Selectman Alan Slavin said Tuesday he wants to change the approach to the budgetary constraint that all cities and towns across Massachusetts are all dealing with: state programs that are mandated but unfunded.

Slavin said at a Massachusetts Municipal Association meeting this past Friday with 22 towns from across the Southeast region, everyone was stuck in a similar situation.

"They all had to make cuts. They're taking things they need to buy, like infrastructure, police cars and other programs, and not buying them in order to operate the town," Slavin said. "This puts you in the hole even more for the next year."

He said that the issues were the same every year. He said the state Legislature allots $300 million in Chapter 90 state aid, then the governor allows $200 million and by the time the money is actually made available to the towns it's too late to bid out contracts or get anything done.

Slavin mentioned the broken formula for Chapter 70 School Aid, in which Wareham is penalized for high value waterfront property, as well as the McKinney-Vento Act where people are moved from one town to another, and the receiving town has to pay for school transportation.

"We have a disproportionate amount of people who get moved into town of Wareham where we in turn have to bus the kids to the original school they came from but the state doesn't reimburse us for all of it."

Selectmen Patrick Tropeano said when Proposition 2 1/2 was passed in the 1980s, there was a component that any time the state mandated a program they had to pay for it, but the state has consistently exempted itself from that portion of the law.

"I'm really shocked that the 351 cities and towns have not gotten together and filed suit against them for doing just that and not following with that portion of the law," Tropeano said. "It really is a horrible thing what they're doing to us."

"I had 7 or 8 other towns that were more than willing to sit down and start an active campaign to say if you don't fund it we're not going to do it," Slavin said.

He said the formulas and systems are broken and simply aren't going to work anymore. "From my point of view as a selectman when things come up I'm going to say no."