Last week, the Massachusetts Senate unanimously approved a nearly $56 billion budget for fiscal year 2024. The 40-member body is made up of 37 Democrats and three Republicans. The spending plan is roughly the size of those put forward by Democratic Governor Maura Healey – her first since taking office in January – and the Democrat-dominated House in March and April, respectively. After a dozen years, Democratic State Senator Paul Mark ascended from the House to the Senate in last year’s election. He represents Berkshire, Hampden, Franklin and Hampshire counties — over 1,500 largely rural square miles of Western Massachusetts. WAMC spoke with Mark about the first Senate budget he worked on.
MARK: I think the headlines are, the Senate focused on a budget that really invests in education at all levels, transportation at all levels. And then locally, tourism around the state, but in a lot of tourism and cultural activities in the Berkshires, in our region, which I think is a great thing.
WAMC: Now, when it comes to those regional earmarks, anything you want to draw attention to?
We were able to get an earmark to level fund [the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in North Adams] with the rest of the colleges. And I’d like to put that in a little perspective. For some reason, most of the state universities were receiving an increase of about 3%, and MCLA was getting only one and a half percent. And so, an amendment I filed brought them up to the proper amount and also included enough funding for this diversity educator program that I've been working with them on even since last year, which was pretty good. We got money to double the amount of funding going to our local Opioid Task Force, which goes through the Sheriff's Department. And that's an entity that benefits people throughout the entire Berkshires- So, North County, South County, Pittsfield. And doubling their funding is going to make sure that there's more resources in the hands of people doing educational work, doing work to encourage treatment, doing all kinds of projects to make sure that people that are either facing substance abuse or trying to get out of substance abuse have the resources they need to have a better life, improve their lives, and improve our community.
Now, when it comes to housing, what in this budget will address the ongoing housing crisis in Berkshire County and Western Mass at large?
Yeah, I was able to get an amendment for $75,000 for the Western Mass Network to End Homelessness. And they act as kind of a facilitator between all the local agencies and organizations to do both rapid response activities and connect people when they're in need and act as almost a crisis management team as well. And so, for whatever reason, it fell on me to try to get them the money that they needed. And it's important because they do work in all four counties. And especially during COVID, I watched the network be very proactive, have regular meetings of agencies on Zoom. And I think one of the most important things we can do when talking about housing is making sure that people don't lose the housing that they're in right now. And when you're faced with the possibility of foreclosure or eviction, it can be a crisis time, a crisis time for a family or an individual. And if you actually end up out of that home, it can create a domino that spirals, that just gets really difficult to get out of and so keeping people in place and then making sure that programs that are responsive to that ideal are properly funded was something important to me and something that I think the Senate did a pretty good job with.
Back when [Governor] Maura Healey’s debut budget was rolled out, there was conversation and criticism, including some from you, about tax relief for wealthy folks in the state and the possibility that the tax relief package proposed by the Governor would roll back the efforts of the Fair Share Amendment. It's a concern that you echoed in a conversation with WAMC a few months back. Looking at the Senate budget, how does that reflect that conversation and those stances that you took back in March?
Yeah, I think the Senate budget is in line with what we, you and I talked about previously. There's a set aside for about $575 million anticipating that there is going to be some kind of a tax package, and so, making sure that that's accounted for in the budget. But as of yet, the Senate hasn't put out a package similar to what the Governor proposed or similar to what the House has already passed on their side. And so, we're still having conversations about, how do we make any tax relief package more progressive? How do we keep in line with the ideals of the Fair Share Amendment that was passed? The Senate budget also reflects that we anticipate about a billion dollars coming in from these new Fair Share revenues, and we're setting it up in a way that it's accounted for in a trust fund that can show people exactly where the investments in transportation and education are going to go, as the ballot question, as part of the selling point of why people should vote for this ballot question laid out. And so, I think the Senate is trying to keep with that and trying to make sure that there's no giveaways, there's no handouts, that we're doing something in a manner that's going to benefit every person in this commonwealth and also, again, falls in line with this idea that we want progressive taxation, and that we want the revenue spent in the most efficient manner possible.
Again, going back to that conversation in March where you initially reacted to the governor's budget, there was a separation between the Senate and Governor Healey about how to provide more funding for higher education in the Commonwealth. Healey's plan was about making community college free for folks 25 And up, other plans were more expensive on that subject. How does the Senate budget that was approved this week reflected that back and forth between major leaders on Beacon Hill?
The Senate budget provides a set-aside for what the Governor proposed with community colleges for people returning after the age of 25. So, there's an amount of money that is intended to make that happen. But then there's also an additional amount of money for a pilot program to make sure that people are able to go for free to community college for nursing programs, which is obviously a high need area right now in terms of job creation and job growth and general need throughout the entire state. And then there's also funding set aside to get a plan in place with the intention on the Senate side of making community college free and available for residents of the state, starting in, I believe, the fall of 2024. So, the Senate takes an approach that is both complimentary to what the governor and the House has proposed, but then tries to take things, I think, a step further. And that's what we'll find out as the conference committee does its work over the next month or so, where are we actually going to land and is the appropriate method, go with a governor's plan, and then let's try to get a plan up and running over the next year and how we expand this to as many people as possible.
With all of this in mind and the conference committees coming together, what do you see as the major conversation pieces as the Massachusetts government tries to reconcile a budget for next year?
I think the education piece is definitely a point where there's differences. And that's going to take a lot of discussion and a lot of work on how do we get to the right place for the people of the state. I think transportation, again, is another place where the House and Senate both put some good stuff in there, how do we maximize what's available. Something I was really happy with, back when we did the Chapter 90 bill, as a result of some work I did in the Berkshires, specifically bringing some of the Ways and Means chair and the Senate president and a couple other chairs of committees to the Berkshires, we came up with an additional $25 million intended for rural road funding. And the Senate doubled down on that. They put an additional $100 million into the state budget intended for Chapter 90 transportation, but with half of that intended to be distributed by road miles, intended to be distributed in a way that would benefit rural communities specifically. So again, a difference with the house. But I don't think something that's at all- I think just something that we need to discuss and figure out, how do we do this? How do we get the most road funding? How do we get the most education funding? And how do we do this in a way that is something that the people in the state are really going to be proud of?
