When the House of Representatives announced that it would be upping the already eye-popping $4.1 billion housing bond bill proposed by Gov. Maura Healey by more than $2 billion, it was easy to see the move as a shoot-the-moon approach to the state’s crippling housing crisis. But as the Senate mulls its version of the bond bill, it’s worth noting that this is a far cry from a final investment pledge.
How far? We’ll know in roughly three hours when the governor rolls out her 2025 Capital Investment Plan.
Major bond bills, proposed by the governor but needing sign-off from the Legislature, set the widest parameters for possible spending. They approve the maximum amount of state bonds – debt securities that support infrastructure spending – to be sold over a five-year period, but the actual amount of outstanding direct debt that the state can carry on its books is limited by state law. There’s little to no chance that $6 billion in bonding power actually gets pointed at the housing crisis.
In 2018, the state approved what was then the largest housing bond bill in the state’s history, at $1.8 billion. After all was said and done, the administration only included about 70 percent of them in the actual capital spending plan. Still a substantial $1.2 billion, but a far cry from the full authorization.
Though the spend will probably not hit a full $4 billion plus, fiscal observers expect, it will presumably offer a boost over the current $1.4 billion.
Philosophically, the massive bills indicate a “real prioritization of housing and capital spending on housing, and a shared goal of increasing how much the state spends on housing,” said Doug Howgate, president of Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation.
“These big numbers – even though they aren’t necessarily going to translate to actual spending – the rationale for them is you want flexibility on where you’re spending your capital dollars. What you don’t want to do is authorize exactly how much you think you’re going to spend, authorize it by each individual program, because then if something changes and all of a sudden you have to go back for a different authorization.”
Because the authorizations stretch over five years, Howgate said, the broad set of possible options let the administration be nimble and adaptive.
It can also be an opportunity for the two chambers to limit or incentivize spending in certain areas. The House version bulked up the governor’s proposal, raising the authorization to fix the state’s aging public housing stock to $2 billion and including $1 billion to expand the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority’s service area into more suburbs, with the goal of spurring housing production.
“We need to expand the ability to deliver infrastructure to these developments. And I’m serious that we have people who want to build 6,000 homes in Weymouth and they just need a water source,” House Speaker Ron Mariano said at the unveiling of his housing bond bill, referring to redevelopment of a former naval air base. “And if we can use this bonding bill to get that done, you’ll see some impact on the South Shore.”
The Legislature usually pushes for higher bond authorizations than the governor, as seen with Charlie Baker’s proposed $1.4 billion housing bond bill that rose to $1.8 billion when signed, a roughly 29 percent increase. But $2 billion extra from the House this time, more than a 50 percent jump over Healey’s proposed bill, places a bold policy statement in the Senate’s court.
The meat of a bond bill isn’t just its borrowing authorizations, though that is the ostensible label on the tin. More and more, these are sprawling policy documents.
Moving bills through the standard legislative process can feel like wading through waist-deep molasses, so attaching significant political initiatives to bond bills that are almost sure to move more speedily has become even more essential over the years.
For instance, a provision in both the governor and House bond bills would allow accessory dwelling units, or ADUs, to be built by right in single-family zones across the state. Estimates on how many units this could unlock in the next decade tend to hover between 6,000 and 10,000 units.
The Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation released an analysis of the governor’s bond bill when it dropped and will dig into the House and Senate versions. The business-backed group was iffy on the policy provision that would allow a local option to impose real estate transfer fees on pricier homes, which the House axed from its version.
Flinging around large numbers has a plus, Howgate noted, in terms of flexibility and clarifying major priorities.
“The flip side is,” he said, “you get numbers like this out there and people really highlight the numbers, understandably, a lot of folks are going to think that that is necessarily what we’re going to spend on housing.” Howgate said the five-year Capital Investment Plan, which the governor rolls out annually is the “way to marry the prioritization and the ambition and the need for flexibility with the need for expectation setting.”
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