"the state was laying the groundwork for a multimillion-dollar reconstruction... The state also operates another golf course"
WTF?!
They can't keep the schools funded, but they can RECONSTRUCT GOLF COURSES!!!
Oh, and with the ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS why not leave the place WETLANDS?!
Yeah, you'll pardon me if I give the "global-warming" a gasser, 'kay?
"Budget hangs on golf course plans; Legislators discuss rescuing Canton links" by Matt Viser, Globe Staff | July 2, 2008
As Beacon Hill talks on the $28 billion state budget wound down yesterday, one of the most dramatic moments turned not on healthcare, corporate taxes, or education spending, but on a prized, if dilapidated, recreational jewel. Top lawmakers huddled into the evening to come up with a rescue plan for the Ponkapoag Golf Course in Canton.
Nonduffers, scoff not.
The storied course has a rich history and was designed by renowned links architect Donald Ross. But while under management of the Department of Conservation and Recreation, it has fallen into severe disrepair, with dead grass and swamped, sunken fairways.
What to do about the golf course, which was the subject of a June 16 Globe report, was one of the last remaining items holding up budget negotiations and was among the top reasons the state began the fiscal year yesterday without a budget in place.
The GOLF COURSE was holding up the budget, huh?
Ron Paul is correct; the LESS GOVERNMENT the BETTER!
It is just one long LOOTING OPERATION!
For weeks, a committee of six lawmakers has been meeting behind closed doors to try to come to agreement on the different versions of the budget. Details of their discussions were guarded so closely that rank-and-file lawmakers were unaware of the sticking points.
Sources who were briefed on the talks said Senate President Therese Murray was pushing hardest for a lease of the course. When approached yesterday in a State House hallway, however, Murray adamantly declined comment.
"Who told you that?" she said. "No comment on the Ponkapoag. I don't talk about what goes on in conference."
And a Sig Heil to you, too, fascist!
You are holding a PUBLIC OFFICE aren't you, fascista "liberal?"
House Speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi, an 8-handicap who is a member of Ipswich Country Club, also declined to comment, but then seemed to scoff at how bad the course has become.
And WHAT does his HANDICAP have to do with "news?"
Sigh!
"Have you ever been to Ponkapoag?" he said, laughing as he repeated the question. "Have you been to Ponkapoag?"
Notice how DEFENSIVE the "liberals" get when they are CALLED on their WASTEFULNESS?
Nine of the 36 holes are currently shut down, and it has long been pilloried as a symbol of state mismanagement. The Globe reported last month that the state was laying the groundwork for a multimillion-dollar reconstruction of the course, including a new drainage system to stop chronically soggy fairways from flooding and importing truckloads of peat to raise holes that have sunken from years of neglect.
But officials at the state's Department of Conservation and Recreation are supportive of leasing the course out, instead of running it themselves.
The state also operates another golf course, the Leo J. Martin Golf Course in Weston, although that course does not have the maintenance problems that Ponkapoag does.
Canton would be allowed to take over the course before it went out to private management companies, but lawmakers do not expect the town to be interested.
Why would they want to? That's not a STATE JOB, is it?
If so, SHOULD IT BE?
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