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Massachusetts governor seeks more bonds for transit and transportation

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Massachusetts governor seeks more bonds for transit and transportation


Massachusetts Governor Maura T. Healey’s $56.1 billion budget proposal for fiscal 2025 calls for increased funding to the state’s Commonwealth Transportation Fund that will enable it to borrow an additional $1.1 billion over the next five years.

The fiscal 2025 budget proposal, which represents a 2.9% increase over the current year’s spending, would dedicate $250 million of transportation revenues from the Fair Share income tax surtax enacted in 2022 directly into the CTF, “unlocking the capacity to borrow an additional $1.1 billion for capital projects” at the Department of Transportation and the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority over the next five years, according to the governor’s executive summary of the budget proposal.

Additional borrowing enabled by dedicated Fair Share revenue would be used in fiscal 2025 “to immediately invest an additional $300 million” to help fund the MBTA’s track improvement plan, the governor’s proposal said. The Boston area’s public transit provider has been wracked by high-profile safety problems.

Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey announces her fiscal 2025 budget recommendation at a State House press conference on Jan. 24, 2024.

Joshua Qualls/Governor’s Press Office

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According to the budget message, which was announced on January 24, $250 million will be earmarked for additional debt service for the CTF. The funds would come from the state’s Fair Share income tax surtax that was approved by Massachusetts voters in November 2022. That measure imposes a 4% surtax on incomes above $1 million that is expected to generate over $2 billion annually to fund education, repairs and maintenance of roads and bridges, and improve public transit.

All told, the governor’s 2025 proposed budget would include $1.3 billion from the new levy, up from $1 billion in the current fiscal year’s budget.

If approved, $63 million of the $250 million of Fair Share transportation revenues would be reserved for debt service on additional CTF bonds. Of the remaining $187 million, $127 million would be used to double the MBTA’s operating subsidy to $256 million while $60 million would be used to support MassDOT operations, including customer service at the state’s Registry of Motor Vehicles agency. The MBTA also receives $1.5 billion from a portion of the state’s sales tax revenue.

In April 2022 the Federal Transit Authority launched a safety management inspection of the MBTA following several high-profile accidents. Following the inspection, it reprimanded the MBTA, the country’s oldest and fifth-largest transit system, for “compromising” safety by favoring its capital program over safety, mainly by taking the “unprecedented step” of transferring $500 million from its general fund into its capital budget in January 2022. The FTA said MBTA appeared to have prioritized new-build projects over preventative maintenance.

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The federal agency ordered the MBTA and its state oversight agency, the Department of Public Utilities, to take immediate action to improve safety across the system. The FTA said the MBTA “lacks resources to adequately manage its $2 billion capital program and complete capital projects on time and without need for retrofits and workarounds.”

According to the governor’s budget proposal, “additional capital borrowing capacity, leveraged from Fair Share revenues, will help the MBTA improve safety, service, and sustainability.”

Fair Share investments will also allow MassDOT to “continue investments in critical bridge infrastructure and keep Massachusetts roadway construction crews engaged and on the job,” the budget documents said.

Increased operating funding will also help the MBTA to continue improving safety, reliability and service, the proposal said.

The budget recommendation also includes $169 million for operating assistance to 15 regional transit authorities across the state, including $75 million from Fair Share revenues.

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MBTA senior sales tax bonds are rated AAA by Fitch Ratings and Kroll Bond Rating Agency and AA-plus by S&P Global Ratings.

Massachusetts Commonwealth Transportation Fund revenue bonds are rated AAA by Kroll and S&P, and Aa1 by Moody’s Investors Service.



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Massachusetts

‘If any of these questions pass, how and when do they go into effect?’ and other questions about the 2024 statewide ballot initiatives answered – The Boston Globe

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‘If any of these questions pass, how and when do they go into effect?’ and other questions about the 2024 statewide ballot initiatives answered – The Boston Globe






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Massachusetts

Big crowds on last day of early voting in Massachusetts

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Big crowds on last day of early voting in Massachusetts


Big crowds on last day of early voting in Massachusetts – CBS Boston

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Friday marked the last day of in-person early voting in Massachusetts and voters had any number of motivations to head to the polls. WBZ-TV’s Brandon Truitt reports.

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Woman gave fake Botox injections at her Mass. beauty spas for years, feds say

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Woman gave fake Botox injections at her Mass. beauty spas for years, feds say


A woman posing as a nurse has given thousands of injections of counterfeit Botox and fillers at her Massachusetts beauty spas, federal prosecutors said Friday.

Rebecca Fadanelli, 38, was arrested Friday on suspicion of importing fake Botox and the fillers Sculptra and Juvederm from Brazil and China, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Massachusetts said. The Stoughton woman continued offering counterfeit beauty treatments through Skin Beaute Med Spa up through this week, according to the criminal complaint filed in court, despite her offices in Randolph and South Easton having been searched.

Fadanelli was due in federal court in Worcester Friday afternoon to face charges of importing and and selling counterfeit drugs and devices, which bring the possibility of decades in prison and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines for a conviction, prosecutors said. It wasn’t immediately clear if she had an attorney who could speak to the charges.

“For years, Ms. Fadanelli allegedly put unsuspecting patients at risk by representing herself to be a nurse and then administering thousands of illegal, counterfeit injections,” acting U.S. Attorney Joshua Levy said in a statement, saying she “ignored safety regulations against bringing unapproved, counterfeit drugs and devices into our country and endangered the health of hundreds of her clients.”

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His office asked anyone who believes they may have gotten a counterfeit treatment at Skin Beaute Med Spa or through Fadanelli since 2021 to reach out — see the link below.

Fadanelli an aesthetician who isn’t licensed or certified to give prescription drugs, collected more than half a million dollars from Botox appointments and more than $400,000 from filler appointments between March 2021 and March 2024, prosecutors said.

Federal customs investigators had already been looking into whether Fadanelli, who also goes by Rebecca Daley and Rebecca Hawthorne, when a client filed a complaint to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration saying she had “bumps” in her lips and forehead tingling after receiving a filler treatment from Fadanelli in Randolph and never received a copy of the prescription for the substance that Fadanelli had injected despite asking for it, according to the court documents.

Over the next few years, investigators seized packages with apparently counterfeit injectable prescription drugs labeled Botox, Sculptra and Juvederm, and found her entering the country at Boston’s Logan International Airport with prescription drugs and vials of liquid, the documents said. A search turned up no record of Fadanelli buying the real prescription drugs through the companies that make them.

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When agents searched the Skin Beaute Med Spa businesses in late June, Fadanelli allegedly told them a certified nurse is the only person who administers the drugs, but a former employee told investigators that Fadanelli administered the drugs, saying she was a nurse.

The former employee also said that she’d been told the Botox cost $50 through a China-based ecommerce platform, according to the criminal complain, which noted that authentic Botox costs more than 10 times as much. The employee also claimed that when her packages started to be intercepted, Fadanelli began shipping them to different addresses, including to an acquaintance in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood.

A confidential source had an April consultation with Fadanelli in which she quoted $450 for a Botox treatment, according to the complaint. That same source called and made an appointment for a treatment with Fadanelli last week.





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