Seven Years Later
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The Valley Advocate News
Tom Vannah
03/18/2010
Late last week, in advance of the release of proposed 2011 fiscal budgets by the state House and Senate, Massachusetts legislative leaders sent a message to local governments across the Commonwealth: prepare for another round of cuts in local aid.
The anticipated drop in state funding to municipalities is no more surprising than it is novel. Municipalities have been hit hard in recent years, with such regularity that the question each March is no longer whether Beacon Hill will trim local aid but how deep the cuts will be. This year's answer? "While it's not the best news, given the fact that communities are looking at a maximum 4 percent cut, obviously under the fiscal circumstances it's not as bad as it probably could have been," said state House Ways and Means chairman Charles Murphy (D-Burlington).
Murphy may be forgiven for his obviously half-hearted effort to soften the blow of yet more bad news for local governments, but his sense of what is obvious about the state's "fiscal circumstances" sounds both fuzzy and remarkably defeatist.
This Saturday, March 20, a network of peace activists will come together in Northampton to paint a much clearer picture of the state's fiscal circumstances than Murphy and his colleagues are likely to provide. Sponsored by the Western Mass Alliance for Peace and Justice, the event, billed as a vigil, will mark the seventh anniversary of the U.S. war in Iraq, highlighting the costs of conflict in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan in terms not only of direct deaths and casualties, but of the continuing cuts in domestic government spending for a wide range of vital human services.
The event, which begins at 11 a.m. at the corner of Main Street and King Street in downtown Northampton—the same time and place as the weekly vigils held by the Northampton Committee to Stop the War in Iraq—will reiterate the fiscal analysis of the Northampton-based National Priorities Project, focusing attention on the vast amount of money that continues to go to fight dubious wars abroad—money that is desperately needed here at home. Rather than tacitly accept the apparent fatalism of lawmakers who see no alternative to continued cuts to domestic programs and services, local anti-war activists offer a solution in their slogan: "Bring Our War Dollars Home! Stop the Killing."
