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Reflecting on the 2023-2024 MA Legislative Session: What Happened?

Written by: Isabella Gambill, Assistant Director of Climate, Energy, & Resilience

August 14, 2024

With the close of formal debate in Massachusetts’ two-year legislative session, many advocates, business leaders, residents, and partner organizations are feeling deep disappointment at the anticlimactic end to one of the most unproductive legislative sessions in recent history. Typically, the Massachusetts state legislature completes its work on July 31^st, when it ends its formal debate period, but legislative leaders do have the ability to extend their legislative session to give additional time to address pending legislation. This year, with the legislature failing to reach consensus on major issues, like Governor Healey’s economic development bill (also known as the Mass Leads Act), the clean energy siting and permitting climate bill, and many other proposals, there is already talk of the legislature returning this fall to reengage on these bills.  If this does happen, then A Better City will continue to advocate for the policies and priorities in our policy agenda.

Despite this uncertainty with the economic development and climate-related bills, we are encouraged that many issues related to A Better City’s areas of focus did become law in the past few weeks, in large part thanks to the FY 25 Budget.  We want to highlight some of these successes below:

FY25 Budget Takeaways

On July 29^th, Governor Healey signed the $57.78 billion state budget for FY25. This budget includes significant investments in education, infrastructure, transportation, and climate initiatives. Similar to the FY24 budget, the FY25 budget again commits about 1% of the overall budget to energy and the environment programs.

Some examples of FY25 budget commitments include (the full press release and summary can be found here):

• Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs (EEA): funded at $555M
  • $20M for the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center (MassCEC) to support wind technology, decarbonized homes, and workforce training programs for the clean energy industry
  • $8.7M for environmental justice initiatives
  • $14M in consolidated net surplus to create a new Disaster Relief and Resiliency Fund
  • $1M for Dam Safety Technical Assistance and community support re: vulnerable dams
  • $2.8M for resilient infrastructure upgrades to small bridges and culverts
• Workforce Development
  • $15.9M for the Youthworks program to facilitate career development for at-risk youth
  • $9.6M for Career Technical Institutes
  • $3.3M for Registered Apprenticeship Program
  • $8.9M for MassHire Career Centers for regional workforce training and employee placement
• Transportation
  • $538.5M for transportation from the Millionaire’s Surtax.
  • $250M transfer to the Commonwealth Transportation Fund, which can leverage over $1B in borrowing for transportation infrastructure investments
  • $20M to initiate a mean-tested fare program at the MBTA
  • $110M for regional transit authorities’ free fares programs
  • $45M in supplemental aid for municipal roads and bridges
  • $35M for the MBTA to address climate adaptation and resiliency needs in their subway system
  • $10M for a new program to assist the MBTA with hiring and recruitment

A Better City is particularly excited to see that the FY25 budget included our proposal to begin a new financing plan with the Millionaire’s Surtax funding. This idea has been an ABC priority for almost two years and it will ultimately help maximize the impact on our transportation system.

What’s Next?

It appears that legislative leaders are willing to return to formal sessions to complete work on the Economic Development Bill (Mass Leads Act) and potentially the Clean Energy Siting and Permitting proposal. A Better City remains cautiously hopeful that this happens, so that Massachusetts is able to make progress on critical renewable energy infrastructure projects that can help meet our statutory commitments for emissions limits in 2025 and 2030.

A Better City will continue to monitor legislative developments and provide updates when needed, but in the interim, please do not hesitate to reach out to Isabella Gambill or Tom Ryan with any legislative questions.