Lieutenant governor talks rural issuesDate: 3/28/2023 Gov. Maura Healey and Lt. Gov. Kimberly Driscoll recently visited Western Massachusetts to announce a new position on Beacon Hill, director of rural affairs. The new administrator will work to keep rural towns in the mix during policy discussions and enhance economic development in smaller communities.
“For the first time in state history, we will have a dedicated staff member committed to coordinating across state government, to support economic development in rural communities,” Healey said.
Local officials have heard similar promises from the governor’s suite in the past. Unfortunately, policy decisions often created undue economic and procedural difficulties for small and rural towns. In a subsequent discussion, Driscoll talked about four issues that still hamper local towns, the administration’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2024, and a little about her new life working at the statehouse.
Reminder Publishing (RP): Is this a big change for you, from mayor to lieutenant governor?
Driscoll: Definitely. I feel a lot of gratitude. I think both the governor and I do, to be in these positions and hopefully, be able to help communities on the ground. I went from helping one community to being in a position, this different role, to try and do more for all of our communities – so I’m excited and grateful, and optimistic.
RP: One thing most people might not understand is just exactly what a director is, and what level of government they operate at. Is this going to be a heavyweight position?
Driscoll: Absolutely. We see it as a role that can help better connect us to our rural communities. There’s been a lot of groundwork laid, with the Rural Policy Advisory Commission, which helped focus on some of the challenges in our rural communities. There’s been analysis done; and certainly our legislative leaders, like [state] Sen. Comerford, Rep. Blais, Sen. Hinds and others have really been calling out the issues.
It needs an individual intake government that can help connect the dots, whether it’s policy issues [and] how we think about funding, and that’s why we’re excited about the rural affairs director post, who can work cross sector. It will be housed in Housing and Economic Development, but really we expect this position to work cross sector to identify challenges and help us make sure we’re an administration that is representing all of our communities. That’s really important to the governor and me.
Smaller towns have the same challenges, and are doing the same work, educating their kids, investing in infrastructure, trying to grow their economy. We’ll develop a better partnership with them. That’s what this position is about.
RP: Can we talk about specifics? One of the things I hear in communities, over and over again, is the Police Reform Bill of 2020 and how it’s wreaking havoc in police departments in small and rural towns. I spoke to a police chief two days ago who said they’re thinking of hiring one (full time) patrolman for $60,000 a year when their whole budget for the police department is $73,000. Do you hope that this position will lead to some relief, in that respect, for local police departments?
Driscoll: Doc, I’m so glad you raised this. I was just in Goshen, last week, and the chief from the neighboring community came by, stopped in to say I really want to talk with you about police reform. I heard this from folks in Worthington as well, that the idea behind police reform, the need for it, are very valid, but the one size fits all approach doesn’t work in a small town that has a really small number of police – and the administrative requirements are just too burdensome.
I hope it’s something we can look at. We brought this to our EOPSS [Executive Office of Public Safety and Security] director to better understand how we [can] better support our smaller communities. They still want to heed the requirements of the post commission, but don’t have the same access to resources and personnel. And frankly, the challenges are a little bit different there.
This is a perfect example of, if we have a rural affairs director, we can bring that lens to the work earlier, and better understand how we have to make adjustments in policy, and resource allocation, to meet the needs of our more rural towns.
RP: Regional schools — a lot of small towns gather into a regional school — one of the sore points that we’ve found are transportation reimbursements. Do you intend to work to bring that up to a 100 percent reimbursement rate?
Driscoll: It’s certainly our goal. This was an issue that I heard a lot about and almost from the perspective of, the state said if we regionalize our schools they would provide the funding for transportation. We’ve sort of been through that; I’m going back over decades, I think; so we did increase our budget this year, particularly to our rural school districts, to provide some additional aid. We know that even though you may have less children, less students, your fixed costs remain. It doesn’t mean the heat’s lower, right? Fixed costs remain the same; so we are hoping that we can better support the transportation costs – and frankly, the everyday costs of tending to the school needs of smaller communities.
