BOSTON (State House News Service) — Activists are objecting to Gov. Maura Healey's decision to cut funds that would benefit some of the state's lowest-income residents, saying it will prevent an "urgently needed" 10 percent benefit bump that was schedule to take effect on April 1.
The Lift Our Kids Coalition, which includes 160 organizations such as the Mass. Coalition for the Homeless and Greater Boston Food Bank, plans a State House rally on Thursday and organizers say participants are ready to express their "shock and dismay" at Healey's move to trim more than $17 million in public benefit increases midway through the state budget year.
"We call on the Governor to rescind cuts to cash assistance that the state's lowest income households rely on to meet their basic needs," said Greater Boston Legal Services senior attorney Naomi Meyer, who helps coordinate the coalition's work. "Families can't afford essentials like diapers, pain medicine, soap, and winter coats and shoes. The Governor should not fill gaps in our state budget by cutting basic benefits for Massachusetts families and individuals struggling in Deep Poverty."
The group originally planned its rally for Wednesday, but postponed the event until Thursday due to forecast inclement weather.
As part of the $375 million in budget cuts she unveiled Monday, Healey cut about $13 million from the Transitional Aid to Families with Dependent Children (TAFDC) program and $4.3 million from the Emergency Aid to the Elderly, Disables and Children (EAEDC) program.
Those reductions leave about $431.5 million available for TAFDC and $182 million available for EAEDC, in both cases tens of millions of dollars more than the state spent on the programs in fiscal 2023. Healey wrote in her official summary that she reduced the two line items to "the amount projected to be necessary to maintain current benefit levels that have increased by an average of 30% since FY21."
Coalition members have spent years pressing policymakers to enhance cash assistance benefits, arguing that the programs have not kept up with inflation after being frozen for years. While announcing its plans for a rally Wednesday, the coalition said current grants are "worth slightly more than half as much as the grant in 1988."
The group said Healey's cuts will keep benefit levels at $783 per month for a family of three with no income, less than half of the federal poverty level.
Administration officials said Massachusetts offers the fifth-highest cash grant amount for families among all states. An average TAFDC household grant provides $704, and an average EAEDC household grant provides $459, according to the Department of Transitional Assistance.
The programs received 10 percent increases in July 2021 and again in October 2022.
"Massachusetts has made many reforms to the TAFDC program over the last five years. These reforms support families in their transition to work by stabilizing access to benefits and allowing families to keep more income as they transition to work," said DTA spokesperson Cecille Avila. "Massachusetts is one of only a handful of states that provides a cash benefit to older and disabled individuals without children. While grant amounts will not increase this year, no clients will experience a reduction in their benefits as a result of this action. Neither eligibility nor benefit levels are being reduced or changed."
Healey unveiled the spending cuts, the first of their kind since 2016, as tax collections flow in short of expectations and rising emergency shelter costs create more pressure on state spending decisions.
The majority of cuts feature in a single line item: a $294 million gross reduction to MassHealth fee for service payments.
Additional cuts spread across 65 other line items include an elimination of $50 million for the Commonwealth Care Trust Fund, which Healey said has a balance "sufficient to support projected spending," $40.3 million for community residential services, $12 million for center-based child care rate increases and $5 million from a Department of Mental Health loan forgiveness program.
"In crafting spending reductions, we have done our very best to protect investments that are critical to Massachusetts's future, limit impacts to programs and services and to avoid negative impacts to the most vulnerable of our residents," Healey wrote in a letter to lawmakers about her cuts. "In addition, we have refrained from any reductions to Local Aid and school funding."
Healey's budget chief Matthew Gorzkowicz on Monday said the cuts were "thoughtfully crafted" in a bid to protect services.
"The solutions that we're putting forth today are a balanced set of solutions," he told reporters. "They were thoughtfully crafted with the aim of protecting programs and services, making sure that we continue our investments in municipalities and we continue to preserve an historic tax cut that is providing much-needed relief to many low and middle income families, as well as making Massachusetts more affordable and competitive."
The governor offered varying reasons for picking each cut. In one case, she tied the reduction to lawmakers' sluggishness.
Healey slashed $7 million for Extended Learning Time Grants, leaving just $416,806 available for fiscal 2024. That's the amount necessary for the year, she said, because the "agency was unable to issue FY24 summer programming grant awards due to the extended FY24 budget process."
House and Senate Democrats did not agree to a spending plan until July 31, a full month into fiscal 2024 and the second-latest enactment date in more than two decades.
Written by Chris Lisinski/SHNS.
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