Massachusetts House lawmakers are pushing a big spending hike despite federal funding concerns.
For months, state lawmakers have signaled fiscal caution as President Trump continues to re-allocate federal priorities. Last week, House Ways and Means lawmakers rolled out their annual budget plan. State House News Service reporter Chris Lisinksi explains how the overall budget the House released compares with Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey's proposed budget.
Chris Lisinksi, SHNS: At least as it starts, the House budget is about $580 million below Governor Healey's budget, still seeking a very sizable increase in state spending compared to last year. I believe close to 6.5% over the version Governor Healey signed last summer, but a little bit less spending before we get to the amendment phase. As House Democrats think of ways they can maintain some wiggle room should federal funding begin to disappear.
Carrie Healy, NEPM: The largest area of spending always is health care. That's also an area that's targeted for reduction by the Trump Administration. The governor's plan, released a month ago, increased the MassHealth budget and represents more than a third of her line-item spending in that budget. So, what did House Democrats propose there?
Like Healey, House Democrats are proposing a sizable increase in MassHealth. I believe about $22.4 billion, a pretty big increase, 2.3, 2.4 billion over last year's budget. MassHealth has a very sizable caseload. And even after the redetermination process to assess eligibility post COVID-19, if you remember, that cases are still higher, more people are using MassHealth than some officials had projected earlier in the process.
How about a topic that we touched on a lot last year, the Emergency Assistance Shelter Program. Now, a budget defines one's priorities. So, what did lawmakers signal there?
The House budget pursues a funding cut for the Emergency Assistance Shelter program, at least compared to the current annual budget and to the version that Healey proposed. House Democrats suggested $275 million for that program. Granted, comparing it to $325 million in Healey's is not the most useful, given that the state has spent close to $1 billion on this program in each of the past two years. There's the annual budget and then mid-year injections of additional funding. House Democrats are signaling that they think all of the reforms that have been put in place, the eligibility changes, the caps on length of stay are starting to produce results and financial savings. And they're somewhat hopeful that 275 million will be enough without closing the door to supplementing that at a later date.
The Massachusetts Municipal Association is already taking issue with the House budget level funding of unrestricted general government aid at $1.31 billion. Now, lawmakers traditionally like touting increases in money coming back to their communities. So why did House lawmakers hold back there, and what are municipalities saying?
House lawmakers defended this based on what they call a tight budget year. Granted, they're still proposing to increase overall state spending more than 6%, but they face significant uncertainty and headwinds doing so. And it's worth noting that the House budget does increase local aid in other forms above the governor's proposal. There's more money for chapter 70 school aid. I think that the House budget would increase the minimum per pupil aid for districts to $150 per student over the governor's $75 per student. The tradeoff is that in the House budget, cities and towns would not see any change in that unrestricted general government aid.
So, the governor previously estimated that federal revenue contributes about $16 billion towards her budget plan. And it's been a few months since the Trump Administration has been working on trimming back money that's going to flow to states. And since Healey's budget was released. So how confident are House lawmakers in their revenue projections?
Yeah, confident is a tricky word for that. I'd say the best way to explain where we're at is that House Democrats don't feel any need at this point to change their estimates. They would rather proceed with the estimates that have been created while building in a little bit of flexibility here and there. You know, you and I talked just a couple of moments ago about the comparably smaller bottom line versus Healy's budget. But as for right now, they'd rather go that route and make decisions down the line. Once there's more certainty about federal funding than preemptively proactively changing the revenue forecast.
