I have to say I’m a little surprised to see a few comments on here getting upvoted. As a little perspective, I am a lifelong resident of Western MA, and I’ve spent my adult life working in public policy, including 6 years in elected office. Nobody out here is suggesting that the people of rural MA be given more votes in the legislature, or anything like that. But the truth is that there are a lot of people in key decision-making positions who have huge blind spots when it comes to some of the communities outside of 495.

This really isn’t some zero sum game where anything that comes to the rural parts of MA has to come at the expense of Metro Boston. It’s just a matter of making sure that people who make public policy understand the unique needs of all Massachusetts’ communities. And right now, I can tell you, a lot of people straight up don’t. They don’t understand how delivering services to vulnerable people is different when you have zero public transit. They don’t understand the first thing about agricultural economies. They don’t understand the ways that having an aging, declining population leads to a different kind of housing crisis than what they have out East.

If your opinion is basically “fuck those dumb hicks”, then the status quo is great. But there are a lot of people who are actually tasked with providing government services to all of the Commonwealth’s citizens, and in a lot of cases, they would be doing a better job providing those services to to rural communities if there were people from rural communities at the table voicing their needs.

And to folks saying that the legislative delegation from those communities is enough, to me, that just suggests that you don’t pay attention to state house politics. The MA state house is one of the most top-heavy, least transparent legislative institutions in the country. It is not a place where honest public servants go to discuss the needs of their constituents. And unless your rep and senator are part of the leadership, they don’t have a tremendous amount of contact with the decision makers in the executive branch, which is what this editorial is actually about.

I ended up at a gathering of local elected officials from Western MA last year. Some representatives from the state were there, and they discussed a bunch of government initiatives to help with technology, infrastructure, etc. As the officials asked questions, it became clear that in nearly every case, their communities either weren’t eligible for the funds, or they didn’t have the administrative resources to even apply. These folks from the state drove 2-3 hours to present on this stuff, which they presumably would not have done if they understood this. But I seriously doubt a single thing has changed since then.