COMMONWEALTH BEACON: Unpacking the governor’s state budget proposal

                                     

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Unpacking the governor’s state budget proposal   February 2, 2026 By COMMONWEALTH BEACON STAFF

The final state budget Gov. Maura Healey will file before she's up for reelection landed last week amid a maelstrom of federal feuding and economic strain.

State tax collections are middling, health care costs are skyrocketing, and money flowing from Washington to help with key programs is set to decrease after, as Healey put it, President Trump "has taken a hatchet to federal funding."

That’s the context for Healey’s $63 billion spending plan, and this week on The Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon senior reporter Chris Lisinski spoke with two budget watchers who have sharply differing perspectives on the challenges it presents. Viviana Abreu-Hernandez, president of the left-leaning Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center, decried the looming federal cuts, while Jim Stergios, executive director of the free-market-oriented Pioneer Institute, argued that Healey left too many cost-control options on the table.

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"We cannot look at this budget without understanding what is happening at the federal level," Abreu-Hernandez said of the changes to SNAP and Medicaid -- the largest single area of state spending -- which she called a huge "detriment" to Massachusetts's fiscal footing.

Stergios zeroed in on what he sees as missed chances for the budget plan to rein in spending. "It doesn't take advantage of the many opportunities that exist to create savings," he said.

The proposed bottom line in Healey's budget is about 3.8 percent higher than the current annual budget. That would be a smaller increase than from fiscal 2025 to fiscal 2026, but it'd also outpace both inflation and the rate by which budget-writers expect tax collections to grow.

Between her annual budget and another bill filed the same day, Healey called for using more than $1.1 billion in revenue from the voter-approved surtax on high earners to support operations and replenish reserves at the MBTA -- enough money, officials say, to close the T's projected budget gap in fiscal 2027 and most of the expected shortfall the following year.

Stergios said that although the T is a "jewel" essential to the region's economy, he thinks it's in desperate need of tighter fiscal management.

"I would be for investing that money in [the MBTA] if we actually, again, managed ourselves," Stergios said. "The T spending is off the rails. We need a Fiscal and Management Control Board back, because it is crazy," he said, referring to the T oversight board put in place after the disastrous winter of 2015. (Lawmakers allowed that panel to expire in 2021 and replaced it with the current MBTA board of directors.)

Healey also wants to use more than half a billion dollars in revenue from the so-called millionaires tax to fund the last round of Student Opportunity Act school aid increases. Stergios contended that, between that and the push to use surtax dollars for MBTA operations, Beacon Hill is "backtracking fully" on the original pitch behind the levy, which suggested it would only fund new investments, not replace existing ones.

Abreu-Hernandez doesn't agree.

"As long as the money is being invested in education resources that are going to improve the system, particularly for the low-income students and low-income school districts, I do not have a philosophical problem with that," she said.

In this episode, Abreu-Hernandez and Stergios discuss the sustainability of proposed state spending growth (1:30), options policymakers can weigh to rein in health care costs in the long term (7:45), and whether surtax revenue is being used as voters intended (20:00).

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More Context Growing health care pressure drives up spending in Healey’s annual budget (January 2026)

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