Local aid wins in Patrick's budget
Belt-tightening seen for agencies
Governor Deval Patrick will unveil a budget Tuesday that would boost state aid to cities and towns by more than 5 percent, and increase spending on community policing, while providing virtually no increase for the state's human service agencies.
Patrick, seeking to fulfill campaign promises while grappling with a gaping budget deficit, would send an additional $200 million to communities for education, which would mean at least $50 extra per student, according to administration sources. His budget proposal also calls for:
Spending $13 million to help 800 of the state's 1,500 half-day kindergarten classrooms expand to a full day.
Doubling the amount spent on extended school day programs to $13 million.
Increasing other local aid to communities by $112 million, including a $15 million increase in lottery distributions.
Adding about $10 million in community policing grants to help pay for 250 new officers.
"Even while facing a $1.3 billion deficit, the governor made it clear that he was not going to balance this budget on the backs of our schools and cities and towns," an administration source said.
Much is on the line for the Democrat, who rode a wave of populism to win a landslide victory in November. The more than $26 billion proposal for fiscal year 2008, which begins July 1, will play a major part in defining the start of his tenure as governor. It will also test his leadership skills after a relatively quiet honeymoon period, recently disrupted by controversy about his transportation and furniture expenditures.
The new governor will face a daunting challenge in persuading the legislative leadership, the special interest groups, and the public in general to accept his plans -- some of which already have drawn fire.
As a candidate, Patrick pledged to expand educational opportunities, add 1,000 new police officers, and come to the assistance of cities and towns, which are still struggling to recover from significant aid cuts made four years ago.
But Patrick's decision to increase spending for education and public-safety initiatives while level-funding or reducing other accounts could come at some political cost. Sources familiar with Patrick's budget plan say spending for direct services would be held at levels requiring social service agencies to tighten their belts. Patrick had asked all state agencies last month to submit plans that would cut their spending 5 to 10 percent.
The political coalition that helped Patrick win last fall included the core of the state's health and human services workforce, their union leaders, and advocates for clients of the state programs.
The governor has been warning since December that he would have to scale back some of his lofty campaign promises, including the pledge to add 1,000 new police officers, in light of shrinking revenues and spiraling costs, particularly in healthcare.
He and the legislative leaders agreed last month that revenue growth in the coming fiscal year would be sluggish -- about 3 percent, compared with an estimated 4.4 percent this year and an actual 8.2 percent last fiscal year.
Healthcare and education spending, which make up more than half the budget, are growing at about three times the rate of inflation, Leslie Kirwan, the state's administration and finance secretary, said at a budget briefing for reporters on Friday.
In need of new revenue to balance his budget, Patrick last week proposed closing seven so-called loopholes in the corporate tax structure, changes projected to generate $295 million next year and $500 million in fiscal year 2009.
But whether the Legislature will embrace those proposals remains in question, due to concerns about their impact on economic development and the business community's howls of protest.
To make ends meet, Kirwan said, the administration will hold the budget's total spending increase to about 4 percent -- compared with the 11 percent increase in spending this year -- and cut some areas of state government. She declined to be specific about which departments would face cuts.
Though public schools would fare better than other areas of government under Patrick's plan, some school officials may not get all they were hoping for. The additional $200 million Patrick's budget would give to schools next year exceeds the $175 million increase that the education reform law requires as the minimum aid to districts. But it is far less than the $250 million or so that schools would have received if Patrick had followed the distribution formula used this year. The changes, which the Legislature applied to the current year's budget, were designed to make the school funding law fairer to communities with relatively low income levels and high property values.
"We wish there were more, but we understand we're one of several dozen legitimate interests standing at the governor's door asking for money," said Glenn Koocher, executive director of the Massachusetts Association of School Committees.
Advocates for early learning applauded Patrick's plans for all-day kindergarten, which Patrick had made one of his central education goals.
Mara Aspinall, president of Genzyme Genetics and cochairwoman of the Early Education for All Campaign, called the governor's proposal "outstanding news."
"We can't leave kids' early learning opportunities to chance," she said. "And right now, an individual child's opportunities depend on whether a town offers full-day kindergarten, whether families can afford tuition payments, and the luck of the draw for communities that must limit access to a lottery."
Administration sources said the additional money for extended school days in Patrick's plan would allow the state's pilot program, now operating in 10 schools, to expand to more than a half-dozen new schools.
Christopher F. Gabrieli, who lost to Patrick in the Democratic primary and who devotes much of his time to promoting extended learning programs in Massachusetts and nationally, has been working closely with his formal rival on the issue.
"At this tough moment in state budget history, for the new governor to say, 'This is a top priority, I'm going out of my way to make this happen,' that's huge," Gabrieli said.
As a candidate, Patrick promised to cut local property taxes by helping municipalities gain a firmer financial footing. The extra $312 million in his budget for local communities comes on top of a "municipal partnership act" he proposed 10 days ago, which would, in part, give communities the authority to levy a modest meals or rooms tax.
But, as Patrick has tried to warn local officials for weeks, the local aid increase in his budget will not match the 8 percent increase the Legislature provided this year. And Patrick's effort to help communities raise their own money also appears to be in doubt in the Legislature, where House Speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi immediately declared it tantamount to a tax increase.
"I think communities will be satisfied if they understand how difficult the state's plight is, but certainly not measured against 2007 and their overall expectations," said Michael Widmer, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation.
Geoffrey Beckwith, executive director of the Massachusetts Municipal Association, said yesterday that, given the state's financial predicament, most local officials were not expecting large increases in aid. But without the new local option taxes, he said, this budget could leave communities in the difficult financial straits of recent years.
"The problem is that the fiscal challenges at the local level are so deep, and communities don't have other revenues to go to in general," he said. "We could very well end this fiscal year with a greater reliance on the property tax unless we get the municipal partnership act passed by the Legislature."
Lisa Wangsness can be reached at lwangsness@globe.com. 