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Boston Herald
Boston Herald
18 Jul 2022
Matthew Medsger


NextImg:State budget balloons to $52.7 billion, passes both chambers unanimously

Less than 24 hours after the conference committee responsible for ironing out the differences between the state House and Senate’s budget proposal announced they had reached a compromise, lawmakers pushed the package through the Legislature and off to Gov. Charlie Baker.

“The annual budget is the most important task for lawmakers to take up each year. It’s simply impossible that lawmakers could give this $52.7 Billion spending plan the due diligence it deserves in that short amount of time. It’s very likely only leadership knows what they are passing today,” Paul Craney, a spokesman for MassFiscal Alliance, said following the vote.

Coming in at nearly $5 billion more than Baker proposed in January and a full $2 billion more than when it left either chamber, the compromise bill, due at the beginning of July, heads now to the governor who has 10 days to decide whether he will sign it.

With the legislature set to end their two year session on July 31, that will leave lawmakers just days to override a veto if Baker sends the bill back to them unsigned.

Beyond funding the state’s various apparatuses for the year, the compromise bill sends nearly $1.5 billion to the state’s rainy day fund, potentially bringing it close it $7.4 billion; sends millions to the MBTA to deal with ongoing safety concerns identified by federal legislators, invests heavily in early childhood education and behavioral health, doubles Chapter 70 per-student school funding, pays for phone calls for prisoners and bans childhood marriage.

“This budget builds off of the successes of the last few years and it prioritizes our residents. By reinvesting in the people of the commonwealth, we will continue to assist those recovering from this pandemic while making our economy stronger and more equitable for years to come,” House Ways and Means Chairman Aaron Michlewitz said. “We remain mindful of the economic uncertainty on the horizon, but the commonwealth is in a stronger fiscal position to weather the storms ahead.”

Massachusetts was officially the last state in the country to file an annual budget and has been operating on an interim budget since the start of July. 2023’s spending proposal represents an increase over 2022 of just over $5 billion or 10.7%.

The spending plan cleared both chambers unanimously Monday afternoon after arriving at the House Clerk’s office at 6:50 p.m. Sunday evening.

Herald wire service contributed.