The Massachusetts State House
Six months later and $180 million lighter, lawmakers on Thursday returned to Gov. Maura Healey a spending bill that ratifies 38 collective bargaining agreements for state employees and approves millions in last-chance spending of federal pandemic dollars.
Healey filed the supplemental budget March 18, saying the $534.7 million bill "targeted resources at our most time-sensitive deficiencies, using available federal reimbursements and other resources to minimize the net cost to the state."
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The compromise that House and Senate negotiators agreed on after several months and sent to Healey on Thursday was significantly slimmed down, with a bottom line of $362 million.
The largest spending item that didn't make the cut: $175.5 million for supplemental payments to safety net hospitals through the Medical Assistance Trust Fund -- which would be wholly offset by federal reimbursements.
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Asked which health care centers would have benefited from those supplemental payments, a spokesperson for the Executive Office of Health and Human Services said the trust fund supports Medicaid payments to UMass Medical Center, Boston Medical Center and Cambridge Health Alliance.
Those payments -- $505 million in total -- are eligible for federal matching funds. However, they missed out on that reimbursement for fiscal year 2024, meaning it will have to be applied in fiscal year 2025, HHS said.
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Sean Fitzgerald, a spokesperson for the Senate Committee on Ways and Means, said leaving out the $175.5 million is "more of an accounting and timing measure than anything" that "we thought more appropriate for a future supp." He said the committee plans to revisit it in the future, and is continuing conversations with the administration.
In addition to the supplemental payments through the Medical Assistance Trust Fund, lawmakers also scrapped funding for struggling hospitals and community health centers in their compromise deal.
The Senate's supplemental budget would have steered $45 million toward "fiscally strained" hospitals and $25 million toward "fiscally strained" community health centers. The House version did not include that health care funding, though both branches sought to invest in struggling hospitals through their stalled hospital oversight packages.
While the compromise abandoned steering extra dollars towards struggling community health centers and hospitals, the state recently committed at least $417 million to help keep Steward Health Care hospitals open as they are sold and transition to new owners, in what the Healey administration and legislative leaders have repeatedly said is not a bail out of the for-profit bankrupt hospital system.
The supplemental budget deal does, however, provide more than $61.1 million for the health and human services workforce.
In her filing letter to the Legislature, Healey wrote that this funding for a so-called Critical Health and Human Services Workforce Reserve would "cover projected deficiencies in Fiscal Year 2024 related to our continued need for direct care staffing to respond to health needs in our nursing homes, group care settings, state hospitals, and Soldiers' Homes, as well as other patient health an safety supports."
The budget also includes $228 million for programs designed for those who prefer to get long-term care services in their home or community, rather than in an institutional setting, and $20 million to support survivors of violent crimes as dollars from Washington have dried up in recent years -- both of which will be paid for fully by federal American Rescue Plan Act dollars.
"This bill ensures that we are fully leveraging federal ARPA revenues by granting the administration additional flexibility to ensure that ARPA funds are spent before the looming federal deadlines. In doing so, we'll ensure Massachusetts does not return any ARPA funds to the federal government, maximizing our investments in the commonwealth," Sen. Michael Rodrigues, chair of Senate Ways and Means, said during Thursday's session.
The state has less than $100 million left to obligate of the over $5 billion it received from the federal government in ARPA dollars during the COVID-19 pandemic. Most of that money is reversions, Rodrigues said, or appropriations the Legislature made that satisfied appropriations ARPA dollars had been earmarked for.
With deadlines looming to use those dollars -- or return them to D.C. -- the main thrust of the supplemental budget was to use up that money while it's still in the Bay State, and to resolve 38 collective bargaining agreements for state employees, Fitzgerald said.
It's the second year in a row scores of public employees had to wait months for the Legislature to approve the funding for agreements they had already negotiated.
Many have an effective date of July 1 but some date back to 2023, including the contract for Massachusetts community college faculty and professional staff. The Massachusetts Community College Council, which represents employees on all 15 community college campuses, knocked the House and Senate earlier this month for not acting "in a timely manner." The council's unfunded contract would be retroactive to July 2023.
"Paying negotiated wage hikes in a timely manner will be crucial to recruiting and retaining the professional staff and faculty we need to meet the growing demand for public higher education," said MCCC President Claudine Barnes, a Cape Cod Community College professor.
The 38 collective bargaining agreements tied up in the supplemental budget encompass all currently before the Legislature, Fitzgerald said.
"It did take us a while to finish the deliberations," Rodrigues said of the bill Thursday. "We had a little bit of rough waters going there for a few months, but we've stabled the ship."
Other spending in the supplemental budget includes $5 million for the Healthy Incentives Program, $5.6 million for tax abatements for veterans, $29.7 million for an early education and care income-eligible child care program, and $2.1 million for the Women, Infants and Children Nutrition services program -- all level-funded compared to Healey's original recommendation in March.
The House had included in its version of the bill a number of tourism initiatives having to do with the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution. The anniversaries kicked off last year with the sesquicentennial of the Boston Tea Party, and next spring Lexington and Concord plan to welcome tourists for the anniversary of the start of the American Revolution.
The House hoped to steer $26.5 million towards statewide programming for historical anniversaries coming up over the next several years, but according to an aide for House Ways and Means Chair Aaron Michlewitz, that funding did not make it into the final version of the bill.
There is, however, some patriotic spending, with a $100,000 earmark for the Massachusetts Bay Council of the Navy League of the U.S. for activities related to the commissioning of the USS Nantucket.
Alison Kuznitz contributed to reporting.
