Commonwealth · Report

Commonwealth

Power and Politics, Money and Municipalities

Parcenomics public research · Patrick White

19 October 2026

The report (PDF, 1.7 MB) The 351 municipalities appendix (PDF, 15.5 MB)

Summary

1. What we measured

Over ten budgets, FY2017 through FY2026, the state distributed $93.4 billion through its budget to the 351 cities and towns and their school districts, counting formula aid at its gross amount; about $9.0 billion, 9.6%, was federal money passed through state appropriations. Formula aid was 97% of the total. Competitive grants came to $2.52 billion. Enacted local earmarks came to $485 million naming the town, $718 million placed in the town and $811 million counting everything placed, and every earmark figure in this report names its measure.

2. Size, not need

The size of the ask matters more than the need behind it. Over ten years the Senate adopted 71% of requests under $50,000 and 6% of requests of $5 million or more. Between $1 million and $5 million, senators without a leadership post or top-tier chair won 3 of 50 need-based requests in FY2024–FY2026, against 15 of 50 for assistant leaders, whips and $30,000-tier chairs. Among need-based requests naming a town, requests for poorer resident populations were adopted less often, and requests naming the least needy towns passed 54 times in 56.

3. The denominator problem

Per resident is the wrong yardstick for infrastructure money. Per resident, the smallest fifth of towns received 4.9 times their population share of competitive awards. Measured against what each program pays for, the figure is 1.47. In core infrastructure the smallest fifth as a group received 1.29 times its share and the largest fifth 0.99; the money is concentrated in a few winners, and the median small town received 0.73.

4. Schools and Chapter 70

The school formula delivered equity and left small and regional towns behind. Chapter 70 aid per pupil rose 29% after inflation in cities and fell 1% in the 118 regional-member and non-operating towns. Over five years the state funded regional school transportation $65.5 million below the statutory 100%, a rate that is subject to appropriation. Rural school aid reached at best one-third of the $60 million a year the Special Commission on Rural Schools recommended in 2022.

5. Concentrated and diffuse

Of 16,166 money requests filed in both chambers over ten years, 12,719 were concentrated on one place, facility or organization and 3,447 were diffuse. At the same size, the Senate adopted concentrated requests somewhat more often (odds ratio 1.40), almost all of it in requests under $250,000. The larger tilt runs through size: 38% of diffuse requests were $1 million or more, against 6% of concentrated requests, and in FY2025 and FY2026 the Senate adopted none of 39 diffuse requests of $10 million or more.

6. Why towns get what they get

Size and need explain most of the variation in earmarks and competitive grants; power adds almost nothing measurable to the prediction. Size, need, capacity and local institutions predict about 56% of the cross-town variation in ten-year earmark dollars placed in the town and 58% in competitive grants. Adding leadership posts, stipends, loyalty, campaign giving and connections adds less than one point out of sample. Of the associations that hold, the largest is the Senate gavel: towns represented for more of the decade by the Senate President or the Senate Ways and Means chair received 85% more earmark money per standard deviation of exposure than the model expects (p < 0.001).

7. Breadcrumbs

In the House, Democrats holding any paid post almost never voted the reform side: 5 of 349 member-sessions. Of House Democrats who began a session without a stipend, 62% of those who cast no reform-side vote had one by the second year, against 14% of those who voted for reform. A member’s earmark money does not predict the vote, but among House Democrats district earmark money naming the town (first measure) is 9.5% higher per resident for each $10,000 of the member’s stipend and 19% lower, about $6.6 million over nine budgets, for reform-side voters. On 42 members that would seem to indicate a link, and the data cannot show which way any influence runs; the Senate shows neither pattern.

8. The squeeze

Town fixed costs are a larger pile than earmarks. From FY2016 to FY2025 municipal health insurance rose $1.43 billion, 54%, against 24.9% for nine years at 2.5%. Local earmarks in the nine budgets FY2017–FY2025 equal 28% to 45% of that increase alone, depending on the measure, and an earmark is a one-year appropriation. State aid covered 22.0% of town general-fund spending in FY2025, against 25.9% in FY2006; for the median town, 11.5% against 14.1%.

9. The Fairness Index

On the Fairness Index, all state aid follows need and discretionary money follows size. The median all-aid score rises from 35 in the least needy fifth of towns to 59 in the neediest, largely through Chapter 70. On discretionary money the smallest fifth scores 90.5 at the median and the largest 36.4. Eighty-nine towns, home to 2.8 million people, stay low on both scopes under every weighting.

10. Case studies

Counting everything placed, the largest clause placed in a single town in ten budgets is the FY2026 $31 million for the state-run Pappas Rehabilitation Hospital for Children in Canton, a policy dispute over a state facility. In the same debate the Senate passed the Pappas amendment 39 to 0 and rejected, in a bundle without a vote, a $30.4 million increase in TAFDC and EAEDC cash grants. Thirty-five towns, home to 50,388 people, had no earmark placed in them in ten budgets on the second or third measure, and 33 of them rank in the top half of the state for competitive grant dollars per resident.

11. The governor’s instruments

Governor Healey vetoed no local earmarks in FY2025 or FY2026; her instruments have been the mid-year cut and the hold. In January 2024 her 9C cuts halved local earmarks, and in FY2026 she held all $125 million of them from July 4 to October 20, 2025, then released them in full (the administration’s counts). Which earmarks survive is settled upstream, in conference, where the record does not show who decided.

Disclosure: the author was a candidate for the 3rd Berkshire House seat in 2024. Berkshire figures appear in this report as one county among 14.

Contents

Summary