Sen. President Karen Spilka, D- Ashland, defended the process that led to a month-late fiscal year 2024 budget and its significant use of one-time revenues, and downplayed the latest House-Senate acrimony.
"The parties were working hard, the two chairs of Ways and Means were working hard. I'm glad that we got it done. I'm glad that it's behind us," Spilka said about the $56.2 billion budget that legislative negotiators didn't get to Gov. Maura Healey's desk until July 31, a month after the fiscal year started. "Honestly, what I hear from most people — from the State House and for outside — that it's such a great budget that the quote that I hear is, 'it was worth the wait.'"
The fiscal year 2024 budget that Healey has until Thursday to act on represents a 6.6 percent, or $3.5 billion, spending increase over the fiscal year 2023 budget signed last summer. The spending splurge is fueled by $1 billion from the state's new income surtax and more than $600 million from one-time sources, but Spilka said she does not think the state budget is growing too fast.
"Most of those reserves we put into a reserve from last year when we did not do an economic final bill that we had wanted to put that $200 million towards child care, early education and child care. It didn't happen, so the Senate — and the House agreed with the Senate — to put that into a reserve to use for the following year," she said, adding that the state's rainy day fund was not tapped.
Though she suggested the budget was worth the month-long delay, Spilka also pointed to the protracted budget talks as a reason that the Legislature has still not finalized a tax relief package that has been talked about since last legislative session. That tax relief was to have been included in the "economic final bill" Spilka mentioned, which fell apart last summer when Legislative leaders were blindsided by rebates that were statutorily required because of how much tax revenue the state collected.
"Well, I think that they were working on the budget to get that done," the Senate president said.
"I am hoping and I expect that we will ... pick that up right away and get to work on that. My expectation is to get a strong tax relief bill," Spilka said without offering a specific timeline for action on tax relief. The Legislature generally does not do serious work in August.
There are also significant policy differences between the tax relief packages passed by the House and Senate that could complicate a compromise. The House voted to reduce the state's short-term capital gains tax rate from 12% to 5%, an idea Healey has embraced.
The Senate package did not include that reduction or House-backed changes to how taxes are calculated for multistate businesses, but Spilka said she did not agree with Keller's characterization that "the Senate does not necessarily share the prioritization by the governor and House speaker of tax relief for investors and for the business community."
"No, I mean, we do a lot for the business community as well. You know, the capital gains was put to a vote and the senators did not support that," she said. "So we have a lot of other tax relief, again for low-income, middle-income working families to help them better afford living and thriving in Massachusetts."
Layered on top of the Legislature's list of unfinished or delayed business is a recent flare-up in bickering between the House and Senate. The latest episode has revolved around the way that some House co-chairs have sought to control the flow of bills through joint committees.
Spilka said she "can't answer" why the tradition of courtesy between House and Senate chairs has eroded, and she tread carefully around the intramural spat.
"Well, I think bottom line, we have some wonderful, caring, dedicated House chairs of committees and wonderful, dedicated Senate chairs of committees. All of them want to get work done for the people of the commonwealth," she said.
