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BOSTON (State House News Service) — Legislative Democrats are nearly a month late in filing an annual state budget, and while she downplayed the past-deadline budget talks as "part of the process," Gov. Maura Healey on Wednesday also declined to indicate whether she intends to give the House and Senate even more breathing room by filing a second interim budget to avert a shutdown in government operations in August.
The House and Senate have pushed their budget negotiations so late that their eventual accord will be, at best, the third-latest state budget this century.
Fiscal year 2024 started July 1 with a $6.66 billion interim budget that Healey filed and the Legislature passed to keep state government funded at least through July 31. But with top House and Senate Democrats still at loggerheads, Healey would not say Wednesday whether she will file another short-term budget to buy the negotiators more time.
"Right now we're awaiting a budget, look forward to receiving one. Obviously, we'll be prepared to take whatever steps necessary as we move forward," the governor said. She added, "I know the Legislature is working hard on this. It's all part of the process. And, you know, it is July and I hope that we receive a budget soon."
During a scrum with reporters, Healey did not answer questions about whether she is frustrated that the prolonged talks are holding up her priorities, whether she plans to meet in-person with House and Senate leaders to discuss the budget delay ("We talk regularly, all of us talk regularly. We talk with, also with the chairs of Ways and Means, our administration does," she said), and whether she has been given any indication as to what is causing the budget holdup.
On Monday, lead House budget negotiator Rep. Aaron Michlewitz asked the Healey administration to consider filing a second interim budget and said he wanted the administration to detail exactly when the $6.66 billion in the first interim budget will be spent down. He also said Healey was "not really" involved in talks on the annual budget, which is expected to total around $56 billion.
"I don't want to speak for him, but I think they have to, I think they have to file at some point," Michlewitz said Monday of a second interim budget coming from the Healey administration. "So I think that, you know, we're getting to that point."
Michlewitz's office did not respond Wednesday to questions from the News Service about whether the House Ways and Means chairman received responses from the Healey administration.
The Executive Office of Administration and Finance on Wednesday could not say precisely when that initial round of interim funding will run out but said that it will not all dry up when the calendar flips to August. Comptroller William McNamara's office said that the interim budget is projected to cover expenses for about a month, but that "how long the funding lasts is subject to when departments choose to spend down these appropriations."
The comptroller's CTHRU website showed that the state has spent $2.35 billion so far in fiscal 2024 across more than 86,000 transactions. That sum includes spending through the state accounting and payroll systems, as well as "the use of appropriated, capital, federal grant, trust, and non-tax revenue funding sources," the comptroller's office said.
Healey's reticence to weigh in on the overdue nature of the Legislature's budget talks is in contrast to the way she, as a candidate for governor, publicly prodded lawmakers to continue their work last year on a tax relief package they promised and then backed away from.
"I've already called out the Legislature; I'm not afraid to stand up to powerful interests," Healey said during her second debate with Republican Geoff Diehl last October.
Like the annual budget, targeted tax relief proposals also are hung up in a six-person conference committee that voted to negotiate only in private.
Written By Colin Young/SHNS
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