Tufts, surrounding areas affected by Patrick's cuts

    Tufts' Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine may be grappling with $5.4 million less in state funding come fiscal year 2009, after Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick announced on Oct. 15 that he will slash over $1 billion from the state's expenditures. The move will reduce the Cummings School's fiscal year 2009 operating budget by about eight percent.
    Cummings School Dean Deborah Kochevar said that administrators at the school in Grafton, Mass., are not sure what steps they will take to address the funding cuts. "It would be inappropriate to comment on how the school is going to handle the cuts right now," she said.
    The graduate school's loss comes out of a state earmark, according to the Worcester Telegram and Gazette.
    As part of its contract with the state, at least half of the Cummings School's student body must be comprised of Massachusetts residents, and the school receives a subsidy that helps it provide a 15-percent tuition discount to in-state students, according Kochevar. Because those stipulations remain part of the contract, the budget cuts will not affect them, she said.
    Somerville and Medford, which will also face millions of dollars in budget cuts, have enacted measures to protect funding for select programs.
    Somerville officials expressed cautious optimism about the city's ability to weather the setback.
    Somerville Alderman-at-Large Bruce Desmond told the Daily that the local government is trying to focus on retaining "some of the main functions of the city," such as police and fire services, schools and public works.
    Desmond said Somerville is working to keep such essential programs on "an existing-service level, so you're not cutting any people.
     "The biggest cost in government is usually personnel," he said.
    State Sen. Patricia Jehlen (D-2nd Middlesex), who represents parts of Medford and Somerville, said that despite Patrick's pledge to keep local aid and education funding constant, many programs are suffering.
    "We've been through rounds of budget cutting, and there's not a lot left that's easy to cut," Jehlen told the Daily. "We cut some things that are making people very upset."
    As examples of cutbacks so far, Jehlen pointed to local municipal programs seeking to allay drug abuse and teen violence, funding for special-needs students and a 40-year-old Cambridge program that provides support to people with mental illnesses.
    Sounding a hopeful note, Desmond referenced Somerville's ability to endure a series of "tremendous" budget cuts during former Gov. Mitt Romney's administration.
    "We adapted to it, we made changes we had to make and we survived much better than other cities and towns have," Desmond said. "Since that time, especially since this administration has come in, we've been very exact as to what we're doing, what we're trying to do, what we need money for and why we're going to spend money where we spend it."
    Lesley Delaney Hawkins, a spokesperson for the City of Somerville, said that Mayor Joseph Curtatone's administration has drawn on past experience to take preventative measures.
    "We've worked very hard over the past five years to ensure that, in the event that we saw budget cuts similar to those from the Romney administration, we would be able to handle those cuts without severely cutting services," she told the Daily.
    Patrick's cuts are "wide reaching, but … well thought-out," Delaney Hawkins said. "To the governor's credit, the cuts he made were surgical … He didn't just slash and burn."
    The budget cuts will leave intact state money set aside for local aid — which towns and cities put toward basic services such as public safety — and will not affect a block of money intended for school funding, according to Nick Martin, a spokesperson for Boston Mayor Thomas Menino.
    Martin said that the reductions have come recently, so it is difficult to anticipate which specific programs in Boston will suffer, but that some cuts are inevitable in the interest of keeping the state's budget balanced.
    "We don't have any projections about whether or not or how much funding we're going to cut," Martin told the Daily. "There's no target to cut a certain amount of money from the budget. In terms of programs at this moment, we haven't seen an effect yet."
    Martin noted that Menino has halted the hiring of any employees on the city's payroll in an attempt to counteract the imminent budget shortfall.
    "Education and local services are some of the programs we want to touch last, which is why we've instituted some of the programs like a preemptive personnel hiring freeze," Martin said. "We're reviewing uncritical expenses so we don't have to make cuts in critical areas."
    Adding to the magnitude of the current budget crisis and the consequences for Somerville, Delaney Hawkins said that many Massachusetts towns' budgets still feel the effects of Romney's fiscal conservatism.
    Jehlen also stressed that the current state of Massachusetts' coffers is only partially due to recent financial convulsions, pointing to a history of irresponsible taxation.
    "Over the past 18 years, we've cut taxes [by a] net $3 billion," Jehlen said. "Mostly during the '90s, when things were pretty good, we had surpluses, so instead of putting it into infrastructure and investing it, we gave people tax cuts. We don't have as much money as we used to."
    In this vein, Jehlen denounced Question 1, a Massachusetts ballot question that proposes eliminating the state income tax. The estimated 40-percent budget cut that passage of this referendum would effect would dwarf the roughly three percent of the budget Patrick dispensed with, Jehlen said.
    Desmond said that legislators are bracing themselves for more tough decisions, even though Somerville has already initiated a series of cuts.
    "We'll have to go through the process again when the state makes more cuts on [the budget]," Desmond said. "We'll take a look at it and adjust accordingly."
    Ben Gittleson contributed reporting to this article.