Eye-popping cost of coronavirus pandemic laid bare in supplemental budget
A supplemental budget filed by Gov. Charlie Baker offers a glimpse at the eye-popping cost of the coronavirus pandemic in Massachusetts.
Coronavirus spending makes up 70% of the $273 million supplemental spending plan for the current fiscal year filed on Tuesday.
“These recommendations include $191 million to authorize spending certain federal funds made available through COVID-related federal legislation, a $0 net cost to the Commonwealth,” the governor wrote in a Tuesday memo to lawmakers.
The federal monies to be spent in Baker’s 69-page spending proposal come from Donald Trump-era relief bills that ushered roughly $70 billion in federal aid into the state.
State Rep. Dan Hunt, D-Dorchester, who heads the House Committee on Federal Stimulus and Census Oversight, said he expects collaboration between the Legislature and the Baker administration on how the state will spend the $5.3 billion awarded to Massachusetts from President Biden’s American Rescue plan.
Hunt and his team are “pouring through” the 700-page bill and its accompanying 160 pages of guidance, the Dorchester Democrat said.
“It seems like we are going to have some broad latitude to spend this once-in-a-generation funding,” Hunt said.
Hunt’s committee was created this session by first-term House Speaker Ronald Mariano, who has signaled his desire for the Legislature to take a greater oversight role in the spending of billions of relief dollars flowing into the state.
Baker’s budget bill also makes another stab at establishing a permanent seven-member board of overseers for the MBTA. The charge for the existing Fiscal Management Control Board — created in 2015 — is slated to expire July 1.
Lawmakers last year were unable to agree on the makeup of a permanent oversight authority for the transit agency when they found themselves at odds over the size of Boston’s role, its duration and more.
Baker’s supplemental budget also seeks “a number of corrections” to an economic development bill passed last session “to allow for the proper implementation of important policies” signed into law, according to his memo to lawmakers.
from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/3ymoB7C
Post a Comment