Senate budget chief hesitant to support Healey's plan to plug shelter funding gap

Photo | Courtesy State House News Service Senate Ways and Means Chairman Michael Rodrigues

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By Sam Drysdale | State House News Service

Senate budget chief Michael Rodrigues didn't jump on board Wednesday with Gov. Maura Healey's proposal to drain $700 million in one-time funds to cover expenses related to the state's overflowing emergency shelter system.

Last month, Healey proposed covering funding deficiencies for a projected $932 million in emergency shelter funding by tapping into the Transitional Escrow Fund that former Gov. Charlie Baker set up in 2021 to stash surplus revenue.

Asked by reporters Wednesday about his opinion on the governor's idea to use up the one-time funds, Senate Ways and Means Chair Rodrigues responded that they would "talk about it."

"We protect our reserve funds -- whether its transitional escrow or the state fund -- you know, we worked very hard. We've been very responsible for building up this reserve fund, and we're going to think long and hard about how we expend any of those reserve funds," Rodrigues said.

Rodrigues said he was "not surprised" by the governor's estimates of significant funding deficiencies -- just a few months after he and House Ways and Means Chair Aaron Michlewitz budgeted only about one-third of what the governor is now projecting will be needed to keep shelters running in fiscal year 2024.

Lawmakers and Healey appropriated $325 million to the shelter system when they completed the fiscal 2024 budget late last summer. Just a few months later, the administration is now estimating the tab will approach $1 billion both this fiscal year and in fiscal 2025.

"It was clear from my discussions a few months ago that more money was going to be needed," Rodrigues said on Wednesday.

Healey's high-dollar estimates come as state tax revenue growth is slowing and budget storm clouds loom on the horizon for fiscal 2025.

Tax revenue has trailed off recently after a few years of record high collections. Revenues are about $627 million short of the estimates used to craft the fiscal year 2024 state budget.

"We have some challenges. We have some challenges ahead of us," Rodrigues said on Wednesday, asked about the shelter spending needs as revenues tumble.

He continued, "We will collectively rally and rise to those challenges. The commonwealth -- we are in good fiscal shape. We've been very responsible through the years that we've received an amazing amount of revenue increases, a lot of it as a result of hundreds of billions of dollars of federal dollars that have flowed into the commonwealth of Massachusetts. We've built up our state fund. We've built up our transitional escrow fund... So we've been very responsible, preparing for the time in the day when these robust revenues are not going to be achieved anymore."

Beacon Hill Democrats are just coming off a heated debate over steering $250 million more into the shelter system -- a debate that took all fall as it became clear that the amount budgeted was not close to enough funding needed to house homeless families from Massachusetts and new arrivals from other countries.

House and Senate negotiators held up a bill to close out fiscal 2023 for months as they went back and forth over the $250 million injection. Once a deal was reached, Republicans -- given an unusual amount of power by legislative leaders' inaction and internal rules -- held up the deal for days, objecting to the lack of policies attached to the shelter funding.

The Healey administration announced in a mid-December report that the governor would file another spending bill in the coming weeks to again steer more money towards the crisis.

Asked if he anticipates the same challenges in negotiating another supplemental budget, Rodrigues answered "I don't say there were challenges."

"I think we have differences of opinion. And that's what democracy is all about, and we don't all walk in lockstep," he said.

The budget chief said he and the Senate Democrats' caucus would consider any proposal Healey sends over.

Rodrigues had been exiting a nearly four-hour, closed-door caucus on Wednesday when reporters caught up to him.

Senators inside President Karen Spilka's office had been discussing bills coming up for debate, senators said, as lawmakers prepare to launch into the busiest few months of the two-year legislative session.

The Senate will vote on three bills on Thursday related to assisting people with disabilities and fentanyl test strips.

Majority Leader Sen. Cynthia Creem of Newton also said senators were briefed on gun safety by representatives of the attorney general's office and the Executive Office of Public Safety during Wednesday's caucus.

The House pushed a sweeping gun reform bill through their branch last year, and senators are preparing to take their own swing at changing the state's firearm safety laws. Senate Democrats say they plan to release their proposal for new reforms by the end of January.

"There was a lot of members in the Senate who wanted to have an opportunity to, not to take positions, but like there were members, like I was to begin with, that didn't know what a glock switch was, what's a frame. Do you know any of these terms of guns if you don't have guns?" said Majority Leader Sen. Cynthia Creem of Newton outside of the Senate president's office on Wednesday. "So we had great people from the EOPS come in and show us."

Creem did not share any details of possible gun reform plans, but mentioned "ghost guns" when asked what stood out to her about today's presentation.

So-called "ghost guns" are often made or assembled at home and lack serial numbers with which they can be traced. They can be assembled from pre-packaged kits, and or 3D-printed. These untraceable guns have become more prevalent on Massachusetts' streets, and are a primary piece of the House's firearm reform legislation as well.

"The idea that you can take a semi-automatic and make it an automatic, I mean things that we've learned. There's just so much crime out there and it's scary. And if we could get rid of violence, that would be great," Creem said.

Attorney General Andrea Campbell has also been a vocal supporter of regulating the untraceable guns, a popular policy goal that would likely win approval as standalone legislation but it caught up in the developing House-Senate debates about more sweeping proposals.