Question #4 or #5, depending on where in the district you are, is a non-binding public policy question to give a suggestion to the state representative for our district, as follows:

“Shall the state representative from this district be instructed to vote in favor of legislation distributing $450 million from the state’s ‘rainy day’ stabilization fund to the cities and towns of the Commonwealth for residential property tax relief?”

There’s a lot more involved in this question than meets the eye at first. Part of Ron Chernisky‘s campaign against Rep. Geraldo Alicea is that Alicea voted against some amendments that would have taken money from the “rainy day” stabilization fund and distributed it to towns as unrestricted local aid. In fact, part of Chernisky’s campaign staff worked at getting this question on the ballot in this district. (It’s on the ballot in a few other districts as well, unrelated to the Chernisky campaign as far as I can tell.)

If I’m to understand what Chernisky said at the debate correctly, there was a bill to spend $450 million from the stabilization fund on various state projects. Rep. Frost from Auburn submitted an amendment to spend that money on direct local aid instead, and that’s what Alicea voted against. Alicea seemed to think that Chernisky was talking about a different vote at a different time.

However, the question on the ballot isn’t about when we spend from stabilization, do we do so on state programs or local programs. I think the question here is really about whether we should spend out of the stabilization fund at all. And I think that the state right now needs as much in there as they can get, to get through the economic downturn with as high a bond rating as possible. Last I heard, the state already isn’t getting as good a rate on their bonds as they’d like. Draining the state’s savings account for a one-time boost to cities and towns just doesn’t seem responsible to me. As Alicea says (maybe the only thing I agree with him on), it’s like raiding your 401(k) to pay for groceries.

I don’t know whether this measure will pass or not, or if it will really mean anything either way. The public policy questions never get a whole lot of media attention, although there was a front-page article in Friday’s Southbridge Evening News (PDF) about it. I’m interested to see what the result is, though.