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The House on Tuesday rejected Gov. Charlie Baker’s request to immediately spend $2.8 billion in federal COVID-19 relief money, including $1 billion on housing initiatives, choosing to follow through with the plan of Democratic leaders to sweep most of the $5.3 billion the state received into a separate fund as they consider how to deploy the money.
The action by the House reflects not only a disagreement between the governor and legislature over process, but also about how quickly the federal funds should be spent to assist in the state’s economic recovery.
Baker last Thursday offered a compromise that would have allowed him to immediately spend more than half of the funding the state received through the American Rescue Plan Act, and give the legislature more time to deliberate over how to spend the remaining $2.3 billion.
The Republican governor proposed to put $1 billion into housing production and down payment aid programs, and hundreds of millions of dollars into job training, water and sewer infrastructure and other priorities. The spending was targeted toward helping people and communities hard hit by the coronavirus, including communities of color.
House Speaker Ron Mariano and Senate President Karen Spilka, however, quickly dismissed the governor’s plan, and the House on Tuesday formally voted 130-30 along party lines to sweep $4.89 billion into a COVID-19 relief fund, subject to appropriation by the legislature.
“While the administration has proposed working with the legislature to appropriate all of the funds, the administration also remains concerned about holding up these funds with a process that would take years while the communities that were hit hardest by the pandemic, including communities of color, wait,” Baker spokesman Terry MacCormack said Tuesday in response to the vote.
While Baker did not say whether he would veto the bill should it again reach his desk, it’s likely Democrats in the legislature will have enough votes to override the governor.
“We can all agree a number of those are well-conceived and worthy. We don’t deny that. We just think it’s important all 160 members of this body and 40 in our sister body have a chance to have their voice heard,” said Rep. Dan Hunt, the chair of the House Committee on Federal Stimulus and Census Oversight, about the governor’s priorities.
Hunt said that over the course of several months after the “July holiday” the House planned to have multiple hearings on different subject matters to gather input on how the money should be spent. Mariano and Spilka said the hearings would be led by the Joint Committee on Ways and Means.
The Democratic leaders said they invited the administration to testify at their hearings.
“We will continue to seek input from the Governor and expect that he will file additional legislation so that his priorities can be part of that process,” Mariano and Spilka said in their statement.
