THE TASK FORCE Gov. Maura Healey created to propose a new funding model for transportation in Massachusetts is going to miss its end-of-2024 deadline, and sources say the concepts currently being bandied about fall well short of what some had been hoping for.
“The task force is going to need a little more time to finish the work,” said Matt Murphy, a spokesman for Matthew Gorzkowicz, the secretary of administration and finance and the co-chair of the task force. “It’s very close. … l don’t think it’s going to be weeks.”
The 31-member task force, which was formed in part to address the more than $600 million deficit the MBTA is facing next fiscal year, hasn’t met as a group since December 4, but Healey administration officials have been sharing drafts of the report with some members in a bid to reach a consensus. Murphy wasn’t sure whether the task force would meet again as a group before the report is released.
“It’s possible there might be another meeting before the report is released,” Murphy said. “The task force members have all seen parts of the report and provided feedback.”
Task force members were notified by email at 5:37 p.m. on Monday that the report was not being issued on Tuesday. The delay comes as Healey is preparing her fiscal 2026 budget, which is due to be unveiled in late January.
Sources say the report is still a work in progress – as of December 30 there were still multiple drafts circulating – and that it neither forecasts how much revenue the state is expected to need for transportation in the coming years. Instead, it talks about ways to optimize use of existing revenues, with a heavy emphasis on tapping into the revenues raised from the state’s surtax on income over $1 million to fund transportation needs.
The millionaire tax money is currently split between education and transportation, but a larger percentage has been going to education. In the fiscal 2025 budget, the split was 59 percent education and 41 percent transportation. Drafts of the task force’s report suggest increasing the amount of money going to transportation – giving less to education – and using those additional funds to finance the borrowing for transportation infrastructure needs.
The current drafts also don’t directly address looming shortfalls in the MBTA’s operating budget of $600 million to $700 million. Sources say Phillip Eng, the MBTA’s general manager and a member of the task force, has indicated the T has somehow located $300 million in reserve funds that could be used to help address the forecasted fiscal 2026 deficit. He has also expressed confidence the T can make it through at least fiscal 2026 without major spending cuts.
A number of sources said Healey may use her State of the State speech in January to address transportation funding, particularly funding for the MBTA. In an interview on Sunday, Healey said her top two priorities are housing and transportation. She talked with pride about the major investments the T is making in manpower and track upgrades and indicated there’s a lot more work to be done at the transit authority.
“I’m not going backwards,” she said.
Healey signed an executive order establishing the task force in January 2024 and gave the group until December 31 to finish its work. The task force launched with high hopes that it would come up with a way to finance the state’s rising costs for highways, bridges, and public transit in an environment where the state’s gas tax is likely to see declining revenues amid the adoption of electric vehicles.
Monica Tibbits-Nutt, the secretary of transportation and the other co-chair of the task force, was very optimistic the task force would accomplish what previous boards and commissions had failed to do. But she got out over her skis in April when, during a talk to the advocacy group WalkMassachusetts, she said she was looking at a number of very specific new revenue measures, including new tolls at the state’s borders, a payroll tax, and higher or new fees on Uber and Lyft trips and package deliveries. She promised to be aggressive, “basically going after everybody who has money.”
Those comments – and others she made at the event – stirred strong opposition and prompted Healey to rule out tolls at the state’s borders and downplay other new taxes and fees. Tibbits-Nutt subsequently toned down her rhetoric and took a backseat at task force meetings, according to some of the members.
In July, Hayes Morrison, the state’s undersecretary of transportation, briefed the MBTA board on the task force’s progress and lowered expectations about its eventual report. She promised a “tool kit” listing potential revenue sources and revenue uses with no actual recommendations. Asked if the final report would rank revenue-raising priorities, she said: “We don’t think so.”
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