Latest news with #JointWaysandMeansCommittee
Yahoo
6 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
ACLU, Decoding Dyslexia join calls for state literacy grants to target highest needs schools
A student in the North Powder School District gets tutored in reading Feb. 20, 2023. (Alex Baumhardt/Oregon Capital Chronicle) Literacy and civil rights advocates are calling on Oregon legislators to add targeted investment and accountability targets to Gov. Tina Kotek's bedrock literacy initiative or risk wasting it. House Bill 3040 would re-up funding for the Early Literacy Success Initiative first passed in 2023, providing schools with an additional $100 million to spend on improving reading and writing outcomes through 2027. It's currently in the Joint Ways and Means Committee, where legislators will negotiate funding and rules attached to the bill. The Oregon ACLU, the Oregon chapter of the national nonprofit Decoding Dyslexia, the nonprofit advocacy group Oregon Kids Read and several other groups in late May requested the co-chairs of the Joint Committee on Ways and Means require at least $17 million of that go toward 42 of the state's 'most neglected' schools. In the first two years of the Early Literacy Success Initiative, more than 250 schools received a literacy grant. 'Oregon risks spending $90 million or more without meaningful progress on closing the literacy achievement gap,' group officials wrote in a news release. The 42 schools advocates want to receive targeted funding have the highest percentage of third through fifth graders not reading at grade level since at least 2018. They include César Chávez K-8 School in Portland and Washington Elementary School in Salem, which also have a higher than average percentage of students who are Black, Hispanic or Latino, Indigenous, rural or experiencing poverty. The groups also asked that of the $17 million to be set aside, legislators should require that $4 million is spent on training more than 400 teachers at those 42 schools in the 'science of reading,' and that the remaining $13 million go toward tutoring more than 5,000 of the highest needs students in those schools. The term 'science of reading' is used to describe the large body of cognitive and neurological science showing how the brain learns to read. Since the 1960s, hundreds of studies have been conducted to find the most effective ways to teach kids to read. Evidence shows that the human brain does not learn to read or write naturally but relies on explicit instruction in a specific set of skills. Over the past 25 years, nearly two in five Oregon fourth graders and one in five eighth graders have scored 'below basic' on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, often referred to as the nation's report card. That means they struggle to read and understand simple words. The nearly 10,000 elementary school teachers in Oregon learned different methods for teaching reading depending on where they went to college. Many colleges are failing to prepare teachers to teach reading, according to a recent analysis by the National Council on Teacher Quality. Research has found that teacher quality is the most important, in-school factor when it comes to student achievement. Reporting from the Oregon Capital Chronicle found most elementary teachers-in-training at colleges and universities in the state take only one or two courses on reading instruction, and are more immersed in theory than in linguistics and the rules of written language. Some even learned flawed methods as part of an approach to teaching reading called 'balanced literacy,' which can include teaching students to guess at unknown words, to memorize words and to use pictures to decode a word. House Bill 3040 as written offers a few updates to the Early Literacy Success Initiative, including language that will allow schools to spend the grants on training classroom assistants, not just teachers and administrators. It also would add the requirement that any grant money spent on K-5 reading curriculum has to be spent on curriculum that has been approved by the State Board of Education and create a regional network of literacy experts housed in the Oregon Department of Education to support school and district literacy specialists and help with coaching. In their request to the Joint Ways and Means Committee, the literacy and civil rights advocates asked that language in the bill currently prioritizing grant money to 'schools that have literacy proficiency rates that have not recovered to pre-pandemic levels,' be changed to, 'schools with the lowest rates of proficiency in literacy.' They also want the bill to mandate the Oregon Department of Education collect and report more data on what schools are doing with the grant money, including how many hours of tutoring students are offered, and details about the type and number of hours of professional development in reading instruction that teachers take, and who all is participating in the professional development. They've also asked that the Legislature require the Oregon Department of Education to monitor the efficacy of the Early Success Initiative by tracking and reporting regularly to legislators progress among 3rd graders at schools with the bottom 20% of reading proficiency scores. The latest request to the Joint Ways and Means committee follows an open letter Oregon Kids Read and more than 100 educators sent to the Legislature in March, asking that lawmakers require a portion of every literacy grant to go towards teacher training in the science of reading, ensuring all K-3 teachers and administrators in the state have received training by the fall of 2027. 'Literacy is a civil right,' Angela Uherbelau, founder of Oregon Kids Read, said in a news release. 'Families are calling on Ways and Means to use its funding oversight to prioritize students and schools that struggle the most.' SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
