House Passes Fiscal Year 2017 State Budget; No New Taxes

From the General Court of Massachusetts:

The House passed a $39.5 billion state budget for Fiscal Year 2017, announced Rep. John V. Fernandes, D-Milford. The budget includes targeted investments in core state services in addition to increased local aid for cities and towns and support for local initiatives in the greater Milford area.

The spending bill, approximately $39.5 billion, highlights the House’s ongoing commitment to balancing fiscal prudence with targeted social service investments, a practice that has resulted in Massachusetts retaining its AA+ bond rating, the highest in the state’s history. The budget includes no new taxes or fees and reduces the commonwealth’s reliance on one-time revenue sources. For the second year in a row, it does not withdraw any funds from the stabilization fund.

“Through fiscal responsibility and thoughtful, forward-looking investments, this budget supports citizens of all backgrounds, particularly the most vulnerable among us,” said House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo (D-Winthrop). “I am particularly proud of our investments in early education and care, elder affairs and substance addiction programs. I thank Chairman Dempsey, the House Ways & Means Committee and the members of the House for their outstanding work on this budget.”

“I am satisfied that this year’s House budget offers a fair balance of among the many competing investments I believe we should support in returning tax dollars to citizens through programs and services,” said Fernandes.

"Local aid and education funding are always top priorities for me, but so are matters such as transportation funding, economic investment in job and business development, particularly in the area of advanced manufacturing, and programs that service the most vulnerable or deserving among us, the elderly, disabled and our veterans.

"In addition, during every budget season, I am presented with many local requests in the critical areas of public safety upgrades, opioid addiction prevention and treatment, youth services and parks improvements. I was once again successful in including significant funding for many of these important goals in the final House budget report. I am particularly excited about inclusion of money to help offset the initial costs of expansion of regional bus service to Milford and inclusion of funding for an opioid outreach and intervention program in the Greater Milford area.”

Locally, the budget provides funding for a number of critical projects, including $84,000 for the Milford Police Department and Juvenile Advocacy Group to maintain a regional opioid outreach and intervention program in the Greater Milford area; $75,000.00 for expansion of regional bus transportation to the town of Milford; $50,000 for the Milford Youth Center; $25,000 for the Mendon 350th Town Anniversary celebration; $26,900 for public safety improvements for Hopedale; $50,000 in ongoing improvements to historic Fino Field in Milford and $25,000 for public safety upgrades in Mendon.

The budget extends the House’s longstanding reputation as a champion of municipalities. With increases in both local education funding and Unrestricted General Government Aid (UGGA), this budget raises local aid by $159 million from FY16. It provides $55 in per-pupil-aid, more than doubling last year’s expenditure, and fully funds Special Education Circuit Breaker.

In addition to Chapter 70 education aid and the Special Education Circuit Breaker, the budget invests in education at all levels, from early education to college to workforce development: $96.6 million for a state scholarship program which benefits Massachusetts residents attending both private and public colleges; $4.75 million for the STEM Starter Academy, a House-created initiative for community college students which has shown notable early success; $1.7 million to support inclusive higher education learning opportunities for students with disabilities between the ages of 18 and 22 years; invests $2 million in the Big Data Innovation and Workforce Fund, to promote the big data and analytics industries, provide tools for related career development and explore how analytics can help address problems of public concern; MassCAN with $1.7 million to establish and enhance widespread, progressive computer science curriculum in public school through a public-private matching program; provides $2 million for technical grants for small business and provides $3 million in grants for an urban competitive grant program.

The budget also supports the sectors of the Massachusetts economy that drive economic growth, targeting investments in the innovation and knowledge-based economy: $1.5 million to encourage young innovators to get a head start on their futures by matching stipends for interns at innovation start-ups, and to provide mentoring opportunities for new entrepreneurs; continues to fund the Massachusetts Manufacturing Partnership, a program that continues to show results in closing the skills gap and connecting small manufacturing enterprises across the state to available resources and technologies and provides $1.5 million to the Advanced Manufacturing Workforce Development Grants program to train unemployed and underemployed workers, including veterans, in an effort to support the workforce needs of the Commonwealth’s globally competitive advanced manufacturing cluster.

Since FY12, the Legislature has increased funding for substance addiction services by more than 65 percent and passed two landmark bills to help address this public health epidemic. This year’s budget makes notable investments for behavioral health, including new funding of more than $28 million for the Bureau of Substance Addiction Services and $13 million for the Department of Mental Health. These investments include $2 million for 46 new transitional support services beds, boosting the state’s capacity by more than 13 percent; $2 million for new supportive case management services that will benefit 500 families; funding for 45 substance addiction treatment beds at Taunton State Hospital; $1.5 million to expand district attorney trafficking and heroin diversion programs and $3 million pilot for medication-assisted therapy in emergency rooms.

Additionally, the budget furthers the House’s mission to break the cycle of addiction by engrossing an amendment filed Rep. Fernandes to include language originally striped from the final draft of the Opioid Bill, allowing police officers to assist people who are incapacitated by drugs by transporting them either to their residence or to a medical facility for assistance.

The House’s budget also features numerous provisions to support Massachusetts’ most vulnerable citizens, including increasing the Department of Children & Families’ budget by more than $23 million, as a portion of this funding will support new and recently hired employees; increasing the Department of Developmental Services’s budget by $45 million; boosting funding for Family Respite Services to assist an addition 3,000; providing more than $30 million for domestic violence and sexual assault prevention and treatment programs and increasing the Councils on Aging formula grant to $10 per individual, per year.

The budget will now go to the Senate.