FY2023 Supplemental Budget Update

FY2023 Supplemental Budget Update

March 29:

Governor Healey Signs Supplemental Budget

Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2023: https://malegislature.gov/Laws/SessionLaws/Acts/2023/Chapter2

Bill Features School Meals, SNAP Aid, MassWorks Recapitalization

Supplemental Budget Bill as Signed; 

Source: State House News Service, Chris Lisinski, 3/29/23 3:11 PM

MARCH 29, 2023......Gov. Maura Healey signed into law a roughly $1.1 billion combined spending and borrowing bill today, according to her economic development chief.

During a presentation Wednesday to lawmakers about grant opportunities, Housing and Economic Development Secretary Yvonne Hao praised the Legislature for including $125 million in the supplemental budget (H 3548) to help Massachusetts compete for newly available federal dollars.

The bill approves $388 million in time-sensitive spending for social safety net programs, including $85 million to expand capacity at the state's emergency family shelter system, $130 million to provide enhanced food aid for three months, and $65 million to keep a universal school meals program running through the end of the academic year.

Both Healey and her predecessor, Gov. Charlie Baker, have been warning for months that the state's emergency shelter system needs more units to accommodate a surge in demand fueled partly by migrant arrivals.

Hao told the Economic Development Committee that Massachusetts is the only right-to-shelter state in the country, ramping up the pressure to respond to what she called a "humanitarian crisis."

The number of people living in temporary placements in hotels has climbed from effectively zero to about 600, Hao said.

Lawmakers also included $740 million in borrowing authorizations, covering areas such as $400 million to recapitalize the MassWorks infrastructure grant program.

END
03/29/2023

Earlier:

The House and Senate worked out a compromise version of Gov. Healey's fiscal 2023 supplemental budget and bonding bill and sent it to Governor Healey's desk last week. The House version includes $353 million in spending and $585 million worth of bonding authorizations, while the Senate passed a bill with a $366.7 million bottom line and $814.3 million in bond authorizations. Both versions would extend pandemic-era policies like remote meetings and outdoor dining. 

Background

On March 6, the Senate Ways and Means Committee issued a redrafted version of the supplemental budget bill approved by the House last week, setting an amendment deadline at close of business on March 7 ahead of debate at a Thursday, March 9  formal session. The Senate Ways and Means Committee's rewrite features a $366.7 million bottom line, according to a committee summary, and would authorize $814.3 million in bond obligations.

House Ways and Means Redrafts FY2023 Supplemental Budget Bill for March 1 Vote

From several sources, including State House News Service

March 1, 2023: The House passed its first significant bill of the session, voting 153-0 to engross a House Ways and Means redraft of Gov. Maura Healey's fiscal year 2023 supplemental budget that also includes elements of her $1 billion "immediate needs" bond bill. The $353 million bill, which also includes $585 million worth of bond authorizations, temporarily extends pandemic-era programs such as enhanced food assistance and free school meals. It also gives $86 million to the emergency shelter system to help offset medical costs for what House Ways and Means Chair Aaron Michlewitz described as "migrant families headed to our emergency rooms for shelter and assistance in numbers we have never seen before." Bond authorizations include $400 million for the MassWorks grant program and $104 million for the Clean Water Trust, among other initiatives. After behind the scenes talks, the House dispensed with 27 amendments to the bill with one consolidated amendment, which included $50 million in bond authorization for the Massachusetts Technology Park Corporation. 

Excerpts from State House News Service, Colin A. Young, 2/28/23 2:44 PM

The Massachusetts House will take a formal session vote Wednesday on a redrafted version of Gov. Maura Healey's fiscal year 2023 supplemental budget that also includes elements of her nearly $1 billion "immediate needs" bond bill.

The House Ways and Means Committee bill has a bottom line of $223 million net ($353 million gross), includes $585 million worth of bonding authorizations, and extends popular pandemic-era policies like outdoor dining and cocktails to-go.

The Senate still needs to take up the bill.

The House Ways and Means Committee members voted 28-0 with one member reserving his or her rights on February 28, 2023, on the redrafted version of H 47, which was a $282 million spending bill when Governor Maura Healey filed it a month ago and told lawmakers it was necessary to manage a surge in demand for emergency shelter and to prevent the free school meals program from running out of money.

