Mass. Senate budget plan makes community college free, cuts regional transit authority bus fares

BOSTON — Senate leaders unveiled a $57.9 billion budget plan for the coming fiscal year that would eliminate tuition and fees at community colleges and fares at all of the state’s regional transit authorities.

The proposal builds on earlier efforts to make community college free for nursing students and students over 25 by making it free permanently for all students. The cost is expected to total $117.5 million.

At the same time, the Senate budget proposal provides $214 million in total funding for the state’s 15 regional transit authorities, which provide bus service outside the MBTA service area in the eastern part of the state. The Senate’s RTA proposal is $30 million higher than the House’s proposal.

The Senate RTA funding includes $40 million that would allow the transit agencies to provide year-round, fare-free access to the bus services they provide. Several of the RTAs have already abandoned collecting fares, and the Senate plan would reimburse them for giving up that lost revenue and allow those that haven’t eliminated fares yet to do so.

Sen. Michael Rodrigues of Westport, the chair of the Senate’s budget-writing Ways and Means Committee, said the budget plan also provides $10 million to launch bus routes connecting regional transit authorities. For example, he said, a bus route could run up and down Route 24 connecting three different RTAs servicing regions between Brockton and Fall River.

Rodrigues said Senate support for eliminating fares at the RTAs does not mean the chamber also backs eliminating fares at the MBTA. He said eliminating fares at RTAs makes sense because most of the riders fall in the low-income category. By contrast, he said, MBTA riders tend to stretch across many income categories. He said the Senate budget plan, like the budget approved by the House, provides financial support for a half-off fare for low-income riders of the MBTA.

The Senate spending plan provides a total of $361.5 million to the MBTA, which is several hundred million dollars below what the House proposed in its budget.

In his remarks to reporters, Rodrigues said he is interested in providing more regional equity on transportation. At one point he described the T’s gap between spending and funding as “insatiable.” Asked for clarification he said: “The gap is vast. It’s a big gap.”

The Senate budget plan, combined with funding from an earlier mid-year spending plan, provides $500 million for the state’s emergency shelter system in the coming fiscal year. That’s well below the more than $900 million Gov. Maura Healey says is needed to operate the system next year.

“It’s enough to get us into the next calendar year,” Rodrigues said of the Senate’s approach. He said the goal is to pressure the Healey administration to keep working to make the program more efficient and reduce its cost.

“We want to keep pressure on the administration to make programmatic changes to make it more efficient and affordable,” he said. “If we just throw all the money they want at it, there’s no incentive. We’re saying make it work and if you can’t make it work then come back to us and tell us why you can’t make it work.”

The Senate budget doesn’t endorse any of the local option taxes on restaurant meals, hotel stays, and cars pushed by Healey and doesn’t embrace an online lottery, which the House supported in its budget proposal. Rodrigues said the state treasurer, who oversees the lottery, testified that it would take 14 months to get an online lottery up and running, so it wouldn’t yield any funds for this budget even if it was authorized.

“And we’ve heard a lot of concerns from brick and mortar retailers, convenience stores, and package stores that rely on the Lottery for their business that it would hurt their business,” the senator said.

Rodrigues said the Senate budget proposal would change the law so lottery players could pay for their tickets with debit cards as opposed to just cash, a move Rodrigues said would boost sales by $25 million.

This article first appeared on CommonWealth Beacon and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.