Latest news with #MassachusettsHouse
Yahoo
30-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
House holds federal funding impact hearing
BOSTON (WWLP) – The Massachusetts House held an informational hearing on Thursday, learning about potential impacts on federal policy and funding changes. This hearing is coming as US senators debate President Trump's 'big beautiful bill,' which is made up of tax cuts and spending cuts that will leave hundreds of thousands of Bay Staters without health insurance. One tax expert told the legislature they are not in a position to make exact spending and cutting plans without more information from the federal government, and that different committees within the House will need to work collaboratively to create a response plan. 'We can't say, okay, Ways and Means is going to work on the budget, everyone else is going to work on the federal response, or vice versa. We need to make sure we're centering this decision on how we're using our resources,' said the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation President, Doug Howgate. House members asked a business expert why data shows that consumers are still spending despite tariffs and threats of changing regulations. The expert explained that this is likely a temporary phenomenon. 'We believe that any manufacturing reshoring that takes place as a result of tariffs is unlikely to benefit Massachusetts, while retaliation by important export markets will impede our collaborative efforts to expand the state's economy,' said AIM's Vice President of Government Affairs, Sarah Mills. Experts noted that the bill is not looking as detrimental as the original proposals did, which featured more draconian cuts. It is not yet clear what, if any, changes will be made to the so-called 'big beautiful bill' in the US Senate, or what the Bay State's fiscal options will be as a result. WWLP-22News, an NBC affiliate, began broadcasting in March 1953 to provide local news, network, syndicated, and local programming to western Massachusetts. Watch the 22News Digital Edition weekdays at 4 p.m. on Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Boston Globe
05-05-2025
- Business
- Boston Globe
Mass. collected $1.1 billion more in taxes than it expected to in April. But warning signs remain.
It's also unlikely that the revenue haul offers any certainty about where the state's fiscal winds will be blowing in the months ahead as concerns about a recession and threats of federal cuts swirl. The state could also still end up dealing with some type of budget deficit, In all, Massachusetts pulled in more than nearly $1.9 billion, or 5.5 percent, ahead of its projections for the fiscal year with two months to go. Advertisement The state budgeted to spend about $1.3 billion this year from revenue generated by the millionaires tax. But officials in Governor Maura Healey's administration said they believe the surtax could end up generating close to the more than $2.4 billion the tax brought in last year. The millionaires tax continues to 'perform strongly as a revenue source,' Matthew Gorzkowicz, Healey's budget chief, said in a statement. But he also cautioned that money from it will not 'alleviate persistent pressures on the overall state budget tied to the escalating costs of providing state services.' Advertisement 'As we continue to navigate economic uncertainty at the national level, our administration is focused on controlled, effective spending and fiscal responsibility,' he said. President Trump has already withheld or cut The national economy also With all that at play, state lawmakers have warned that any budget they pass now could look dramatically different in the coming months. The Massachusetts House last week passed a State Senate leaders are expected to release their own budget proposal Tuesday, with debate to follow later this month. The two chambers will then have to negotiate a final version to send Healey for the fiscal year that starts July 1. Some budget watchers have already warned that, given all the warning signs, lawmakers should begin State Senator Michael Rodrigues, the chamber's budget chief, told reporters last week that if 'any real cuts come down from from Washington D.C.,' lawmakers would reassess the state's spending plan then. Advertisement 'But you cannot build budgets based on assumptions — or I say — [on] wishes or prayers," the Westport Democrat said. 'You have to build it upon facts.' This spring's haul is reminiscent of one a year ago, when the state That surge in revenue, too, came with similar qualifications attached: State officials at the time said that most of it was tied to the surtax and capital gains. By the summer, state officials said they ultimately collected well north of $2 billion in millionaires tax revenue, helping create the roughly $1.3 billion surplus that lawmakers are State officials have treated money from the millionaires tax separately from other types of tax collections because under the state Constitution, the surtax revenue can only be spent on education and transportation. The state actually closed last fiscal year with a Whether the state could follow a similar path this year is unclear. Before last year's unexpected haul, Healey had slashed state spending, downgraded the state's revenue forecast, and Healey administration officials said Monday that some major revenue categories that best reflect current economic conditions also came in at, or below, expectations. That included corporate and business tax collections, which dipped $142 million, or 21 percent, below the monthly benchmark in April and were $117 million less than what the state counted in April 2024, state officials said. Advertisement Doug Howgate, president of the business-backed Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, said when taken as a whole, the numbers could indicate that the state experienced a turnaround after months of unsteady collections in 2024. But, he said, it's a 'pretty hollow turnaround.' 'If you're a budget maker and you look at this [and say], 'Hey guys, no worries, we're going to build a strong-growth FY26 budget,' I think you'd be insane,' Howgate said. In fact, the state budget proposal the House passed at the end of April trailed Healey's own 'Every thing we can collect in [this fiscal year], great,' Howgate said of tax revenue. 'There are some storm clouds on the horizon.' Matt Stout can be reached at
