By Joseph A. Curtatone

(The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries of The Somerville News belong solely to the authors of those commentaries and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville News, its staff or publishers.)

With the Massachusetts Presidential Primary less than a week away, every Democratic leader seems to be lining up to express a preference.  People ask me every day who I’m endorsing, and the answer is that I haven’t endorsed anybody – yet.

This is a heavily Democratic – and supremely political – city in which almost everyone I know feels torn between three good candidates, which is actually a very good problem to have. I also think that, with very few exceptions, the people who vote for a Democrat on February 5 will rally around the eventual Democratic nominee – whoever she or he may be – and join in the effort to end eight years of G.O.P. mismanagement in Washington.  But the worst thing we can do right now is to let the race for the Democratic nomination drive a wedge between political leaders in Massachusetts who will need to be  working together every day to make sure that our economy grows, that our communities are safe, healthy and livable, and that our citizens enjoy a prosperous and secure future.

In his recent State of the State address, Governor Deval Patrick did not back off from his vision of appropriate investments in education, infrastructure and public safety, and he offered a number of ways to pay for that vision. As I’ve said in the past, I don’t agree with every single one of the Governor’s revenue proposals, but I stand with him on the principle that you don’t give up on governmental action and investment at the very time that our economy and our people need them most.

Pushback has come from some legislators who say the Commonwealth would be wrong to ask anyone for more revenues of any kind for any purpose. Instead, apparently, they would have us cut back on spending at both the state and local levels – cuts that would come on top of the major cuts already made over the past few years in communities that, unlike Somerville, haven’t been able to expand their commercial tax base.  (The latest example is the city of Salem, which has had to go to the legislature for emergency borrowing authority to avoid up to 60 layoffs in the school system.)

If you examine the ‚Äúcut, cut, cut‚Äù approach in any detail, you know it just won’t work; you can’t cut your way to success.  With state aid still well below historical levels and with residential property values declining, this Mitt Romney approach to governing would mean that essential services, rising energy costs and soaring health care rates for teachers and other city workers could only be paid for through Proposition 2_ overrides, property tax rate increases and other forms of regressive taxation that unfairly affect working- and middle-class homeowners. 

That’s no way to improve the quality of life in cities and towns across Massachusetts – or improve the skills of our workforce, or restore and enhance the crumbling roads, bridges and transit systems on which our future prosperity depends.  State and local leaders need to come to put together a balanced, compromise package that includes some new investment and some source of new revenues to pay for them.

I plan to work closely with Somerville’s legislative delegation, my fellow mayors, and with Governor Patrick to help create and fight for such a package. 

I hope other Democratic leaders will join us. The last thing we can afford is an intra-party fight that further disrupts our ability to cooperate on a shared vision for keeping the Commonwealth strong and growing while we weather current economic turbulence.  Soon enough, we will have to be working together on a realistic, practical, and progressive state budget – and we will need all the goodwill and cooperation we can muster.