Spilka: Baker budget refile may spark post-election debate
Senate President Karen Spilka told local officials in her district this week that action on the overdue annual state budget is unlikely to happen in the Legislature until after the November election, a softer target than the more ambitious goal articulated earlier in the week by the Senate’s budget chief of making decisions on how to spend billions in tax dollars by the end of October.
Spilka also said that Gov. Charlie Baker may be planning to file an updated version of the pre-pandemic fiscal 2021 spending plan he put forward in January, which would become the jumping off point for the House and Senate to craft their own budgets for the fiscal year that began on July 1.
“Currently the state budget has been delayed, as you know,” Spilka said, appearing before the Holliston Board of Selectmen and the town finance committee on Tuesday night. “We are waiting on certain factors.”
“We will also know more after the election. If the feds have not done anything with a stimulus package, a second one, before that, we’ll have a better idea as to how to interpret that with the election,” Spilka said, according to a recording of the meeting reviewed by the News Service.
The comments made by the Senate’s top Democrat add to the uncertainty of how Beacon Hill intends to proceed in the development of an annual state budget as they continue to wait for any clear signs from Congress about the prospects for additional federal aid.
On Monday, Senate Ways and Means Chairman Michael Rodrigues said his goal was to have a budget passed and on Gov. Baker’s desk by the end of the month when a threemonth, $16.5 billion interim budget expires. “Our idea is to get it done by the
end of October. I’m here today. I’m here every day. We are working,” Rodrigues said at the Statehouse.
Rodrigues told the News Service on Thursday that he didn’t mean to imply it had to happen by the end of the month, and that his goal is to finish the fiscal 2021 budget and turn his attention to the fiscal 2022 budget “as soon as possible.” He acknowledged that was different from what he said three days earlier, and said he could have been more careful in choosing his words.
After learning of the News Service’s reporting, Spilka reached out to say she felt her comments were not incompatible with what Rodrigues has been saying, and that everything from the timeline for budget to the amount of money lawmakers will have to spend remains uncertain.
“We would all love to get the budget done and focus on FY22. But our need is to do it right. We need more clarity ... ,” she said, pointing to renewed talks in Washington over relief spending. “This week alone it’s changed at least three time what they’re doing or not doing.”
A rare post-election budget debate would mean that scores of major deci
sions about spending would be made in part by a lame-duck Legislature featuring some lawmakers who are retiring and others who won’t be returning in January because they lost their elections.
Spilka told Holliston officials another interim budget is “very possible,” and suggested the Legislature was inclined to wait a little longer to see if Congress will deliver another stimulus package with aid for states and municipalities.
“There are people saying we can hold out for months. I’m not so certain. Eventually, we are going to need to do a full-year budget,” Spilka said, later specifying, “We need to have a balanced budget and we need to get it done, I would say hopefully before this year is out, this calendar year.”
Spilka went before the board with Rep. Carolyn Dykema, of Holliston, to update the town on status of the state budget as local officials try to plan their own finances for the year.
She noted that Rodrigues and House Ways and Means Chairman Aaron Michlewitz, whose committee has custody of the governor’s fiscal 2021 budget bill, meet every Monday morning to discuss
budget planning, but said the uncertainty in Washington has made moving forward difficult.
“We have no idea at this point what the federal government is doing. We need relief. It really is dependent a lot upon what the feds do in terms of us putting together a budget, but we will have a full year budget,” Spilka said.
Next Wednesday, the Ways and Means committees have invited economists and other fiscal experts to offer updated projections for tax revenues for the remainder of the fiscal year. The hearing falls about a week before the annual Oct. 15 deadline for the administration to make adjustments to annual revenue projections that were agreed to by the administration and the Legislature in January.
“The administration is required to certify revenues by Oct. 15 and they may be filing another budget, a revised budget from what they did last January. We’re not certain,” Spilka said.
A spokesman for Administration and Finance Secretary Michael Heffernan would not say whether Baker intended to file another budget, only that the administration was working with legislative leaders.