Weeks after the deadline, the Massachusetts legislature delivered a compromise budget for fiscal year 2024 to Governor Maura Healey. The final $56 billion plan, which garnered little opposition in both the House and Senate, includes sweeping investments in education and local aid, free calls for incarcerated people, and more. Between its July 1st due date and its belated arrival, heavy rain and flooding dealt a costly blow to communities in Western Massachusetts. Paul Mark is the Democratic State Senator who represents the region on Beacon Hill. To find out more about why the budget was late, what it includes, and how the extreme weather impacted things, Mark spoke with WAMC.
MARK: I think part of the holdup was just being cautious that- We've been in positions before, I know I've lived through budgets where you pass something, you make these commitments to organizations, to municipalities, to schools in your district, and then something drops out, revenue starts to come in flat, and then you end up having either the governor make mid-year cuts, which is never great, or I remember I think at least once, the legislature had actually had the vote to authorize the governor to make some major cuts while Deval Patrick was the governor. You don't want that. So, I think there was a caution to just watch how the revenue projections were coming in, and also, as they work out the tax relief package that is still pending – maybe it'll come on today, maybe a couple more weeks – that there's a note of caution there, that anything we do there is going to be permanent, because once you cut the tax, it’s very difficult to try to raise it. And so, we want to make sure that we're just, we're doing everything correctly, and that we're not causing any future problems, that even with something like rural school funding, which is coming out at $15 million, which is a great number, we don't want to commit to a level that the next year, we won't be able to reasonably try to meet again.
WAMC: The budget is coming in weeks after it's theoretically due on July 1st, and over those weeks, there was a tremendous amount of extreme weather impact from storms on Western Massachusetts. Did any of that real-time emergency situation play into the delayed budget hearings and final compromise bill?
I think it has an impact. In in the interim, we had temporary budgets and we just passed another one to keep the government running and make sure all operations go so there's no showdowns, nothing like that happens down in Washington DC and Congress. And at the same time, we passed what we call a supplemental budget in both the House and the Senate, and supplemental budgets are again, when there's when there's a variation in revenue to what we expected, that we make sure we're keeping the state budget in balance. And in the Senate supplemental budget that was just passed this past week, we did include $20 million for direct aid to farmers, farmers that either are facing flooding problems right now, destruction of crops, or also, it will be available to farmers who had a problem with the frost that was I think, in May, that late-season frost that that killed a lot of crops unexpectedly, and trying to make sure that again, organizations, families, businesses that are going to face an unexpected difficulty through no fault of their own are able to access what they need as quickly as possible to make sure that they can get through the season and stay in business and stay alive, I think is really important. And then we're also still continuing to talk about, how do we get some of the direct aid to places like Clarksburg, like North Adams, where there's been incredible infrastructure damage, while waiting to see, do we hit the threshold as a state to qualify for that FEMA emergency funding? And making sure that we have the amounts correct, because when we went through Hurricane Irene, I remember, a lot of money came from the federal government, and then there was some little places where things were forgotten. And I remember still filing amendments to budgets to make communities whole all the way through 2018. And the more we can do up front, the better off we all are.
The budget also makes permanent COVID era eviction protections. What does that look like on the ground for folks in Western Massachusetts?
Well, again, one of the- When you're talking about housing, when you're talking about affordability, when you're talking about housing crisis, and right now, around the state, there's a lot of people that are facing homelessness and that are being placed into temporary shelters – obviously, we saw up in North Adams that there was that possibility – but other parts of the state, it is happening. Greenfield, it is happening. Homeless are being placed in hotels. So, one of the most important things you can do to prevent homelessness is to keep people from losing their home to begin with. Because once you lose your home, you now are subject to difficulty finding employment, difficulty keeping an address, difficulty formulating government documents. It creates a spiral that can continue to lead down a path that makes homeownership, rental availability almost impossible. And so, the more we can do, whether it's keeping people from being evicted, whether it's keeping funding available, for short-term assistance or even middle-term assistance, all of these things add up, and all of these things, in Berkshire County and throughout the state, will hopefully have an impact in reducing the number of people that are going to be seeking shelter. Because that's not an ideal situation. You don't want a family having to either end up living in hotel for a time, or even worse, if they don't know how to access assistance, living in a car or something like that.
Let's look at regional transit authorities. In the Berkshires public transit is woefully limited, and does not offer a really immediate solution to folks without cars to get around the county with the kind of speed and consistency that would suit most people's schedules. Is there any support in this budget for regional transit authorities like the BRTA?
Yeah, there is increases. I think the final number wasn't as high as was wanted, but it was still a pretty good win. And so, where we get to with increased funding opportunities in a county like Berkshire- So right now, there's no Sunday service and there’s very limited evening service. And so, trying to get funding that will allow BRTA – or FRTA, or PVTA – to try to take those next steps and make sure that, especially when we're talking about maybe employment possibilities. Imagine you get on a bus right now and you go to work, and there's no way to get back. So, trying to make sure that there are consistent routes that are reliable for employment and trying to make sure that the funding exists. And again, the BRTA has to look at the same things as we look at in the state, that you don't want to start a route and have it be successful, and then you have to end it because next year, something's unreliable. So, making sure that they know that funding is going to be stable, I think, is increasingly important. And then part of the increased funding is intended to do projects that maybe work in places like the Berkshires that don't necessarily work in Boston and vice versa, that we want to make sure the projects like what I've seen in South County, this idea of like micro transit, and availability of public transit that will work in smaller communities. It's not going to make sense to have a bunch of really large buses maybe running from Egremont to Alford, but if you can do something that is targeted, and that makes sense in partnership with a couple of municipalities, that's something that can be workable for the entire area. I know an earmark that I got was for the Villages of the Berkshires, and they're a group that tries to help seniors get around and have access to rides and access to transportation. There's a program like that in Boston called the Ride that works through the MBTA. We don't have an equivalent anymore out here. So, trying to target directly programs like that that are going to assist is also another way to supplement making sure that in a county like this where you essentially need a car in most of the area, most of the small towns, that were trying to work around that and trying to improve access for everybody.
