Five days into the new fiscal year, Massachusetts is one of six states without a full-year budget in place for fiscal 2024 and one of just three yet to have even put a finalized budget bill before the governor for review.
Massachusetts, Michigan, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin were the only states without a full-year budget in place as of Wednesday morning, according to the National Association of State Budget Officers.
However, lawmakers in Michigan [which doesn't start its new budget year until Oct. 1], Oregon and Wisconsin have finished their budget work and the governors of those states have finalized budgets to review.
Without a full-year budget, Massachusetts began fiscal 2024 on Saturday with a $6.66 billion interim budget in place. That spending plan, which Gov. Maura Healey recommended, is intended to maintain state operations through July as conference committee talks continue. In North Carolina, state law "allows spending to continue at current levels until a new budget is enacted," NASBO said. And in Pennsylvania, an enacted budget "is required by the start of the fiscal year to maintain full spending authority," the group said.
Three representatives and three senators were charged on June 7 with reconciling each branch's roughly $56 billion budget for fiscal 2024. Massachusetts lawmakers do not have a good track record when it comes to finishing the annual budget in time for the start of the fiscal year and interim budgets like the one Acting Gov. Kim Driscoll signed last week are an annual exercise.
The fiscal 2023 budget passed last year on July 28, the fiscal 2022 budget was signed on July 16 of 2021, and fiscal 2021 had an especially late passage due to pandemic delays and made its final passage on Dec. 11, 2020. Pre-pandemic budgets also arrived late -- with fiscal 2020 and fiscal 2019 getting former Gov. Charlie Baker's signature on July 31 and July 26, of each year respectively.
The top budget negotiators this year are familiar faces: Rep. Aaron Michlewitz of Boston and Sen. Michael Rodrigues of Westport.
NASBO said that states overall "remain in a strong fiscal position as they enter fiscal 2024," citing its own spring 2023 fiscal survey of states.
