Mass. House, Senate vote to send $56.2 billion budget to Governor Healey’s desk – The Boston Globe

The Senate unanimously approved the package. Governor Maura Healey will now have 10 days to review it.

Before the vote, House budget chief Aaron Michlewitz addressed the chamber by quoting the band Grateful Dead: “What a long, strange trip it’s been.”

“This has been a drawn-out and complicated conference report to negotiate, to say the least,” the North End Democrat said, acknowledging the tardy budget. “This has been a challenging budget to get over the finish line.”

The compromise budget includes top priorities of both House and Senate leaders, including tuition for students attending community college nursing programs, and a program that would make undocumented high schoolers eligible for in-state tuition rates at public colleges or universities in Massachusetts.

The budget would also make the state the eighth in the nation to provide permanent free school meals. If signed by the governor, the proposal would also revive an effort to make phone calls free for the state’s incarcerated people and add two seats to the MBTA Board of Directors.

The budget is notable in that it’s the first budget to take into consideration at least $1 billion in projected revenue from the so-called millionaires tax voters passed last fall. The spending plan, if signed into law, would allocate roughly $522 million on education and $477 million on transportation, including $205 million for the MBTA.

Groups and policymakers across various sectors celebrated the compromise budget Monday.

Asked Monday during her regular radio appearance on WBUR if she had a person in mind for the Boston seat on the T board, Mayor Michelle Wu demurred, noting the seat remains subject to negotiations on Beacon Hill.

“I’m incredibly grateful to the House for initiating this in their budget,” Wu told the station. “The Senate for agreeing to it in the negotiations, and again, fingers crossed [the seat gets approved] in this last stretch. This is really critical.”

Those in the early education space said the funding levels were historic.

The compromise budget would spend $475 million on Commonwealth Cares for Children grants, the first time the state has fully funded the grants for early education without help from the federal government. While the spending is scaled back from the $490 million the House proposed, leaders in the field said the record $1.5 billion going to the sector is something to be celebrated.

“The historic investment in early education and care in the state budget is a major step toward building a stronger, higher-quality early childhood education system in Massachusetts,” said Lauren Kennedy, co-founder of the Boston-based early education nonprofit Neighborhood Villages. “This funding will help expand access to child care for families, enhance affordability, and increase educator wages across the sector.”

The compromise budget, if signed by the governor, would also:

• Set aside $50 million for free community college across all campuses by fall 2024, including $38 million for free community college programs for students aged 25 or older and for students pursuing degrees in nursing starting in the fall of 2023.
• Create a two-year ConnectorCare pilot program to expand eligibility, resulting in as many as 70,000 residents becoming newly eligible for more affordable health insurance coverage.
• Codify a pandemic-era renter protection law, which would slow down the court process in eviction proceedings in cases in which the tenant has applied for rental assistance.
• Spend $6.59 billion in K-12 public education funding, an increase of $604 million from last year. It would double the minimum aid level from $30 to $60 per student.
• Set aside $581 million for a future tax code overhaul, though a concrete plan of how to spend that money has yet to emerge from negotiations.

The bottom line of the budget is up 6.6 percent, or $3.5 billion from the $52.7 billion annual budget Governor Charlie Baker signed on July 28, 2022.

“We are sending her excellency the governor her first budget, one that is balanced, thoughtful, and forward-thinking,” Michlewitz said. “As Jay-Z said, we are on to the next one.”

Samantha J. Gross can be reached at samantha.gross@globe.com. Follow her @samanthajgross.