House Minority Leader Bradley Jones Jr. speaks to reporters, backed by much of the House Republican Caucus, after House Democrats mustered a quorum and accepted a conference report on the FY23 closeout budget Monday, Dec. 4, 2023. Standing to the left of Jones is Rep. Paul Frost, who doubted the presence of a quorum in the previous three lightly-attended sessions.
Sam Doran Dec 8, 2023
State House News Service
STATE HOUSE, BOSTON, DEC. 8, 2023..... Temps are falling and the snow's started falling, too, but how about families waitlisted for emergency shelter, the state's revenue shortfall, and fiscal 2023 spending? All those stats have gone up, up, up.
Amid those mounting problems were notes of victory at the start of the week, though, as Republicans reveled in what House Democrats (and unions) reviled: the GOP's successful multi-day delay of a spending bill, aimed at making a point about Beacon Hill Dems' workflow, which can sometimes run slow as molasses on a frosty December morning.
In this holiday season pageant, Rep. Paul Frost was cast in the role of -- well, depending which side you ask, either Conscientious Objector Number 1 or Public Enemy Number 1.
This time of year, the House needs to muster a quorum -- at least 81 members -- if any one rep in the chamber questions the branch's attendance. Frost, an Auburn Republican, did just that last week, over the weekend, and into Monday when the supermajority Democrats (134 in number) were finally able to get more than a handful to pile into the chamber and get the overdue budget passed, including money for the overrun state shelter system and public employee raises.
Meantime, surf over to the NAGE SEIU union website, and there's a vintage headshot of Frost looking fairly joyful, next to the union's grim headline that dubs him "Public Employee Enemy Number 1."
The union called Frost an "obstructionist," House Speaker Ron Mariano said the GOP Caucus was using the "tactics" of "Washington Republicans," and MassDems Chair Steve Kerrigan somehow tied the parliamentary maneuver (permitted by the session rules that Dems authored and approved) to a "MAGA agenda" in a Monday morning statement.
It got done in the end, and Senate budget chief Michael Rodrigues announced on the floor that the raises would start flowing to state workers on the Dec. 22 payday, in time for Christmas.
But who was really poised to be the krampus this Yuletide?
The Republicans had their concerns with the shelter language, particularly a lack of policy reforms to accompany the emergency assistance cash infusion, but no one wanted to hold up the raises for state employees.
Ask House GOP Leader Brad Jones and the grinchiness fell squarely on the majority: "The reality is the Democrats delayed action on this bill for nearly two months, failed to reach an agreement before formal sessions ended on November 15, and did not produce a conference committee report until November 30, exactly eleven weeks after Governor Healey first filed the bill."
Ask the Senate -- both President Karen Spilka and top Republican Bruce Tarr -- and the bill's completion was achieved notwithstanding their neighbors, the House: In their shoulder-to-shoulder press conference, Spilka highlighted how the Senate "took [the bill] up quickly." Quoth Tarr: "The point is, we have a difference of opinion. And the main point about today is, we didn't let that difference of opinion paralyze the Massachusetts state Senate."
Ask Mariano, and it was all theatrics by the minority: "They want to seem to be relevant and this is the tactic they're using."
At the end of the day, Mariano played a jolly ole Saint Nick to the MassGOP, gifting them a sack full of political opportunity. Not only did the House take a couple months to move the supp forward after Gov. Maura Healey filed it, but Democrats let the Republicans steal the stage at multiple sessions before finally showing up en masse Monday.
As Rodrigues pointed out during Monday's Senate session, three fiscal years were blending together this week. The bill pending before lawmakers was to wrap up state spending from fiscal 2023, which ended in June. Officials at a concurrent hearing down in the basement were gathering intel on how much tax revenue to expect for fiscal 2025, which starts next July.
And meanwhile, Rodrigues was already forecasting that November's tax collection numbers weren't going to be "pretty."
Sure enough, the next day, the Department of Revenue announced a $2.253 billion haul for November -- $274 million (10.9 percent) below the expectation for the month.
In total, tax collections are $627 million below the administration's projection almost halfway through the current budget year.
Granted, November is one of the "smaller" revenue months, DOR said, with a disclaimer that "November and year-to-date results should not be used as a predictor for the rest of the fiscal year."
But at the big Monday hearing on what to expect for fiscal 2025, even as officials heard predictions of slightly higher revenues for the next cycle, Rodrigues said he saw trouble brewing.
"[W]e find ourselves at a precarious crossroads. There are storm clouds gathering on the horizon," the Westport Democrat said, citing recent DOR numbers, high interest rates, and the ongoing influx of migrants and strain on the state shelter system.
Vis-a-vis the shelter crisis, the supplemental budget wrapped up this week featured a new stipulation for the Healey administration: stepped-up requirements to report shelter data directly to Rodrigues and his House counterpart, Rep. Aaron Michlewitz.
Legislators this year felt pressure from municipal officials and constituents who felt in the dark about the wave of migrants seeking humanitarian aid. And the lawmakers, in turn, expressed a frustrated feeling that they, too, were in the dark on the administration's approach.
The House and Senate want to keep closer tabs on what's happening -- like more regularly-updated reports on the number of sheltered families, state spending on the shelter system, and the number of waitlisted families.
But just because lawmakers are tired of being left in the dark doesn't mean we're all going to be enlightened. The Senate voted against making the reports publicly available during its debate on the bill, and a House Ways and Means spokesman said the new law "doesn't speak to making [the reports] publicly available" and that "typically it's not the practice of the committee to make such reports public unless required to."
12/08/2023