FY21 Interim Budget:
Last Friday, June 19th, Governor Baker filed H.4806, a 1/12 budget for FY21. The bill was passed by the House and Senate and on June 25th was sent to the Governor for his signature. This bill does three things:
- Section 1 of the bill appropriates $5.25 billion to maintain all necessary services through July 31, 2020.
- Section 2 of the bill allows the advancement of local aid payments to any city, town, regional school district, or independent agricultural and technical school that demonstrates an emergency cash shortfall.
- Section 3 of the bill extends capital accounts that would otherwise expire.
This will keep the state government open through July and give the legislature additional time to release its spending plan for FY21. It is still likely that when a spending plan is released by the House, it will only cover part of the fiscal year and could be pre-conferenced by the House, Senate, and Administration. Note, for those of you trying to figure out FY21 appropriations for the One-Stop, Manufacturing, YouthWorks, Connecting Activities, etc. line items, this document does not provide that level of information. In addition, as of now, the local aid money included in this legislation does not include the extra money that districts were expecting under the Student Opportunity Act passed last year.
FY20 Supplemental Budget:
On June 24th, the House passed its version of Governor Baker’s COVID-19 Supplemental Budget bill H.4802. Governor Baker had filed this supplemental budget bill on May 12th.
Majority of the funding in the bill applies to COVID-19 related costs including at least $350 million to the purchase of personal protective equipment, $139 million for rate add-ons to congregate care and other human service providers, $111.4 million in supplemental payments to hospitals and health care providers, $44 million on the state’s contact tracing program, $36 million on emergency child care, and $45.6 million on early education grants. It also directs $100 million in spending authorizations through the end of fiscal year 2021 to cover monitoring, treatment, containment and prevention of COVID. Much of the COVID related costs the state expects to be reimbursed by the federal government. This legislation also directs additional funding to support affordable and public housing, emergency rental assistance, emergency shelter, and homelessness prevention, including:
- $13.5 million for local housing authorities (7004-9005)
- $2.5 million for family and individual shelters (7004-0101 & 7004-0102)
- $85 million for field hospitals and shelters
- $8 million for family and individual shelters (7004-0101 & 7004-0102)
- $20 million for Residential Assistance for Families in Transition (RAFT) (7004-9316) to support a COVID-19 RAFT Response (CRR) program.
- $1.5 million for Housing Consumer Education Centers (7004-3036)
- $5.8 million for Permanent Supportive Housing (7004-0104)
- $1 million for Unaccompanied Homeless Youth (4000-0007)
Finally, this legislation would mark June 19th as Juneteenth Independence Day, an official state holiday. The bill now moves to the Senate for consideration.