Governor Proposing $352M in Budget Cuts

Staff reports
iBerkshires
05:24PM / Thursday, October 29, 2009

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WORCESTER, Mass. — Gov. Deval Patrick on Thursday proposed $352 million in state cutbacks as part of a plan to plug an estimated $600 million shortfall this year.

Some 2,000 state jobs may be eliminated, on top of 1,680 slashed over the past two years as state leaders struggled with a more than $8 billion budget gap over the past two years. He's also asking to eliminate as paid holidays Evacuation and Bunker Hill days that are exclusive to state workers in Suffolk County.

Patrick, speaking before business leaders in Worcestor, said his adjusted budget preserves funding for education, local aid, mental health, health care, shelters and correctional facilities.

"We should be just as concerned about our commitment to our values as we are about the value of our commitments. Those values — creating good jobs at good wages, offering a world-class education to our kids, delivering quality, affordable health care to our residents, protecting and supporting the most vulnerable — those are the values to which we as a commonwealth are committed," said the governor in a statement. "So as I meet my statutory responsibility to bring the budget in line, I do so according to my moral responsibility to those values."

Massachusetts has experienced a dramatic decline in revenues over the past year, leading to a cumulative budget gap of more than $8 billion over fiscal years 2009 and 2010. Economists are predicting another $600 million gap this fiscal year based on decreased revenues.

Using his statutory authority, Patrick will make $277 million in cuts across executive granch agencies. Additionally, he is seeking expanded 9C authority to make $75 million in cuts to non-executive branch agencies including the Legislature, constitutional officers, the Judiciary, sheriffs and district attorneys. He asked the Legislature on Wednesday to act swiftly to grant him this authority in order to achieve immediate savings and ensure shared responsibility throughout all of state government.

"We'll have to take the governor's recommendation at face value and see what the best information before us is," said state Sen. Benjamin B. Downing, D-Pittsfield, on Wednesday afternoon. "We'll take the governor's request for 9C authority and we'll listen to our constituents and see what their concerns are."

The senator, who sits on both the Joint Committee on Revenue and Senate Ways and Means, said he hoped the administration had targeted cuts, keeping in mind the funding discrepancies across the region. State agencies such as the Departments of Mental Health and of Developmental Services in Berkshire County and Western Mass. had been particularly hard hit in the last round of cuts.

According to the governor's plan, the October cuts include $10 million from the Department of Mental Health, more than $7 million of that from services to adults, the homeless and emergency supports. Where exactly those cuts are being made isn't delineated.

More than $111 million is being sliced from the Education Department and $21 million from the Department of Public Safety.
 
Patrick also vetoed $24.5 million included in a final fiscal 2009 supplemental budget and has directed agencies to prepare plans for additional personnel reductions toward another $35 million in savings. He's asked the state public employee unions to agree to contract revisions to reduce the number of layoffs required. Without union compromises, Patrick said he will direct agencies to begin implementing their layoff plans once approved.

The plan also includes the use of American Recovery and Reinvestment Funds, sales of state land, a tax amnesty program and other efficiencies.
 
A full list of reductions can be viewed at www.mass.gov/bb/gaa/fy2010/. The governor’s full proposal can be viewed at www.mass.gov/anf.

After two years of revising budgets downward, Downing said the Legislature needs to get to a baseline budget for the next fiscal year that will allow it to realistically project revenues for the next few years.

"It's not as simple as saying government should run like a business because there is no business in an economic climate like this where more people are coming to you for more services in their darkest hour," he said. "We have to be cognizant of that as we move forward."