Editorial Roundup: New England
Last Updated May 7, 2021 at 5:44 pm EDT
Boston Globe. May 5, 2021.
Editorial: Count counties out of federal aid program
The six vestigial county governments in Massachusetts aren’t equipped to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in federal economic relief.
As part of the latest economic relief bill, the federal government is showering billions of dollars onto county governments to help them overcome the impact of coronavirus on the economy.
Sounds great and in parts of the country where counties pave roads and operate schools and provide police services, it is.
But in Massachusetts, most of the state’s 14 counties ceased to exist as legal entities years ago and endure only as lines on a map. The county governments that do still exist only handle minor tasks like providing courthouse maintenance and administering land records and they’re hardly equipped to handle the sudden arrival of a giant check from Washington.