The challenges facing the Berkshires do not stop at municipal borders. Housing shortages in one community affect employers in another. Transportation connects our workers, students, seniors, and businesses across the region. Healthcare access, education, public safety, infrastructure, economic development, and population change are regional challenges that require us to think and act beyond the boundaries of any single city or town.

I believe one of the most important jobs of a State Representative is to bring people together. Leadership is not about being the loudest voice in the room or believing that every disagreement needs to become a fight. It is about building trust, finding common ground, and creating coalitions strong enough to turn good ideas into results. That is the approach I have taken throughout my work in local government, community development, and economic revitalization, and it is the approach I will bring to Beacon Hill.

For a rural region like ours, collaboration is also a matter of capacity. Our thirteen communities range from North Adams and Adams to some of the smallest towns in Massachusetts. Each has its own identity, priorities, and right to local decision-making, but not every community has the staffing or tax base to independently maintain every specialized service, pursue every grant, or respond to every emerging challenge. Regional cooperation can allow communities to share expertise, jointly pursue funding, coordinate services, and accomplish things together that would be difficult, or impossible, to accomplish alone. Massachusetts itself recognizes this through its Efficiency and Regionalization Grant Program, which specifically supports shared services, joint facilities, intergovernmental agreements, and other collaborations intended to strengthen long-term municipal sustainability. 

This does not mean forcing communities into consolidation or eliminating local control. Collaboration works best when it starts with trust and a shared problem. Sometimes the answer may be a shared service. Sometimes it may be several towns jointly hiring expertise, purchasing equipment, pursuing infrastructure funding, or coordinating transportation. In other cases, collaboration simply means getting municipal leaders, employers, schools, nonprofits, healthcare providers, and state agencies around the same table before decisions are made.

We have already seen this approach work. Northern Berkshire communities have previously collaborated around animal control and special education. More recently, twelve southern Berkshire communities received $180,500 from the Commonwealth to jointly study regional emergency medical services. Elsewhere in Massachusetts, municipalities are sharing public-health professionals, developing regional housing strategies, coordinating visiting-nurse services, and even jointly preparing local governments around addressing artificial intelligence. These partnerships demonstrate an important principle: regional collaboration does not make individual communities weaker; done well, it gives them greater capacity while allowing them to retain their individual identities.

That same spirit of collaboration should extend to the Berkshire County legislative delegation. As State Representative, I will work to build stronger relationships among our region’s legislators so that, wherever we share common ground, we are jointly advocating for Berkshire priorities on Beacon Hill rather than competing against one another for attention or resources. We will not agree on every issue, but on challenges like housing, transportation, healthcare, education, economic development, and rural investment, a coordinated delegation can carry far greater weight. I want us meeting regularly, identifying shared priorities, and approaching state agencies and legislative leadership with a unified regional voice. The question should not be who gets credit for a win, but how we work together to get the best possible result for the Berkshires.

As State Representative, I want to make the 1st Berkshire District exceptionally good at this kind of collaboration. I will convene municipal leaders around shared challenges, strengthen relationships between our communities and state agencies, work closely with our regional planning and economic development organizations, and identify opportunities where joint action can bring additional resources into the district. Massachusetts has 13 regional planning agencies specifically designed to help communities address issues such as transportation, economic development, growth, and the environment across municipal boundaries. We should be supporting and using that infrastructure aggressively and ensuring the Berkshires have a coordinated voice when statewide policies and investments are being shaped. 

The Berkshires will not succeed because one elected official has all the answers or holds all the keys. We will succeed when elected officials are willing to listen, build relationships, bring the right people together, open up doors, and then use the power of state government to help those partnerships deliver results. My approach to leadership is simple: build trust locally, build coalitions regionally, and use that collective strength to make the Berkshires impossible to overlook on Beacon Hill.