Who Is Killing the Towns of Western Massachusetts?

[Commentary] This is the story of a dramatic failure of imagination and vision at the state level: Gov Charlie Baker’s (R-MA) apparent insistence that Massachusetts relegate small towns to second-rate, high-priced, monopoly-controlled (and unregulated) communications capacity. It’s a slow-rolling tragedy that will blight Western MA for generations. The likely outcome: Only those plucky, scrappy towns that elect to build on their own will escape the grip of unconstrained pricing for awful service. The rest will fade into irrelevance. What new American generations will stay in a place that is essentially unconnected to the world? What new businesses and ways of making a living will emerge there? None and none.

There’s an alternative vision that would allow Western MA communities to control their own destinies: subsidize towns that want to own their own infrastructure.

[Susan Crawford is the John A. Reilly Clinical Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and a co-director of the Berkman Center.]