The Massachusetts Senate passed a roughly
$42.8 billion budget for fiscal year 2020 on Thursday night,
leaving a little more than five weeks for negotiations
between the House and Senate ahead of the July 1 start of
the fiscal year.
The Senate voted 40-0 around 10:30 p.m.
Thursday to adopt the spending plan, which was amended over
the course of three days of debate in the Senate Chamber. In
total, senators tacked about $74.4 million in additional
spending onto the fiscal 2020 budget that the Ways and Means
Committee proposed, the committee said....
The Senate this week backed a sizeable
increase for a state grant program that helps religious and
nonprofit facilities "at risk of terrorism and violent
threat" improve their security, bolstered funding for
regional school transportation reimbursements, added funding
for civics education, and authorized an increase in some
Registry of Deeds fees to boost funding available through
the Community Preservation Act.
Many of the highest-profile budget
amendments received attention but no actual vote when the
Senate began its week of debate Tuesday. Amendments that
would have brought in significant new revenues by increasing
corporate tax rates were withdrawn after remarks by their
sponsors...
The House last month authorized $42.7
billion in spending for fiscal year 2020, including
significant new investments in elementary and secondary
education, while avoiding any major tax increases....
The next fiscal year starts on July 1, but
the Legislature has in recent years missed that deadline for
having a new budget in place and instead has resorted to
passing a spending plan sufficient to meet the state's needs
for about a month to buy themselves more time to agree on a
compromise budget. Massachusetts was the last state to adopt
a fiscal year 2019 budget.
State House News Service
Thursday, May 23, 2019
After adding $74.4 Mil, Senate adopts FY20 budget
Gone are the days of packing the budget with
dozens of outside sections to advance policy that had been
bottled up in committee or just needed a faster ride to the
governor's desk, or a dead end in the House.
Senate President Karen Spilka and new Ways
and Means Chairman Michael Rodrigues effectively put a
chokehold on the policy pipeline, convincing colleagues,
from the revenue crusaders to the public health pushers, to
wait.
Everyone, it seemed, got committee religion.
For instance, Sen. Jamie Eldridge held off
on forcing a vote on a corporate tax increase to defer to
Sen. Adam Hinds' tax code working group. And Sen. John
Keenan gave an impassioned speech on why flavored tobacco
should be banned, only to withdraw his amendment because, he
said, Ways and Means was trying to keep the budget policy
free.
It wasn't policy free, though.
There are new taxes on opioid manufacturers
and e-cigarettes, tough drug pricing controls for MassHealth
and a tuition and fee freeze on the University of
Massachusetts campuses. . . .
State House News Service
Friday, May 24, 2019
Weekly Roundup - Quality Control
The next stop for the state budget, which
looks like it will approach $42.8 billion, is a six-member
panel that will likely hold private talks where some of the
biggest spending decisions of each year will be made. While
there are differences between the branches, there's a lot in
common between the two budgets and lawmakers are on pace,
based on past patterns, to deliver an on-time budget by the
July 1 deadline.
State House News Service
Friday, May 24, 2019
Advances - Week of May 26, 2019
The $1 billion GreenWorks plan outlined in
February by House Speaker Robert DeLeo to help communities
finance climate adaptation projects has grown during its
development and now includes a $295 million Climate
Resiliency Act of 2019.
The GreenWorks bill (HD 4234), officially
filed on Tuesday, features a resilience act within it that
proposes $100 million for municipal microgrid energy
systems, $125 million for public sector electric vehicle
fleets, $20 million for municipal sustainability
coordinators, and $50 million for Green Resiliency Fund
loans to municipalities.
In January, Gov. Charlie Baker called for a
real estate transfer excise tax increase to fund his
ten-year, $1 billion climate change impact proposal. The
bill sponsored by Rep. Thomas Golden of Lowell would be
financed by borrowing, with bonds that would be paid off by
2050 at the latest.
The House this session has so far also not
gone along with Baker's proposed taxes on opioid
manufacturers and vaping products, levies that the Senate
agreed to in its $42.8 billion budget and which will now be
subject to negotiation in the House-Senate budget conference
committee.
State House News Service
Tuesday, May 28, 2019
House leaders add $295 Mil Climate Act to Greenworks bill
By Michael P. Norton
Buckle up, because the road to establishing
a Massachusetts "millionaire's tax" on the state's
wealthiest earners has been a long and winding one, with
several years of debate to come.
Businesses leaders are torn on a state
constitutional amendment that, if approved, won't reach the
ballot until November 2022.
The Massachusetts Income Tax for Education
and Transportation Amendment, aka the Fair Share Amendment,
aka the "Millionaire's Tax," is sponsored by Sen. Jason
Lewis, D-Winchester and Rep. James O'Day, D-West
Boylston....
In 2018, the amendment was framed as a
citizen's initiative, collecting over 150,000 signatures and
winning constitutional convention approval before the
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled against it.
The court sided with a group of
Massachusetts business associations — including the
Massachusetts High Technology Council, Associated Industries
of Massachusetts, Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation,
Massachusetts Competitive Partnership and the state chapter
of the National Federation of Independent Businesses — who
argued the question was unconstitutional in the way it set
aside tax revenue....
While that literally remains several years
away, business leaders are intensely split both for and
against the amendment. The same groups who rallied against
the initiative in 2018 remain fiercely opposed, while others
view it as an opportunity to bolster the relationship
between the business community and the state government.
For Marie-Francis Rivera, the President of
the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center, the tax
initiative, if executed fairly, would be an excellent way to
redistribute resources across poorer areas in the
commonwealth....
Jesse Mermell, the president of the Alliance
for Business Leadership, a non-partisan coalition of
Massachusetts business leaders, spoke in favor the amendment
in 2018 and believes it has a stronger chance of making it
to the ballot in 2022.
"We're supporting it this time through the
legislative approach," Mermell said in an interview, "We're
facing extreme inequality in the commonwealth, and asking
the most fortunate among us to pay their fair share is an
incredibly fair way to address the equality." ...
The groups rallying against the bill,
however, views it is a threat to the economic stability in
the state.
The Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, a
business-funded public policy organization, has been vocal
in its opposition and views the tax as "far-reaching and
unguided experiment that risks the state's economic
well-being," according to a statement published by the
group.
The MTF statement cited doubts over whether
the estimated $2 billion in tax revenue would go towards the
proposed transportation and education, or would even
materialize at all.
"[T]he power to appropriate revenue in the
state budget rests solely within the Legislature and cannot
be guaranteed in the constitution," according to the
statement. Because the wording of the amendment says the
funds are "subject to appropriation," the decision on how to
best spend the additional funds would need to be made each
year by future legislatures....
Christopher Carlozzi, the Massachusetts
State Director of the National Federation of Independent
Businesses, an association representing thousands of small
business members in the state, is also strongly opposed....
"There is no way to bind a Legislature to
use it for that money for a specific cause in future years
... so to ensure a Legislature down the line is going to
actually use it, that's uncertain."
The Lowell Sun
Wednesday, May 29, 2019
Biz groups split on millionaire's tax
It would create 4% surcharge on annual incomes over $1M
