Minimum Payment Warning

Minimum Payment Warning, DCR Capital Spending

By Chuck Anastas | March 2022

The table below shows what the Commonwealth’s Minimum Payment Warning might look like if the Department of Conservation and Recreation’s (DCR) $1.0 billion deferred maintenance backlog was a credit card balance.

DCR’s Chief of Planning and Engineering Patrice Kish reported at last month’s Stewardship Council meeting that DCR has devoted $85 million to capital projects in FY2022. Using the $85 million as the minimum payment and adding a conservative five percent for inflation and yearly additions of existing maintenance projects coming online, we will pay an additional $564 Million – assuming that no new projects are planned or constructed for the next 18.4 years. That is also not accounting for the interest paid, admittedly at a favorable rate, but on a large sum, on the bonds the state will sell to finance these capital projects.

That brings us to the year 2040. Chances are I will be dead, but I wonder what our parks will look like then. Surely, we will not have the 21st-century parks we will need and deserve. We will not be ready for the changes in climate that are already here with more coming. We will not have improved our parks in Gateway Cities and related environmental justice neighborhoods (an imperative in this new age of pandemics) or improved the economic activity that parks could bring in many of our rural areas. We will not have completed a network of bike and pedestrian trails connecting our state parks, and doubtless much more will remain undone. So, if you have dreams for what our park system should look like and Massachusetts avoids a robust capital expenditure program in favor of doing the minimum, you can postpone those dreams for a couple of decades.

In late 2021 the Massachusetts Legislature cut Governor Baker’s proposed American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) $100 million, a down payment on the DCR deferred maintenance, to $15 million. A move that would make any credit card company smile but made thousands of us realize that our state’s 500,000 acres of public lands had fallen to the bottom of the barrel in importance to our state legislators.

Meanwhile, the Governor’s administration is formulating the FY2023 capital plan for DCR. It will be interesting to see if the Administration and the Legislature propose to continue paying the minimum payment, or if they change direction now that we taxpayers have billions in federal assistance coming our way, and state tax revenue that is 22 percent higher than initial pandemic induced estimates.

But there’s more.

The Commonwealth anticipates up to $13 billion in its share from the federal infrastructure legislation.

And the state continues to run a multi-billion-dollar tax revenue surplus.

MCV has proposed a plan that pays off the DCR $1.0 billion deferred maintenance backlog and builds a 21st-century park system in a decade. Here is what it will take to start in the next fiscal year, FY2023, which begins July 1:

• The Legislature must reverse its $85 million cut to the Governor’s proposed $100 million ARPA appropriation for DCR.
• The Governor must double the capital allotment to DCR in FY2023 to $170 million.
• The Legislature must go further than the Governor’s half-step proposal to eliminate the Retained Revenue account (2810-2042). To do so, according to the DCR Special Commission, it must eliminate budget language that continues it so that DCR operating expenses come from general revenue tax dollars, not user fees and other income.**
• The Legislature must increase the Governor’s DCR FY2023 Parks and Recreation Operations budget (2810-0100) by $10 million to $83.5 million, so DCR can hire more project planners and engineers to work on the deferred maintenance backlog.

There is an estimated $16 billion in federal aid and budget surplus to get this done. It is our job – all of us who care about our free and shared natural resources – to insist that the Governor and Legislature make this right.

Remember, the park you save may be your own.

Chuck Anastas is the Chair of the Board of Directors for Massachusetts Conservation Voters

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**The budget language that needs to be removed from the Conservation and Recreation Administration account # (2800-0100) for the Governor to eliminate Retained Revenue:
“…provided, that notwithstanding section 3B of Chapter 7 of the General Laws, the department shall establish or renegotiate fees, licenses, permits, rents and leases and adjust or develop other revenue sources to fund the maintenance, operation and administration of the department.”