“As the state’s fiscal situation worsens, difficult choices must be made to ensure that the Fiscal Year 2024 budget is balanced. In weighing the financial options available to maintain this balance, the state needs to set clear spending priorities to protect essential programs that benefit the residents of Massachusetts and ensure that taxpayer dollars are being managed responsibly. Unfortunately, some of the mid-year spending cuts announced by the Healey Administration today fall short of these goals. The state is hemorrhaging money while the price tag for addressing the migrant shelter crisis continues to climb at an unsustainable pace with no accompanying efforts to reform the system. This is exactly what Republicans predicted would happen when we debated the Fiscal Year 2023 closeout budget in December. The one reform we were able to secure in the emergency shelter program was a reporting requirement from the Administration, but no financial controls to slow this rate of spending which is now crowding out other priorities. As we sift through the fine print of the Administration’s budget balancing proposal it is clear we must do better in meeting the daunting fiscal challenges that lie ahead, and that requires a serious rethinking of our priorities moving forward.”
