June 19, 2009 — Press Release
BOSTON — Friday night, Representative Jennifer Benson (D-Lunenburg) joined 45 of her colleagues in voting against the House and Senate Conference Committee's budget for fiscal year 2010. Due to falling state revenue projections, the $27.4 billion budget represented a $1.5 billion decrease from the House budget passed earlier in the year. The budget included a number of new revenue sources, including raising the state's sales tax to 6.25%, removing the sales tax exemption on alcoholic beverages and allowing towns to increase meals taxes by 0.75%.
Despite this new revenue, the towns in Benson's 37th Middlesex District would still see a 41% decrease in non-Chapter 70 local aid. "While I commend the Conference Committee for presenting a reasonable budget in this difficult economic time, the local aid decreases would mean deep cuts to important town services," said Benson. "Creating a budget is a matter of setting priorities, and I feel that local aid was not prioritized highly enough in this budget."
Many larger cities and towns will be able to rely on new local options taxes to mitigate some of the cuts to their budgets. The composition of Benson's district makes it unlikely, however, that the towns could rely on option taxes. "I support many of the changes and reforms in this budget" said Benson, "but, in the end I had to do what was right for my district. Many towns can't raise more revenue through property and local options taxes, and they would face devastating choices like cutting police officers, firefighters and other town employees."
