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Workforce Training Funds Moved Forward in Mini-Budget

By Jim O’Sullivan and Kyle Cheney
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE

STATE HOUSE, BOSTON, OCT. 20, 2009……The Legislature sent Gov. Deval Patrick a $71.7 million spending bill late Tuesday that included $60 million to cover Medicaid overruns from last fiscal year and over $5 million to pay the state’s share of the election to fill the late Sen. Edward Kennedy’s seat.

Debate over the bill, intended to pay any remaining bills from last fiscal year, focused in the Senate on the deep budget challenges still facing lawmakers as tax revenue continues to come up too short to cover approved spending and officials eye an even bleaker fiscal year 2011.

The minibudget did not include expected $200 million withdrawal from the state’s stabilization account, a fiscal win for the state in a season that has been littered with news off service cuts and layoffs. Instead of drawing down from that fund, a practice looked on dubiously by budget hawks and bond ratings agencies, legislators found roughly $170 million unspent in the fiscal year that ended last July, another $40 million allocated for subsidized health insurance, and a $25 million trust fund transfer that was canceled.

Lawmakers also left out of the package changes to contracts for transportation union workers whose job descriptions are set to change Nov. 1 as a result of the transportation system overhaul. Disagreements among the House, Senate, Patrick administration and transportation unions had slowed the minibudget, initially slated for floor votes last week but pulled back when House leaders balked at including the collective bargaining language.

House budget chief Charles Murphy called the dodge of a $200 million pull from the so-called rainy day fund “a positive sign” for the state. The withdrawal would have whittled the fund, which hovered above $2 billion less than two years ago, below $400 million.

Murphy (D-Burlington) said lawmakers would likely have to revisit the special election funding to produce about $10 million for cities and towns to conduct the votes locally.

The minibudget (H 4288) is a rewrite of the $64 million proposal Gov. Deval Patrick filed in July, and comes a week after Patrick reduced the official estimate for state tax receipts by $600 million, a write-down of more than 3 percent.

Senate budget chief Steven Panagiotakos said the ongoing challenge underscores an even starker challenge next fiscal year when the state won’t have hundreds of millions of dollars in federal stimulus aid.

“There is very little margin for error,” he said. “Where are we going to come up with increased revenue? It will only come through job creation ... The most important thing we can do is to get our collective wills and minds together and try to find ways of creating jobs, jobs that will put people back to work so they can afford their mortgages and also so they can pay taxes.”

After the budget committee released the bill just a few hours before debate was scheduled to begin, the House sent the appropriations bill to the Senate on a 116-33 vote shortly before 3:30 p.m.  Eighteen Democrats joined party-line Republicans in opposing the mini-budget. The Senate passed the bill 27-8 shortly after 5 p.m. with three Democrats joining the five Senate Republicans in opposition.

The House rejected on a voice vote Rep. Jennifer Callahan’s proposal to itemize legislative operations budgets, a measure Callahan said would allow for increased budget transparency. The Senate scuttled a slew of amendments offered by Sen. Robert Hedlund (R-Weymouth), including a proposal to raise the fees on legislative vanity plates obtained through the Registrar of Motor Vehicles. Hedlund’s amendments to establish a special commission to recoup excess profits from affordable housing developers and abate gas taxes paid by cities and towns were also quashed on voice votes.

By the time the House took its final vote on the bill, after 6 p.m., the chamber was all but clear of members. GOP members had an evening fundraiser scheduled across the Boston Common, headlined by former Gov. Mitt Romney, to raise money for Republicans running for House seats next year.