Dear Editor,
As the race for governor heads into its final two months, candidates are making their case to voters across Massachusetts. But while Beacon Hill focuses on statewide policy headlines, residents in towns like Tewksbury and our surrounding Merrimack Valley neighbors are left dealing with the real-world fallout of state governance. One of the most persistent issues facing our local communities isn’t what the state promises to deliver—it’s what it forces local towns to pay for through unfunded state mandates.
An unfunded mandate occurs whenever state government passes legislation or regulations requiring cities and towns to implement new policies or programs, but fails to provide the funding necessary to carry them out. On paper, these directives often sound well-intentioned. In practice, however, they place an immense financial burden directly on local taxpayers and municipal officials.
Massachusetts actually has a law meant to prevent this. The Local Mandate Law requires that any state law or regulation imposing new costs on cities and towns be either fully funded by the Commonwealth or subject to local acceptance. Yet the state’s own Division of Local Mandates has repeatedly found that Beacon Hill doesn’t live up to that standard. As recently as last year, the division ruled that the MBTA Communities Act—which requires many cities and towns, including several in our region, to zone for multifamily housing near transit—constitutes an unfunded mandate. The law on the books hasn’t stopped the problem; it’s simply given towns a process for proving, after the fact, that they’ve been shortchanged.
When the state hands down new rules without the accompanying dollars, municipal budgets are stretched to their limits. Local select boards, town managers, and municipal boards are put in an impossible position: they must either raise revenue locally or divert existing funds away from essential services. Every dollar spent complying with a state mandate is a dollar that cannot go toward repairing our roads, supporting public safety, maintaining clean water infrastructure, or funding local public schools.
Furthermore, these top-down mandates undermine local autonomy. Every town has unique geographic, fiscal, and infrastructure needs. What makes sense for a dense urban center like Boston rarely translates cleanly to suburban communities like Tewksbury or Wilmington. By dictating uniform requirements across the board, state leadership strips elected local boards of their ability to tailor decisions to what their voters actually want and need.
With Governor Maura Healey and Republican challenger Mike Minogue now set for a November matchup, local voters must demand accountability. We need state leadership that respects municipal independence and enforces, in practice and not just on paper, a simple principle: if Beacon Hill considers a policy vital enough to mandate, Beacon Hill must provide the funding to pay for it.
Decisions about local tax dollars should serve local needs, not top-down state directives. It’s time for state leadership to partner with local communities rather than pushing the bill onto local property owners.
George Ferdinand
Tewksbury
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