policy
Gov. Maura Healey announced a plan Tuesday to “immediately stabilize” the struggling MBTA's funds by pouring billions of dollars in investments into the authority and other transportation improvements.
Healey's plan, which calls for $8 billion over the subsequent decade, doesn’t include any tax increases. Instead, her office said the plan would maximize funds generated by the state's Fair Share Amendment, also often known as the “millionaire's tax,” through borrowing and other existing resources.
Immediately under the plan, the Healey government will direct $857 million of excess revenue generated by the Fair Share Amendment in 2024 into public transport.
“This historic transportation proposal represents smart, forward-thinking financial management and will impact people in every region of our state,” Healey said in an announcement. “We will invest billions of dollars to create better roads, less traffic, safer bridges and a transportation system that works in every region. We will close the MBTA's budget gap by improving service and modernizing stations, and we will advance regional projects like West-East Rail. And we can do all of this without raising taxes.”
The announcement comes just days before Healey expected to deliver her second State of the Commonwealth Address. The plan was released because the state's Transportation Funding Task Force submitted a final report back to the governor.
Healey said the findings of the duty force to stabilize and improve transportation within the state helped shape her administration's proposal when planning for the longer term, and said most of the group's recommendations can be put into motion.
In an announcement Tuesday, MBTA executive director and CEO Phillip Eng praised the proposal.
“This solutions-focused approach results in a historic investment and will provide critical support to the MBTA, including increasing our operational capacity, improving service and ensuring a more sustainable, reliable transportation system for all riders,” he said.
The latest transportation plan will likely be filed into law in the approaching weeks as a part of Healey's fiscal 12 months 2026 budget proposal and an accompanying supplemental budget, in response to the governor's office. Healey may even face a multi-year sentence Chapter 90 Later that 12 months, she passed a bill that her administration said would increase funding allocated to municipalities for local roads and sidewalks to $300 million per 12 months for five years.
“The combined effect of the FY26 Governor's House Budget Proposal 1 and the FY24 supplemental budget for the use of excess Fair Share revenues will be a 50 percent split between Fair Share resources for transportation since the enactment of the voter-approved resolution and education lead surcharge,” Healey’s office said. “This was one of the key recommendations in the Transportation Funding Task Force report.”
In addition to doubling support for the MBTA's operating budget and immediately closing the agency's budget deficit, Healey's proposal would allocate $1.4 billion to upgrade MBTA infrastructure equivalent to latest commuter train cars and subway cars, in addition to 2.5 billion to speculate billions of dollars in road and bridge repairs across the state, closing the funding gap for the Allston I-90 project and supporting projects that meet the Advance west-east railway proposal.
Worcester City Manager Eric Batista is amongst officials already expressing support for the governor's proposal.
“Significant investment in public transit is critical for growing communities like Worcester,” he said in an announcement. “These funds will directly impact and improve the lives of residents who use Commuter Rail to connect to Boston and beyond, use the Worcester Regional Transportation Authority to conduct their daily activities, and use our local roadways to stay safe and get around the city efficiently.”
Despite immediate praise from some for the proposal, Reggie Ramos, executive director of the statewide Transportation for Massachusetts coalition, had a measured response to the plan.
“We look forward to reviewing the governor’s funding plan in detail,” she said. “We will first make sure that it does justice to the scale of the problem, which is huge and cannot be solved through an over-reliance on the bond. We also need to ensure equity, both in the scope of the plan and in the financing mechanisms.
“Providing significantly higher fair share revenues for transport is a good first step towards these criteria,” she added. “Swift action is needed to pull the MBTA out of a deficit that would otherwise have devastating consequences for riders and communities.”
In unveiling her plan Tuesday, Healey emphasized that her administration is targeted on transportation since it is a component of the on a regular basis experience of “almost everyone in the state,” and she or he expressed hope that her proposal will improve the standard of life for residents across the state would state.
“The work isn’t done yet,” she said. “But if we don't deal with stabilization, if we don't deal with the foundation that has been crumbling for decades, we won't have a chance to build anything meaningful. You know that. You can't build a house without a foundation or the whole damn thing will fall apart, no matter how pretty it looks on the outside. That’s what we did today.”
image credit : www.boston.com