The majority-Democrat state House is expected to vote this week on a $2.25 billion, year-end budget that channels more money to MassHealth and provides a key injection of taxpayer cash when soccer’s World Cup comes to Foxborough next year.
The so-called “supplemental” budget that’s set to come before the House is a little less than the $2.45 billion spending plan that Democratic Gov. Maura Healey originally filed in August.
The spending blueprint “aims to fortify the Commonwealth’s finances, bolster economic development, and ensure continued access to critical health care services,” House Ways and Means Committee Chairperson Aaron Michlewitz, D-3rd Suffolk, and House Speaker Ron Mariano, D-3rd Norfolk, said in a joint statement.
The largest portion of the budget, $1.67 billion, is allocated for MassHealth, the state’s Medicaid program. Healey had sought $2.05 billion in the bill she submitted to lawmakers.
Up to 350,000 people statewide are at risk of losing their Medicaid coverage over the next decade under the domestic policy mega-bill that President Donald Trump signed into law last summer.
The spending plan will defend “vulnerable residents” from the “unrelenting attacks” from the Republican White House, Michlewitz and Mariano said in their joint statement.
The year-end blueprint will help those residents “prepare for, and avoid, a lapse in coverage, and ensure continued access to vaccines for every child in Massachusetts,” the two Democratic leaders said.
Massachusetts will play host to seven World Cup matches in Foxborough next year. The $10 million set aside in the supplemental budget for “support costs” related to those matches.
The budget also sets aside $15 million for a new competitive grant program, administered by the state’s tourism office to underwrite, among other things, “event services, sports development, sports marketing, or construction, functioning and operation of an event.”
The budget notably withholds most of a $162 million funding request from the state’s sheriffs amid “serious questions and concerns” about their “financial and operational integrity,” Michlewitz and Mariano said.
The two Democratic leaders have asked the state’s Inspector General’s Office to conduct an investigation and to report back by February, according to The Boston Globe.
The action comes after the August indictment and arrest of Suffolk County Sheriff Steven W. Tompkins, 67, who has been accused of extorting a cannabis company executive, MassLive previously reported.
“We will continue to explore further steps to ensure appropriate oversight, achieve cost containment, and keep sheriffs’ offices on a more sustainable fiscal path in the months and years ahead.