Matt Murphy | State House News Service | June 17, 2021
https://www.wbur.org/news/2021/06/17/baker-legislature-billion-federal-relief-battle
In an attempt to end the battle over who gets to spend nearly $5.2 billion in federal relief money, Gov. Charlie Baker on Thursday pitched a plan that would see him cede much of his control over the aid to the Legislature, as long as lawmakers agree quickly to spend more than half on priorities such as home ownership assistance, substance abuse treatment and job training.
Baker visited a new housing development in Haverhill on Thursday where he detailed his proposal to allocate about $2.8 billion in federal relief money, attaching a sense of urgency to a plan that would also allow the Legislature to determine for itself how to spend the remaining funds.
The governor pitched the stimulus spending plan on the same day he faced a deadline to act on a bill passed by the Legislature that would sweep nearly $5.18 billion in American Rescue Plan Act funding into the Coronavirus State Fiscal Recovery Fund.
That fund is subject to appropriation by lawmakers, meaning the APRA relief funding would go through a more traditional budgeting process.
“While we’re willing to agree to move this aid into a separate fund, we need to work together to get part of this funding out the door to start addressing the immediate needs we have in our communities across the commonwealth,” Baker said.
The governor has asserted that he does not need legislative approval to spend the federal relief money, but said Thursday he was willing to meet Democratic leaders half-way. The governor returned the bill (H 3827) with an amendment that would allow the full amount to be transferred to the trust fund, but would also appropriate more than half of it immediately.
If he had vetoed the bill, House and Senate leaders likely would have had the votes to override the governor. But with his spending plan, which gives Democrats a vehicle to begin advancing their own ARPA spending bill, the Republican governor has now given lawmakers something new to think about.
“Folks in these communities are going to have a harder time getting back to work and a harder time getting back on their feet the longer we go thinking about how to spend this money,” Baker said. “And we chose areas that we that we believe the Legislature will be every bit as interested in spending resources on quickly as we are.”
Overall, the governor proposed putting $1 billion toward housing, including $300 million earmarked to help first-time home buyers in communities of color disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The amendment proposes another $200 million to support housing production through the CommonWealth Builder program, $200 million for rental housing production and $300 million for supportive senior and veteran housing.
The spending plan also includes hundreds of millions of dollars for job training, broadband internet infrastructure, addiction treatment and behavioral health, downtown development, tourism and nearly $1 billion for parks, culverts, dams, water and sewer infrastructure and other climate change resiliency projects.
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