Mass. Gov. Maura Healey unveiled her fiscal year 2025 budget on Wednesday, bringing mixed reviews as budget hawks and Republicans read through the numbers.
“It might be good enough for Gov. Healey but for the taxpayers of Massachusetts it’s definitely not good enough,” said Paul Craney of the Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance.
“We just had to adjust the projection for revenue for the current fiscal year by a billion dollars,” said Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr.
The budget totals $56 billion, a 2.9% boost from her fiscal year 2024 budget. Healey says that’s well below normal increases.
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“The average rate of growth in the last four years is 6.1%. The budget proposal comes in at less than half of that,” Healey explained.
The billions in funding include investment in education, housing, climate action and transportation both in Boston and beyond.
“We put forward funding to support a program for reduced fares, statewide, not just on the MBTA and on commuter rail but on our regional transit authority,” said Healey.
But that serves as little comfort for Tarr, who believes the state isn’t putting itself in the right financial position moving forward.
“State revenue is not growing at the pace it has over the last several years, that says to me, we need to plan for a future where we aren’t going to have those robust tax revenue collections,” he said Tarr.
He also pointed to a supplemental budget that would shore-up the state’s migrant housing crisis.
“Something has to give, I think we all agree we need to reform the current system,” Tarr said.
The budget process moves through the House of Representatives first and then over to the Senate.