22-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek backs Salem livability levy, concept of state payment to capital city
Gov. Tina Kotek promised to protect Oregon values during her first press conference after the Nov. 5 election. (Photo by Julia Shumway/Oregon Capital Chronicle) Oregon governor and Salem resident Tina Kotek plans to vote for a temporary new property tax levy that aims to keep the city's library, parks and senior center open as the capital city faces a $14 million budget gap. Kotek told reporters Monday that she will support the levy, which would charge property owners 98 cents per $1,000 of assessed property value, or about $229 annually for the average Salem homeowner. She said she hoped other residents would join her. 'They've made a strong case that (the levy) will help keep the senior center open, the libraries open,' Kotek said. 'It's a really important measure.' Kotek, who lives in the state-owned governor's mansion, Mahonia Hall, wouldn't pay the new levy if voters approve it. The state government doesn't pay property taxes, which is part of the reason Salem's in such dire financial straits. About 8% of property in the city is owned by the state government, and the city provides resources like police and fire response to those properties but can't collect taxes from it. 'I have been publicly supportive of the state helping the city of Salem out, because we do have obviously a lot of state buildings that don't pay local property tax,' Kotek said. 'We do need to have a conversation.' But she said she hasn't yet seen a proposal this legislative session for the state to aid Salem. A bipartisan group of legislators led by Rep. Tom Andersen, D-Salem, introduced House Bill 2531 to send $7 million annually to the city to pay for emergency response services stressed by the state government. Kotek said she hasn't talked with Andersen about the proposal. Andersen confirmed the two haven't spoken about his bill, which didn't receive a hearing before a legislative deadline. His next step is to ask the budget-writing Joint Ways and Means Committee to take up the request and consider including it in the state budget or the 'Christmas tree bill,' an end-of-session bill laden with lawmakers' pet projects like a tree with ornaments. It's a tough year for budget requests, as lawmakers brace for cuts to federal spending and the impact of tariffs. But Andersen stressed that his $7 million request is small compared to the state's budget. '$7 million, we can find that in the legislative couches,' Andersen said. And, he said, the bipartisan coalition of Salem-area representatives — Democratic Sen. Deb Patterson, Republican Rep. Kevin Mannix and Democratic Rep. Lesly Muñoz, all of whom represent portions of Salem, are cosponsoring it, as are Republican Rep. Ed Diehl and Democratic Rep. Paul Evans from neighboring districts — will help convince lawmakers from other parts of Oregon of the capital city's importance. The last time Andersen testified to a committee about an earlier version of the bill, he held up a picture of the state Capitol burning in the 1930s, the second time the statehouse was destroyed by fire. 'It was the city of Salem fire department that rescued and saved people's lives in that fire,' Andersen said. 'So the city provides valuable, extremely needed and necessary services to the state property within the city limits. That should be acknowledged, and there should be some sort of payment from the state to the city for those services.' SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
10-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
In Warm Springs, tribal members and other central Oregon residents share budget feedback
Warm Springs elder Linda Meanus, who graduated from college at 65, urges lawmakers to prioritize measures to support students on April 4, 2025. (Photo by Julia Shumway/Oregon Capital Chronicle) WARM SPRINGS— Oregonians aren't supposed to clap — or cheer, boo, hiss or stomp their feet — at legislative hearings. But there was no containing the applause in the old school gym that served as a hearing room on Friday night when Louie Pitt Jr. finished his two minutes of testimony. Pitt, a former director of government affairs and planning for the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, thanked lawmakers on the budget-writing Joint Ways and Means Committee for work on laws to investigate the deaths and disappearances of Indigenous people, and said tribal members and their neighbors in central Oregon still need help accessing clean drinking water and affordable housing. La Grande Friday, April 11, 5 p.m. – 7:00pm Eastern Oregon University, Hoke Union Building #339 1 University Boulevard, La Grande, OR 97850 Register to testify here Salem (statewide virtual testimony prioritized) Wednesday, April 16, 5 p.m. – 7 p.m. Oregon Capitol Building, Hearing Room F 900 Court St NE, Salem, OR 97301 Register to testify here Klamath Falls Friday, April 25, 5 p.m. – 7 p.m. Klamath Community College, Building 4 Commons 7390 South 6th Street, Klamath Falls, OR 97603 Register to testify here Pitt closed with a welcome — and a reminder. 'Welcome to Indian Country,' he said. 