Yahoo
20-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
House specials give Mass. voters first choices of 2025
BOSTON (SHNS) – Both major political parties are poised to compete in a pair of special elections this spring, offering a test of Bay State voter sentiment early in the Trump 2.0 era. Three candidates made the ballot for a special election on the North Shore, and two others are considering entering the fray for an open House seat in southeastern Massachusetts. The elections are the first legislative contests since all 200 seats were up for grabs in November. Democrats will look to capitalize on frustration some voters have with President Donald Trump, while Republicans hope to use November's outcome as momentum to chip away at the Massachusetts House's Democratic supermajority. Beverly City Councilors Hannah Louise Bowen and Todd Rotondo will face off in an April 15 special Democratic primary for the Sixth Essex District last represented by former Rep. Jerald Parisella. Whoever wins that contest will advance to the special general election against Republican Medley Long III, also of Beverly, on May 13. Long most recently worked as president of the Greater Beverly Chamber of Commerce, and he's been involved in several community organizations. He raised more than $28,000 toward his House bid so far, according to state campaign finance data. Bowen has raised about $43,700, and Rotondo has raised about $43,200. Historically, the region has leaned toward Democrats. The Sixth Essex District last elected a Republican to the House, James Henry, in 1990. Nearly 65% of Beverly voters picked Democrat Kamala Harris over Republican Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election, and the split was about the same in the portion of Wenham that's part of the Sixth Essex District. Parisella won reelection in November, but instead joined the judicial branch in January as a District Court judge, leaving the district representing Beverly and part of Wenham vacant for several months. Another House district covering parts of Taunton and Easton is also vacant following the death of Rep. Carol Doherty in February. Candidates eyeing the Third Bristol District have until April 1 to submit nomination papers. Two have pulled that paperwork so far signaling their intent to run: Taunton City Councilor Christopher Coute, a Republican, and Mass. Nurses Association Associate Director Lisa Field, a Democrat. Coute unsuccessfully challenged for the district in 2022, losing to Doherty with about 43% of the vote. Republicans have established some roots in the southeastern Massachusetts area. Shaunna O'Connell, who immediately preceded Doherty in the House, serves as mayor of Taunton. Republican Kelly Dooner of Taunton in November flipped a Senate district that had been held for decades by Democrat Sen. Marc Pacheco before his retirement. And several — but not all — of the neighboring House districts are held by Republicans as well. Harris won Taunton, part of which is in the Third Bristol District, but by a much narrower margin than the state as a whole, securing about 49.8% of the vote in the city. The Democrat did better in Easton, where she earned 55.8% of the vote. The special primary election will take place May 13, and the special general will occur June 10. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
CBS News
02-03-2025
- Politics
- CBS News
Why Massachusetts House Speaker opposes Diana DiZoglio's attempt to audit legislature
Massachusetts House Speaker Ron Mariano (D-Quincy) said he is "worried" about the situation in Washington, D.C. and the effects it could have on Massachusetts if federal funding is cut. He also defended local lawmakers' resistance to State Auditor Diana DiZoglio's efforts to audit the legislature. How losing federal funding could impact Massachusetts Mariano has been around the track a few times in his long career as a teacher, school committeeman and legislator. He's hard to startle. But as he surveys the scene in Washington and its potential impact on Massachusetts, "I am worried," he said during an interview with WBZ-TV. "It's hard to have any idea how this thing is going to play out. I just know that we rely on our federal partner for about $15 billion coming into the state over the course of the year in a myriad of programs. So if that's cut significantly, then we are in a difficult position," he said. Ron Mariano on audit opposition But there's another challenge being confronted these days by Mariano and his fellow legislators. DiZoglio is scorching for their resistance to her proposed audit of the legislature, a right she was granted by the voters when they overwhelmingly approved Question One on the November 2024 ballot. In a tweet last week after the House rejected a Republican effort to accept DiZoglio's audit plan, the auditor accused Mariano and his "henchman" Majority Leader Mike Moran of working to "continue to hide whatever it is they do