(The legislature thinks mutual fund behemoths are more important than municipal services and education? No way! – promoted by eli_beckerman)

Senate Ways & Means FY2012 budget came out out today, looking a lot like the House and governor’s budgets. Compared to last year,  cities & towns would see $65M less in local aid and schools would see $81M less in C70.

According to the quick on the draw Mass Budget and Policy center :

The Fiscal Year (FY) 2012 Senate Ways & Means (SWM) budget proposes $834.0 million in local aid to cities and towns (Unrestricted General Government Local Aid), a decrease of $65.0 million, or 7.2 percent, from the current FY 2011 budget. This proposal is identical to the House and Governor’s FY 2012 proposals.

The hit to our cities and towns is even worse when you look at K-12 Chapter 70 Aid:

The FY 2012 SWM budget proposes to fund Chapter 70 education aid to local and regional school districts at $3.99 billion, a decrease of $81.5 million from current FY 2011 funding levels (which include $221.1 million in federal recovery money that was available to districts in FY 2011). This proposal is essentially identical to the House and Governor’s proposals.

That’s $146.5 Million for just those two cuts to public services in the proposed budget. There are many more cuts besides these, but  here’s the real kick in the backside to go along with those first two:

According to the State Department of Revenue , $146M also happens to be the amount our legislators propose to reward Fidelity&Co for still another round of Massachusetts job cuts! http://bit.ly/hYFvmL

Apparently it is more important to reward infidelity than to sustain our cities, towns, and schools.

Anybody still think our priorities are our legislators? Whatever happened to spending public dollars on public services for the public good?

….

Note: Because so much C70 aid last year came from federal funds, our legislators want to claim schools are seeing an increase in state funding, even if the overall dollar amount is less. But as a school committee member, I call a cut in school funding a cut in school funding, and MA K-12 schools would  see $81M less in C70 funding.  An unnecessary $81M  cut, I hasten to add.