The draft appears to include much of what was in Governor Healey's bill -- about $86 million toward the emergency shelter system (the House appears to have boosted the total by $1 million), $130 million to keep expanded nutrition assistance that expires Thursday in place for a few more months, and $65 million for the universal school meals program. The House also included in its redraft $68 million in early education and care workforce stabilization grants.

Federally enhanced Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits are scheduled to end Thursday. More than 630,000 Massachusetts households could face a loss of about a third of what they received in food assistance over the past two years without House and Senate action on the bill or some other government intervention before April's benefits are distributed.

According to Project Bread, more than 647,000 Massachusetts households will receive their last increased payment on Thursday and lose, on average, $151.46 per month in additional benefits, based on data from the Department of Transitional Assistance. The emergency allotments were meant to be temporary during the COVID-19 Emergency, but Project Bread says the extra federal funds "have become a lifeline" for households with children facing food insecurity.

The committee redraft also includes parts of Healey's $987 million "immediate needs" bond bill for housing and economic development programs (H 51), including $400 million for the MassWorks Infrastructure Program, $104 million for the Clean Water Trust to help finance municipalities' efforts to improve local water quality, $34 million for the Underutilized Properties program, which is used for redevelopment of abandoned or underutilized properties, $15 million for the Massachusetts Manufacturing Innovation Initiative, $14 million for the Massachusetts Manufacturing Accelerate Program, and $1 million for Community Planning Grants.

The House did not go along with Healey's requested bond authorizations for a $200 million state match for federal grant programs included in laws such as the CHIPS and Science Act, $48 million for the repair and modernization of public housing, $30 million to compete for community broadband dollars through the bipartisan infrastructure law, $25 million in funding for library project grants, and $10 million for a coastal community grant program.

Healey said last month that her administration also plans to file a more comprehensive bond bill later in the session. That bill could revive some of the proposals that the House decided to forgo.

Pandemic Policy Extensions

The House is also looking to use the combo supp budget/bonding bill as a vehicle to extend some policies that originated in the COVID-19 pandemic that started three years ago.

The committee redraft includes language extending both the state's permission for restaurants to sell beer, wine and cocktails for take-out and authorization for expanded outdoor dining from April 1, 2023 to April 1, 2024.

It also would extend the authority for public bodies, agencies and commissions to hold their meetings remotely until March 31, 2025 -- two years from the current expiration date of March 31, 2023. The bill also extends remote town meetings and the ability of towns to adjust town meeting quorums to the same date. Public bodies are required to provide "adequate, alternative means" of public access to their meetings and for members of those groups to participate in deliberations remotely.

Since the start of the pandemic, basically every public body in Massachusetts -- the Legislature, legislative committees, executive branch departments and agencies, local boards and more -- have offered some form of remote access, which advocates say has improved access for people with disabilities and people who may not be able to travel to attend a meeting in person. Local officials called on the state to extend remote and hybrid meeting options beyond March 31 at a Local Government Advisory Commission meeting in mid-February.

"I really believe that the future in governing and in corporate life is to continue to use this new technology to benefit ourselves and our communities," Pittsfield Mayor Linda Tyer said at the LGAC meeting. "One of the benefits of that is greater community engagement. People who might not be able to join in person are able to Zoom in, make their public comment and then go back to whatever they're doing."

The Senate voted this session to permanently allow remote voting in its own sessions, continuing what had been an pandemic-era rule in the chamber. While the House will require members to be in person to vote, the House and Senate adopted a hybrid committee hearing structure that will allow for both in-person and remote participation for most legislators and the public.

The House is also proposing in the bill to make permanent the authorizations for remote notarization services, remote reverse mortgage counseling, and remote shareholder meeting and board of directors meetings for non-profits, a Ways and Means Committee spokesman said.

The bill that the House is preparing to put on the floor Wednesday addresses much of what was in the two of the first three bills that Healey filed as governor, and the third is also on the move in the Legislature. Her bill (H 52) to authorize the state to borrow an additional $400 million to fund road and bridge work under the Chapter 90 program for the next two years is scheduled for a hearing before the Joint Committee on Transportation on March 7.

[Sam Doran contributed reporting.]

-END-
02/28/2023