Senate budget chief sees concern in stock market fall
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State Sen. Michael Rodrigues
With the stock market plummeting Monday on fear of the spreading coronavirus, Senate budget chief Michael Rodrigues said he had already had two meetings about the outbreak to start his week, and expected the conversation to continue.
Rodrigues, who is in the process of assembling a state budget for fiscal 2021 that will be released in May, said the Senate is exploring ways to ensure the state is as prepared for the spread of the virus as it can be.
He said there's also a risk that if the situation does not stabilize, it could impact state revenues.
"We've already had two discussions this morning on coronavirus and how we can better prepare the commonwealth to deal with this issue. We don't have any answers," said Rodrigues, who chairs the Senate Ways and Means Committee.
"I'm very comfortable that we are prepared, but if there are ways we can be better prepared we want to be better prepared," he said.
Over the weekend, the number of cases of coronavirus in Massachusetts climbed to 28, with the majority connected to a Biogen employee leadership meeting in late February at the Long Wharf Marriott hotel in Boston. As of last Wednesday, another 249 people were in quarantine, and 470 individuals had completed monitoring and were no longer quarantined.
The Westport Democrat said he's met with his Vice Chairwoman Cindy Friedman, Public Health Committee Co-chair Sen. Jo Comerford and staff in his office and the Senate President's office to discuss coronavirus preparations. Comerford and her Public Health Committee co-chair Rep. John Mahoney held an oversight hearing on the state's response last week, and has delivered a preliminary report to Ways and Means.
"We're just looking at different options and we'll continue the conversation this afternoon amongst the Senate and then we can maybe expand the conversation to our colleagues across the building the House and to the administration," Rodrigues said.
Senate Democrats do not have any plans for a formal caucus meeting on Monday.
Asked if the economic toll the virus was taking on the stock market might trickle down to state tax collections, Rodrigues said, "We're a little concerned about that. Still too early to say but we see what's happening with the stock market tanking. Is this short term? Is this long term? We're having that conversation too, but this could, I'm not saying it's going to, but this certainly could have a long-term effect on our revenues."
Through mid-day Monday, oil prices had cratered and the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average were both down more than 7 percent off Friday's closing bell. Trading briefly came to an automatic 15-minute halt, known as a circuit breaker, in the morning after a steep decline when the markets opened.
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