Massachusetts lawmakers are 10 days from needing a state budget for the new fiscal year, but the big fight now is about billions in federal aid and who controls it.
Governor Charlie Baker and legislative leaders are battling about who has the power to decide how and when to spend more than $5 billion from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA).
Matt Murphy of the State House News Service joins us to talk about the latest on that, and what else lies ahead this week in state politics and government.
Matt Murphy, State House News Service: The governor last week answered the Legislature's call to sweep all of the ARPA money — this $5.3 billion in federal money — into a fund they would control and appropriate.
He sent that bill back to them. He refused to sign it. He proposed to spend a little more than half of it, $2.8 billion, on a variety of priorities — $1 billion directed towards housing, particularly homeownership programs for first-time home buyers in communities of color, and was disproportionately impacted by a pandemic.
There's also close to $1 billion in the governor's plan for things like climate change, or resiliency parks, and a whole list of priorities.
But the Legislature responded quickly and said, "Thank you. We will take this plan under advisement, but we still think that we need to go through our process to allocate this money." They want to go through a more traditional budget process with this funding. And that's where we stand right now.
The speaker and Senate president indicated they are not interested in passing the governor's proposal as it stands. They will likely send it back to him, and then we will wait and see whether or not the governor will try to veto this bill, or if there's some other route to compromise.
Carrie Healy, NEPM: The deadline is coming up on the state budget for the fiscal year that begins in July. A full-year budget was much delayed last year because of the pandemic. Do lawmakers expect to make a deal on time?
We don't know if it'll be on time, but this is certainly a more traditional process than it was last year, when we didn't see a budget for the fiscal year until December — basically halfway through the fiscal year.
It is not uncommon, and we could see something as soon as this week, out of the governor. There could be an interim budget just to keep government operating beyond the July 1 deadline as a placeholder, just in case they cannot strike a deal in time, or they don't get a budget to the governor's desk before he has his 10 days to review it, and sign off on it.
So that is something that could happen this week. But all signs point to a much more traditional process, though it's not uncommon that legislators go a week or two beyond the July 1 deadline.
The governor put his foot in his mouth at the end of the week, causing confusion about mask rules during summer school. He said officials "don't think kids need to be wearing masks in summer school." The administration clarified that mask rules remain in effect, but that could change in the fall. Many kids likely won't be eligible for vaccination by then. Can you break this down for us?
Yes. The governor asked about summer school, saying he did not think — and officials did not think — masks are required in school at this point, given the vaccination rates. But his administration clarified that the rules for schools have not changed for summer school, which means children are still supposed to be masked when they're inside the building.
If they go outside for recess; if they go outside for other activities, they can take the masks off. Fully vaccinated teachers can remove their masks in school. But the Department of Elementary Education is not changing their rules for summer school.
That is going to be revisited for the fall, when they anticipate a full return to in-person learning across the state, for all schools. I think they will take a look at where the pandemic stands — where the virus transmission rate stands — and they'll make a call, and probably issue some new updates for the fall, the next academic calendar year. But summer school is status quo, moving forward.
The state's Elementary and Secondary Education Board meets Tuesday to consider revised rules for vocational school admissions. Advocates say the changes don't go far enough to address issues of access and inequality. What are the disagreements?
This has been a long-simmering feud. Advocates are concerned that admission policies of voc-tech schools disadvantage people coming from certain communities, low-income communities, where students tend to have higher rates of discipline, maybe have battled absenteeism.
This would give schools a lot more flexibility to set admission criteria, and not have to adhere to a standard across the board for the entire state and every school district. But some advocates think it doesn't go far enough, and gives school districts too much latitude and flexibility, and won't achieve the desired results.
