Friend,
With $4 billion in federal COVID-19 emergency funding sitting in its collective lap, you'd think that Democratic leadership at the Massachusetts State House would be eager to spend it on relief packages.
You'd be wrong.
The hold-up over how to spend Massachusetts' windfall of emergency federal funding is happening because the Democrats are bickering over pork barrel projects. Instead of using it to help chip away at more than $78 billion in debt (Massachusetts sits firmly among the top five states in terms of debt levels), the Democrats are more interested in finding new ways to pork up their home districts.
"Legislative Democrats put the federal aid in a lockbox that they control and opted for a long public hearing process to gather feedback about the state's needs. They then couldn't agree on a consensus bill by Wednesday when formal sessions ended for 2021."
