Republicans thought Gov. Maura Healey’s annual address “presented a rosy picture” that “fell short of reality;” while top Democrats in the Massachusetts Legislature said they were glad she highlighted past successes, but didn’t jump on board with every one of her outlined future priorities.
“Tonight, the governor presented a rosy picture of our commonwealth, declaring unequivocally that the state of the commonwealth is strong. However, her narrative fell short of reality, obscuring critical challenges and ignoring pressing issues. Massachusetts faces a crisis of affordability, with an unsustainable cost of living driving a mass exodus of residents,” said GOP Rep. Marcus Vaughn of Wrentham, offering a rebuttal speech to the annual State of the Commonwealth address Healey gave from the House floor on Thursday night.
Healey’s 57-minute speech highlighted work from her first two years in office, including the tax cut package from 2023, eliminating slow zones on the MBTA’s subways, new housing and climate laws. She touched only briefly on a crisis that has defined much of her tenure as governor: shelters overflowing with homeless families, many of them new immigrants to the U.S.
The word “shelter” only came up once in Healey’s speech, during a brief section when she mentioned — but did not detail — new regulations she proposed earlier this week to significantly restrict access to shelter by placing residency requirements on the state-funded emergency housing, alongside other new restrictions.
Though it wasn’t a prominent theme in her speech, Vaughn spent a significant amount of his 11-minute speech discussing the shelter and migrant crises, and state spending for them — which he said had topped $2.5 billion.
“In the last three years, over $2.5 billion has been poured into this unsustainable system, and that’s just the amount what they’re telling us. These funds could have provided every town and city in Massachusetts with $7 million in local aid. Instead, residents are struggling; municipalities are forced to watch their tax dollars squandered on a problem the Democratic supermajority refuses to solve. Taxpayer money should be invested in strengthening our communities, not squandered to sustain a crisis,” Vaughn said.
Healey said in her speech that her administration is “dramatically reducing costs” and that they “have, and will, prioritize Massachusetts families.”
Talking to reporters after the speech, House Speaker Ron Mariano and House Ways and Means Chairman Aaron Michlewitz suggested that they may not be on board with the full $425 million for shelters that Healey recently proposed in a supplemental budget currently before the Ways and Means Committee.
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A reporter asked Mariano about Republican criticism that Democrats have a spending problem, and if it was fair.
“Well, spending problems in regards to, you know, we have unaccountable migrant folks, and — how much?” the speaker responded, trailing off and turning to Michlewitz, whose committee is currently working on the supplemental budget.
Michlewitz said, “It depends on how much we do with it.”
“Yes, how much we do of the $400 million we’ve got waiting to be spent,” Mariano said. “So in that sense, we had a lot of unanticipated expenses. Expenses we did not incur on our own. They were handed to us by a lack of federal government action, so that we have to deal.”
Later Michlewitz said the House needed to “get to the bottom” of some questions about the shelter system before moving any money forward, “and exactly what amount that will be, we don’t know yet.”
Existing funding for the system is expected to run out at some point this month.
Asked about Healey’s proposed changes to the family shelter system, Senate President Karen Spilka seemed to have concerns about families ending up on the streets.
“I think it’s important that we remain fiscally responsible, and yet balance our moral obligation to make sure that our families — particularly with children, young children, aren’t out in the cold. I’ve said it before: we’re a New England state. Look at how cold it’s been. I couldn’t imagine a family sleeping out on a park bench on the last few weeks.”
Mariano seemed more willing to go along with Healey’s proposals.
“We’ll evaluate all the things that she wants to put in, a lot of things that I agree with,” he said. “If you remember the history of this whole thing … we were the ones who said, you may have to cut back the time to stay here.”
The Quincy Democrat added, “So we’ve had questions about the survivability of this thing from the very, very beginning.”
Healey also said in her speech that “anybody who does violent acts should be held accountable and deported” — a slight deviation from her prepared remarks, which said, “They should deport violent criminals.”
Her administration has come under fire in recent weeks after an undocumented immigrant was found in state-run housing in Revere with an assault rifle and 10 pounds of fentanyl, and she admitted her administration had not been running criminal background checks on all applicants.
Asked about the comment in her speech about deporting violent criminals, Mariano replied: “I didn’t hear that.”
Reporters and Michlewitz described the comment Healey had made. He replied, “I must have been asleep.”
Asked about the same comment from the governor, Spilka said, “I think to some extent, that has happened for those that have had proven criminal behavior. I’m not certain how much that changes what has been happening.”
Another major theme in Healey’s speech was transportation funding, which she plans to propose significant increases to in her fiscal year 2026 budget. She’s planning to support a lot of that increased funding with money from the 4% surtax on high earners.
That money, according to the voter-approved constitutional amendment that created the surtax, must be used for education or transportation initiatives. For the last two years, it’s been split more heavily towards education spending.
Several senators called Spilka the “education president” during opening day of the session earlier this month, and Spilka has made it clear that continuing to expand education programs is a priority for her.
Asked if she agrees with Healey around splitting the surtax this year more heavily towards transportation, Spilka didn’t directly reply but reiterated her emphasis towards education initiatives.
“It’s all a matter of balancing the fair share amendment. The surtax expressly says for the funding, the money that comes from it to go to both education and transportation,” she said. “I came to the Legislature to work towards fair funding for K-12, and education is so important to our affordability, our competitiveness and our equity in our state. Transportation is also important, and we need to look at both the T and all the RTAs across the state and roads, bridges and all aspects of our infrastructure and balance that.”
Spilka and Healey have both called for a focus on primary care this legislative session, singling it out as an upcoming priority.
Asked if he shared that priority, Mariano turned to Michlewitz and laughed.
“Primary care is an interesting challenge,” he said. “I’ve been doing health care since 2006. We’ve had a couple of initiatives to create additional primary care. We’ve put incentives to medical schools, tuition rate for primary care. It’s very difficult to get doctors to enter into a primary care practice … So I’ll listen to what they have to say, but I know there are certain barriers that are hard to get over if you want to create primary care.”
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