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Crisp, Cool October Nights Usher In Mass. Budget Work In A Pandemic-Shifted Season

The changing seasons have brought cool October nights, fall foliage, pumpkin spice and signs of life on a state budget in Massachusetts.

The pandemic has altered the seasonal calendar. Amazon Prime Day, which was last week, used to be held in July. And with quite a bit less fanfare, the work of putting together a Massachusetts budget has also shifted seasons.

Carrie Healy, NEPM: Last week, Governor Charlie Baker sent a revised $45.5 billion budget to lawmakers. Have budget writers given you any indications about where the tricky bits may appear in this budget as the process pushes forward?

Matt Murphy, State House News Service: Not exactly. They're just starting to look at the governor's proposal, now. This was a recommendation from the governor for how to balance spending, after he wrote down and revised revenue estimates anticipating about $3.6 billion less in revenue.

Now, the good thing for Massachusetts, the governor said, is that they've been stockpiling cash. They had about $3.5 billion saved. The governor proposing to use almost half of it, $1.35 billion. There's also at least $1.8 billion dollars in federal relief funding, without a new package from Congress, that the state is going to be relying on.

So, lawmakers are going to be looking to see whether or not they want to dip as deeply — as the governor —into these rainy-day funds. They will probably want to utilize those federal funds as well. And then they'll look at priorities that the governor identified for spending.

We are hearing from lawmakers about education funding, in particular, when whether or not this budget will live up to the commitment of the Student Opportunity Act passed in the fall of 2019 and whether or not the state can afford to live up to that commitment, at least in this first year.

Speaking of education, that budget contains a 2%, or $108 million, increase in Chapter 70 aid to local K-12 schools. With all the workarounds to educating kids safely during the pandemic — hybrid learning, extra sanitary measures, all the rest — does a 2% increase represent enough money to make the school year work?

Some will say no, but what you're seeing in this budget is a mix of things. One, it certainly does propose less funding in Chapter 70 than the governor had hoped to provide way back in January. But what the legislature and the governor did do, is they postponed the budget in order to give cities and towns an idea of what they could expect. They committed to level funding local aid, unrestricted local aid, as well as Chapter 70, and added $108  million to the Chapter 70 line, which is where you see the 2% increase.

Now, there is also federal money flowing to schools to help them plan for remote learning, to buy computers, to buy PPE. But schools are still hurting. This has been an expensive proposition for them. They need more money. That's why you're seeing lawmakers on Beacon Hill, [and] in Congress from Massachusetts, lobbying and advocating for additional federal relief to help this very thing.

Briefly, Matt, what kind of expectations should we actually have for the productivity of state lawmakers focusing on affairs of the state when all eyes, screens, Twitter, everything are laser-focused on the final weeks of the presidential race?

Yeah, well, we haven't seen the exact timeline for the budget yet, but it's probably safe to say that it's going to be after the election. So, I think you'll see them kind of take a breath after November 3rd, come back and really start to tackle some of these issues.

Keep up here with Beacon Hill In 5.

Carrie Healy hosts the local broadcast of "Morning Edition" at NEPM. She also hosts the station’s weekly government and politics segment “Beacon Hill In 5” for broadcast radio and podcast syndication.
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