Press Release: 2024-04-16

Speaker Mariano’s Budget Bust Out

This week, we learned what is in Speaker Ron Mariano’s proposed FY2025 budget, his fourth as Speaker, which has a whopping price tag of $57.9 billion. Before any earmarks are added, this budget is a 3.3% increase over last year. MassFiscal warned last April, this level of reckless spending will eventually result in “tax hikes down the road.” State House leaders have already made good on that prediction as bills allowing an increase in taxes on meals, hotels, vehicles, and property sales are pending.

 

This year, despite state revenues consistently coming in below predictions, the Speaker insisted on a budget that’s larger than last year. For comparison’s sake, during Mariano’s first year as Speaker in 2021, his proposed FY2022 budget was $47.6 billion dollars.  In only four short years, Mariano has proposed an increase to state spending of over 21.5%. This budget also relies on more than $1 billion in one time funding sources which is playing with fire.

 

Despite the surtax on high income earners having a negative impact on the state’s economic competitiveness, a record-breaking streak of poor tax collections, and the surge of migrants coming to Massachusetts to abuse the state’s Right to Shelter law, lawmakers forged ahead with a budget full of increased state spending and the creation of new state programs. Only in the Massachusetts legislature does this type of math add up. 

 

Even though State House leaders just made community college “free,” the Speaker’s budget would create a new $40 million-dollar “MBTA Academy” that would require new administrative oversight, indefinitely indebting the taxpayers for generations to come. Even though Governor Maura Healey announced last week her administration needs to implement a hiring freeze, the Speaker’s budget would create an entirely new agency to hire new state workers.

 

The Speaker’s gravy train for the MBTA didn’t stop with the new academy. He would authorize a $314 million operating transfer to the T in fiscal 2025, up from $187 million in the fiscal 2024 spending plan Gov. Healey signed last summer. That represents a 68% increase under the Speaker’s spending plan!

 

Despite Speaker Mariano’s reckless spending at the T, his source of funding is even more off the rails. The Speaker would use $187 million in General Fund money on the T and another $367 million from revenues generated by the new surtax on high earners. The surtax on high income earners could be very volatile in the years ahead as more and more high-income earners and businesses move out of state or domicile in New Hampshire and Florida. The result will be less revenue from the surtax, but the spending at the T will remain high. Even the MBTA itself is projecting their agency will face a gap of about $650 million in FY2026, a gap which is expected to increase in subsequent years. Mariano’s reliance on such an unstable revenue source will further put the T at an economic risk.

 

While the Speaker’s budget includes tons of reckless spending, Beacon Hill leaders have been desperate to deflect people’s attention from the fact that they actually HAVE been forced to make some budget cuts. However, when looking at some of the areas they decided to cut spending we find: closing a state prison in Concord, underfunding snow and ice removal, diverting money that is legally designated for our state savings account, and cutting Healey’s proposed increase in unrestricted local aid to cities and towns where money is typically better spent with closer supervision from the general public.

 

We don’t see cuts in increased funding for electric vehicle charging stations, despite only 1% of all passenger vehicles on the road being EV’s. Nor do we see cutting dozens of administrative staff positions we lived without until last year, or address cutting the tens of millions we are spending every month on newly arrived migrant housing, food, cell phones, laundry services, ride shares, legal bills, etc.

 

Speaker Ron Mariano’s budget is remarkable in one aspect; he seems to be one of the few people in Massachusetts not aware we have a math problem. Despite his increases in spending, he ignores the fact that we have an income surtax driving businesses and wealth out of state, a 20-year record breaking streak of declining tax collections, and a state right to shelter program that is being abused on global scale and is causing our state to hemorrhage billions of dollars. All these budget busters didn’t deter the Speaker from creating new state spending programs and increases to state spending.

 

All you need is basic commonsense that will tell you the Speaker’s budget is reckless. Long after he is gone from the Massachusetts legislature, taxpayers will be obligated to pay for his irresponsible spending proposed in this state budget. More to come on this in next few days and weeks ahead.