Baker expects movement on budget bill
Gov. Charlie Baker believes that when legislators return from a weeks-long recess one of their first actions will be to take up an end-of-year budget bill filed by the administration to close out fiscal 2015, which ended on July 1.
"We're being told the supp is probably going to move sometime in the next two weeks," Baker told a gathering of municipal officials at the State House on Tuesday.
Baker, along with Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito, attended an afternoon meeting with the Local Government Advisory Commission. Dominick Ianno, chief of staff in the Office of Administration and Finance, told the local leaders that fiscal 2015 ended with a surplus of about $220 million.
The supplemental budget filed by the Baker administration proposed to fund deficiencies in some departments and programs that materialized over the course of the last fiscal year, as well as allocate $25 million in additional spending for municipal snow and ice cleanup and fund new opioid abuse prevention programs and pay down debt.
The House and Senate are meeting in informal sessions this week, but could hold their first formal sessions since July next week. Leaders have not said what might be the first item to emerge for consideration in either branch.
Ianno said the administration is monitoring fiscal 2016, but being just two months into the year he had little update on areas of concern or promise.
"One of our major objectives is to make sure we don't have to 9C things because that's become a habit over the past couple years here and it's a bad habit," Baker said.
Baker told the local leaders that he has generally been pleased with the Federal Emergency Management Agency's commitment of labor to resolve disaster claims linked to last winter's snowfall, and said he anticipated all reimbursements should be "resolved" by Thanksgiving.
Baker said he thanked President Barack Obama for FEMA's response, which at one point included 100 employees helping to document damage and expenses, when he greeted the president on the tarmac at Logan Airport on Monday. Obama was in Boston to speak at the Greater Boston Labor Council breakfast, which Baker did not attend.
But unlike the hug Obama received from New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, to the consternation of some Republicans, when he visited the Garden State after Hurricane Sandy, Baker said there was no embrace.
"I think we patted each other awkwardly on the back," he said.
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