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By Erika Uyterhoeven, State Representative,27th Middlesex,
candidate for 2nd Middlesex State Senate

As construction season begins and we all start dodging the potholes that winter left behind, I want to share some good news and some numbers that have been weighing on me. Last week, the House voted on a $2.2 billion transportation bond bill that includes a historic increase to the Chapter 90 program, which is how the state pays to fix your roads, bridges, and other transportation projects.

Somerville’s state aid grew 5% in twelve years, while inflation grew 37%. I want to break down what that actually means for Somerville, and then share something that has been weighing on me about the bigger picture.

For more than ten years, Chapter 90 was frozen at $200 million while construction costs kept climbing. Somerville residents filed more than 1,200 pothole reports through 311 last year, a 38% increase over the year before. This bill raises the program to $300 million, a 50% increase, with $200 million distributed through the traditional formula and $100 million based on road mileage.

For Somerville, that means $1.53 million in Chapter 90 funding under the new formula, up from $1.23 million, a 24% bump.

Chapter 90 was stuck for over a decade, and people said it could not be increased, but the Massachusetts Municipal Association pushed, municipal leaders organized, I as your legislator made the case, and the state delivered. That is real progress.

But that only covers roads and transportation. Here is the part that has been on my mind.

Chapter 90 fixes roads but does not pay for your child’s educator, or the firefighter who responds when you call 911, or the librarian who keeps the doors open on weekends. That comes from a different pot of state money called general state aid (formally, Unrestricted General Government Aid), and it has not gotten anything close to the same treatment.

Here is what happened to Somerville’s funding: since 2014, the state has sent the city more dollars every year, about 44% more in total. But the city’s costs grew faster. The result: the share of Somerville’s budget covered by state aid has shrunk from 25% to 15% over the last decade, and the difference lands on your property tax bill.

The state did not cut Somerville’s aid. It did not have to. By growing aid more slowly than the city’s costs, the state shifted more and more of the burden onto your property tax bill, with some of it absorbed by Somerville’s growth and new development. Proposition 2½ means there is a limit to how much the city can raise revenue. That is why Somerville has limited options to cover growing costs and is proposing to cut school budgets right now.

In Somerville, the initial budget proposal is asking public schools to face a $1 million cut. Something that the Somerville Educators’ Union calls putting the school budget “well below level-service.”

This is not a uniquely Somerville problem. In Medford, the city had to ask voters for a tax increase for the first time in 44 years in order to prevent educators from losing their jobs and to begin addressing tens of millions of dollars in deferred road and sidewalk repairs. In Winchester, an $11.5 million override (the largest ever proposed in Winchester) failed by fewer than 300 votes and is facing educator layoffs, possibly reduced library hours, and cuts to first responders. In Cambridge, the city is bracing for the loss of $23 million in annual federal funding on top of the state aid gap.

Four cities, one pattern. Every one of these communities has been stretching every dollar, and the gap is not local, it is structural.

Chapter 90 was stuck for a decade, and the state stepped up because people made the case with data, organized across communities, and refused to accept that level-funding was good enough. If we can do that for roads, we can do it for the aid that funds our schools, our firefighters, and our libraries.

Because when we organize and fight for what we need, we win it. We just proved that works with roads and transportation funding, and we proved it was possible when we fought and won over $1.5 billion more dollars into our public schools through the Student Opportunity Act (something the naysayers initially said couldn’t be done).

I dug into twelve years of state financial records for every city in our district, because I believe you deserve to see what is actually happening with your money, not just hear that local aid is at “record levels” (because of inflation).

That is how I approach this work: not just showing up for the vote, but doing the work before and after. The state’s share of your city’s budget has been shrinking for over a decade, and that did not happen by accident. It happened because nobody on Beacon Hill fought hard enough to change it.

This is a problem we can fix. And I intend to be the person who fights hard enough to fix it.

Data sources: MA DOR Division of Local Services, Schedule A General Fund Revenue Reports (FY2014–FY2025); Cherry Sheet Trend Data; H.5375 (the transportation bond bill).