Press Release: 1/30/2026

Kassandra Gove is new MMA president; Kiana Baskin is VP

 

Amesbury Mayor Kassandra Gove, left, was elected president of the MMA for 2026, and Sharon Select Board Chair Kiana Baskin was elected vice president.

The two women leading the MMA’s Board of Directors this year say they’re prepared to help the state’s 351 cities and towns navigate a treacherous fiscal landscape and seek greater control over their financial destinies.

On Jan. 24, the last day of the Connect 351conference in Boston, Amesbury Mayor Kassandra Gove was elected president of the MMA for 2026, and Sharon Select Board Chair Kiana Baskin was elected vice president. Between them, the two leaders bring extensive backgrounds in public service and the nonprofit, legal and private sectors, as well as a commitment to social justice work.

Gove, who served as the MMA’s vice president last year, succeeded Franklin Town Administrator Jamie Hellen. She said recently on the MMA’s “The 351” podcast that the organization’s strength comes from the collaboration it promotes among municipal leaders.

“My biggest takeaway is that we all have the same challenges,” Gove said. “It almost doesn’t matter even the size of your community. There are so many similarities, and there’s so much we can learn from each other. I’ve connected with select board members, city councillors, mayors and managers that may not even be near my community, but have so much in common with us.”

Gove has been mayor of Amesbury since January 2020, and is the District 3 representative for the Massachusetts Mayors’ Association. A fifth-generation Amesbury resident, she was previously executive director of the Amesbury Chamber of Commerce. She has also been a real estate agent and worked as an assistant director for programs serving students and alumni at Boston University and Clark University.

Gove began her mayoral career by steering Amesbury through the COVID-19 pandemic. Now she is tackling another challenge: the worsening fiscal conditions that threaten local government services. Municipal revenue streams aren’t keeping pace with the costs of delivering services, she said, and municipalities have very limited tools to address the gap, while taxpayers already feel overburdened.

“We just had a failed override in the fall,” Gove said on The 351. “We are seeing the pressure on our taxpayers, and the limitations of our other revenue options, and the inability to continue delivering basic services. We have made reductions across the board — and for many of our departments, we’re looking at some sort of forced innovation and ways to deliver services to different populations in our community that have never been done before.”

As MMA president, Gove will help lead the MMA’s efforts to ease the municipal fiscal crunch. Last fall, the MMA released two reports — “A Perfect Storm,” and “Navigating the Storm” — that analyzed the forces threatening the delivery of local services, and outlined policy recommendations for stabilizing municipal finances and giving communities greater budget and revenue-raising flexibility.

“So now here I am positioned to carry this torch, and that is really what I’m most excited about,” Gove said. “I feel very well-positioned, [and] very passionate about this being the upstream solution here for affordability in Massachusetts, and I can’t wait to really dive more into this and work with the staff and our leaders at the State House on making progress in these areas.”

Baskin agreed that engaging in the MMA’s fiscal-strengthening efforts is a central priority this year. She also wants to focus on the need for more affordable housing, since “too many people are living without the safety and stability of a secure home.” She said the MMA can play a key role in pursuing regional and statewide solutions.

Baskin said she wants to ensure that an equity lens is applied to MMA advocacy efforts, “so that proposed policies and funding decisions account for their impact on historically excluded and underinvested communities and help reduce, rather than deepen, existing disparities across our municipalities.”

In 2022, Baskin, an attorney, was the first Black person elected to the Sharon Select Board. She is an assistant teaching professor and dean of belonging at Northeastern University School of Law, and was previously a senior law lecturer at Bentley University.

Named Sharon’s Citizen of the Year in 2021, Baskin has chaired the town’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee, and is president of the Sharon Racial Equity Alliance. She also serves on the Metropolitan Area Planning Council’s Gubernatorial Council, on the MBTA Advisory Board, and on the Boston Bar Association’s DEI Steering Committee.

“Through this work, I realized that my voice and the voices of others from historically excluded backgrounds were needed at the decision-making table,” Baskin said. “While Sharon is a diverse community, that diversity was not well-reflected in town leadership, and I felt a responsibility to help change that. I also believed that my professional background and lived experiences could bring valuable perspective to the Select Board, particularly around equity, access, and community trust.”

Baskin sees the shared challenges across municipalities, including housing, finances, infrastructure and public engagement. The MMA plays a critical role in connecting municipalities, she said, and her involvement is a natural extension of her public service and professional mission.

“It is a way to amplify them and bring a local perspective to the statewide level, strengthening partnerships across communities, and helping ensure that the MMA remains responsive, inclusive, and forward-looking,” Baskin said. “I view this role as an opportunity to give back to an organization that has been essential to my own growth as a municipal leader and to help position Massachusetts municipalities for long-term success.”

As vice president, Baskin would be in line to assume the presidency of the MMA in 2027.

Written by Jennifer Kavanaugh, MMA Associate Editor