The House and Senate are set to enact a Fiscal Year (FY) 2024 budget, totaling $56.2 billion. The conference committee report was filed on July 30th, one month after the start of the new fiscal year. This year, separate tax bill negotiations, the new income surtax, and an uncertain FY 2023 revenue picture imposed additional complications on the budget negotiation process.

After four days of debate, the Senate finalized its $55.9 billion Fiscal Year (FY) 2024 budget; adding $82.2 million in new spending and 34 outside policy sections.

The Senate took action on 1,049 amendments through a combination of standalone votes and amendment ‘bundles,’ which categorically approve or reject many amendments at once. In total, 478 amendments were adopted, 415 were rejected, and 156 were withdrawn from consideration. This brief summarizes Senate debate action and assesses the new spending and policy proposals.

Authored by: Meaghan Callahan

The Fiscal Year (FY) 2024 budget process reached another milestone today with the release of the Senate Committee on Ways and Means (SWM) budget proposal. The $55.9 billion SWM spending plan differs from earlier proposals as it was not released in conjuncture with a tax reform bill. However, the SWM budget does set aside $575 million for the first-year costs of a tax policy bill the Senate plans to take up later this session.

Major Trends in Local Finance
Municipal revenues and expenditures increased by 5.7 percent ($1.8 billion) from fiscal year (FY) 2021 to FY 2022; the highest rate of growth since FY 2007. The strong rate of growth in FY 2022 is partially the residue of the pandemic. In FY 2021, municipal resources grew under two percent (1.7) for the first time since the Great Recession. In FY 2022, municipal finances rebounded. Prior to the pandemic, municipal finances experienced three straight years of growth over four percent, the first time that had occurred since the mid 2000’s.

The House finalized its $54.9 billion Fiscal Year (FY) 2024 budget this week after adding $129.7 million in spending over the course of three days of debate.

The House took action on 1,566 amendments through a combination of 7 consolidated amendments and 3 separate votes. Some form of at least 773 amendments were adopted; 745 added new spending, 25 added or amended policy sections or budget language, and 3 included a combination of both. This brief summarizes the House debate action and assesses the new spending and policy proposals.

Authored by: Meaghan Callahan

The next major step in the FY 2024 budget development process began today with the release of the House Committee on Ways and Mean’s (HWM) budget proposal. Coming just six weeks after Governor Healey filed her administration’s inaugural budget, the $54.8 billion HWM spending plan makes significant investments in education, transportation, and the state’s workforce pipeline.

In January, budget-writers upgraded the Fiscal Year (FY) 2023 tax revenue benchmark by just over $150 million, from $39.618 billion to $39.768 billion. Tax collections for the month of March (announced on April 5th) are the first collections to be compared to the new, upgraded, FY 2023 benchmarks. This brief explains how the revenue benchmarks were upgraded and contextualizes the March collections.

Authored by: Meaghan Callahan

Since December of 2021, the state has appropriated close to $8 billion in combined federal Fiscal Recovery Funds (FRF) and Fiscal Year (FY) 2021 and 2022 surplus resources to support a range of COVID recovery and economic development initiatives. Significant resources still remain, but tracking the amount and type of funds that are still available is a challenge for policymakers and the public.

This Brief outlines the recent history of FRF and surplus spending and summarizes the current status of remaining funds.