BOSTON — House leaders were working to restore $274.7 million in spending to the fiscal 2018 budget on Wednesday as they pursue a series of overrides of Gov. Charlie Baker’s budget vetoes amid uncertainty over whether tax projections will hold up or continue a two-year pattern of weak performance.
House Speaker Robert DeLeo said that the overrides teed up on Wednesday could be just the first of several rounds depending on how tax revenue collections perform in September, which is the first big month of the fiscal year that budget managers are watching for a sign of revenue trends.
“For the most part, the items that you will see today really revolve around issues of statewide significance,” DeLeo said, singling out a restoration of spending on Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), senior care and the Massachusetts Cultural Council as areas that will budget replenished.
New Ways and Means Chairman Jeffrey Sánchez said after a half-hour meeting with Democratic House members that his office had readied 61 line-item vetoes for override votes, accounting for $274.7 million in spending, of which the federal government will reimburse for about $127.7 million.
The bulk of the money, or $220 million, will go back to MassHealth to cover the costs of projected caseloads in the state’s Medicaid program, Sánchez said.
Baker in July signed a $39.4 billion budget for fiscal year 2018, vetoing $320 million from the spending plan approved by the Democrat-controlled House and Senate and warning that the Legislature had underfunded some accounts by a total of $198 million.
Over the first two months of fiscal 2018, total tax collections are up $66 million, or 1.9 percent over the same period last year, and $11 million below the year-to-date benchmark.
When the Legislature approved the budget in July, Rep. James Lyons, an Andover Republican, said the spending plan was predicated on “hopeful” levels of revenue growth, suggesting a 2.9 percent rate of growth is too optimistic since collections over the past year had grown by about 1.4 percent. “These revenue numbers are not going to meet the expectations,” Lyons said.
DeLeo reiterated his belief on Wednesday that the original conference budget submitted to Baker had been balanced and said the restoration of funds planned by leaders was “within our means.”
“We’re taking a close look at revenue figures, but it was never our plan to try to do all overrides within one day. It could be a three-, four-day process,” DeLeo said.
While DeLeo said he was focused on putting money back into the budget for statewide priorities and programs that serve “the most vulnerable,” he indicated there were no shortages of requests from members and outside groups to go even further.
“I must have requests from members and others of about three inches deep,” DeLeo said.
However long it takes the House to work through its votes, the Senate does not plan to meet until at least the end of September with Senate President Stanley Rosenberg currently out of the county in Austria and a high Jewish holiday, Rosh Hashanah, falling in the middle of next week.
DeLeo said the Senate’s schedule should not be a problem.
“I don’t think there’s anything that a two-week delay will cause any immediate problems for anyone,” he said.
House Minority Leader Brad Jones said it would be more prudent to consider overriding vetoes after September revenue receipts have been compiled, the North Reading Republican told the News Service.
“Let’s get through the first quarter. That leaves us all of October,” Jones said.