By Margery Eagan, Boston Herald

So at least 50 cities and towns around Massachusetts, going broke, want taxpayers to approve Proposition 2 �½�½ overrides, or else. They’ll lay off teachers, firefighters, police. They’ll cut school programs, shut libraries, close the firehouse down the street. If you don’t vote to raise your own taxes, they’ll likely do all those things.

But here are some questions taxpayers should get answered before giving anyone another dime.

Has your town joined the state’s health insurance pool? If not, why not?

Joining would save cities and towns $2.5 billion over 10 years, according to tax watchdog Michael Widmer of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation. That’s enough to pay an awful lot of teachers, firefighters and cops.

But almost no towns have joined, Widmer says, because local unions don’t like the idea. They’d rather negotiate with individual towns. And because the Legislature has failed to give municipalities the power to override these unions, here go the towns again, begging, guilt-tripping homeowners into thinking they’re cheap and mean and cynical when the real problem is no political courage on Beacon Hill or in Town Hall.

Ask your selectmen if they’ve put pressure on Beacon Hill to act. Put pressure on yourself. Call your own state senator or state representative (617-722-2000) and ask why they haven’t dealt with the health-care insurance pool. Don’t let them give you a song and dance.

A few more questions:

What is your city or town doing about police details? Pensions? At what age can town employees retire and collect those pensions? Can they “double-dip” (explained below)?

Some of us thought we’d be dead before what happened this week happened: House Speaker Sal DiMasi, Senate President Therese Murray and Gov. Deval Patrick all agreed to rein in police details, plus the MBTA and the Turnpike Authority.

Police details in cities and towns now cost between $37 million and $67 million a year, the Beacon Hill Institute reports.

The Turnpike and the MBTA are not, obviously, local. But reducing MBTA fringe benefits (T workers can retire at full pension after 23 years) would save the state $1.1 billion over 20 years, taxpayer groups say. Such savings could mean the state actually funding the mandates it imposes on cities and towns.

In Boston, health-care and retirement costs have gone up 38 percent in just three years, the Herald reported this week. Mayor Tom Menino bailed out schools with $10 million. But not a word about ending the sort of practices that cost the city dearly.

Here’s a particularly galling one: the aforementioned double-dipping. Boston Redevelopment Authority retiree Paul McCann, for example, gets a $96,651-a-year pension - tax free. Yet he still consults at the BRA he’s retired from - collecting a second salary of $2,550 a week there. Incredible, isn’t it? He collects both pension and salary from the same agency at the same time. But why shouldn’t he? It should be illegal. Instead, it’s routine in Boston and at many state agencies and - rest assured - in your town, too.

You just won’t hear town officials admitting it when lecturing homeowners about stinginess. Don’t you believe it - the real reason you’re buying Kleenex for your first grader’s teacher and paying $175 for your high schooler to play a sport is not because your property taxes are low. It’s because politicians are either too inept, intimidated or worried about re-election to do a difficult thing: demand reasonableness from municipal unions.

They can’t do anything about contracts already signed. But they can do plenty about the future. So here’s another question: What, exactly, are they doing?

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