Despite significant efforts to close a more than $1.35 billion budget gap in fiscal 2002, the state's financial leaders have failed to produce a balanced budget or to adequately address the multi-billion dollar financial problems that the state will...

On November 6, voters in eight Massachusetts communities -- including Boston, Malden and Waltham -- rejected a ballot measure that would have raised property taxes by up to three percent to fund affordable housing, historic preservation and open...

Massachusetts will face escalating multi-billion dollar state budget deficits over the next several years unless state leaders make major spending reductions in the fiscal 2002 budget, according to a new analysis by the Massachusetts Taxpayers...

Three years after its enactment, the success of forward funding of the MBTA -- one of the most important fiscal reforms of the last decade -- is increasingly uncertain. Despite major steps taken by the T to implement the reforms and live within its...

In a striking outcome of the deliberations on this year's budget, the state in 2004 will for the first time in decades spend more on prisons and jails than on public higher education. While this change in budgetary priorities has occurred during a...

In order to help address the "relentless squeeze" on municipal finances in Massachusetts, the state should dedicate 40 percent of tax revenues to local aid and develop a new system for benchmarking local costs, according to the Foundation's 35th...

The overall municipal financial picture stabilized in 2006. Nevertheless, most communities continue to face a fiscal squeeze as underlying costs grow faster than revenues, according to the Foundation's 36th annual analysis of local revenues and...

Driven by the global economic problems and the state's fiscal crisis, cities and towns are about to enter another period of cutbacks and serious retrenchment.Major cuts in state aid to local communities are virtually certain to take place in fiscal...

Cities and towns across the Commonwealth are facing enormous fiscal pressures which will only worsen over the next two years and likely beyond. Confronted by structural deficits in good times, municipalities have had to deal with major cuts in local...

Troubling state budgetary practices have left the Commonwealth’s Stabilization Fund balance insufficient to meet the next fiscal downturn and immediate action is needed to increase and safeguard the fund for future use, according to a report released...