Lt. Gov. Murray sells the budget to Central Mass.
Lt. Gov. Tim Murray was in Fitchburg yesterday speaking about the budget at the Greater Gardner Chamber of Commerce. He didn’t pull any punches, he was upfront about the $1 billion surplus that somehow ended up being a $1.3 billion (b-i-l-l-i-o-n, yipes!) deficit. The Lt. Gov. talked about plans to help municipalities offset their costs by such common sense things like allowing communities to buy into the state’s group health insurance program, and joining the state pension fund.
I’m not an expert on budgets. The whole thing makes my eyes glaze over, but to my untrained eye, it seems that there are some really good cost cutting ideas in this budget. There’s some hard stuff in there too. I don’t expect that corporations will be too jazzed to hear that they are going to have to pay their fair share too, but the money has to come from somewhere and homeowers and small business have been shouldering that burden long enough.
