Boston Globe 6/24/10: Backers say sales tax cut to be on ballot. Voters in November will get the chance to slash the state sales tax from 6.25 percent to 3 percent, according to advocates who say they submitted more than enough petition signatures yesterday to force the item onto the ballot. Carla Howell — chairwoman of the Alliance to Roll Back Taxes, based in Wayland — said her group submitted about 19,000 signatures to town and city clerks by yesterday’s deadline, a comfortable margin over the required 11,099 signatures. Her group put similar measures on the ballot in 2002 and 2008, but neither passed.

Needham Times 4/14/10: Smulowitz wins, but race tight in Democratic State Senate primary. Smulowitz won in Wayland 525-181, a greater margin of victory than his overall margin district-wide.

Boston Globe 3/14/10: Special election to fill Brown’s state Senate seat may predict November swing. Scott Brown’s stunning upset over Attorney General Martha Coakley gave Massachusetts Republicans momentum they haven’t seen in a generation or more. If a relatively unknown Republican state senator could best a statewide officeholder and rising star in the Democratic Party, isn’t anything politically possible? Whether Brown was a fluke or a trendsetter won’t be known until scores of statewide races are decided in November. But political observers say this spring’s special election to fill Brown’s state Senate seat could be a bellwether and an interesting look at how both parties are dealing with the shifting political landscape.

Boston Globe 2/28/10: Runaway health costs are rocking municipal budgets. A six-month review by the Globe found that municipal health plans, which cover employees, retirees, and elected officials, provide benefit levels largely unheard of in the private sector. Copays are much lower. Some communities do not force retirees onto Medicare at age 65. Many citizens on elected boards – some after serving as few as six years – receive coverage for life, too. As medical costs across the board rose over the past decade, municipal health care expenses exploded, draining local budgets and forcing major cuts in services, higher property tax bills, and billions in new debt. The cost of municipal health care more than doubled from fiscal 2001 to 2008, adding more than $1 billion in all to city and town budgets, according to state Department of Revenue data. A Globe survey of 25 communities found that they now devote, on average, 14 percent of their budgets to health care, up from 8 percent a decade ago.

Boston Globe 2/5/10: Special election dates set for Scott Brown state senate seat. The state Senate announced that residents of Brown’s former state Senate district will vote May 11, with party primaries scheduled for April 13, according to State House News Service.

Metrowest Daily News 12/12/09: Changes may be on the way in community preservation funding.  Legislation that would boost the state's commitment to match money that towns and cities collect through the Community Preservation Act has cleared a significant hurdle.

Wayland Town Crier 11/3/09: Top Republican in Senate race makes his case. Although the seat has been in Democratic hands since the 1950s and more…