BOSTON — Entering her second year in office, Gov. Maura Healey is planning to focus on tightening the state’s fiscal belt while boosting housing stock, tackling a migrant crisis and improving the state’s affordability.
Healey, a first-term Democrat, says she expects resistance to cuts she proposed as part of a preliminary budget for next fiscal year.
“We put forward a budget that is responsible, and balanced, but also makes the kinds of investments we need to make,” she said in a wide-ranging interview with the North of Boston Media Group in her Statehouse office. “Obviously, we can only spend what we have, and the revenue picture has changed some from last year.”
A preliminary $56.1 billion budget Healey filed last month calls for increased aid to cities and towns and schools but also includes about $450 million in cost-cutting and a proposed cap to keep state spending under the rate of inflation.
The spending plan doesn’t call for tax increases to drum up additional revenue, and wouldn’t tap into the state’s more than $8 billion “rainy day” savings account.
Healey said the state needs to adjust to diminishing federal assistance to boost the state’s finances with COVID-19 pandemic aid drying up. That’s coupled with slowing state revenue growth that prompted her to make nearly $1 billion in unilateral cuts last month ahead of her filing her proposed spending package.
“For a few years the state was used to receiving a lot of money, but that has gone away,” she said. “So belt tightening is the responsible thing to do.”
The governor said she plans to make boosting housing stock a priority in her second year in office and is urging lawmakers to approve her $4.1 billion affordable housing plan, which includes a broad range of tax breaks, changes to state laws and other efforts to spur new construction.
“Housing is the No. 1 challenge facing the state,” she said. “People are heading to other states simply because they can’t afford housing. That’s not right. We have to fix it.”
Healey says she also plans to focus on upgrades to the beleaguered MBTA, which is under intense scrutiny over safety issues, including train collisions, fires and derailings, that led to a federal review and orders to correct the problems.
The T is facing financial challenges with an estimated $139 million budget deficit in the next fiscal year. A recent report said it would cost a jaw-dropping $24.5 billion to bring all of its trains, tracks, equipment and other assets into a “good state of repair.”
Healey acknowledges that fixing the T won’t happen overnight, but points to new leadership at the agency, a hiring blitz and new investments that will help fix safety issues and improve the service and reliability of the regional transit system.
“It’s going to take time,” she said. “But we’re going to stay at it because we have to get to a place where there is a safe, reliable public transit system. It’s important not only to quality of life, but it’s also an economic imperative for our state.”
In her budget plan, Healey proposes $127 million more in state operating assistance to the MBTA and wants to tap into money from the millionaires’ surtax to backstop $1.1 billion in new transportation-related borrowing capacity to fund track repairs and eliminate slow zones on the subway system.
“Because for too long, the T was understaffed, poorly managed, and underfunded,” she said. “So it’s no wonder why we have some of the problems he have today.”
Healey also expects to have to devote money and resources this year to dealing with an ongoing influx of thousands of asylum seekers who are arriving in the state amid a historic surge of immigration along the U.S.-Mexico border.
More than 650 families are currently on a waiting list hoping to get into the state’s emergency family shelter program. Healey last year capped the number of people in the shelter program at 7,500 and the list continues to grow as more families arrive in the state.
So far, the state has opened four large-scale overflow sites for families, including one that opened this week at the at the Cass Recreational Complex, in Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood. There are also smaller emergency shelter sites in hotels and motels in about 90 communities, including Salem, Methuen and Andover.
“It’s a hard issue,” she said. “This is not something that Massachusetts created. It’s not our fault, but we have to deal with it.”
Healey said she plans to continue lobbying Congress and the Biden administration for more federal funding and resources to help cover the state’s costs for caring for migrants, which are expected to grow to $1 billion this year. She is also pressing for expedited federal work authorization for migrants who qualify.
“We shouldn’t be covering the bill,” she said. “So we’ve got to focus on getting people to work and out of shelters while continuing to demand relief from Congress.”
Despite criticism that the state’s right-to-shelter law has drawn migrants to Massachusetts, Healey notes that other states that don’t have similar policies on the books are also seeing an influx of migrants in even greater numbers.
Healey touted what she views as her major accomplishments over the past year, including the passage of a historic tax relief plan, implementing free breakfast and lunch in public schools, expanding state funding for child care, hiring the state’s first climate change czar and free community college for thousands of older students.
“I stood and made a bunch of promises a year ago, and we’ve delivered on every one of them,” she said. “I’m proud of what we’ve done. But obviously we’ve got a lot more to do.”
Christian M. Wade covers the Massachusetts Statehouse for North of Boston Media Group’s newspapers and websites. Email him at cwade@cnhinews.com