Patrick unveils $26.7 billion budget plan

Steve LeBlanc

MELROSE — Gov. Deval Patrick unveiled highlights of his first state budget Tuesday, balancing increases in local aid and expanded kindergarten classes and community policing in part with cuts to Medicaid and other state programs.

The proposed $26.7 billion spending plan represents a 4 percent increase over the $25.6 percent budget approved last year. Patrick discussed the budget at an evening forum at Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall in Melrose.

The full budget — with more details on the level of cuts to specific programs — was released Wednesday. Patrick’s budget will serve as a blue print for House and Senate leaders as they draft their own spending plans.

“Whether in Melrose or anywhere else in the Commonwealth, we need to face the facts that the same old thing is not enough to move us forward,” Patrick said.

One of the biggest challenges facing Patrick was how to close what he is predicting will be a $1.3 billion-plus budget gap while still trying to make good on a number of key campaign pledges, from reining in property taxes to hiring more police.

Patrick’s plan addresses the spending gap in a number of ways, including making $515 million in spending cuts, closing $295 million in what Patrick has described as “unintended corporate tax loopholes” and using $225 million from the state’s rainy day fund and tobacco fund.

The proposal also makes $179 million in cuts to Medicaid and another $136 million in cuts to other state programs.

“Overall, it’s a good faith effort to deal with a large and difficult problem,” Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation President Michael Widmer said.

Advocates for those who receive services from the state said they were bracing for possible cuts.

“We would hope that the budget would preserve core services at a minimum of a cost of living adjustment to allow the same quality of services last year to be provided this year,” said Michael Weekes of the Massachusetts Council of Human Service Providers.

The plan makes a down payment on one on Patrick’s key campaign pledges to hire 1,000 new police officers. The budget boosts the community policing program by about $13 million to hire 250 officers.

It also includes more than a 5 percent increase — or about $200 million — in local aid to cities and towns.

Under one budget proposal set to begin next January, an estimated 100,000 families and individuals would be eligible for a state tax credit of up to $860 a year to help offset property tax increases.

The plan would allow married couples jointly earning up to $70,000 to receive the tax credit if the assessed value of their homes is under $684,000. The credit would cover the amount by which a household’s property tax payment exceeds 10 percent of their income.

When fully in place, the program could cost the state about $75 million.

Patrick said tying the tax credit to a homeowner’s salary and the value of their property was a way to make good in part on his promise to ease pressure on property taxes.

Education initiatives in Patrick’s budget include an extra $13 million to help 800 of the states’ 1,500 half-day kindergarten classrooms expand to full-day and a doubling of the amount spent on extended day programs in schools.

Patrick’s budget also would increase public health spending by 15 percent.

Every Massachusetts girl between the ages of 9 and 18 would be eligible to receive a free vaccine against the virus that causes cervical cancer under the plan. The vaccination against the human papillomavirus (HPV) is part of a $72 million boost to public health initiatives in the budget, including extra spending on cancer prevention, anti-smoking, teen pregnancy and suicide prevention initiatives.

Patrick wants to help cities and towns boost revenues in part by letting them impose new local taxes on meals and hotel rooms. One quarter of any new tax revenues from meals and hotel rooms would go to a special state fund designed to lower property taxes for seniors.

Legislative leaders have made clear they oppose allowing the meals tax bill to pass.

That municipal aid package also would let the state take over underperforming pension funds and close what Patrick described as a $78 million loophole that exempts telecommunications companies from paying property taxes on telephone poles and wires.

(Associated Press)