Gathering in a church across the street from the State House, advocates from an array of organizations outlined a wish list for more than $70 million worth of programs related to education.
Michael Curry of the Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers said the programs – including English language instruction, youth jobs efforts, workforce training and reentry programming – “provide residents with the tools they need to build a better tomorrow.”
“This is an opportunity to reshape the future of our communities,” he said. “It’s an opportunity to break the cycle of poverty, to create sustainable career paths and to build a more equitable and just society for all.”
Beacon Hill is bracing for the impact of federal funding cuts for schools, public health and more, so these advocates have their eyes on a specific pot of state money: billions of revenue dollars brought in over time by the state’s millionaire’s tax.
The money, they wrote in a letter to lawmakers, “is very likely the only way to get new funding to increase a current program or fund a new one” in a tight budget year.
They’re making their pitch as state lawmakers are about to decide, for the first time, how to spend a pool of extra cash from the relatively new tax.
Massachusetts voters approved the 4 percent surtax on income over $1 million in 2022. Its proceeds are dedicated to financing education and transportation needs.
Uncertain how much, exactly, the new tax would yield, policymakers took a cautious approach to allocating its revenue. Each year, there’s a cap on how much can be spent in the state budget, and the surplus beyond that cap is deposited into special funds.
Gov. Maura Healey in January filed a $1.3 billion bill proposing ways to spend the first round of that surplus money.
Under Healey’s plan, which is up for a State House hearing Thursday, the largest chunk of funding – $780 million – would go to the MBTA. Her bill would also support workforce training at regional transit authorities, help cities and towns prep for winter storms, boost capacity in child care programs and vocational high schools, and chip away at a waitlist for classes that teach English to speakers of other languages.
Healey describes the bill as a complement to the $62 billion annual budget she filed in January, saying that the two pieces of legislation together “will make historic investments in our public transportation system” and “advance major initiatives in early education and support for cities and towns.” The annual budget would spend another $2 billion in millionaire’s tax revenue.
A spokesperson for Raise Up Massachusetts, the coalition that campaigned for the income surtax, said the new revenues put the state in a position to discuss “where to make new investments, rather than talking about where to cut and how to stop the bleeding.”
“I don’t think anyone can say now that this money isn’t needed at the state level,” said Andrew Farnitano, the spokesperson.
Uncertainty over the scope of funding cuts from the Trump administration looms over Beacon Hill. Debate over the annual budget is set to kick off later this month, and leaders have warned the loss of federal dollars could create a hole too big to plug with state money alone.
“If we didn’t have this money today, we would be debating hiking fares or cutting service at the T, we would be debating layoffs in public colleges or tuition hikes,” Farnitano told GBH News. “We would be making some really tough choices in our public education and transportation systems, and because we have the money from Fair Share, we’re able to have a much more positive conversation about how to make new investments, because the need is so great.”
Thursday’s hearing is the first step in a process of rewriting Healey’s plan for spending the surplus revenue. House and Senate lawmakers will ultimately blend her priorities with some of their own.
Doug Howgate, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation and one of the people planning to testify Thursday, told GBH News that the money presents an opportunity for legislators to think differently about ongoing policy problems.
One “budget-buster,” he said, is the soaring cost to transport students to special education programs outside their regular school district.
“It’s kind of outpaced any projections, and we already see the strain it’s putting on the state budget, on school budgets, and on municipal budgets and, as you might imagine, there’s an education policy component here as well when people are having to make really tough decisions about expensive services, that’s going to impact how they make those decisions,” Howgate said.
Howgate said there isn’t a solid plan to help districts manage those costs. He said some of the surplus could be used to offer grants to districts trying new ideas and research new solutions around coordinating services or growing the workforce.
The lawmakers leading Thursday’s hearing, Ways and Means Committee chairs Rep. Aaron Michlewitz and Sen. Michael Rodrigues, said in a joint statement that they’ll use the feedback they gather to “help us craft a reasonable and responsible plan for the use of these funds.”
