The Massachusetts Rural Policy Plan is being updated for the first time since being released in 2019, with a focus on supporting rural equity and capacity.
The updated document, now in its draft phase, is being developed by the Rural Policy Advisory Commission, which was created by the Legislature in 2015. The commission, made up of state and regional planning officials, serves as a research body for issues that are considered critical to the welfare and vitality of rural communities.
The plan is broken up into nine chapters, such as Housing, Municipal Sustainability and Economic Development, among others. Each chapter provides recommendations for how policymakers might address issues involving the various subjects.
Franklin Regional Council of Governments (FRCOG) Executive Director Linda Dunlavy, a member of the Rural Policy Advisory Commission, explained that the focus is on ensuring equity and capacity — equity in how rural towns are impacted by grant programs, state policies and funding formulas, and capacity in how town officials can pursue state grants and other programs with the limited resources they have.
She described the Massachusetts Rural Policy Plan as a “roadmap” for where rural advocacy needs to be channeled, and said it is designed to be looked at as a whole. The document can also help guide policymakers in prioritizing initiatives as they arise.
“It would almost be easier if there were a single item that we were focused on, but we’re not,” Dunlavy said. “We’re focused on a bunch of different issues and advancing rural conditions across the comprehensive set of issues.”
Dunlavy detailed a number of accomplishments that have come to fruition since the first plan was crafted, including establishing a director of rural affairs, a position that is now held by former Sen. Anne Gobi; the creation of a Rural Development Fund; and some changes to rural school aid and the Chapter 90 program for transportation infrastructure.
“We got a lot done — it’s pretty remarkable,” Dunlavy said of the 2019 plan. “And obviously, it wasn’t just the Rural Policy Advisory Commission, but the combined work of the [Healey-Driscoll] team and rural legislators.”
Since the original plan was developed prior to the pandemic, Dunlavy said the updated version is influenced by the experience of the public health crisis. Regionalizing resources was one of the revelations brought on by the pandemic, which came in the form of sharing information, access to personal protective equipment and starting vaccination clinics.
In that spirit, the 2026 updated plan makes a recommendation to promote regional models for police, emergency medical services and fire departments, especially where call and volunteer systems are not sustainable. Dunlavy said this is going to be a “huge focus” for FRCOG over the next few years.
Local interest
In addition to exploring regionalization for emergency response, a few initiatives included in the plan are already of interest to Franklin County officials.
The Land Use chapter contains a recommendation to modernize the state-owned land reimbursement framework with a review of the payment in lieu of taxes (PILOT) program formula, which is being carried out by a state commission. During a recent Franklin County Chamber of Commerce Legislative Breakfast, state Rep. Susannah Whipps, I-Athol, shared her interest in seeing the formula updated, especially for the benefits it would create for communities in the North Quabbin region with large swaths of state-owned land.
The PILOT program gives money to towns and cities across Massachusetts for some or all of the lost revenue involved with overseeing land that they steward on behalf of the state. The payback is necessary to the budgets of the communities that host large portions of public land, since they don’t receive property taxes for their oversight. The commission is tasked with evaluating potential changes to the PILOT program to recognize the disparity in reimbursement levels, with particular attention to geographic equity.
The state’s average reimbursement rate for fiscal year 2024 was $127 per acre. Hampshire and Franklin counties fell well below that average, receiving $61 per acre and $32 per acre, respectively. Comparatively, counties in eastern Massachusetts received higher average reimbursement rates. For example, Norfolk County received $408 per acre and Suffolk County received $5,504 per acre.
Recommendations in the Technology, Broadband and Digital Resilience chapter seek to help rural communities navigate the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and how to manage large-scale development proposals for data centers, or other types of clean energy storage, as rural areas are usually sought out for these kinds of projects.
“We need to be careful about natural resources. We need to be careful about the impact on our municipalities,” Dunlavy said about this section of recommendations. “I think our immediate future is working with our municipalities and helping them to be as responsive as they can be to such proposals.”
In Franklin County, rural communities have already started the process of addressing these issues, including through a one-year battery energy storage system and data center moratorium in Gill that was passed during its May Annual Town Meeting. In Wendell, residents pushed back against New Leaf Energy’s 105-megawatt lithium-ion battery energy storage proposal, which was eventually withdrawn. The county seat of Greenfield is also exploring a moratorium on data centers.
Public comment on the draft Massachusetts Rural Policy Plan has been open since the start of the month. Once public comments are collected and reviewed, editing is expected to occur in July and August, with a final plan to be distributed come September.
For more information, visit frcog.org/2026-ma-rural-policy-plan-feedback-sessions. According to the website, interested parties are welcome to review the materials and submit written comments through the end of June to FRCOG Communications Manager Mark Maloni at mmaloni@frcog.org.