'It's all Indian Country, of course.' Friday night's hearing at the old Warm Springs elementary school, one of a half-dozen hearings throughout the state for lawmakers to hear community feedback as they craft the state's budget, was the first since at least 2005 to be held on tribal land. Other visits this year are to Gresham, Astoria, La Grande and Klamath Falls, while a hearing in Salem next week will prioritize virtual testimony from Oregonians who couldn't attend an in-person event. Ensuring at least one of the traveling hearings was on tribal land was especially important to Rep. Tawna Sanchez, a Portland Democrat who is of Shoshone-Bannock, Ute, and Carrizo descent and the second Indigenous person elected to the Oregon Legislature. Before entering elected office, she co-founded the Native American Youth and Family Center, or NAYA, in Portland and spent years advocating on Indigenous issues. Sen. Kate Lieber, a Beaverton Democrat who co-chairs the committee with Sanchez, told the Capital Chronicle she and Sanchez looked over the past two decades worth of hearings to decide where to visit. 'We knew we needed to come to central Oregon, and of course everybody thinks of that as the Bend or Redmond area, but we really wanted to make sure that we included Warm Springs, especially given Representative Sanchez's heritage,' she said. 'So we decided to come to Warm Springs because we realized we'd never done it on tribal land before.' Ray Moody, the tribes' vice chair, prayed over the start of the hearing and told lawmakers he hoped they understood just how far they drove on the tribes' homelands, both the 644,000 acres of the reservation and the millions of acres members of the Warm Springs, Wasco and Paiute bands ceded to the federal government with an 1855 treaty. 'We hope that you understand our reach, not only through our own boundary but the land that we call ceded territory, over 10 million acres, that the things you do in the state affect us all the time,' Moody said. 'Our people are very humble and it is often hard to come to ask for assistance, but we will come to you when we need to. We will ask you, and we appreciate those who work hard to help us.' About one-fifth of the roughly five dozen people who spoke during the two-hour hearing were members of the Warm Springs tribes, while others traveled from central Oregon cities including Bend, Redmond, Madras, Prineville. Nearly all of them came with specific requests for government spending on projects and programs that would far outpace the state's resources as laid out in a $38 billion budget framework Sanchez and Lieber released last month. Most of their budget rough draft reflects continuing current programs, with $987.5 million available for additional spending — assuming proposals to cut federal spending responsible for about one-third of the state budget don't come to pass. 'In our framework, we have just under a billion dollars to invest, $987 million,' Sanchez said at the end of the hearing. 'And if everyone was listening carefully, and I was trying to, there are multiple billions of dollars being asked for. Every single one of those asks are worthy and important, and we will do our best.' After a fire season that burned a record-breaking 1.9 million acres, much of it in eastern Oregon grassland, Crook County Commissioner Seth Crawford urged lawmakers to pass House Bills 3349 and 3350, creating a new fund for rangeland protection with at least $1 million in the next budget. Prineville Council President Steve Uffelman said the city needs about $12 million for safety-related upgrades on U.S. Highway 26. And Redmond City Councilor Kathryn Osborne said her city wants about $1.5 to $2 million from the state to join a $500,000 investment from the city to add a traffic light at an intersection that has seen 260 car crashes, two of them fatal, in the past eight years. Warm Springs elder Linda Meanus urged lawmakers to support House Bills 3182 and 3183, which would provide more than $16 million for affordable housing for college students and $2 million for textbooks and education resources. Meanus started college at age 61 and graduated from Portland State University in 2016 at 65. She relied on tribal grants and scholarships to pay for school, which left her little money for rent, bills or groceries. 'I am here to tell you that the future of the tribe's in your hands,' she said. 'Many of the Warm Springs kids will need access to food, housing and textbooks. The student basic needs bills will make it much easier for the students to graduate.' Elizabeth Johnson, a public health nurse, urged Oregon lawmakers to keep funding health care in the face of potential federal cuts. 'Actions from the White House are only benefiting the mega-wealthy, but for Oregonians like myself, the family I support and my community, they mean job loss, loss of stability and are wreaking havoc on my ability to do my job, which is to prevent infectious diseases,' she said. 'Oregon must continue to hold the line on making unnecessary cuts to Medicaid and public health based on what might happen in Washington, D.C.' Madras resident Robyn Morrison asked lawmakers to keep in mind the big picture of climate change while making their budget decisions. Morrison, who moved from Montana to Madras to be closer to family, said her grandchildren are anxious about the climate crisis and that her generation hasn't done enough to block it. 'We cannot allow the tyranny of the present to distract us from our children's future,' she said. Former Oregon poet laureate Elizabeth Woody, now the executive director of the Museum at Warm Springs, urged support of the $8.9 million in grants to cultural organizations in House Bill 3191. The Museum at Warm Springs, which opened in 1993, would receive $1.5 million under that proposal. 'We provide a gateway to think about this land in a different way,' Woody said. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
