Massachusetts Playbook
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Additional money, So much more Trouble To settle – Massachusetts and its capital city are flush with cash, and that means budget writers from Beacon Hill to Boston City Hall are packing their fiscal 2023 spending plans with “once-in-a-generation” investments in affordable housing, child care and more.
Household leadership swimming during the excess fund and higher-than-expected income are loading up their $49.6 billion budget plan – up $1.4 billion from Gov. Charlie Baker’s proposal – with investments in early education, rental assistance and workforce development programs. They also want to require jails and prisons to provide inmates and their families free phone calls and extend free school meals for another year.
Call it an excellent philosophical variation or an election-seasons truth, but Baker and House leaders just aren’t seeing eye to eye on tax cuts. The Republican governor continues to push $700 million in tax breaks for renters, seniors and low-income workers. But top House Democrats see the state’s good fiscal fortune as an opportunity to invest in programs “underpinning our middle and lower class workforce,” Speaker Ron Mariano said.
Mariano isn’t shutting the doorway on doing some sort of tax relief package later this session, though. So governor, if you’re reading this, don’t give up hope.
Together with, this really is the nevertheless early stages. The FY ’23 budget will undergo changes before it becomes law, starting with the House debate later this month.
When Opportunity Knocks – While the House budget relies solely on state revenues, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu is using the rest of the city’s $350 million in American Rescue Plan funding to prop up her “transformational” investments in affordable housing, economic development and her city Green New Deal.
Certain fiscal watchdogs alert of the dangers of leaning on one-time funds for major initiatives like housing and fare-free transit. But Phineas Baxandall of the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center told Playbook that the federal aid serves the “double function of helping to deal with current shortfalls in meeting our needs and at the same time helping to create a different reality for the future.”
Let the good fiscal moments move
A good THURSDAY Day, MASSACHUSETTS. Baker and Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito are skipping their party’s paign advisor Jim Conroy confirmed to Playbook.
In lieu of reading using their party’s top select authorities – Baker and Polito declined Chair Jim Lyons’ invitation to speak at the event, deferring to the candidates running for office – delegates will listen to Thomas Homan, a former ICE acting director and Donald Trump “border czar,” and anti-abortion advocate David Bereit.
Baker are gone off their party’s summit, but the guy are not lost so it years. He’s helping launch Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson’s reelection campaign later this month and is out collecting signatures for Anthony Amore, whom he endorsed for state auditor.
Baker intends to introduce Amore to their donors at a campaign finance committee meeting with Polito on April 26 at the Lenox Hotel in Boston, per an email obtained by Playbook.
Now – Baker and Wu attend a pier groundbreaking ceremony at the U.S. Coast Guard’s Boston Base at 10 a.m. Wu announces her new chief of human services at 2:15 p.m. in Roslindale. Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito, Sen. Ed Markey and Associate. Jim McGovern announce food security grants at 10 a.m. in Worcester. McGovern and herst at step three:31 p.m. Agent. Lori Trahan remembers military solution academy nominees during the 5 p.meters. during the Lowell. Boston Urban area Councilor 
Ruthzee Louijeune commences MWPC and you may Standard Strategies’ digital Emerging Leaders Presenter Collection from the 5 p.meters. Governor upbeat Geoff Diehl begins their Middlesex State tour within 8 a.m.