April 8, 2025 

Chair Michlewitz, Chair Rodrigues, and Members of the Joint Committee on Ways & Means: 

My name is Jonathan Cohn, and I am the Policy Director at Progressive Massachusetts, a statewide grassroots advocacy group fighting for a more equitable, just, sustainable, and democratic commonwealth.

As we contemplate the daunting, anxiety-inducing, catastrophic possibility of steep cuts to the federal budget as Republicans in DC attempt to take an axe to health care, education, infrastructure, and so much more, we need to be prepared in MA to protect our essential services. We need to continue to do what we are doing—and we also need to be doing more. 

To make that possible, I urge you to embrace progressive sources of revenue as well as tap into the rainy day fund as needed. 

First on the rainy day fund. Like many of us, I have had the experience of holding an umbrella while walking in the rain. The rain gets heavier and heavier, but I think, “Oh, it’s not that bad yet” while getting fully soaked. Let’s not be that. When it starts pouring, don’t be afraid to take out an umbrella. 

But beyond that, I want to urge that “the money isn’t there” is a difficult argument to stomach in a state as affluent as Massachusetts. Indeed, our state’s GDP is higher than countries like Sweden or Belgium despite our smaller population. We have great wealth in this state, and that great wealth is why the Fair Share Amendment has been able to deliver so much. 

You have many tools at your disposal to raise necessary funds, such as but not limited to ensuring that billionaire global mega-corporations like Amazon and Apple are paying their fair share and are not able to dodge taxes by offshoring their profits in Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. 

Similarly, as you are going to seek every opportunity to trim our investments, I would urge you to first do the same to the state’s tax corporate tax breaks to evaluate whether or not they deliver upon any goal at all. The sales tax exemption for private jets is but one of many examples. 

It shows a lack of regard for the most vulnerable populations to countenance cuts to mental health case workers and cuts to assistance to needy families, but not countenance cuts to the tax giveaways to large estates and day traders passed two years ago. 

We  know who has the money: the rich and large corporations. What matters is the political will to raise the funds. 

In the FY 2026 budget, we urge you to focus on increasing critical investments that underlie the quality of life in the Commonwealth and make this high quality of life accessible to all: 

• Delivering on Our Promises to Our K-12 Students: The Student Opportunity Act from 2019 was a major win for students across the Commonwealth. However, the combination of high rates of inflation in FY23 and FY24 and a tight inflation cap under the SOA has led to a $465 million gap in district budgets.  As a result, districts across the state are being forced to cut their budgets, lay off educators and staff, and cancel long-needed investments. We must keep our promises to students.

We further urge you to fix charter school tuition reimbursements so that our public schools are not losing critical funding. Tuition dollars follow students, but if a class size falls from 25 to 23, a school cannot hire 23/25 of a teacher. So many of the costs of education are fixed costs, and siphoning off resources harms the 90% of students who attend local district public schools. 

Our students deserve not only well-funded schools, but also green and healthy schools that focus on the whole student. We urge you to increase funding for capital improvements for school buildings so that students can have the safe and healthy environment conducive to learning, and to provide funding for community schools so that districts can embrace this proven model that empowers students, parents, and educators to collaborate and provide vital wraparound services. 

• Building on Recent Child Care & Early Ed Investments: Last session, you made historic investments in early education and child care, moving us closer toward a vision of quality and stability for providers, good pay for educators, and affordability and access for families. We join the Common Start Coalition in calling for continued investments:
  • $200 million to increase access to child care financial assistance (line item 3000-4060 in the FY25 budget): A $100 million increase over FY25 is needed just to maintain existing caseloads, and an additional $100 million would be enough to provide financial assistance vouchers to 6,000 additional children who are currently on the waitlist for CCFA.
  • $45 million to increase operational grants to child care providers to a total of $520 million (line item 3000-1045 in the FY25 budget): An increase in total funding to $520 million is needed to keep up with increased utilization of the C3 program by providers. Increased funding for the C3 program is essential to support the growing number of providers who accept families using child care vouchers.
  • $45 million to raise early education and care financial assistance reimbursement rates (line items 3000-1041 & 3000-1042 in the FY25 budget): This will improve access to child care financial assistance by increasing the number of programs that are willing and able to accept vouchers, allow programs to invest in quality, and raise workforce salaries for subsidized child care providers.
  • $20 million for the Head Start Supplemental Grant (line item 3000-5000 in the FY25 budget): Funding needed to increase salaries in Head Start classrooms and help programs that provide high-quality care to some of the state’s lowest-income, highest-need children, especially in anticipation of potential federal cuts.

• Investing in the Opportunity Engine of Public Higher Ed: Last year, you made community college free, a transformative step that has benefited many residents already. We need to build on that commitment to opportunity by making our four-year public institutions debt-free for all students as well and ensuring that our colleges and universities have the resources needed to give a high-quality education and experience to every student. 

That means ensuring better pay and benefits for adjunct faculty, who often have to juggle high course loads for low pay. That means ensuring that our public higher education employees are paid at or above the national average, especially given the high cost of living in MA.  And that means ensuring that our public colleges and universities have green and healthy buildings and having the Commonwealth assume the capital debt of public higher education institutions and cover the costs of such upgrades. 

• Increasing Funding for Access to Counsel: We join fellow organizations in the Right to Counsel Coalition in urging for an increase to the Access to Counsel pilot (Line Item 0321-1800) from $2.5 million to $5 million and making the program permanent. While upwards of 90% of landlords are represented, recent Trial Court data shows that over the past two years only 4% of tenants had legal representation. We can change this, prevent homelessness, and stabilize peoples’ housing by incrementally building a strong statewide Access to Counsel program.

• Protecting Our Right to Shelter by Investing in Emergency Assistance: We believe in listening to the experts connected to communities on the ground about how best to solve the problems facing the Commonwealth. The Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless are the experts on how to best manage the emergency shelter system in Massachusetts and assume that all families have access to safe housing. We urge you to support their requests, which include:
  • Undoing harmful restrictions to emergency shelter: Removing the length of stay limits, which force families out of shelter before they can access safe housing; eliminating the “dual track” system, which kicks some families out of rapid track shelters in as little as 30 business days; removing the cap on the number of families in EA shelter, currently set at 5,800 families; restoring presumptive eligibility, which gives families temporary access to shelter while they gather documents to prove ongoing eligibility; and strengthening support for families leaving shelter, including by improving housing search, providing ongoing wraparound support, and increasing HomeBASE rehousing resources
  • Increasing funding for RAFT (Line Item 7004-9316): Increase funding for Rental Assistance for Families in Transition RAFT) to $300 million, up from the current FY25 funding level of $204.7 million ($197.4 million in General Appropriations Act funding and $7.3 million in supplemental funding)
  • Increasing HomeBASE (Line Item 7004-1008) Increasing the maximum benefit levels to $50,000 over the first 24 months of the program and up to $25,000 in subsequent years for families needing additional time

Moreover, we urge you to reject harmful proposed cuts in Governor Healey’s budget. 

• Please reject Governor Healey’s proposed elimination of the 10% increase to cash assistance grants that recently took effect. This assistance is for our families with highest need, and it is unconscionable to think that that is where we would be making cuts in the budget. 
• Please reject Governor Healey’s proposed cuts to mental health care and the corresponding layoffs of Department of Mental Health case workers. This is critical care, and it is about people’s lives. 

Thank you for your work on the budget and on this marathon of a hearing. 

Sincerely, 

Jonathan Cohn 

Policy Director 

Progressive Massachusetts