Beacon Hill Update: Thursday, May 6th, 2021
May 15, 2021Thursday, May 6, 2021:
- As of Wednesday night, DPH reported a total of 648,967 cases of COVID-19.
- The state reported 718 new confirmed cases.
- The state has now confirmed a total of 17,293 deaths from the virus.
- Starting Monday, COVID-19 vaccine-seekers in Massachusetts will be able to get their shots at six of the state’s mass vaccination sites without first booking an appointment.
- Governor Baker said Thursday that the six sites – at Boston’s Hynes Convention Center and Reggie Lewis Center, the Natick Mall, the former Circuit City in Dartmouth, the DoubleTree Hotel in Danvers and the Eastfield Mall in Springfield – will begin accepting walk-up appointments, as a way to make it easier for people to access vaccines.
- People will still be able schedule appointments online, and the state’s vaccine finder website will also host information about walk-in hours.
- Despite the tax filing deadline being moved from April to May, the Department of Revenue collected $3.865 billion in taxes from people and businesses last month, $385 million more than the Baker administration had estimated for the month even before it extended the deadline.
- The April receipts put the state roughly a month ahead of the projections that DOR made in January for the second half of the budget year and position Massachusetts to end fiscal year 2021 within one percentage point of the pre-pandemic revenue estimate for the year.
- Early on in the fiscal year, lawmakers and economists were expecting they could fall short of that estimate by as much as $8 billion, expectations that were way off.
- April tax collections came in just more than 11 percent above DOR’s monthly benchmark, continuing the trend of actual tax collections blowing DOR’s monthly estimates out of the water.
- January collections beat the benchmark by 14.7 percent, February collections surpassed the benchmark by 24.8 percent and March revenues came in 26.8 percent over expectations.
- Through 10 months of fiscal 2021, state government has collected $26.449 billion in tax revenue, up $3.405 billion or 14.8 percent over the same period in fiscal 2020 and $1.83 billion or 7.4 percent over DOR’s benchmark.
- Year-to-date collections through April are roughly equal to the amount DOR expected to have collected through 11 months of the year, DOR said its midpoint estimate for year-to-date collections through May was $26.513 billion.
- If May and June revenues now come in at exactly the DOR benchmarks – and May’s benchmark was determined before the tax filing deadline was moved to May 17 – Massachusetts will have collected $30.92 billion in tax revenue in fiscal year 2021.
- That would be $1.83 billion or 6.3 percent more than what the Baker administration projected it would collect this fiscal year when it last updated its expectations in January, $1.311 billion or 4.4 percent more than what was collected during fiscal year 2020, and only about $230 million or 0.74 percent less than the pre-pandemic estimate of $31.15 billion in tax revenue for fiscal year 2021.
- It would also be about $800 million more than the consensus revenue agreement being used as the House and Senate craft the forthcoming fiscal year 2022 budget.
- As the fiscal 2022 revenue estimate began last month to look like it could be overly conservative, House Ways and Means Chairman Aaron Michlewitz said any change in the fiscal 2022 revenue assumption would come about after discussions between the House, Senate and administration.
- A little over a month after Governor Baker signed a law shoring up the unemployment system and reducing the premium increases facing employers to fund jobless benefits, lawmakers and administration officials are once again looking for a way to provide businesses relief from spiking costs.
- The law Baker signed on April 1 authorized $7 billion in borrowing to stabilize the state’s unemployment insurance trust fund, strained by a flood of joblessness during the COVID-19 pandemic, and limited the average rate hike to 18.5 percent instead of the nearly 60 percent increase employers would otherwise have to pay.
- Some businesses soon found they were nonetheless facing dramatic increases in their unemployment tax payments, as one component of their UI costs, known as the solvency assessments, jumped from a rate of 0.58 percent in 2020 to 9.23 percent in 2021, surprising many.
- One complicating factor is that while the state stands to receive billions of dollars in federal aid through the American Rescue Plan Act, detailed guidance on how that money can be spent is not expected until mid-May.
- Raise Up Massachusetts, the coalition of labor, community and faith-based groups that has secured minimum wage increases, a new paid family and medical leave program and guaranteed earned sick time in recent years, launched its campaign Wednesday to grow and solidify what supporters said is already strong support for the constitutional amendment that could go before voters in 2022 if the Legislature votes this session to advance it.
- Attorney General Maura Healey on Wednesday defended her call for mandating COVID-19 vaccines among public employees as a “matter of common sense,” urged state and federal lawmakers to pursue a “systemic” overhaul of child care, and criticized President Joe Biden’s campaign goal of forgiving $10,000 per person in student loans as insufficient.
- In a wide-ranging discussion with business leaders, Healey also hinted at additional legal action her office could take against opioid manufacturers and urged employers to take a stand in favor of securing voting rights.
- Healey, whose office confirmed Wednesday that she will require some of her staffers to get vaccinated when they return to in-person, public-facing work, reiterated her stance that some public-sector employees such as corrections officers and state police should be required to receive COVID-19 vaccinations.
- Asked during a question-and-answer session with the New England Council how state officials could enforce such a requirement, Healey said she views the mandate as “common sense” for employees who regularly interact with the public as a function of their jobs, and pointed to other required vaccinations.
- The Supreme Judicial Court ruled Wednesday that individuals can wait for in-person court hearings if they do not want to meet virtually.
- The 37-page decision, authored by Justice Elspeth Cypher, concerned whether the use of internet-based video conferencing platforms like Zoom for hearings during the COVID-19 pandemic violated constitutional rights.
- More than three months after it was supposed to begin its work, a special commission tasked with reviewing the hiring, promotion and recruitment of public employees and State Police officers with an eye toward improving transparency and diversity met for the first time on Wednesday to organize itself and chart a course to complete its work by early fall.
- The commission, co-chaired by Rep. Kenneth Gordon of Bedford and Sen. Michael Brady of Brockton, gathered virtually to review its mandate, which includes studying the policies used to hire, promote and discipline civil service employees.
- The commission, which was created by last year’s landmark policing reform law, was supposed to meet for the first time no later than Jan. 30, but got off to late start as legislative committee assignments and other appointments were delayed.
- In order to complete its review and make recommendations to the Legislature and governor by the statutory Sept. 30 deadline, Gordon and Brady divided the work across four subcommittees.
- Governor Baker’s top communications advisor Lizzie Guyton plans to step down after more than six years working in the administration, and press secretary Sarah Finlaw will be elevated to communications director on May 15, his office announced on Wednesday.
By David Gauthier
