flooding damage due to Tropical Storm Irene last August.
“Your response to our need, when Route 2 collapsed, was incredible,” Alcombright said, describing the highway as the region’s “lifeline” to the rest of the state.