Budget hearings resume as Mass. lawmakers hear from education reps

Massachusetts budget hearings resumed Monday at UMass Amherst, where lawmakers were hearing from state education officials and others. This comes just days after President Trump signed an executive order to dismantle the federal Department of Education.

Reporter Chris Lisinksi from the State House News Service explains in this uncertain time, what lawmakers were expected to hear at the session.

Chris Lisinksi, SHNS: We can be almost certain that lawmakers will hear basically how important public funding for education services is, and having government infrastructure supporting education services and the importance of that.

We heard a lot last week when President Trump signed his executive order, about how potentially damaging it could be to public education here in Massachusetts, how much the state relies on services, funding and expertise that flow through the U.S. Department of Education. And so, we can expect that we can draw a pretty straight line that that theme is going to continue.

Carrie Healy, NEPM: The Commonwealth has a long history of embracing the institution of knowledge. It's Monday, and 180 years ago tomorrow, the state legislature passed House Bill 45, guaranteeing all Massachusetts children access to public education. So, in this moment, what's Governor Maura Healey saying about the future of the state's educational situation?

Governor Healey, unsurprisingly, is a vocal critic of President Donald Trump, and has been sounding the alarm about the potential changes to the U.S. Department of Education. That's not my word. The subject line on a press release from Healey's office last week about the executive order, says “Healey-Driscoll Administration Sounds Alarm...” Healey said last week that shutting down the U.S. Department of Education would be bad for students, teachers and schools. That it would disrupt programs and funding that [is] necessary in Massachusetts and lead to bigger class sizes, fewer after school programs, and the like.

And this is not the only state budget hearing scheduled for this week. There are more?

That's right. I think we've got three budget hearings this week, and we're right in the thick of budget season. We'll get into some other areas beyond education later in the week, and I think that there's probably two weeks’ worth of hearings. Once we're done with this week, we'll be looking for the House to roll out its rewrite of Governor Healey's $62 billion state budget sometime in the month of April.

Meanwhile, the state's cities and towns are closely monitoring federal decisions as they prepare their budgets for the upcoming fiscal year. Local officials are warning that aggressive cost cutting by the federal government could lead to difficult local budget choices. Those affecting some of the same things that affect the state housing, health care, education. How does the local budget season compare with the state’s?

There's a lot of uncertainty. As you noted, it's smaller in scale. Obviously, town budgets are a fraction of what the state government budget is. But one dynamic in particular that we're going to have to watch is the way that uncertainty affects both entities.

A common refrain we've heard on Beacon Hill amid these threats of federal funding cuts, is that state government will not be able to make up that money itself. So, towns and cities, as they set their own spending plans, they might just have to grapple with less money than they did a year ago. In some areas, they will not be able to count on state government coming in as the cavalry with additional dollars.

In response to Trump Administration program elimination, cuts and widespread chaos last week, Massachusetts congressional Democrats held packed town halls. Congressman Seth Moulton urged people to stay on top of the news from Washington, D.C. and to speak out when they don't like what's happening. And Senator Elizabeth Warren took questions from constituents at a packed hall in Lowell. Warren said this about what President Trump is doing to federal government, “This is not normal. This is not a time to be calm. We have to be in this fight. And it means in this fight all the way.” So, Chris, Mass Democrats appear to be trying to fire up their constituency. Is this, ‘hundreds-of-constituents-at-a-time-Q&A-in-town-hall’ strategy likely to make a difference in what happens in Washington?

I don't know if it's going to make a difference in what happens in Washington, but it is a really striking portrait of where we're at right now. Democratic voters and left leaning voters are enormously frustrated. They are afraid. They are widely opposed to what's happening at the federal level. And we're seeing in polling data [that] a lot of them are not happy with how Democrats have responded... with how congressional Democrats are working and operating as the minority opposition party.

So, whether the messages that Elizabeth Warren and Seth Moulton and others are hearing will make it all the way up the food chain to top congressional Democrats remains to be seen, but it's pretty clearly part of a broader trend.