On Tuesday, the Massachusetts Senate proposed a new state budget that would saddle the MBTA with a $200 million deficit – a shortfall that would almost certainly require major cuts to public transportation service in Massachusetts.
For months, the T has been warning lawmakers of a large shortfall in its 2025-2026 budget thanks to rising labor costs and declining revenues from its dedicated portion of the state's sales tax.
At the beginning of the year, Governor Healey had proposed a budget package that solved most of the T's budget problems with funds from the new "Fair Share" income tax surcharge on high-income households.
The Governor had proposed boosting the state's annual contribution to the T to $687 million, using higher-than expected revenues from the new Fair Share tax.
The Governor had proposed augmenting that contribution with another $765 million in one-time funding that the state had collected, but not yet spent, from previous years' Fair Share taxes. Most of that additional funding would have been set aside to replenish the agency's depleted reserves, but some of it would have been spent this year to fill the T's structural deficit.
But lawmakers at the State House are casting the Governor's plan into doubt.
Last month, the House budget committee proposed a 2026 spending bill that, in accordance with the Governor's main budget proposal, would have sent $687 million to the T for regular operating support.
But the House was more stingy with its proposed supplemental budget.t for unspent Fair Share funds, which proposed a smaller $480 million contribution for the MBTA.
The House proposal could have provided just enough money for the T to cover its operating costs without any service cuts, but it would have left the agency in a financially vulnerable position, with a much smaller reserve fund.
But the Senate's spending proposals, released this week, are considerably more tight-fisted.
If it were enacted as the state's new budget law, the Senate proposal would force the T's budget writers to fill a budget shortfall of roughly $200 million this year.
Such a huge deficit could require considerable service cuts, and possibly fare increases as well.
At the end of 2020, while facing a much smaller budget deficit of $128 million, the MBTA's former management had drawn up a slate of draconian service cuts that included a 20 percent reduction in subway service plus the elimination of all ferry service and 25 bus routes.
“We believe this is enough money," state Senator Michael Rodrigues, the chair of the Senate Ways and Means Committee budget chief, told the Boston Globe.
StreetsblogMASS has reached out to several stakeholders for comment. This story will be updated on Wednesday.
