© 2023
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Gov. Patrick Asks Municipal Leaders To Back Tax Hikes

Dwight Sipler

Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick urged city and town leaders Friday to support his call for a big tax hike.

Addressing the annual meeting of the Massachusetts Municipal Association in Boston, Governor Patrick appealed for help in making the case for what he called “ growth and opportunity”.  Patrick is proposing  the first increase in unrestricted local aid to cities and towns in four years. Coupled with a proposed hike in education spending, total state aid to municipalities would increase by 5 percent under the governor plan.  But to pay for it, and an ambitious upgrade to the state’s transportation system, Patrick has proposed a tax increase totaling $1.9 billion.   After the speech, Patrick met privately with many mayors.

Paul Tuthill is WAMC’s Pioneer Valley Bureau Chief. He’s been covering news, everything from politics and government corruption to natural disasters and the arts, in western Massachusetts since 2007. Before joining WAMC, Paul was a reporter and anchor at WRKO in Boston. He was news director for more than a decade at WTAG in Worcester. Paul has won more than two dozen Associated Press Broadcast Awards. He won an Edward R. Murrow award for reporting on veterans’ healthcare for WAMC in 2011. Born and raised in western New York, Paul did his first radio reporting while he was a student at the University of Rochester.
Related Content