08-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Cabinet secretary warns of 'enormous' Medicaid cuts
BOSTON (SHNS) – Having spent her roughly 100-mile drive listening to the national news Monday morning and then hearing her colleagues at a budget hearing dig into the policy and finance specifics of crucial state programs, Rep. Lindsay Sabadosa got a sinking feeling. 'I feel like we're trying to budget on quicksand at the moment,' the Northampton Democrat said as she and the rest of the Joint Ways and Means Committee gathered to review Gov. Maura Healey's fiscal year 2026 budget plan (H 1) with the part of state government that could face the deepest and most immediate consequences of looming federal shifts, the Executive Office of Health and Human Services. While Beacon Hill continues its usual budget process, President Donald Trump has been moving to reshape the federal government and its spending, with all signs pointing to disruptions in the relationship between D.C. and states like Massachusetts. Medicaid is in the crosshairs of a pursuit for trillions of dollars in tax cuts and federal spending reductions over the next decade, and that could have massive impacts on MassHealth. The state Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance Program system affords health care coverage to about 2 million Bay Staters and brings about $15 billion of federal revenue to Massachusetts. Proposals under consideration in Congress 'would likely translate into billions of dollars of cuts for MassHealth for next year,' Health and Human Services Secretary Kate Walsh said Monday, and 'will force some very, very difficult choices.' MassHealth is the largest single chunk of spending in the state budget, representing about $22.599 billion gross (a $8.672 billion net cost to the state after federal reimbursements) or 36% of line-item spending in Healey's proposal. The governor's plan would increase the MassHealth budget by $1.04 billion gross or $415.8 million net compared to estimated total spending during the current budget year. Healey's budget, filed before the threat of deep Medicaid cuts became clear, expects federal reimbursement for Medicaid spending to increase by $1.8 billion to $14.2 billion, per the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation. While the scope of federal spending cuts may not become clear for weeks or months, the state budget is on its typical timetable, with the House and Senate planning to pass their spending bills in April and May. When Attleboro Rep. James Hawkins asked how MassHealth is 'preparing to continue serving residents in the face of these threats,' Assistant Secretary for MassHealth Mike Levine responded that 'a lot of this is going to come back to budget and appropriations and hard choices.' 'It is a matter of identifying our key populations and what we're going to do to support them, and collectively coming up with answers,' Levine said. 'Because you might have a point of view on, you know — 'If we're on track to spend $8.7 billion out of the General Fund and [fiscal] 26, that number can go no higher than X' — that's really going to clarify our choices and what we're able to continue to do and what we're going to have to stop doing.' Excluding MassHealth, Healey's fiscal 2026 proposal recommends funding EOHHS at $10.156 billion, which the administration said would represent a $452.5 million, or 5%, increase over the budget the governor signed last summer. The increased budget allotment pays for $207 million for new provider rate increases through the Chapter 257 reserve, $524.2 million to annualize provider rate increases from the current budget year, and $460 million for projected caseload growth. The uncertainty about federal support for Medicaid comes as Beacon Hill Democrats are redrafting Healey's budget while the state's spending demands are elevated and general purpose tax revenue growth is modest. A reduction in federal funding could force state budget managers closer to considering unpopular steps, potentially including allowing federally-funded services to end, cutting back on state support for programs, dipping into preciously-guarded state reserve accounts, or raising taxes to bring in more revenue. Walsh told Sabadosa that her morning drives are often very similar, and that she has shifted her thinking to 'trying to figure out, well, there must be a better way to do this.' She said most important is understanding what Massachusetts values and 'the basic things that we need to do,' and then finding ways to 'do it differently and better.' The secretary said the state has to be able to deliver services at a lower cost, but also warned that 'we will be cutting' programs that she, her staff and lawmakers have become attached to. 'We're just going to have to think more creatively and differently. And I think it's going to really challenge the — going back to the values, what's made us all so proud to do this work, which is that we've built programs … that have really saved people's lives, or may enable them to live the best life they could possibly live, and that's easier in this state than probably any other state on the planet,' Walsh said. 'And so how do we get there from here? And I don't know the answer, but we really are at an inflection point.' The response is going to require a partnership between lawmakers and the administration to make potentially uncomfortable trade-offs, she said. 