Greetings from your State House!

Yesterday I voted, “YES” on the $43.1 billion fiscal year 2020 budget. Yes, it’s late. But a lot of this budget was worth waiting for. Here’s the scoop:

Ever since the Senate passed its budget in late May, a House-Senate conference committee has been negotiating the differences in the budgets passed by the two branches to produce a conference committee budget. 

I’m proud to say that all my regional spending earmarks made it through. I’ll detail those in later emails to you. For now, I think it’s important to give you a front row view to what’s in the budget writ large.

I’ll start with just a few key budget items I fought for on your behalf, and then I’ll move on to policy:

  • The budget increases Registry of Deeds fees which should boost Community Preservation Act funding by a needed $36 million and increase the state match to communities.
  • It increases funding for Regional Transportation Authorities to $90.5 million. (Note: This isn’t enough. And RTAs are not yet on par with the MBTA though they serve more people in the aggregate. But it’s a start.)
  • The wildly successful Healthy Incentives Program jumps to $6.5 million.
  • The budget funds the Massachusetts Emergency Food Assistance Program at $20 million, up $2 million.
  • It hikes funding for the arts, humanities, and sciences through the Mass Cultural Council by $2 million to over $18 million.

On the housing and homelessness front, the budget sets aside $249.4 million for the Massachusetts Rental Voucher Program, public housing subsidies, the Alternative Housing Voucher Program, and individual shelters.

With regard to the environment , the budget is projected to spend $283 million to fund the Department of Environmental Protection, preserve state parks, and protect watersheds.

In the realm of health and human services , the budget provides $50 million to stabilize nursing homes across the Commonwealth, $10 million for a new behavioral health trust fund to support mental health worker loan forgiveness, and $19 million towards the Councils on Aging.

And, the budget allocates more funding for school building costs , offers a modest pay raise for early educators , bumps community college funding and youth summer jobs, and funds the important ‘Breakfast After the Bell’ program.

As Public Healt h Committee chair, I was honored to secure a $500,000 increase for the Youth At Risk grants to community-based programs across the Commonwealth like the Brick House in Turners Falls.

I'm thrilled that this budget retains the Senate’s $5 million in funding for harm reduction efforts like fentanyl testing strips, nasal naloxone rescue kits, sterile and safe injection equipment, and syringe disposal services. Another important public health win is $100,000 in funding for the Office of Health Equity to address health disparities.

There's also some good news on education funding, as well as some frustrations that are all too familiar.

The budget sets Chapter 70 school funding at $5.18 billion. This $269 million increase represents the largest year over year increase in Chapter 70 funding in the past two decades. It’s essentially a one-seventh down payment on the vision of the Promise Act.

It reimburses Regional School Transportation at $75.8 million or 82 percent, which is unfortunately still well short of the 100 percent reimbursement our regional schools have been promised. The budget also adds $115 million for Charter School tuition reimbursements, noting that this line also is still not yet fully funded.

And here’s a bit of backstory: the House and Governor’s budgets would have amended the law so that district schools would only be reimbursed for charter school tuition if they were sending more students than they had at any time in the past 5 years. This policy would have harmed local and regional schools, so I filed an amendment and spoke against this provision on the Senate floor during debate. I'm pleased that the policy was struck in conference committee. 

Finally, the budget moves money into the stabilization (or rainy day) fund which will hit $3 billion this year. Since we’ve seen an uptick in tax revenue, I support what is essentially an investment in our future to guard against the possible ravages of an economic downturn.

Now onto policy (also known as "outside sections"):

I’ll start close to home: I won an outside section to study rail transit along the Route 2 . Here’s a quick piece I recorded during budget week.
Also close to home, the conference budget modestly increases funding for the University of Massachusett s and lifts restrictions around tuition and fees, but adds a provision asking the university to report data to the Legislature on tuition, salaries, and more—hoping to open a conversation about college affordability and accountability.

The budget also included an outside section that allows the Health and Human Services agency to negotiate drug prices with pharma companies. You may know the state spends more on health care than on any other issue or line-item, and drug prices have been number one in driving up health care costs in recent years, so this provision is critically necessary. 

Another outside section helps protect our mental health providers against insurance company clawbacks . I have received more phone calls than I can count from providers who have experienced devastating clawbacks, and this budget prohibits insurance companies from retroactively denying claims more than a year after the claim was submitted. 

The budget also strikes the awful requirement that a person experiencing homelessness needs to prove they’re homeless by spending a night in an unsafe location like a train station or their car. Now, the mandate is that if a person is facing homelessness, the state must shelter them.

And there’s more, like fully funding Lifting the Cap on Kids, which allows families living in poverty to receive full state benefits for all of the children in the household. 

What now?!

Governor Baker has 10 days to sign the budget. In Massachusetts, the Governor has line-item veto power, which means he can veto sections of the budget without rejecting the entire thing. It’s likely that the House and Senate will override all of the Governor’s vetoes, at which point the Governor will sign the budget.

I'm grateful to my Senate colleagues who have carried this budget work forward.

Your advocacy has been tremendous throughout this budget process.

Now, your calls and emails should now be directed at the Governor: https://www.mass.gov/topics/executive-branch

And for more in-depth reading, here is the full budget: https://malegislature.gov/Bills/191/House/H4000

Please know that I'll keep fighting for fair funding and regional equity for western Massachusetts by your side. Send your questions and feedback to joanne.comerford@masenate.gov.

It’s an honor to serve you.

Jo
P.S. Here's a photo taken at the moment the gavel came down on the Senate budget, sending it to Conference Committee. Our vote yesterday closes that chapter.
Senator Jo Comerford
State House, Room 70C
Boston, MA 02133
Jo.Comerford@MASenate.gov
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