Text of Proposal “Shall the representative from this district be instructed to vote in favor of legislation distributing $450 million from the “rainy day” stabilization fund, originally due to the cities and towns of the Commonwealth, for residential property tax relief.” Summary of Local Aid Vote There were two local aid related initiatives proposed in the House during debate of the deficiency budget in mid-October-2007. It was at the time that the legislature was trying to spend the multi-million dollar surplus from last fiscal year. The Republicans argued that between the surplus from FY'07 and the amount of money that was diverted from cities and towns when lottery aid was capped, that there was arguably $450 Million available to distribute to cities and towns. They filed two amendments to achieve this distribution in different ways. The first amendment paid out money to cities and towns as local aid, based on the lottery formula. The second amendment paid the money out the same way but required that municipalities use it for direct residential property tax relief. Passage of either version would’ve greatly assisted cash-strapped municipalities by giving them a local aid bonus, OR by providing some relief to residents coping with increasing property taxes. Unfortunately, our elected representatives chose to spend the surplus in other ways, rather than using it to pay back what is owed to cities and towns. The Local Aid amendment was defeated by a vote of 24-123 (Roll Call # 181). The Property Tax version was brought up in second reading, where there was a vote of 18-129 (Roll Call # 182) ruling it out of order. That amendment was re-filed and there was another vote taken to defeat the amendment itself, 19-125 (Roll Call # 185). How did your representative vote? Click Here to find out.