Senate Democrats will take up a $57.9 billion budget later this month that does not close a projected budget gap at the MBTA, where officials expect the agency will run a more than $600 million operating deficit come the new fiscal year that starts in July.
Neither the fiscal year 2025 spending plans that Gov. Maura Healey filed in January nor the version the House approved last month have enough dollars to cover the $600 million-plus gap at the MBTA. With the Senate joining suit, agency officials could be left scratching their heads.
Senate budget writer Michael Rodrigues, a Westport Democrat, said the chamber’s yearly spending plan features $361.5 million in total funding for the MBTA, including $127 million to double the “operating support” the agency receives.
“I think that gap is insatiable right now. So we doubled the operating support for the MBTA. We’re making great strides in investing in not just the MBTA, but all of our transit agencies,” Rodrigues told reporters. “The gap is vast. It’s a big gap, yes.”
The Senate’s plan takes a different approach than the $555 million the MBTA is set to earn under the House’s budget proposal, which included a $314 million operating transfer, $75 million for physical infrastructure projects, and $65 million to address federal safety concerns.
Healey pitched $314 million in direct assistance to the agency, including doubling the “operating support” the agency receives by $127 million to $254 million and providing $60 million in “pay-as-you-go capital funding.”
Budget writers in the governor’s office said another plan to boost the agency’s borrowing capacity could help cover track improvements.
But officials at the MBTA have said they will need to “underspend” their projected fiscal year 2025 budget by about $93 million and wipe out a backup account to balance the books if they receive what the governor proposed.
Rodrigues said the Senate looked at transportation “holistically” by writing in about $214 million in funding for the state’s regional transit authorities.
That includes $40 million for year-round, fare-free access to all regional transit authorities and $10 million to connect agencies where “borders can create challenges for mobility,” according to a summary of their fiscal year 2025 proposal prepared by Rodrigues’ office.
“(RTAs are) an essential public good and a lifeline for our communities and all of our residents across the state,” Senate President Karen Spilka said. “This will help to expand bus service, make route connections, and fund system-wide fare-free transit.”
Senators are also set to consider a fiscal year 2025 budget that includes only $500 million for the emergency shelter system, or half of the $915 million the Healey administration has projected it will spend on services in the next fiscal year.
The system has become inundated with thousands of families with children and pregnant women over the past year amid an influx of migrants. Costs have soared and Beacon Hill has already approved two extra spending packages for the system over the past eight months.
Rodrigues said $500 million should “adequately fund” the program into the next calendar year and put pressure on the Healey administration to make “programmatic changes to make it more efficient and affordable,” though he didn’t offer any specifics.
“I think what we see and what we hear is that it’s very expensive, the services that they’re providing now. It’s very expensive, not just for the volume of the number of people accessing the services. But I think there can be efficiencies made and we’ll let them come to us with their proposals,” he said.
Dozens of contracts between the state’s housing department and social service organizations show nightly rates to house homeless families can vary widely, with some closing in on $300 once the cost of food and supportive services are added in.
Lawmakers last month approved a plan to cap the amount of time families can stay in shelters at nine months with a chance for two 90-day extensions and a “hardship waiver.” The earliest families can be kicked out of shelters is Sept. 1, according to the state’s housing department.
Spending on and potential reforms to the shelter system have sucked up much of the political oxygen on Beacon Hill since Healey declared a state of emergency in August to respond to the escalating crisis.
Many at the State House have scolded Congress for not passing a federal immigration bill earlier this year that could have sent millions in aid to states like Massachusetts. Rodrigues said he is hoping that after November’s election, the federal government “will come to their senses.”
He added: “The fact that all of these legal asylum-seeking migrants came to Massachusetts is a result of federal policy and we really think that the feds need to step up and support the policies that they implement.”
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