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BOSTON (State House News Service) - President Joe Biden "better start paying attention" to the emergency shelter crisis straining Massachusetts and other states and cities, House Speaker Ron Mariano said Wednesday while signaling he still has not gotten the information he wants from the Healey administration about the costs of the situation.
Three weeks after Gov. Maura Healey filed a more than $2 billion spending bill to close the state's books on fiscal year 2023, Mariano said the chairs of each Ways and Means Committee are "negotiating the closeout supp now."
The negotiations are preceding debate and amendments to the bill in both branches.
Healey proposed drawing down $250 million from a reserve account to cover emergency shelter costs, which have skyrocketed to unprecedented levels amid record demand on the state's system, much of it fueled by new arrivals to the country.
"Again, we've been waiting for numbers ... some sort of framework to surround the cost. We haven't got it yet," Mariano told reporters after an unrelated bill-signing event. "So we're still up in the air about: is $250 (million) way too much, or is $250 million nowhere near enough?"
"We're going to be talking to some of the Washington folks, too," he added. "There are a lot of questions that we've been asking, and we need to get some answers before we can frame any sort of commitment of payment."
Healey for weeks has been unsuccessfully pushing for the Biden administration to expedite work authorizations for newly arrived migrants and make federal funding available to offset some of the costs states bear.
Asked if he wanted the Biden administration to establish a point person to coordinate with Massachusetts, Mariano replied, "The guy's running for president. He better start paying attention to this."
Written By Chris Lisinski/SHNS
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