TARDY FY24 BUDGET DEAL
No details yet on what survived private negotiations
A month-long standoff between Massachusetts Democrats over an overdue fiscal 2024 state budget came to an end yesterday when top negotiators said they reached an “agreement in principle” on a roughly four-week late spending plan.
But the public will have to wait a short while longer to find out what survived private deliberations led by House and Senate Budget chiefs Sen. Michael Rodrigues and Rep. Aaron Michlewitz. Details of the agreement were not immediately available even as the Legislature planned to take action on the compromise on Monday.
Top Democrats have kept private this month what caused the weekslong delay but a breakthrough means lawmakers will likely enter their traditional August recess after handing Gov. Maura Healey a finalized budget.
“Our respective teams are actively engaged in ironing out the details and working diligently to finalize the agreement,” Michlewitz and Rodrigues said in a joint statement. “We are confident that the conference committee report will be filed in the coming days, ensuring that both the House and Senate will take up the report on Monday in formal session.”
The necessary documents to file a budget compromise were picked up from the House Clerk’s office at 2:10 p.m. The House and Senate both plan respective 11 a.m. and 12 p.m. formal sessions on Monday.
If the House and Senate send a compromise to Healey then, it will be the latest non-pandemic-era budget since 2001, when the fiscal 2002 budget was laid before the governor on Nov. 21. The fiscal 2021 budget made it to thenGov. Charlie Baker in December 2020 during economic uncertainty and the spread of a society-altering virus.
Healey will have 10 days to review an agreement after it reaches her desk.
She gave lawmakers more time on Thursday to come to an accord by filing a $6 billion interim budget, which the Legislature approved and sent back to her only hours after she submitted it. It was the second temporary budget she filed to keep state operations running since the fiscal year started on July 1.
“The governor is pleased that the Legislature reached a budget agreement and looks forward to reviewing it,” Healey spokesperson Karissa Hand said yesterday afternoon.
The House and Senate proposals included major policy differences — from a House-backed provision legalizing online lottery sales to a Senate-supported effort to offer in-state tuition to undocumented students.
The House wanted to mandate universal public school meals while the Senate sought to offer free nursing programs at community colleges. Both legislative branches included a Healey proposal to offer residents who are 25 or older the opportunity to obtain a degree or certificate through any public community college.
Lawmakers disagreed on how to spend $1 billion in revenue from a new surtax on incomes over $1 million. The two branches split spending equally on transportation and education initiatives — $500 million for each category — but diverged when it came to the fine print.
“We’ll see it when we see it,” said Doug Howgate, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, of what made it through deliberations. “… I think getting something done before folks depart until September was really important.”
The effects of late budgets have real-world consequences, which can be broken down into two categories — the impacts on the day-to-day lives of Massachusetts residents and what it says about lawmakers’ fiscal management of the commonwealth, Howgate said.
Consistently late budgets are of concern, he said.
“When you think of the state’s recent track record of being able to manage through challenging fiscal difficulties by working together to come up with consensus plans, you don’t like to see these indications of it taking longer and longer to reach that consensus,” said Howgate, a former budget director for the Senate Ways and Means Committee.
After Healey filed an interim budget Thursday, Michlewitz and Rodrigues declined to detail the sticking points holding up an agreement.
Rodrigues said the public had not bugged him about the overdue state budget.
“I’ve had no constituent call me,” the Westport Democrat said at the State House. “I can’t share budget conversations …We are literally working 24/7 on trying to get a deal done and Chairman Michlewitz and I are putting every effort in to get it done. But I can’t give you any details.”
Michlewitz conceded there are differences between the two chambers’ proposals but, like he had in the past, said he would not get into specifics.
“We would have loved to have been able to get it done by July 1. But the negotiations have taken us to this point,” he said. “It’s hard for us to specify exactly what’s the reason why or how it is. But it’s not a lack of effort, not a lack of trying, not a lack of work from both sides.”
House Speaker Ronald Mariano and Senate President Karen Spilka delayed the budget “to the last minute,” said Paul Craney, spokesman for the Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance.
“They will most likely delay it as long as they can into the weekend so Senators and House members will be forced to vote on it without knowing what’s in the budget,” he said. “It’s not only a very opaque legislative process but unethical.”