with your taxpayer dollars." "It's very inflammatory, and it's kind of a nonsensical response to the activities that happen in the legislative debate," Mariano said. "We have an honest disagreement, an honest difference of opinion. We think there are constitutional issues involved in the separation of powers and what she wants to do and what that valid question allows her to do. And that's the way she deals with disagreements, I guess, is…tweet." Meanwhile, the House last week approved new rules that Mariano cast as partly a response to the public frustration with the slow pace of legislative activity that was reflected in the Question One vote. In an effort to end the bi-annual logjams where important bills don't get passed by the session's end, "we've set a rolling deadline for the committees," said Mariano. "They get 60 days to hear a bill and move it. We want it out in the membership. We want, the chairman to take a more active part in determining what's going to be in the agenda, and we're hoping that this …will force us to deal with these issues before they stack up and we have to combine them," Mariano said. "We hope it will make us more efficient. We've opened up the process. We're going to include our votes. We're going to include our attendance. We want people to know who's at the hearing, how they're voting. We want to open that up, and we want to process these bills before we feel the crunch of the time coming to an end." Mariano also discussed recent concerns about potential conflicts of interest in House committee leadership during the interview, which can be viewed in its entirety here.
USA Today
06-02-2025
- Politics
- USA Today
House Democrats restrict shelter eligibility, tighten security in $425M bill
Colin A. Young State House News Service AI-assisted summary The Massachusetts House is expected to pass a $425 million bill to address the state's emergency shelter crisis. The bill includes new restrictions on eligibility for shelter, including a six-month limit and a residency requirement. It also mandates stricter security measures, such as background checks for all adult applicants. The $425 million bill the House is expected to pass Thursday would give the Healey administration new, but temporary, authority to restrict eligibility for state emergency shelters and new permanent mandates aimed at tightening security at the shelters where more than 6,000 families are currently living. House Democrats released a bill Wednesday designed to fund the maxed-out emergency assistance (EA) system through the end of June while also imposing a new six-month limit on how long families can stay in shelters as well as a rigid cap on the number of families the state will serve in 2026 -- no more than 4,000 at a time, a one-third cut from the caseload as of Jan. 30 (6,012 families). The administration had previously said its goal is to reduce the system's caseload to 4,000 families by June 2026. "By creating stricter eligibility requirements, along with increased security measures, this supplemental budget is the latest iteration of the House's continued commitment to protecting vulnerable children and families in Massachusetts in a fiscally sustainable manner," House Speaker Ronald Mariano said in a statement. Gov. Maura Healey declared a state of emergency in August 2023 as an influx of migrants and thousands of families of Bay Staters sought the shelter that Massachusetts by law provides to families and pregnant women. Caseloads shot up from the typical 3,500 families to peak at 7,500 and the system swelled from about $350 million annually to cost taxpayers more than $1 billion in recent years. The Ways and Means Committee had been weighing Healey's spending plan since Jan. 9 and the governor made additional proposals to reform the 1983 Right to Shelter Law in a Jan. 15 letter to top lawmakers. The half-billion dollars in direct appropriations and one-time funds that lawmakers have already approved for the EA system in fiscal 2025 ran out Jan. 31 and the administration has said it will not be have money to pay bills that come due until more funding is approved. The House bill would draw the $425 million from the state's Transitional Escrow Fund, a reserve fund created initially as a stash for a state budget surplus that has taken on greater significance in state finance over the last few years. Healey's office has said using money from that account can shield programs in the regular state budget from the possibility of shelter-affected cuts. Nineteen members of the 31-person House Ways and Means Committee voted to advance the bill Wednesday while five voted against and one representative reserved their rights. Six members of the committee did not vote at all. Chairman Aaron Michlewitz's office said he would not be available Wednesday to discuss his recommendation to spend $425 million and make sweeping changes to a significant state program. Mariano's office said the committee bill adopts the administration's recommendation around so-called presumptive eligibility by allowing the state to verify eligibility for shelter benefits during the application process by "requiring applicants to prove Massachusetts residency and an intent to stay in Massachusetts by providing certain documentation." The administration has said that a "presumptive eligibility" mandate was added to the EA system line item in 2005 requiring the state to place families into shelter based on self-attestations of eligibility. Administration and Finance Secretary Matthew Gorzkowicz and Housing Secretary Edward Augustus said last week that roughly half of all families that apply for shelter "are determined to be ineligible for the benefit