Advertisement
Boston's Morning Newsletter
A candy tax? Hospital closures? A look at Gov. Healey's budget belt-tightening proposals
Editor's Note: This is an excerpt from WBUR's daily morning newsletter, WBUR Today. If you like what you read and want it in your inbox, sign up here.
It’s getting a little less cold out there (but still hot chocolate weather, if you ask me).
To the news:
Budget belt-tightening: Gov. Maura Healey’s budget has arrived. Weighing in at a total of $62 billion, the spending proposal unveiled yesterday includes big investments in priorities like transportation and higher education (thanks to money from the millionaire’s tax). And it maintains newly launched programs like free community college, free school meals and child care funding. But as WBUR’s Walter Wuthmann reports, the budget’s 2.6% increase is less than the rise of inflation, as the state grapples with rising costs and revenues falling back to earth. That means new belt-tightening measures, from program cuts to a potential tax on candy. “We believe it is a blueprint for meeting the needs of residents and businesses while also taking care of taxpayer dollars,” Healey told reporters yesterday.
- Health and human services: Healey’s budget proposes closing the Pappas children’s rehab hospital in Canton and moving patients to a hospital in Westfield (though the state nurses’ union says that facility is nearing capacity and designed for adults). The proposal would also close a Cape Cod mental health clinic, lay off half the state’s mental health case managers and cap the Personal Care Attendant program, which Healey also targeted for cuts last year.
- Rental assistance: The proposal would effectively cut the amount offered through the state’s RAFT program in half — from a max of $7,000 over 12 months to $7,000 over two years. The program is aimed at helping renters who face the threat of eviction.
- Candy tax: Healey’s budget also proposes expanding the state’s 6.25% sales tax to candy. Massachusetts is one of 11 states that categorizes candy as a grocery product exempt from its sales tax, according to the Tax Foundation. (Side note: state candy taxation policy is surprisingly complex.) “ Instead of having candy treated like a purchase of bread and eggs and milk, you know, essential groceries, that candy is now going to be treated in the same way as when you go to the bakery in the back of the grocery store and pick up cupcakes for your kids,” said Healey, who — if you’re wondering — is a peanut M&Ms and Almond Joy person.
- Similarly, the budget proposes expanding the state’s tobacco tax to synthetic nicotine, like the popular Zyn pouches.
- What’s next: This isn’t the final draft. Healey’s proposal now heads to the State House, where the House and Senate will propose their own versions and then work to pass a compromise before the new fiscal year starts on July 1. (Maybe.)
Advertisement
After Steward: UMass Memorial Health is planning to build a new standalone emergency department in the Nashoba Valley — an attempt to fill the void left by last summer’s closure of Steward-operated Nashoba Valley Medical Center in Ayer. The facility would also offer certain imaging services, according to a spokesperson.
- Where? TBD. UMass Memorial originally wanted the shuttered hospital site, but couldn’t make it work. So, they’re still looking.
Headwinds: Plans for an offshore wind cable factory at Somerset’s Brayton Point — which former President Biden once called the “the frontier of new energy in America” — have been abandoned. Some local leaders blame President Trump’s hostility toward wind power, but the Italian company behind the factory also spent three years fighting to secure permits and fend off lawsuits from neighbors. The proposed plant had promised to create several hundred manufacturing jobs.
- What they’re saying: “There were enough paper cuts to delay the project,” Ken Fiola, an economic development consultant, told The Public’s Radio, “and then when Trump came in with a new emphasis on energy, I think that was the final nail in the coffin.”
Add Somerville to the list of communities eyeing “generational bans” on tobacco products. The city’s Board of Health will discuss a ban tonight on the sale of all tobacco products to people born after Jan. 1, 2025, according to City Councilor Ben Ewen-Campen. It would also prohibit giving tobacco products to people born after that date.
- Following a court ruling last year upholding Brookline’s ground-breaking generational tobacco ban, over a dozen communities in Massachusetts have followed suit — including Newton this week.
P.S.— Today is the final day of open enrollment for the Massachusetts Health Connector. That means it’s your last chance to sign up for health coverage through the state exchange until November. Click here for more details on enrolling and potential low-cost plans.
