Baker waves his magic budget wand
It’s easier to understand now why Gov. Charlie Baker didn’t want to cancel Halloween. He had his costume all picked out. And no, he’s not dressing as Donald Trump.
Whether by sleight of hand or happenstance, Baker, the budgetary magician, managed to take a lot of the sting this week out of an exercise in fiscal obligation that legislators had been wringing their hands over for months, spooked by the pain it would inflict.
The longer Washington took to fight over the next stimulus package, the longer Beacon Hill could put off its inevitable need to pass a balanced budget for the year. even, and maybe most importantly, if that meant waiting until after the election.
That can-kicking stopped Wednesday.
Baker waved his wand and updated the state’s revenue forecast to reflect a $3.6 billion drop in tax collections compared to what had been projected back in January. It was better than the $5 billion to $8 billion once feared, but it wasn’t couch change either. Then for his next act, Baker submitted a revised state budget to the Legislature that actually increased proposed spending by about $900 million from his January plan, tipping the scales at $45.5 billion for the year.
“Pretty neat trick, huh?” Baker said, smiling wryly at a question about how he accomplished that feat.
But it didn’t take David Copperfield to unravel how he did it. A combination of federal relief money and tapping the state’s “rainy day” savings fund to the tune of $1.35 billion got the budget almost all the way back to black. Add in another $515 million in savings squeezed out of agency budgets by asking them to forgo increases from fiscal year 2020 and voila.
The governor’s budget did not raise any new broad-based taxes and incorporated the final, mandated drop in the income
tax to 5% in January, but he also delayed a charitable giving tax deduction and reproposed a accelerated method for collecting sales taxes that would net the state $267 million in onetime revenue, but has been rejected as unworkable by the Legislature more than once.
The MBTA also continues to contemplate major service reductions as MassHealth, the state’s Medicaid program, consumes much of the proposed spending growth in the budget, and schools are being told to wait on the full funding promised in last year’s Student Opportunity Act.
Needless to say, Baker’s updated budget recommendation was just the start of the process, and one the governor optimistically said he’d like to see wrapped up by Thanksgiving.
While that may take another act of magic to accomplish, Senate Ways and Means Chairman Michael Rodrigues called it a “responsible” plan that gives the Legislature a “good foundation” to build their own budgets – even if that foundation is built on onetime money.
A virtual hearing on the governor’s revised budget has been planned for next Wednesday, and the timeline after that remains anyone’s guess. The budget revision came on the heels of Baker throwing more money at another problem: housing stability.
Prepared to let the moratorium on evictions and foreclosures expire on Saturday, the administration released a plan Monday that it developed with Trial Court Chief Justice Paula Carey to try to stem the rising tide of eviction proceedings by increasing rental assistance by $100 million and bolstering landlord-tenant mediation and other supports.
Without knowing exactly how many residents are at risk of losing their homes, Baker said it was too risky to let tenants continue to accumulate debt if they can’t afford to pay their rents. Many advocates applauded the direction the proposal took, but some said the governor’s $171 million plan won’t address the true needs.
Demonstrators and political leaders, from state Rep. Kevin Honan to U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley and Attorney General Maura Healey, continued to pressure Baker all week to extend the moratorium, at least until he could get his own program up and running.
But they did so in the face of overwhelming evidence that the governor had no intention of taking that step.
Rep. Mike Connolly of Cambridge even tried Thursday to force passage of an emergency petition to extend the moratorium until January, but the furthest he got was getting the bill admitted to the House.
Connolly said at the very least his petition would give Baker more time to get the tenant and landlord support services that are part of his own plan up and running, which they won’t be by Monday.
And at most, it would give legislators like him and Honan more time to convince leadership on Beacon Hill to pass a popular housing stability bill that would not only extend the moratorium until a year after the health emergency is lifted, but also freeze rents during that time.
As it stands, the moratorium is set to lift this weekend. But that doesn’t preclude legislative action in the days or weeks to come.
“When you think about the concerns of our constituents, the challenges facing the commonwealth, I would like us to actually utilize the abilities we have to make policy and pass legislation,” Connolly said, expressing his frustration that neither the House nor the Senate has met in a formal session since July 31, despite voting to extend formal sessions beyond that date in part to deal with pandemic-related issues.
Now the middle of October, Massachusetts has seen its average daily COVID-19 case rate over the past two weeks climb to 8.7 cases per 100,000, which would put it in the state’s own highest risk “red” category if it were a city or town.
But Massachusetts is not a town.
And Baker made clear that he’s not putting much stock in where Massachusetts stands collectively on the virus transmission scale, just where communities stand. Because, he said, there continue to be many, many municipalities where COVID-19 is contained.
Still, 27 more cities and towns moved into the highest risk category this week, bringing the total to 64 of the 351 municipalities, including many of the the state’s largest cities.
“There’s no question that there will be more cases this fall,” Baker said.
Good thing Massachusetts is prepared, according to the governor.
Sandwiched between his housing announcement on Monday and his budget rollout on Wednesday, Baker staged a press conference with the lieutenant governor and multiple cabinet secretaries to tick through everything the state has done since March to respond to the pandemic, and how that experience has prepared the government to deal with a fall surge, if it arrives.
Adequate supplies of personal protective equipment are on hand, hospitals stand ready to quickly build out ICU capacity and the state’s testing and tracing program is no worse than second to one, the governor assured.
“We’ve done the work. We’re prepared to respond to this virus like never before,” Baker said.
“But our preparations are of little use without the people of Massachusetts continuing to do their part.”
In Massachusetts, that part involves wearing a mask, which President Trump continued to equivocate on the value of this week after recovering himself from COVID-19. Trump’s attitude toward COVID-19 and Baker’s opinion of the federal government’s response to the pandemic are undoubtedly part of the reason Baker won’t be voting for Trump, which the governor confirmed this week to the surprise of no one.
Baker, however, did not endorse Joe Biden and suggested he might not vote at all. He could always follow the lead of his good friend and fellow anti-Trump Republican Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland, who, according to the Washington Post, wrote in Ronald Reagan on his ballot when he voted early.
STORY OF THE WEEK: Filling a $3.6 billion budget hole…