I think there was a 36 percent increase from last year in this year’s budget. But we’re hoping to engage more thoughtfully in these conversations with the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, how we allocate aid, and how we can be more supportive in policy areas as well.
RP: On a more municipal angle — payment in lieu of taxes (PILOT) rates. They almost seem like an afterthought. Are those going to go up?
Driscoll: They’re definitely going up this year. I think there’s two things with the PILOT payments that have been brought to our attention. One is just the amount. We’re not actually funding the true cost of the valuation of the land. But I should say, in Western Mass., a lot of this is open space land, forested properties, that are so important to our carbon goals, and so necessary — and yet the way we value state-owned land has ties to population density. Land closer to Boston tends to be valued higher, so our rural communities are playing an important role in the state, but not necessarily reaping the benefits of that when it comes to how we calculate PILOT payments, and the amount they’re receiving.
This year we did increase it 14 percent, with a nod toward trying to be better partners, particularly in our rural communities where these dollars really matter in the operating budget. They’re not able to have, necessarily, the same amount of new growth, to help offset costs. We definitely think that property valuation, how it’s generated, needs to be looked at. Early on, first budget, we wanted to at least make a stand to improve things.
RP: How about one more question: transportation upgrades?
Driscoll: Yes!
RP: There seems to be a lot of focus on that.
Driscoll: Rural communities have a bigger challenge when it comes to transportation because, of course, the population isn’t as great, and the geography is larger. So [we’re] getting regional transit authorities’ [RTAs] resources to be a little bit more innovative. There’s new technology options tied to Uber-like systems and micro-transit options that we’re seeing in other communities. We want to give our RTAs an opportunity to be innovative. We’ve increased funding for regional transportation authorities, in general, to pick up inflationary upgrades and things we know are happening within their operations.
But then we set aside a pool of money and put a hard quarter percent, dedicated to our rural communities, to think about how we can be more innovative. Nobody really lives their lives by a bus schedule. Even more so in a rural community, where the waits can be so long. We wanted to try to incentivize our RTAs to think about how they can better meet the needs of getting people to medical appointments and educational opportunities, and work.
If you don’t have access to a car, or aren’t able to drive, and still want to rely on public transit, how do we do it better? We’re excited about what might come out of that, and those piloted projects hopefully are things we’ll learn a lot from. Some of them will work, some of them won’t, we’ll just sort of fail up and be in a position to provide more options for people who are living in more rural and small towns.
RP: Maybe a good last question, lieutenant governor: what are your days like? A little busy?
Driscoll: It’s definitely busy. We have a lot of gratitude, both the governor and I, for being in these roles, and we feel like people are rooting for us, and we’re excited to try. The days are busy and long, but I think we feel a lot of gratitude.
Right now, I’m heading down to New Bedford. We’ll be meeting with officials there, at a clean energy center project on offshore wind. That’s part of our goal, in looking at emerging technologies, and ways we can help support a bright future in Massachusetts, tied to clean energy. It certainly will help our seaport districts; but if we do it right it’ll also help places that have no proximity to the water, when it comes to the supply chain and manufacturing and the needs of a clean tech future. It runs the gamut from that. On Friday, I was in Goshen, meeting with municipal officials, talking a little bit about some of the challenges in higher elevation communities when it comes to public works facilities and how the state can be a better partner.
It’s exciting to be in a role to hopefully help influence policy and resources to [improve] the quality of life in the places people live.
...We want to be an administration that recognizes the needs of the entire state and are really committed to fine tuning our efforts. The resources we currently have, like Chapter 70 and Chapter 90 — as a local official, you know what all those dollars can mean, on the ground — and also how we are making sure we’re utilizing those. We’re thinking about the needs of different regions and different places. More to come. We’re only in our first eight-and-a-half weeks, but we’re trying to hit the ground running and be an administration that represents all of the commonwealth.
I think there’s a lot of promise in Western Mass., and opportunities for us, whether it’s tourism and promotion and eco-tourism, meeting our housing needs, helping with transportation, some of the things we talked about. I definitely enjoyed spending time [there,] whether it’s in Deerfield at a sugar shack, or in Springfield talking about convention centers and museum campuses. There’s a lot to like in the 413.
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