WHEN MASSACHUSETTS voters passed the millionaire tax in 2022, there was an expectation that the funds generated by the 4 percent surtax on income over $1 million would help solve the problems in the state’s transportation sector, particularly with the struggling MBTA system facing an operating deficit.
But Gov. Maura Healey’s transportation chief, Monica Tibbits-Nutt, said that while the millionaire tax has “performed much better” than expected ($1.2 billion above the budget target in the last fiscal year), it won’t be enough to solve the state’s transportation woes.
“We don’t have enough people in the Commonwealth for that to fix this problem,” she said in a talk with business leaders on Wednesday. “The scale is just not there.”
The MBTA has seen an infusion of funds thanks to the millionaire tax, and its leaders have used the money for a variety of initiatives, including the launch of a special half-priced fare for low income riders. “That is the type of stuff that does pay dividends,” Tibbits-Nutt said, as Phil Eng, the T’s general manager, sat next to her. “That’s not going to be enough to address the fiscal cliff. And the entire nation is going through the same thing.”
Tibbits-Nutt, Eng, and the moderator of the event, Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce CEO Jim Rooney, himself a former top MBTA official, are all members of a task force that is expected to deliver a report by December 31 outlining new ways to fund transportation.
Earlier this year, Hayes Morrison, the No. 2 person in the Department of Transportation, suggested that the group would develop a “tool kit” of revenue options for the governor. But that has drawn pushback, including from Rooney.
“I reject the notion that all we’re going to produce is a tool kit,” he said during Wednesday’s panel discussion at his business group’s downtown Boston headquarters. “I really don’t want to do that because I think we could’ve spent far less hours producing a tool kit.”
Tibbits-Nutt cut in: “Remember, I didn’t say toolkit,” she told Rooney.
“No, I know you didn’t, but it’s out there,” Rooney responded, adding that a stabilization plan is needed for the next three years that eliminates the fiscal cliffs facing both public transit and the state’s road and bridge system. “I’m not advocating for anything, whether it’s tolls, congestion pricing, vehicle miles traveled, whatever it turns out to be. Other jurisdictions have taken as much as a decade to process those things. We’re not going to do it in 10 months.”
Tibbits-Nutt said she didn’t want to get ahead of what the task force will eventually release, but said what would be helpful is a list of potential things that can be done in the near term and the long term. “Even if all of the options that were in this, everyone’s like ‘Yay,’ the Legislature’s like ‘Great, let’s sign off on every single thing,’ it’s not going to fix this fiscal cliff as quickly as the T needs it to,” she said. “So we need to keep getting creative about this.”
She added that she is working with her Healey cabinet counterpart in the budget office, Matt Gorkzkowicz, on some of that creativity with the Fair Share Amendment. “This is going to be multiple steps, multiple years, and multiple interventions,” she said.
A top House lawmaker recently suggested some of the millionaire tax surplus go toward transportation. Revenues from the millionaire tax, also known as the Fair Share Amendment, are meant to be split evenly between transportation and education accounts, and slightly more has gone toward education, he said.
During the panel discussion on Wednesday, Rooney sounded a hopeful note, viewing 2024 as the year the state “turned the corner” on transportation. “We’re confronting the problems in a true way,” he said.
But he was also interested in the vision for 2050, and noted that Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce members often travel the world, ride transit systems, and when they return ask, “why can’t we have that.”
“I hate when people go anywhere internationally ‘cause then they come back with a laundry list of things,” Tibbits-Nutt quipped.
She then outlined a vision for the future that’s less dependent on cars.
“I think for me, your ZIP code and where you live will no longer dictate how you move,” she continued. “You won’t have to own a car. You won’t have to take hours and hours to be able to get to work. You’ll be able to actually make a choice based on where you want to work. And know that you are going to have a transit option that is affordable.”
The vision includes electrified “rail service throughout Massachusetts,” more water-based transportation, and more buses, moving quickly, “ideally in their own dedicated lane,” she said. “It really is going to make it to where we’re not forced to sit in a car, we’re not forced to spend money, and that your quality of life isn’t dependent on what ZIP code you live in. And we will get there. I feel confident.”
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