Healey promised that the report’s recommendations and her transit funding plan are no longer “kicking the can down the road” by underfunding transit and roads. But task force members say new revenue options will still be needed in the future.
The MBTA drained its reserves to balance its fiscal year 2025 budget, and officials project the agency will face a roughly $700 million gap in the next fiscal year that begins July 1, thanks in part to underperforming sales tax revenue.
The task force Gov. Maura Healey created to propose a new funding model for transportation in Massachusetts has missed its end-of-2024 deadline, and sources say the concepts currently being bandied about fall well short of what some had been hoping for.
“We’re at the fiscal cliff,” the agency’s top budget official warned. That would mean the Legislature would have to pass some sort of revenue package for the T early in the year, or else the agency might be forced to start laying off workers
MBTA budget-writers will attempt to balance the agency’s books next year by trimming spending on consultants and delaying lower-priority purchases, taking aim at a $93 million budget gap, officials said Thursday.
Potentially teeing up a new round of debate about how the state funds public transit, MBTA officials on Friday rolled out a dire financial forecast that projects a sizable operating budget shortfall this year and a nearly $1 billion chasm within five years.
