Senate plan gives Healey more leeway on shelter management

With two days left before lawmakers depart for a seven-week break and shelter-seeking families now being placed on a waitlist, House and Senate Democrats disagree on how prescriptive their crisis response should be.

Senate Democrats indicated Monday they favor putting another $250 million toward soaring shelter costs, the same amount that featured in a spending bill the House approved last week, but the plan they rolled out Monday instead gives the Healey administration more leeway to continue dictating the state's approach.

The Senate's supplemental budget (S2502) requires some of the quarter-billion dollars for shelters to be spent, without specifying any minimum amounts, on wraparound supports for affected families and reimbursements to school districts that have enrolled children who recently arrived in Massachusetts. It also allows — but does not order — the administration to put funding toward temporary shelter sites.

That's a contrast from the House bill, which would dictate how much money needs to go toward each shelter-related use, including $50 million for creation of at least one "overflow site" that would support eligible families for whom shelter space is not immediately available.

Under the House bill, if the Healey administration fails to launch at least one overflow site within 30 days of the bill's signing, officials would need to revoke the governor's order capping shelter capacity at 7,500 families.

Senate Ways and Means Committee Co-chair Michael Rodrigues said his team wanted to give the Healey administration "the ability to adjust on the fly because things are happening so quickly."

"They can absolutely use these dollars for temporary shelters — however you want to describe them — overflow sites or emergency shelters. But it doesn't mandate that," Rodrigues told the News Service. "I and we are not experts in how to best handle the migrant crisis situation. We feel that providing the administration the resources, along with strong accountability by requiring robust reporting, is the best way to handle the situation.”

Senators on Tuesday will take up their $2.8 billion spending bill, which also seeks to schedule the 2024 state primary election, clear the way for construction of a professional soccer stadium in Everett and close the state's financial books for fiscal year 2023.

Rodrigues said he wants to get a compromise bill to Healey's desk by the time the House and Senate wrap up their formal sessions for the year on Wednesday, a timeframe that won't allow branch leaders to dig in on their priorities the way they have on other major bills.

The House approved its spending bill on a 133-25 vote, with Republicans voting in opposition. If Democrats fail to achieve consensus before they shift into informal-only sessions for the rest of the year, any single lawmaker could stall progress on the bill by objecting.

A spokesperson for Senate President Karen Spilka described the Senate's shelter funding approach as providing Healey's team with "the flexibility it needs to continue managing thousands of families seeking shelter in the state, as the state continues to look to the federal government for help."

"The funding allocation reflects the imperative that the state must help those vulnerable children and families entering our state, but that Massachusetts needs help from the federal government to properly manage the challenge," the spokesperson said in a statement Monday.

The Senate bill calls for the administration to submit reports every two weeks about the state of the shelter system and the number of families served, plus track projected costs and deficiencies through fiscal year 2025. The bill requires the administration to submit those reports to the House and Senate Ways and Means committees, though it was unclear if the information would also be posted publicly.

In addition to $50 million for overflow sites, the House bill broke down the rest of the shelter funding into $65 million for shelters themselves, $75 million to reimburse school districts for enrolling new arrivals, $18 million for temporary shelters, $12 million for clinical and wraparound services, $10 million for resettlement agencies, $6 million for municipal supports, $6 million for shelter staffing, $5 million for workforce authorization programming and $3 million for family welcome centers.

It also sought to require the administration to provide 60 days notice of any action to cap the duration of individual or family stays in the shelter system, a provision that does not appear in the Senate redraft.

The House plan won praise from anti-homelessness advocates who have raised concerns that limiting capacity in the shelter system — which Healey says is the only option amid unprecedented demand that has strained locations, staff and funding — will leave vulnerable families with nowhere to go.

Although a 1983 state law requires Massachusetts to provide shelter to certain families and pregnant individuals, the system last week hit the cap of 7,500 families the Healey administration set. Eligible new applicants above that threshold are no longer guaranteed immediate shelter and will be placed on a waitlist, with highest priority given to families at risk of domestic violence, those who have an infant up to three months old, have an immunocompromised family member, are experiencing a high-risk pregnancy, or have specific medical needs.

The administration is also partnering with United Way of Massachusetts Bay to support "overnight safety-net shelter" for those with no other options using $5 million in federal grant money.

Most of the money in the Senate spending bill, about $2.1 billion, would go toward MassHealth, which mirrors the House's approach. Other areas of agreement in both versions include $378 million for collective bargaining agreements with public employees, $100 million for the state's pension fund and $75 million to support school districts facing higher special education costs.

The Senate redraft features language that would remove a 43-acre parcel of land in Everett from a designated port area, with a goal of converting it into "a professional soccer stadium and a waterfront park."

Local officials have been seeking the move, as has the Kraft Group, which is reportedly interested in building a new home for the New England Revolution. The House pushed last year to clear the way for the construction, but the effort to convert land that hosts a closed power plant into a stadium drew opposition from environmental groups and fell short of the finish line.

Representatives did not include the Everett soccer language in their version of the latest supplemental budget, though last year's vote suggests they could be open to the change during cross-branch negotiations.

Rodrigues, a Westport Democrat whose district includes what he described as the largest coal-fired power plant in New England, said he "understand[s] intuitively how difficult it is to find redevelopment opportunities for heavy industrial contaminated sites."

The legislation, Rodrigues said, would "try to provide a path so that a very dirty, contaminated site presently can be redeveloped into a facility that's going to be good for the district, good for the community."

The spending bill will effectively shut the state's financial books for fiscal year 2023, which ended June 30 with a tax revenue shortfall.

Both the House and Senate versions would tap a savings account to help close the gap, but they take different approaches. The House bill would empower the administration to decide how much money should come from the General Fund and how much should come from a transitional escrow fund; the Senate bill would require the administration to spend all available General Fund dollars before using escrow money.

Rodrigues estimated the bill would draw down about $260 million from the escrow account, leaving more than $1 billion in that account for future use. He said he is "afraid that we're going to need that escrow account in the near future," particularly given estimates that the additional emergency shelter funding will only last into the spring and tax revenues that have lagged projections four months in a row.

"We are, to date, about $350 million below benchmark for FY24, and that's very concerning," Rodrigues said. "I shudder to think what will happen if this trend continues."

Lawmakers have continued to embrace significant spending increases in recent years while also padding the state's "rainy day" long-term savings account to a record balance.

A Senate Ways and Means Committee spokesperson said the legislation will not receive a formal committee poll and was instead placed in the orders of the day as a Rodrigues amendment to the House bill. That move is "an administrative mechanism to expedite the bill," the spokesperson said.