'So you might want to save a food pantry in your district. And I might say to you, 'no, we need to do this another way,' because it's going to be a more efficient way to get a meal to everyone in the commonwealth,' the secretary said. 'And I think that those trade-offs that you'll have to make for programs again, you've built, sponsored, earmarked, supported — we might not be in the position to do that.' Walsh added later in her response to Sabadosa, 'That's why I applaud people like [Department of Mental Health] Commissioner [Brooke] Doyle, who came forward and said, 'OK, if I have to cut, this does the least damage.' And we have to trust each other, because we are going to be cutting.' Healey's budget proposes slashing the DMH case manager workforce from 340 to 170 positions, a move that her administration says would save $12.4 million. Overall, the DMH budget would increase by 7% to about $1.2 billion under Healey's bill, Walsh said. The proposed cut to the DMH caseload manager workforce was one that a handful of lawmakers took issue with Monday. Another recurring topic of questions from lawmakers was Healey's proposal to level-fund the personal care attendant program and tie PCA spending to health care spending benchmarks from the Health Policy Commission. The PCA program allows seniors and people with disabilities to hire personal care workers to help with daily tasks like bathing, dressing, meal preparation, and grocery shopping. It helps keep people independent and not in nursing facilities, but the program's costs have soared from $1.2 billion in fiscal 2020 to an estimated $2 billion by fiscal 2027. 'While people in their heads think about PCA and homemaker services as things that are paid for and something that you require when you get old and might be covered by Medicare, in fact, it's paid 100% by the Medicaid program, which we have just identified as in for enormous cuts,' Walsh said. 'So this is a very good example of one of the very hard choices that we're facing.' Lawmakers did not go along last year with a Healey proposal to trim $57 million from the PCA program, which would have meant that 6,000 people would have lost access to PCA services. That, Walsh said, 'was an example of us trying to get cost under control' but now represents 'the kinds of cuts that we will not be able to look away from in the future.' 'Like-minded people can disagree about whether or not the program's been cut too much, slowed too fast, growing too fast,' she said. 'I think we're in a situation where these will be the good old days and the cuts that were contemplated will be, 'Wow, wish we could have done that.'' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
04-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Surtax spending turning into real balancing act
BOSTON (SHNS) – Lawmakers will need to reconcile questions about the right balance for income surtax spending, in more way than one, when they take up Gov. Maura Healey's proposal to deploy about $1.3 billion in unspent revenue from the new levy on wealthy households. When legislators gathered Thursday to review Healey's plan (H 55), a pair of western Massachusetts lawmakers voiced frustration that the transportation spending in the bill skews heavily toward the MBTA, contending the split is not 'fair' to residents outside the Boston-based transit agency's service area. Democrat Sen. Jo Comerford of Northampton and Republican Rep. Todd Smola of Warren each pressed administration officials about the roughly $780 million allocated for the T in the bill, contrasted with significantly smaller balances available for regional transit authorities and microtransit in less populous areas. 'When this proposal came out, we all in western Massachusetts heard from people that this didn't look like equity or anything close to equity,' Smola said at a Joint Ways and Means Committee public hearing in Boston. 'We've tossed that term around loosely, but these numbers are tough.' 'This decision was made at the ballot,' he added about the surtax, which voters approved for education and transportation investments. 'I accept that, and I think we all have to accept that, but the breakdown of these funds is a really, really difficult pill for a lot of people to swallow in other parts of the state.' MBTA funding accounts for more than half of the balance in Healey's bill. The money would help replenish the T's savings, which the agency drained last year to sustain a hiring blitz, and workforce and safety spending. Healey's fiscal 2026 annual budget also seeks to use new surtax dollars to significantly boost state aid for the agency, aiming to mostly close the massive budget gap the MBTA faces starting July 1. Administration and Finance Secretary Matthew Gorzkowicz told lawmakers the supplemental budget 'does look disproportionately unfair to western Mass.' on its own, but he urged them to weigh it alongside the annual budget and a five-year, $1.5 billion Chapter 90 bill (H 53). Those three legislative vehicles combine to form a broader transportation funding plan that Healey deputies have estimated would inject $8 billion over the next decade. 'You should be able to go back to western Mass. with a lot of confidence in what we're proposing here. Out of an $8 billion transportation plan, nearly $5.6 billion of it is outside of the MBTA. Only 25% of that plan is really going towards the MBTA,' Gorzkowicz said, soon adding, 'The vast majority of the proposal, when taken holistically across all the items that we filed, is a very thoughtful plan.' Comerford contended, however, that even when combining surtax spending on transportation in the supplemental and annual budgets, the vast majority of dollars would go to the T instead of the state's 15 regional transit authorities that serve other communities. 