The $30.6 billion budget agreement is poised to reach Gov. Deval Patrick's desk.
The Massachusetts Statehouse in Boston.By KYLE CHENEY
BOSTON – In a little-foreshadowed move, lawmakers in a fiscal 2012 budget accord filed Thursday night essentially wiped out a $65 million cut to local aid that cities and towns have anticipating for months, House and Senate officials said Thursday.
During the spring, the House and Senate passed budgets that slashed unrestricted aid to municipalities by $65 million, the latest in a series of local aid cuts. But a conference committee report agreed to Thursday would send unspent funds left over at the end of the current fiscal year – called reversions – back to cities and towns. That plan, legislative officials say, will assuredly eliminate the cuts that municipalities were expecting.
The plan, initially offered by the House Republican caucus, was included in an annual budget approved by the House in April. The conference committee negotiating the budget for the fiscal year that begins Friday – a panel of three House members and three senators, including on Republican from each branch – agreed to preserve that proposal in the final budget, which they filed to minutes before an 8 p.m. deadline Thursday evening.
The $30.6 billion budget agreement is poised to reach Gov. Deval Patrick’s desk Friday. As expected, the proposal redefines the way cities and towns share health care costs with employees care, overhauls the state’s system of indigent defense counsel, and counts on a major curtailment of public health care spending.
The budget was filed after more three weeks of closed-door negotiating that guaranteed an annual spending plan won’t be in place for the dawn of the new fiscal year. It appears lawmakers will be asked to vote on the bill with little time to review it.
The plan includes provisions aimed at cracking down on the use of electronic benefit cards for the purchase of alcohol, tobacco and lottery tickets, It also preserves a health insurance program for about 19,000 legal immigrants, at a cost of $42 million.
Stripped from the budget during negotiations were a House-passed repeal of a ban on gifts from pharmaceutical companies to doctors, a Senate-passed proposal to sharply restrict the use of aversive therapy for certain developmentally disabled residents and the repeal of a policy that levies triple damages on employers who fail to pay wages on time.
Stripped from the budget during negotiations were a House-passed repeal of a ban on gifts from pharmaceutical companies to doctors, a Senate-passed proposal to sharply restrict the use of aversive therapy for certain developmentally disabled residents and the repeal of a policy that levies triple damages on employers who fail to pay wages on time.
If the House and Senate pass the proposal during Friday sessions, as expected, Gov. Deval Patrick will have 10 days to review the bill before signing it, announcing vetoes and proposing amendments to various policy areas he wishes to adjust.
The compromise budget would be the largest in state history and is based on expected tax collections base of $20.525 billion. That figure represents an increase of more than $700 million over the current fiscal year but still falls short of the state's tax take three years ago, prior to the recession. The budget was crafted without $1.5 billion in federal aid that lawmakers and the governor relied on in fiscal 2011.
The proposal relies on a $185 million draw from the state’s rainy day fund, leaving the account at about $584 million. It also cuts services and depends squeezing $800 million in health care cost growth by cutting and capping certain provider rates, slashing some Medicaid benefits and raising co-pays, streamlining Medicaid programs, and seeking $351 million in savings through contracts for Medicaid, Commonwealth Care and Group Insurance Commission health plans.
The budget plan includes $3.99 billion in education aid to cities and towns, an uptick in the state's commitment but an overall reduction when the loss of federal aid is taken into account. Unrestricted local aid would come in at $834 million, a $65 million decrease that lawmakers hope will be replenished by returning unspent funds – known as reversions – back to cities and towns.
The bill includes a $90 million uptick in a special education circuit breaker, as well as a $3 million increase in the regional transportation account.
The Patrick administration and lawmakers have also cheered what they have described as the elimination of a persistent structural deficit – caused largely by an annual reliance on onetime sources of revenue and an unchecked use of capital gains taxes – that has forced policymakers to close budget gaps each year with new revenues or revenue grabs, spending cuts or withdrawals from the rainy day fund.
Michael Widmer, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, said the near-elimination of the structural deficit could help lawmakers begin to restore funds for programs that have taken deep cuts throughout the recession, or cover unanticipated costs in programs like Medicaid.
The negotiated budget includes a compromise between competing House and Senate versions of a plan to restructure the state’s public counsel program for the indigent, which had seen its costs increase throughout the economic downturn and forced lawmakers to plug gaps in the program’s funding.
The pact would reduce the state’s reliance on privately funded defense counsel, requiring 25 percent of cases that involve indigent defense be handled by defenders on the public payroll, up from the current 10 percent. The plan also requires the Committee on Public Counsel Services, which oversees the state’s program of indigent defense, to apply a new set of standards to verify whether applicants for public defense are truly indigent. At budget hearings, critics said indigency verification efforts were weak.
The compromise budget represents a series of decisions by the six-member conference committee, which met privately for most of June to merge the House and Senate versions of the budget into one agreed-upon plan. The final report of the conference committee cannot be amended when it comes to the floor, and members will likely be asked Friday for an up or down vote on the plan. Since the respective House and Senate fiscal 2012 budgets passed this year with bipartisan support, the conference budget is expected to pass.