A Halloween deadline looms for Massachusetts lawmakers to resolve differences in a fiscal year closeout budget.
The bill that closes out the books on the fiscal year that ended in June got passed by the Senate last week, but it carried a $50 million higher price tag than the version that was passed in the House.
Matt Murphy of the State House News Service joins us to talk about the week ahead in politics and government.
Carrie Healy, NEPR: What are the key differences that the conference committee members are going to need to work out?
Matt Murphy, State House News Serivice: Yeah, there was obviously more spending in the Senate bill, a $780 million in surplus money spent by the Senate in this budget. That's up from about $723 million that the House had put in.
The House also had socked away more money into the rainy day account for, you know, the potential for a looming economic downturn. We will see how they can resolve that.
"I am proud of the commitment to education funding, early voting, transportation improvements, community-based Family Resource Centers, workforce development and public health..." #mapoli
— Senate President Karen Spilka (@KarenSpilka) October 25, 2019
Senate Passes FY2019 Closeout Supplemental Budget of $779.8M: https://t.co/isgF2nrS20 pic.twitter.com/Jj9sIBgyoO
And there are policy differences in this. The House is doing something that is being considered a business tax break that would decouple the state tax code from the federal tax code. This is worth about $37 million to businesses in Massachusetts.
And also there are some differences around voting. Both the House and Senate seem to have agreed on a primary date — the state primary, not the presidential primary — for 2020, setting that on September 1 to resolve some issues that Secretary Galvin had raised about next year's election.
But to satisfy some people who were concerned that this date falls before Labor Day, while people may still be on vacation, the Senate chose to add a period of early voting before that primary — so that people who are maybe not used to voting before Labor Day, or students who may be moving on September 1, which is a big moving day, have additional opportunities to vote in that primary.
Regarding the date of 2020's State Primary, the College Democrats of Massachusetts released the following statement. We urge our state senators to pass @PaulFeeneyMA and @EricLesser's amendment to move the primary to September 8th and ensure students get fair access to the polls. pic.twitter.com/qv3byap7Ck
— College Dems of MA (@CollegeDemsofMA) October 23, 2019
But all of that is still yet to be determined, right, because the committee members have to work this out before Halloween — or what, really?
Well, the "Or what?" is the question. You are referencing a deadline for the Office of the Comptroller Andrew Maylor to hit a key financial reporting deadline for the state. He needs to file something called a statutory basis financial report. It's very wonky, but it's something that's very important to the comptroller as he tries to close the books out on the past fiscal year and and show to creditors and bond rating agencies and everyone that Massachusetts's fiscal house is in order.
It wouldn't be the first time that they've pushed this deadline, and even gone past it. So the consequences aren't immediately felt if he goes past it. But it's a confidence thing, and a message that the state is on top of its finances. So they will try to get that resolved.
We don't know if this will move to a conference committee or not. They could try to work this out just in informal negotiations over the next week or so. But it's something to watch closely.
Last week, Senate President Karen Spilka laid out a long list of legislation that she wants to tackle before the last day to hold formal sessions, which I gather is coming up next month. What is on that list?
Yeah. Look, there's a lot of stuff that they have not done, and that includes some of the stuff that we've seen votes on.
This education bill that's not finalized.
They have not finished a hands-free driving bill, that's also in conference committee.
But the Senate president is also looking ahead. There's a child health care bill that they're trying to get done.
There's bills dealing with climate change.
There's stuff dealing with registries.
So there's a lot of stuff. I mean, this is not a hard deadline. Obviously, they come back in January and can just pick up where they left off, but they would like to go into this fall recess with some pieces done and behind them.
House Speaker Bob DeLeo has said that he wants to tackle the issue of vaping. Do senators express the same sentiments — and what might that look like?
I think there's an appetite in the legislature to do something on vaping. The question is, what? The Senate has shown interest in banning flavored tobacco products in the past. And this year the House has moved a ban on flavored products through several committees. That is now before the House Ways and Means Committee.
But the Speaker has suggested that he doesn't just want to do that bill. He wants to take a more comprehensive look, and that could include taking a look at the governor's early proposal to tax e-cigarette products. There could be additional regulations.
And I think part of the delay is also waiting a bit to see if they can get any guidance from either the Department of Public Health in Massachusetts or the Centers for Disease Control or the FDA about what sorts of ingredients are causing these outbreaks of lung injuries, so that they could put some regulation in place on how these products are manufactured, sold, and what kind of ingredients are included in them.
