At the end of this week, an informational hearing focused on the 2030 census will be hosted by the Massachusetts Senate Committee on the census. Researchers at the UMass Donahue Institute say the census has far reaching effects beyond political representation. Sen. Paul Mark, D-Pittsfield, whose district spans all four counties of western Mass. , is on that committee. He has voiced concerns about potential under-counts in Western Mass. Stressing the need for proper counting to ensure fair funding and resources. State House News Service reporter Ella Adams explains what some of governmental uses of the 2030 census are.
Ella Adams, SHNS: So census data is used all the time for things like public health, for municipal planning, for state planning, transportation planning, those kinds of things. Obviously, census counts are the underpinning of federal funding formulas and it also accounts for apportionment of congressional seats among the states.
In 2010, Massachusetts lost a seat as a result of the 2010 census.
And I know that last time around the 2020 census, Senator Mark had said that Western Massachusetts had done better than anticipated with regard to responding to the census. But recently, the Secretary of State (who visited Berkshire County specifically) was talking a bit at the county level about how the population has been lost. It's been slowing in recent census data, and he really wants to make sure that those counts are on point and as high as they can possibly be.
Carrie Healy, NEPM: Moving on, the Massachusetts Health Safety Net Fund faces a massive $300 million shortfall, and state leaders are scrambling to find both short and long term solutions as hospitals struggle financially. [This comes as] thousands risk losing Medicaid coverage in the coming weeks. What's the Legislature doing about this?
The House and the Senate have both passed funding for [the Health Safety Net] in their fiscal 2025 closeout budgets.
So with the slight variations between the House and the Senate versions, there has to be one final agreement made between the branches before it gets sent off to the governor.
Yes. When that final budget is sent to the governor, a piece of it would increase the annual hospital assessment in Massachusetts by $50 million as a way to help support the Health Safety Net program.
So, in addition to funding the Massachusetts Health Safety Net Fund, in passing that $2.3 billion closeout budget, [the Senate] restored over $70 million via veto overrides, what other programs did [Senate] lawmakers fight to fund?
So, the combined veto overrides they returned previously agreed upon funding levels to the trial courts to MassHealth, nursing homes, supplemental rates, early intervention services for younger children with developmental delays, career tech institutions, charter school reimbursements, and there were some other ones...
And finally, briefly, Ella, last week, House Speaker Ron Mariano said that he thinks the relationship between the House and Senate is "fine" and acknowledged that he, “can't pass bills by myself and must find common ground” with the Senate to make any law. The speaker does not like taking up sweeping pieces of legislation. Those are often called mega bills. So, in terms of the speed of legislating, is this sort of bite sized bill process working for the House?
I think just to jog our memory, the House and Senate reached their first joint rules agreement since 2019 this year. So that overhauled how joint committees operate our bills, moving out of committee and being pulled more. Some could say yes. Does Mariano think at least that this is more efficient or working better than before? Yes.
But I think it's important to note that the House and Senate have teamed up this session mostly just to pass spending bills, or what we call supplemental budgets to the governor's desk. Each chamber has worked through its own agenda or priorities, and it's often been that the other branch doesn't really express much interest still, or sense of urgency in the other's bills. So that's definitely something to keep an eye on. You know, as much as the speaker of the House says that relations are fine, no one really knows what happens behind closed doors. So that is something also to keep in mind.
