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When my car registration renewal arrived yesterday from the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles it came with sponsorship. Seven 3.5 by 6.5 inch advertisements - perfect for a business envelope – fluttered out along with my registration form. Known as “buckslips”, these advertising inserts promoted car insurance, oil-change services, a local gym and other businesses trying to reach an audience of automobile owners still in a spending mood despite the economy and the State’s $41 registration fee.

My wife and I take pains to avoid being advertised-to. We keep a recycling bin on the way from the mailbox to the house and junk mail never gets past it. We have strong spam-blocking on our email and ad-blockers on our browsers and we don’t watch TV. But how do you block out the government?

According to the Tax Foundation, Massachusetts has the highest per capita total state debt in the country at over $10,000 per citizen – about three times the national average. Years of political fiscal mismanagement have put the “Commonwealth” into a hole deeper than the Big Dig – one of the major contributors to the problem. In the case of the Registry of Motor Vehicles this has resulted in commercial sponsorship, cutbacks in hours of operation, elimination of license-renewal reminders, and such desperation-measures as printing registrations on cheap paper instead of the traditional card stock at a savings of about 2 cents per driver.

Any revenues gained or money saved do not go to the Registry, but instead are directed to the State’s general funds, which virtually eliminates any incentive for Registry staff or managers to look seriously at cost-saving ideas.

Times are tough all over, and the Registry’s travails are only a small slice of the Commonwealth’s shrinking fiscal pie. But when you’re in hock as deep as Massachusetts, your fiscal wiggle-room is more limited because debt-service is one part of your budget you can’t cut, so everything else must absorb deeper cuts. Programs all over the state are being chopped and local aid has been slashed, so local governments are also cutting and pink-slipping. It’s hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel when the tunnel is closed because its maintenance workers have been laid-off.