The Massachusetts House released its $56.2 billion budget proposal for fiscal year 2024 this week. It’s slightly higher than the $55.5 billion budget put forward by Democratic Governor Maura Healey in March, her first since after being elected in November. Next, the Senate will offer its own draft of the spending plan before an ultimate compromise bill is hammered out before the new fiscal year starts July 1st. As the state budget takes another step forward, organized labor groups are reacting. Max Page is a Professor of Architecture at UMass Amherst and President of the Massachusetts Teachers Association. It’s the largest union in New England, representing 115,000 public school, college, and university educators over 400 locals across Massachusetts. He broke down the MTA’s assessment of the House budget plan in a conversation today with WAMC.
PAGE: Overall, this budget – both the governor's proposal and the house overall – show the impact of our tremendous victory on the Fair Share Amendment, the so-called Millionaire's Tax from this past fall. There are major, major investments, a billion dollars’ worth of new investments in public transportation, roads, and bridges, but also in public education, pre-K through higher ed. So, overall, we're seeing the impact already of that historic victory. There are many concerns we have, both in how the money is allocated as well as a kind of stunning decision by both the governor and the House to move forward with hundreds of millions of dollars of tax cuts for some of the wealthiest residents in the state.
WAMC: Let's dial into the strengths of the budget. When we talk about that Fare Share Amendment money getting invested in public education, what are the highlights as you see them?
What's remarkable is that they are fully funding – both the governor and the House, I should say – have proposed fully funding the Student Opportunity Act. That was our landmark bill that the MTA worked very hard for in 2019 that is bringing, each year, more money into our public schools, especially the neediest districts, such as Pittsfield, North Adams, Springfield, and Holyoke and the like. And that is fully funded, and actually at its highest level this year in both the governor’s and the House budget, and that's terrific. In addition, the legislature chose to spend $1 billion – “b,” billion – dollars of expected Fair Share revenues. I will say the MTA believes that there will likely be close to $2 billion available, but they were being cautious. So, what we see is additional funds, new funds for public education and transportation that are reflected in both budgets, and I expect will also be reflected in the Senate. So that's additional funds for green buildings for our schools, students supports, students scholarships for college, major investments in the MBTA, but also roads and bridges and other transportation systems. So that's tremendous to see.
Now disappointments, let's talk about that. What do you want to see change about this budget as it continues to move forward into reality?
What we want to see first is that the Senate not move forward with these regressive tax cuts, meaning tax cuts for the very wealthiest residents in the commonwealth. We have a very, very unequal state and part of the Fair Share Amendment campaign in the fall for the Millionaire's Tax was about introducing a little more tax fairness, where whereby we fix a problem where the wealthiest were paying far less percentage of their income in taxes then were the poorest people in the commonwealth. That's completely upside down. Unfortunately, the governor and the House have chosen to provide these major tax cuts to some of the wealthiest people. So, we hope to roll some of that back as it does not make sense when there are so many great needs out there. So that's one major disappointment. I will say that I teach at UMass Amherst, and the MTA represents 18,000 public higher education staff and faculty, and we were very pleased by the amount of money that the governor was proposing to invest in public higher education. The House pulls back on that and invests it in other areas, some of them very good, but we think that both should be covered- That is, new investment in K-12 and a major investment in high quality debt free public higher education.
