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In Franklin, Lynch said the devices have flagged registration or insurance problems. But police can't check plates against certain types of information yet, such as arrest warrants, and Lynch said he hopes to see that improve.
"It's still early. We've only had it for about a month," Lynch said. "The technology is great - it's just that the databases it draws off of, as far as I'm concerned, are a little limited."
This paper provides an updated analysis of underlying municipal fiscal health, using a measure of municipal gap and recent data for Massachusetts cities and towns. The analysis shows that large disparities in municipal gaps exist among cities and towns, and that the disparities have grown in recent years.
Created for the purpose of fiscal equalization, unrestricted municipal aid is not highly correlated with municipal gaps in Massachusetts. In fact, municipal gaps cannot explain the majority of the variation in municipal aid. This partly reflects large ad hoc aid cuts over the past 20 years. The consolidation of municipal aid programs in FY 2010 has not improved the aid distribution—that consolidation has simply perpetuated the existing inequity.For those really interested in the systemic fiscal problems that Franklin and by extension the Commonwealth of MA faces in the redistribution of state aid, this paper from the Boston Federal Reserve Bank is a good read. I would love to obtain the full data set used to see where Franklin falls on the charts. The paper identifies the top 10 cities but stops there.