based on their initial application materials and prior to being placed in the system" and that the state's conservative estimate is that at least 6% of families are determined to be ineligible after being placed presumptively based on initial information they provided. Officials said they were confident that removing that language and reverting to the prior practice of requiring pre-placement verification of eligibility for most families would "further reduce demand" on the system. The cost of one month of "presumptive eligibility" in the EA shelter system is between $10,000 and $15,000 per family, the secretaries said. The House bill also gives the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities the authority to "require benefits to be provided only to families who are residents of Massachusetts and who are United States citizens; persons lawfully admitted for permanent residence; or otherwise permanently residing under the color of law in the U.S.," the speaker's office said, but also requires that temporary respite sites be made available to non-eligible families for up to 30 days upon arrival in Massachusetts. There are also measures to reduce the maximum length in an EA shelter from nine to six consecutive months, and to remove the availability of two 90-day extensions for certain situations. EOHLC would be allowed, under the House bill, to deem families that have income exceeding 200% of the Federal Poverty Level for three consecutive months to be no longer eligible for shelter benefits. While the governor's team told the House that its proposed reforms "should be permanent," the eligibility changes the House seeks would be temporary since they would be effectuated by amending the fiscal year 2025 budget. "Over the past several years, as the population of the emergency shelter system has grown, the House has attempted to uphold the Commonwealth's right to shelter law while also being mindful of the long-term fiscal sustainability of the program," Michlewitz said in a statement. "The reforms contained in this proposal will ensure that right to shelter is maintained by further capping the length of stay and verifying eligibility, while also enacting stricter background checks on those who enter the shelter system to better protect the families who need these services the most." One Corner Office proposal that the House did not adopt would have explicitly required that the situation or incident that made a family eligible for EA shelter benefits occurred in Massachusetts. Currently, families can be eligible based on several types of no-fault eviction or if they are in a housing situation "not meant for human habitation" -- but there is nothing imposing a geographic limit on those criteria. About one-third of families that applied for EA benefits in the last six months said on their applications that they did not live in Massachusetts at some point within the 90 days prior to their application, Gorzkowicz and Augustus wrote to lawmakers last week. The administration said making the geographic requirement explicit would be in line with the original intent of the state's 1983 Right to Shelter law, which "aimed to address homelessness occurring in Massachusetts and impacting Massachusetts residents." "[W]e have seen numerous instances in which applications for shelter were based on homelessness that occurred in one of our border states," the secretaries said, adding that 4% of families that leave the EA system transition directly to housing in another state. On the safety front, the House bill proposes to require that each individual adult applicant or beneficiary in the EA system disclose all prior criminal convictions in Massachusetts and any other jurisdiction, except for convictions that are sealed or were expunged. It also would require CORI background checks for each individual adult applicant or beneficiary prior to shelter placement. The Healey administration imposed a new background check policy on Jan. 27. The House bill also directs EOHLC to permanently require each adult applicant or beneficiary that joins a family in the EA system to provide notice, and EOHLC would be required to review all information necessary to verify the individual's eligibility. Mariano's office said the security-related measures included in the House bill would be permanent changes to the EA system. The House bill drew a rebuke from the Mass. Fiscal Alliance, a group largely aligned with President Donald Trump that last week called on the state to do away with the EA system entirely. The group said the House bill was "an unserious solution to a very serious problem" and would be ineffective unless it authorized state cooperation with federal immigration enforcement authorities, an idea that the House has never embraced. "The Speaker claimed to have offered some 'reforms' which are just carry over ideas from what Governor Healey proposed in her letter to lawmakers last month, including asking applicants to self-declare any past criminal convictions," spokesman Paul Craney said. "Asking criminals, many of whom we cannot verify the identity of in the first place, to self-declare past crimes will not work and is no substitute for allowing ICE to cooperate with state resources." The House plans to gavel in at 11 a.m. Thursday and told representatives to be ready for roll call votes starting at 1 p.m. House Democrats plan to caucus at 12 p.m., and Mariano and Michlewitz usually speak to reporters after that closed-door meeting. Before the shelter system can be recapitalized, the spending bill will also have to clear the Senate, be reconciled into a final compromise version (if necessary), and be signed by the governor.
