Cape Cod families are squeezed — by taxes, by fees, by mandates handed down from Boston. Meanwhile the state that inherited a multi-billion-dollar surplus spent its way into a shortfall, moved to gut the audit voters demanded, and keeps reaching deeper into your pocket. Here is the money story they’d rather you didn’t follow.
We stand for budgets the people actually get a say in, and for spending that serves the residents who fund it. That used to be called common sense. On Beacon Hill, it’s now the resistance — and the numbers tell you why.
They moved to gut the audit you voted for.
“72% of Massachusetts voters approved an audit of the state legislature. We’re still asking — where’s our audit?”
— The 72 Percent
In 2024, Massachusetts voters approved Question 1 — authorizing the State Auditor to audit the Legislature — by a landslide. The Legislature’s answer came in June 2026: the House rushed through Bill H.5469, which narrows the very audit voters demanded, passed it 125–28 in under 24 hours with no public hearing, and wrote in language declaring that “no court shall have jurisdiction” to enforce the audit. They didn’t just ignore your vote — they passed a law to bury it, and to lock the courts out.
One resident’s answer.
This spring, a resident of the 1st Barnstable District enclosed a letter with their Massachusetts tax return. We reprint it because it says out loud what a lot of Cape Codders are feeling:
We are not tax advisers, and this is one citizen’s stand, not our advice. But the anger is real — and it is earned.
They inherited a surplus. They handed you a shortfall.
Here are the numbers. Massachusetts closed the Baker years so far ahead that in November 2022 the state returned roughly $3 billion to taxpayers under the 62F cap law. Barely a year later, in January 2024, the Healey administration announced a roughly $1 billion budget shortfall and ordered “9C” emergency cuts of about $545 million. Same taxpayers, same economy — a multi-billion-dollar swing from surplus to red ink, in a single term. That is not bad luck. That is spending.
The millionaire’s tax chased the money out.
Beacon Hill promised the “millionaire’s surtax” would soak the rich and fund the rest of us. What actually happened: the surtax pulled in more than $2.2 billion a year — while an estimated $4.2 billion in income left Massachusetts the very first full year it took effect. When you tax mobile people, they move, and they take the tax base — and the jobs — with them. Cape Cod, full of small businesses and retirees, feels that first.
“Green” is not free: the Mass Save surcharge.
Look at the line on your electric and gas bill. The Mass Save energy-efficiency charge — a surcharge, not a tax you ever voted on — runs the typical heating household roughly $278 a year, and it more than doubled between 2015 and 2025. The three-year program was budgeted at nearly $4.5 billion. Even the Massachusetts House finally voted to cut it by about a third over affordability. When Beacon Hill’s own supermajority admits a program is too expensive, you know it’s bad.
Now the county wants a cut of your home.
The newest idea: a county tax on home sales over $1 million — a “transfer fee” of 0.5% to 4% that the Barnstable County Assembly of Delegates advanced in 2026, filed at the State House by Senators Cyr and Fernandes. On a Cape where an ordinary house now clears a million dollars, this is a tax on your home, dressed up as a tax on the wealthy. You’ve heard that promise before.
Watch: Cape Cod is next.
Where we stand
- Lower taxes and less red tape. Government should live within the means of the people it serves.
- Budgets in the sunlight. Deliver the audit 72% of us voted for — the whole thing.
- Priorities that put residents first. Roads, schools, public safety, and services for the neighbors who built this community.
- No new taxes on your home and no unfunded mandates dumped on our towns.
Sources: The 72 Percent (Question 1 / legislative audit); WBUR & malegislature.gov (H.5469, 125–28, June 2026); Mass.gov (62F FY22 excess-revenue refund, Nov 2022); WBUR / Mass. Taxpayers Foundation (Jan. 2024 shortfall & 9C cuts); InvestmentNews / IRS migration data (millionaire-surtax revenue & $4.2B outflow); Mass.gov DPU & WBUR (Mass Save budget, per-household cost, House cut); Cape & Islands / Barnstable County (2026 real-estate transfer fee); The Mike Urban Show. The enclosed letter is one resident’s statement, reprinted with the name withheld.
