Citing a 19th century law that prohibits direct aid from city coffers to non-profits , Karen Cadieux, Mayor of Easthampton, Massachusetts, in her proposed budget has cut $20,000 in funding to a non-profit community center. Among other services, the center hosts a food pantry. Some city councilors and others say the mayor could contract with the center, and abide by Massachusetts Department of Revenue regulations. So far, she’s standing by the DOR policy.
Massachusetts’ Anti-Aid amendment states that it prohibits cities and towns from giving public money to charitable, educational, and religious organizations. Cadieux, who is in her first term, says she only learned of the law and the financial relationship with the center recently. She then abruptly ended years of financial support for the community center.
“Now that we’re aware of it, it won’t be funded in the future,” Cadiuex says, “and it’s not funded in this budget”
Statewide, nobody quite knows how many non-profits get funding like this from their communities. Neither the Massachusetts Municipal Association nor the Massachusetts Non-Profit Network (MNN) have a composite list.
But Jim Ayers, who is on the board of the MNN and is head of the United Way of Hampshire County, says funding for some groups could be at risk.
“I assume it’s a minority and I don’t know if it’s 2% or 40% or what, and that will be helpful to get a handle on,” Ayers says.
The MNN board meets next week and is scheduled to discuss bringing the issue before Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey. They and others also want the intent of the 19th century law clarified by 21st century lawmakers.
What is the Anti-Aid Amendment actually intended to do?
According to the Massachusetts Department of Revenue, the Anti-Aid amendments is not meant to prevent municipalities from partnering with non profits in their communities. When it was passed by lawmakers in the mid-1800s, historians say it was to to curtail a growing Catholic population in a largely Protestant state, and stop them from using tax money to fund parochial schools.
Eric Gouvin, the Dean of the Law School at Western New England University says back then it was “one thing for Massachusetts to be welcoming for all Protestant sects, but there was a very strong anti Catholic bias.”
That bias may be gone but Gouvin says, the Anti-Aid law won’t go away without an amendment to the state constitution.
The definition of the law is occasionally and not unsuccessfully challenged, before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. That was the case in 1981 when the Springfield Public Schools tapped city money to fund special education for students in parochial schools.
“The court resolved it,” Gouvin says, by saying, ‘this doesn’t violate the Anti-Aid amendment, because those payments aren’t to aid Catholic schools.’ They are to fulfill a public purpose the city has of providing special education to their students.”
In that sense, the schools became just like any other “vendor” the city can legally contract with. That could be the loophole supporters of the Easthampton Community Center are looking for. The Easthampton City Council is reviewing Mayor Cadieux’s budget this week. Council members can’t add money back in, but they can, and some are, protesting the budget cut.