Over the last 12 years, Needham has lost 40% in local aid from the state, translating to significant cuts in services and education. This is a direct result of two things:

1) ill-conceived tax cuts in the dot-com 1990s, when legislators couldn’t imagine the good times ending, and

(2) the good times ending and the Great Recession.

Due to this loss of revenue, the Commonwealth now has a structural deficit of roughly $1.5 billion dollars.

Governor Patrick and other legislators (through the legislation ‘An Act to Invest in Our Communities’) have proposed plans to raise roughly $2 billion — enough to address our structural short fall and restore some of the cuts to our services (like health care, disability services, more) and education and transportation/infrastructure.

These proposals differ in their details, but both raise the income tax and increase the personal deduction, which has the net effect of keeping taxes level for half of MA income-earners (the poorer half) while effecting modest increases on the other 50%.

In other words, it is a progressive tax increase, which many believe is the fairest kind of tax to fund those things we do together through government. These plans were endorsed last week by 57 Mass. economists.

These are bold and courageous plans, and unfortunately, Beacon Hill as a whole has not yet risen to the demands of our moment. Instead, Speaker DeLeo has signaled he will propose a much smaller revenue package, which would effectively only cover the MBTA crisis — and leave the other fiscal fires to be put out another day (and another tax battle for another session).