Lawmakers send Baker transportation bond bill
House and Senate Democrats forged a late-night compromise on a $16.5 billion transportation bond bill, salvaging consensus in the dying moments of the lawmaking session on a multi-year plan to pay for infrastructure improvements while also raising fees on ride-hailing services.
A final compromise between House and Senate leaders emerged shortly after midnight Wednesday after months of private negotiations, leaving members only a few hours to read the updated version of the 63-page bill before approving it 146-0 in the House and 39-1 in the Senate.
Sen. Ryan Fattman, a Sutton Republican, cast the lone dissenting vote around 3:20 a.m.
The bill now on Gov. Charlie Baker’s desk authorizes billions of dollars in bonds for highway and bridge maintenance, train modernization, and major capital projects such as a Red Line-blue Line Connector, the extension of commuter rail service to the South Coast, and the approaches to the two Cape Cod bridges.
In a surprise move, the bill calls for increases to the flat per-ride fees charged on app-based services such as Uber and Lyft, a measure the branches addressed in separate legislation but not in either versions of their bond bills.
Another measure requires the MBTA to implement a low-income fare program, which has long been a priority of transit advocates, and those who fail to pay T fares would no longer be subject to arrest.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has created really unprecedented changes to the ways we commute, but this does not mean the ills of our transportation system do not persist,” said Sen. Joseph Boncore, who co-chairs the Transportation Committee and led the Senate’s negotiations. “Massachusetts needs a new deal on transportation, but included in this bill is a strong foundation to continue that conversation.”
With their late-night vote, legislators punctuated the end of the 20202021 session by returning to a topic that had dominated debate on Beacon
Hill early last year. Still virtually untouched, though, is a related package of tax and fee increases that cleared the House in the spring but died in the Senate without a vote.
Baker filed his original $18 billion transportation bond proposal in July 2019. Governors tend to seek the borrowing authorizations in multi-year increments, and Baker cautioned Monday that the long delay from lawmakers imperiled the upcoming construction season.
“We literally are almost out of transportation bond authority, and we need that bill for the spring construction and summer construction season, and we also need it to sign multiyear agreements that involve federal reimbursement,” Baker said.
“You have to actually demonstrate to the feds that you have the authorization to pay for a federally supported project, which in many cases take a couple of years to actually have the feds sign off and say, ‘yes, you can spend the money.’“
Several provisions Baker sought in his first draft of the bill did not make it into the version on his desk, such as a tax credit for employers who encourage working from home.
The bill lands in a vastly different climate than when Baker first proposed it.