'With this as it is, I think I can't go home and say this, that we have a commitment through Fair Share dollars, which our voters in western Massachusetts campaigned hard for — I just don't think it's super fair currently,' she said. Comerford also referenced another earmark the T has long enjoyed. 'In western Massachusetts, we're aware that we pay a penny of our sales tax for the MBTA, and most of my people will never ride it,' she said. Transportation Secretary Monica Tibbits-Nutt told Comerford that administration officials 'want to be having this conversation over the next fiscal year' about grant programs, funding and technical assistance for RTAs. 'But Secretary, if we wait a year, we will be yet one more year behind with no service in these towns that are declining population at a pretty significant rate,' Comerford replied. Healey proposed using a much larger chunk of the one-time pot — about $857.5 million — on transportation, leaving $462.5 million for education investments that range from early education and care, the special education circuit breaker reserve and career technical education grants. Officials have said they believe the skew in that measure will balance out prior surtax spending, which has leaned more toward education. That idea already has the support of top House Democrats. 'Given that many of the worthy programs that have been funded in the annual budget process have been in the education sector, it is entirely appropriate that the majority of these one-time funds in this round be spent in the transportation sector of our economy,' House Ways and Means Committee Chair Aaron Michlewitz of Boston said at the start of Thursday's hearing. 'When the Fair Share amendment was pitched to the voters of the commonwealth in 2022, it was presented to be distributed evenly between education and transportation funding. This supplemental budget will allow us to fulfill that commitment.' It's not clear if Senate Democrats agree with the approach. Michlewitz's counterpart, Sen. Michael Rodrigues of Westport made no mention in his opening remarks of supporting — or opposing — a more transportation-heavy approach. He called for the money to be spent 'in a regional, equitable manner.' A spokesperson for Senate President Karen Spilka of Ashland did not directly answer when asked if she supports the idea of directing more of the one-time surtax money toward transportation. 'Investing in education and transportation is critical if we want to continue to make Massachusetts a great place to live and work,' spokesperson Gray Milkowski said. 'The Senate President will continue to hear from members and residents from around the state about the needs in both areas, and ensure the Senate's version of the surtax supplemental budget appropriately balances investments in each.' American Federation of Teachers Massachusetts President Jessica Tang told the committee her union is pleased with what Healey proposed, but provided a litany of other surtax investments the state could make to blunt the impact of cuts from the federal government and deal with education financing headaches at the state level. She suggested about $1 billion in education-focused investments the union would support and urged lawmakers to pursue other 'new sources of revenue.' 'Due to the revenue from the Fair Share amendment, we are better positioned than most states to weather the current storm and for our commonwealth to continue to lead by taking critical steps to fill the gaps and do whatever we can to prevent further harm, while continuing to enact proactive measures,' Tang said. 'Considering the level of uncertainty we have across sectors, with the cuts and threats to critical programming we're hearing from the White House, we also urge you to take action early this session to identify new sources of revenue and ways the state can invest and ensure economic security for all, including passing the corporate fair share bill, also known as the GILTI bill.' The Raise Up Massachusetts coalition, which backed the surtax push and increases to the minimum wage, is prioritizing a bill (H 3110 / S 2033) from Rep. Carlos González and Sen. Jason Lewis that would increase the share of excess foreign profits (based on a federal government formula called Global Intangible Low-Taxed Income or GILTI) that could be taxed by the state from 5% to 50% to match New England neighbors. Sen. Paul Feeney raised the GILTI tax proposal, mentioning challenges communities in his district face to pay for education services. He said he has 'always been a supporter' of the idea and asked Mass. Taxpayers Foundation President Doug Howgate whether the state ought to start thinking about new revenue sources. Howgate responded by pointing at rates of growth in revenues and spending. 'Pick whatever revenue structure you want, pick whatever tax rates you want — they're going to grow, if you're lucky, at 3 to 4% a year. And one of the challenges we're facing now in MassHealth, challenges we're facing in a number of areas of spending, is that the spending is growing by more than 3 or 4% a year. And to me, that's a structural issue that is going to require a lot of hard conversations for all of us about how to get our arms around those cost growth factors,' he said. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
