Who is a member?
Our members are the local governments of Massachusetts and their elected and appointed leadership.
The Legislature’s Joint Committee on Ways and Means has begun holding public hearings on the fiscal 2023 state budget bill filed by the governor in January, and has scheduled a hearing focused on municipal and school aid for March 15.
The MMA will testify at the hearing on key municipal priorities, leading with its case that unrestricted local aid should better reflect the historic state tax collections of the past few years.
Unrestricted General Government Aid
The MMA is strongly advocating for a larger increase in Unrestricted General Government Aid, the state’s revenue-sharing mechanism.
Fiscal 2023 state tax collections are forecasted to be $2.5 billion higher (7.3%) than the tax base that was used to pass the fiscal 2022 budget last July, and state tax collections have increased by $6.32 billion (21.3%) since fiscal 2020. But the governor’s fiscal 2023 budget proposes just a 2.7% increase for UGGA, or $31.5 million to be distributed across 351 cities and towns.
MMA Executive Director and CEO Geoff Beckwith points out that the governor’s budget (known as House 2) uses a recently upgraded revenue estimate for fiscal 2022, rather than the one used in the state budget as enacted, “leading to an artificially low growth projection” that fails to share the higher-than-expected revenue growth with cities and towns. He said the past two years have seen an “unprecedented divergence” between the growth in state revenues and local aid.
The MMA is urging the Legislature to use the fiscal 2022 state budget figure as the base, which would increase the UGGA account by 7.3%, or $85.3 million.
Chapter 90
While the Chapter 90 local road and bridge program falls outside the state budget, the MMA will remind legislators, as they take up the governor’s proposal to level-fund the program in fiscal 2023, that allocations have been generally flat at $200 million since fiscal 2012, with a few exceptions, while the purchasing power has been substantially diminishing.
If Chapter 90 remains at $200 million in fiscal 2023, the real level of state support for local road projects will drop by 42% since fiscal 2012, to an inflation-adjusted $117 million — a loss of $83 million in purchasing power over the past 11 years.
The MMA will continue to urge legislators to fund Chapter 90 at $300 million per year, and will urge them to support a one-time increase of $100 million included in a fiscal 2022 supplemental budget filed by the governor on Feb. 18.
Chapter 70
House 2 would increase Chapter 70 school aid to $5.98 billion, with a $485 million increase in fiscal 2023, fulfilling commitments in the Student Opportunity Act.
An examination of the budget, however, shows that 136 of 318 operating districts (43%) would receive only the minimum per-student increase of $30 in the Student Opportunity Act, providing those districts with a Chapter 70 increase of just 1%, far below inflation.
The MMA is continuing to strongly advocate for minimum aid of $100 per student to ensure that all districts can at least keep pace with inflation and maintain their school services.
Special education circuit breaker
The MMA is supporting the governor’s proposal to add $41.2 million to fund the Special Education Circuit Breaker program at $414 million, an increase of 11%. The Student Opportunity Act expanded the special education circuit breaker by including out-of-district transportation, an important enhancement for cities and towns.
Charter schools
The governor’s budget would increase the charter school reimbursement account to $219 million, intended to meet the commitment in the Student Opportunity Act to fund 90% of the state’s statutory obligation to mitigate Chapter 70 losses to charter schools.
The MMA argues, however, that charter schools continue to divert a high percentage of Chapter 70 funds away from many municipally operated school districts, and place increasing strain on the districts that serve the vast majority of public schoolchildren. The MMA will reiterate its call for comprehensive charter school finance reform.
School transportation
The MMA will point out that House 2 would reduce funding for regional transportation reimbursements from $82.1 million in the current fiscal year to $77.8 million, which would create a hardship for virtually all communities in regional districts. Reimbursements for transportation of out-of-district vocational students remains significantly underfunded at $250,000.
The governor’s budget would increase reimbursements for the transportation of homeless students under the federal McKinney-Vento Act from $14.4 million this year to $22.9 million in fiscal 2023.
PILOT
The governor’s budget would level-fund payments-in-lieu-of-taxes at $35 million, which, the MMA will point out, would create a significant hardship for many smaller, rural communities with large amounts of state-owned land. This is a key account due to the major impact that PILOT payments have on budgets in very small communities, and level-funding this account would fall short of the Legislature’s goal of phasing in full funding by fiscal 2024.
Budget process
The MMA will urge legislators to announce an agreement as soon as possible on the two main local aid accounts — UGGA and Chapter 70 — which would be tremendously helpful to the municipal budget planning process.
The Joint Ways and Means Committee will conclude budget hearings in mid-March. The House is expected to debate its budget bill in April, with the Senate deliberating its own bill in May. The Legislature will work to get a final budget bill to the governor by the beginning of the fiscal year on July 1.