DOR announces the FY2009 Trust Fund
disbursements
On October 14th, the Department of Revenue released the Community Preservation Trust Fund disbursements for each CPA municipality. In accordance with Massachusetts General Laws (MGL) Chapter 44B, Section 10, the Department of Revenue (DOR) annually disburses monies from the fund in mid-October to cities and towns that have adopted the CPA. This year’s distribution bulletin also included an estimate for the percentage match communities can expect in October 2009.
Click
here for DOR's spreadsheet showing the Trust
Fund distribution amounts
To arrive at the exact distribution amount for each community, the CPA legislation contains a funding formula calling for up to three rounds of trust fund distributions (click here for an explanation of the funding formula for the CPA Trust Fund).
For
the past six years, the trust fund has provided a 100% match to local surcharge
revenues on the first funding round, but there was insufficient revenue in the
fund to do so this year. Instead of
100%, all CPA communities received a
first round match of 67.62%
for the October 2008 distribution. In addition, the 71 communities that adopted
CPA with the full 3% surcharge received additional funding in the second round
distribution. The percentage match for
those communities ranged from 68% to 100%. The CPA legislation calls for the
third funding round to be made at the discretion of DOR’s
Commissioner of Revenue, and the decision was made not to proceed with that
third round this year.
As we mentioned, this is the first year that the CPA trust is no longer able to sustain the 100% match, due to the popularity of the program and declining real estate activity. Today, DOR estimated that the first round match will fall to 35% in October of 2009. While this is still an excellent return on investment, it does mean that there will be significantly less funding available for CPA projects in the future.
Legislation has been filed that would address this decline
in future trust fund distributions. The Coalition is in full support of HB4820,
filed by Senator Cynthia Creem, because it would
guarantee the long-term health of the statewide CPA Trust Fund by increasing
the annual minimum match to 75%. You can
click here for a bullet point summary of HB4820.
In the coming year, the Coalition
looks forward to working with our 140 CPA communities to advance this
legislation on