Healey-Driscoll Budget Update
March 2, 2023
Dear MCV Members,
The Healey-Driscoll Administration unveiled its FY24 proposed budget yesterday. This is great news for our parks and all of us who rely on them for our physical and mental well-being. We thank the Administration for supporting our forests, parks, beaches, trails and other Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) facilities and encourage you to do the same.
As you know, Mass Conservation Voters’ (MCV) 2021 comments to the Legislative Special Commission on DCR stated the agency needed at least a $10 million per year increase in its State Parks and Recreation operations account (2810-0100) each year for the next decade. With your help, we succeeded in getting a $10 million increase in the account for the FY23 operations budget, funded at $85 million. Our October 2023 state park summit open letter, sent to the Administration and the Legislature, repeated that request for FY24.
We are happy to report that the Administration’s proposed FY24 budget for that account is $107.6 million. Also of note, fee-based anticipated but not guaranteed “retained revenue,” eliminated in FY23 in favor of general revenue tax dollars, is again off of the table for FY24.
There is another important side effect of this proposed budget. Candidates to become the next DCR commissioner, now under review, know the Healey-Driscoll Administration is serious about building on the last two years of success in reversing more than a decade of neglect our parks suffered. This should go a long way toward stopping the revolving door on that position, which saw six commissioners over the past eight years.
In their budget letter to the Legislature, Gov. Healey and Lt. Gov. Driscoll wrote: “This budget also invests an unprecedented level of resources into achieving our administration’s bold energy and environmental goals, for the first time ever dedicating 1 percent of the overall state budget to the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs. This will expand the state’s ability to safeguard public health through environmental stewardship, climate adaptation and mitigation, and clean energy expansion, while making sure these efforts are realized equitably across all communities.”
We applaud the Healey-Driscoll Administration for fulfilling its promise to bring total state environmental spending to one percent of the total state budget and doing so with its first budget. This is not the first administration to commit to that goal, but it is the first one to actually propose it in real dollars.
MCV and our allies have already begun to ask the Legislature to follow suit when lawmakers take up the budget in the coming months. Please ask your state legislators to support the H.1 (House 1 is the budget bill number) line item for the Parks and Recreation operations account (2810-0100) – find your legislators here.
We convened the state parks summit last October partly because legislators asked us if we could speak with one voice. You helped us do that and together, our voices came through loud and clear. Let us continue our worthy effort to see well-funded, accessible DCR parks, forests, beaches, trails and other facilities. Together, along with our allies in the Legislature, we have begun to reverse the trend that saw Massachusetts, first in so many things, fall to the worst state in the nation (pg.51) in per capita funding for public open space.
As always, thank you so much for your past, present, and future efforts. We look forward to working with all of you to keep state government’s focus on our essential parks front and center. Never forget, the park you save may be your own.
Yours in conservation,
Doug Pizzi
Doug Pizzi is the Executive Director of MCV