The new fiscal year began on July 1st in Massachusetts. But for the last three weeks, state legislators have struggled to finalize a spending plan for 2020. Now, the House and Senate have reached a compromise on a $43 billion budget. Second-term Democratic State Senator Adam Hinds of the Berkshire, Hampshire, Franklin and Hampden district spoke to WAMC from Beacon Hill about what it means for Western Massachusetts.
Well as is normally the case, there’s the money side and then there’s the policy side. And so on the money side we had an interesting situation where actually we ended up with higher levels than we finished in both the senate and the house versions. We essentially have increased by $300 million. Essentially we had a consensus number at the beginning of this process but it increased dramatically as revenues came in through the year. And so that certainly made the money side of the conversation much easier. And so we see a lot of big wins on that quite honestly when it comes to education we have record levels of investment in K-12 education. We saw for an example an increase of $269 million this year over last year in our schools and we see big increases throughout the education system but also increases in transportation and a whole range of other issues. The holdup I would say is of course on some of the policy question and quite honestly we see some very positive things in that area. A big area of focus was of course drug pricing and we have now empowered the secretary for health and human services to negotiate supplemental rebates for some of the most expensive drugs out there. And we’ve seen that the cost drivers for our health system, which is 40% of our budget, often comes from our drug pricing. So, there were several of these priorities in the policy area that we took on in the budget as well.
So, as far the district you represent, what does this compromise budget mean for your constituents?
Well, we are very happy that — a couple of big wins here. One is certainly the train from NYC to Berkshire County is fully funded and the pilot service will begin in June of 2020. So that is now done and will conclude our agreements between the Department of Transportation and Amtrak. So we’re excited about that. The other is we had an increase in rural school aid to $2.5 million and so we are very happy that our colleagues across the state recognize the importance of guaranteeing equal educational opportunity. So, that’ll have a big impact throughout Western Mass.
Over the course of this long conversation about the budget, what issues kept emerging as being things in the minds of lawmakers on Beacon Hill?
Well, a big one of course became the higher ed. in UMass and so the Senate had put a tuition freeze in place even though we did increase their overall budget. And so that tuition freeze is not a part of this however, it does set in place regular conversations between the Chairs of Ways and Means on both the House and Senate side and the Chair of Higher Education in the legislature with UMass system to give us a five-year plan on an annual basis so that we can see very clearly where their funding priorities are and how we ensure that education and higher ed is attainable and affordable. So this is an area of focus for sure.
Given how late this budget was, do you think any lessons were learned this time around that could apply to the next situation where the state has to pass a budget?
Yeah, I wish I could say there were.
