The budget includes $671,000 in new spending to provide an additional 12 beds at the Holyoke Soldiers Home.
BOSTON – Leaders of the Massachusetts Senate unveiled a $30.54 billion state budget for the next fiscal year that overhauls health insurance for municipal employees, closes a $1.9 billion shortfall through cuts to local aid and reducing growth in Medicaid and adds beds to the Holyoke Soldiers Home.
The Senate Ways and Means Committee, chaired by Sen. Stephen M. Brewer, D-Barre, unanimously approved the budget for the fiscal year that starts July 1. The budget is $2 million less than the budget approved by the House last month and $7 million less than the governor’s budget proposal submitted in January.
Brewer, presiding over his first budget as chair of the committee, said the budget includes $671,000 in new spending to provide an additional 12 beds at the Holyoke Soldiers Home.
Brewer said the budget also includes $150,000 for a program to train military veterans to counsel returning veterans suffering from brain injuries or other problems.
The proposal reduces or eliminates 277 budget line items. Tax collections are projected to increase by $1.2 billion in the next fiscal year but that would be offset by the loss of $1.5 billion in federal funds used to support this year’s budget and unavailable for next year.
Stephen Brewer“Cuts had to be made this year as in previous years during this recession,” Brewer said. “We have worked our way through this spending plan with a scalpel, making precise and educated cuts where necessary.”
Under changes to municipal health insurance, cities and towns could either transfer workers into the state’s Group Insurance Commission or create their own system of co-payments and deductibles that could be no greater than the median co-pays and deductibles offered by the state insurance plan.
Any cost-saving proposal from a city or town must also include plans to ease the impact on retirees, low-wage employees and heavy users of health insurance.
Geoffrey C. Beckwith, executive of the Massachusetts Municipal Association, said he was encouraged and appreciative of the plan put forward by Senate leaders.
The House approved a similar plan for municipal health insurance. One difference is that the Senate plan sets up a mediation panel to review any changes in co-pays and deductibles to determine that they do not exceed those in the median state insurance plan.
The Senate budget bill is set to be debated by the full Senate starting on Wednesday.
Like the budgets of the House and the governor, the Senate budget would cut unrestricted local aid to cities and towns to $834 million, down by $65 million, or 7 percent, from this year. Total general education aid would drop to $3.9 billion, down about 2 percent. The Senate increased state funding on education aid by $139 million, but it did not offset the loss of about $200 million in federal funds used on education aid this year.
The budget also cuts the state’s annual clothing allowance for income-eligible families from $150 to $40, saving nearly $8 million.
The budget also level funds regional school transportation, and increases funding for special education by $50 million to $183 million. Both Gov. Deval L. Patrick and the House had proposed $213 million in funding for extraordinary expenses on special education.
The budget has 152 riders including proposals to waive the fee on freshwater fishing licenses for people younger than 18 and to reduce the fee for a hunting license from $100 to $25 for people younger than 18.
The Senate budget would also create an $8 million competitive grant fund for cities and towns to promote efficiencies through regionalization of education and public safety services and improve data collection. That’s less than the $9.7 million approved by the governor and the House.
Patrick generally praised the budget, a spokesman said in a statement.
“The Governor is pleased with the Senate Ways and Means Committee’s budget, and commends them for putting forward a proposal that is fiscally responsible, reflects many of the Administration’s plans to fundamentally reform the way government does business, and supports the Governor’s key priorities of job creation and health care cost-containment,” Alex Goldstein, Patrick’s press secretary, said in a statement.
Sen. Michael R. Knapik, R-Westfield, the ranking Republican on the Ways and Means Committee, applauded Brewer’s stewardship of the budget and said he was “grateful” that the budget plan avoids broad-based tax increases and focuses on efficiencies in government. “It’s been awhile since we supported the budget out of the gate,” Knapik said.
The budget plan also creates a new Office of Commonwealth Performance, Accountability and Transparency to track the effectiveness of programs throughout state government and make determinations on which deserve funding and which could be eliminated.
Material from The Associated Press and the Statehouse News Service was used in this report