MA: Funding for the T could derail Mass. budget debate. Here’s how | Bay State Briefing

Just as straphangers on the MBTA’s Red Line thought they were done with a month’s worth of delays and dreaded “shuttle trains,” it looks like a debate over funding for the T could snag the debate over this year’s state budget.

How, you ask? Excellent question.

The short answer: As is so often the case, the House and Senate, both controlled by Democrats, have very different visions for how to spend roughly $1.3 billion in “Millionaire’s Tax” revenue, which funds transportation and education programs.

Now, an argument over how to spend $1.3 billion is, as problems go, a nice one to have. But it could throw debate over the state’s annual spending blueprint (which has a price tag of around $61 billion to $62 billion) into a slow zone that only a Red Line rider could fully appreciate.

A proposal advanced by Senate Democrats would steer $370 million in Millionaire’s Tax revenue to the MBTA. That’s far less than the $793 million that a plan backed by House Democrats would send to the T.

All told, the $1.28 billion supplemental budget that Senate Democrats rolled out last week would set aside $613 million for education and $670 million for transportation and infrastructure, Senate leadership said in an email.

The House’s version, meanwhile, channels $353 million to education programs and $828 million to transportation and infrastructure spending, State House News Service reported.

As a refresher, voters approved the levy, formally known as “The Fair Share Amendment,” as a statewide referendum in 2022. It hits anyone making over $1 million a year with an extra 4% income tax levy.

The more even split in the Senate plan appears to reflect concerns by lawmakers from outside the I-495 corridor that the perennially cash-strapped and maintenance-challenged T was benefiting at the expense of regional transit agencies elsewhere in the state.

“It is always our goal, but we do not count down to the pennies, to try to equally invest the money in both education and transportation,” Senate Ways & Means Committee Chairperson Rodrigues, D-1st Bristol/ Plymouth, told reporters last week, according to State House News Service.

State Sen. Joanne M. Comerford, the Senate panel’s vice chairperson, said the money will come in particularly handy with federal funding in ... ahhh ... flux.

“My constituents in western Massachusetts canvassed, advocated, and then voted overwhelmingly to pass the Fair Share Amendment,” Comerford, D- Hampshire/ Franklin/ Worcester, said in a statement. “It is especially heartening now, amid blistering federal spending cuts, to have funds to invest equitably in education and transportation in the commonwealth.”

On the other side of the State House, House Speaker Ronald J. Mariano, D-3rd Norfolk, said last month that the lower chamber’s big spend on transportation reflects its goal of “ensuring that every Massachusetts resident has access to a safe and reliable public transportation system.”

House Ways and Means Committee Chairperson Aaron Michlewitz, D-3rd Suffolk, offered a similar sentiment, observing that the Millioniare’s Tax cash is a “unique opportunity for us to better strength[en] the commonwealth.”

The debate over how to spend the windfall from the state’s super-wealthy (again, a nice problem to have) will take place alongside the debate over the general fund budget for the new fiscal year that starts July 1, according to published reports.

Democratic Gov. Maura Healey has already filed her $62 billion version of the spending blueprint. The House proposes a smidge less at $61.4 billion. The Senate is expected to unveil its budget proposal this week.

As a matter of law and practice, the state is supposed to have a new budget in place by 12:01 a.m. on July 1. As a matter of actual practice, they’ve overshot the deadline for years. And it looks like this year may be no different.

Rodriques, balancing optimism against hard-fought experience, said lawmakers will try for an on-time budget this year, State House News Service reported.

“It’s always our goal, yes,” he said.

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