Prodigal Legislature

As lawmakers this week continued the systematic reversal of Gov. Charlie Baker’s budget vetoes, Senate Ways and Means Committee chair Karen Spilka said she believes the budget sent to Baker in July remains balanced.

Of course Spilka can believe the moon is made of green cheese — it doesn’t much matter, since it is the governor who is responsible for ensuring the budget is balanced all year. The Legislature sent him what turned out to be out-of-balance budgets two years in a row and now it appears they’re going for the trifecta.

The House and Senate are set to restore most if not all of the $320 million that Baker cut, because he was concerned revenues wouldn’t support the planned spending. And because September was a decent month for revenue collections they now have a cushion to justify the overrides (and blame Baker if he has to make mid-year adjustments).

Because of lagging revenues Baker has been forced to make mid-year cuts in the last two fiscal years. In both of those budgets, he had trimmed spending at the outset — including excising earmarks and excessive spending on lawmakers’ pet projects — only to have those vetoes reversed.

And after each round of cuts lawmakers complained, and chided Baker for being too liberal with the red pen. They also had to seek more funding in the middle of the year for accounts they had underfunded. This is not a pattern of responsible budgeting.

This year Baker also proposed a series of money-saving health care reforms, which would have freed up more funds for lawmakers to fund their critical gazebos and municipal snowplows and cultural grants. Those reforms were ignored, with Spilka and others saying they just didn’t have time to deal with them. Meanwhile the full-time Legislature has been back from its summer “break” for weeks, and nothing has happened on health care yet.

Rep. James Lyons on Tuesday said the fiscal 2018 budget is based on “fuzzy math.” Sadly for taxpayers that has become Beacon Hill’s specialty.