Budget Blues, part 2

The Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center offers an overview of the Guv's budget (House 1) here. Note the discussion of education aid and the bind about half the state's municipalities are in with foundation spending for K-12 education:

under the Governor’s FY 2010 budget, increasing
foundation budgets at the local level, combined
with no increases in state aid, would mean that 153,
or 47 percent, of the state’s school districts will
have spending requirements below their
foundation budget.

That may pose a constitutional problem. In the interim, the Massachusetts Municipal Association's noted that the budget appears to require communities to spend no less than 95% of their FY '09 school budgets in FY '10. That may force additional cuts to the "municipal" side of the budget, given that Chapter 70 (education aid) is earmarked for schools.

The Guv is counting on Federal aid to make the whole budget work and that may or may not be gone due to the actions of "moderates" in the Senate who don't quite have the big picture on what a stimulus is. This from Republicans who have taken a surplus to a deficit and spent a trillion on a war of choice, with more losses to come, being aided by post partisans from across the aisle. If you want the height of hypocrisy, check out the McSame quote in the NYT piece on the bill.