On Thursday, the MA Senate decided to take a victory lap for passing a series of bills that will drain municipalities of much-needed revenue in light of what could be a bleak state budget and amidst federal sabotage.

Although the bills were not fully ill-intentioned, the efforts to provide opportunities for relief from property taxes run into a problem: if there is no ability to raise the revenue from elsewhere, than cities and towns simply lose revenue. Cities and towns should want to create more progressive tax codes, and rather than allowing targeted property tax relief combined with way new progressive revenue opportunities, the State Senate again signaled its hostility to a proposal from Boston Mayor Michelle Wu to shift some of the residential property tax share to the commercial real estate industry.

Her proposal would have blunted property tax increases for residential homeowners and decreased tax cuts for skyscrapers. However, the State Senate has decided that it knows what is better for Boston than the Mayor, the City Council, and the House of Representatives, voting 33 to 5 against the proposal. It answers “Whose side are you on?” quite clearly.

The home rule process in Massachusetts is broken, and cities and towns deserve more flexibility, not being prevented from raising necessary revenue by archaic strictures or the misguided and outdated “Prop 2 1/2” law.