If you saw our earlier email about Maura’s new budget, you know that it’s going to make a difference in so many different areas. We wanted to give you some specific examples by breaking down some of the important investments the budget makes on two crucial issues.
Let’s talk about how Maura’s new budget addresses Transportation and Education:
Transportation
The MBTA has been a big priority for Maura. When she took office, the system was struggling with due to decades of neglect. She took the challenge head on, and last year oversaw the replacement of 246,000 feet of track to fix 226 slow zones, eliminating all slow zones for the first time in decades.
Her budget builds on that success by stabilizing the MBTA and supporting the big infrastructure improvements that the system needs.
Maura is making sure Massachusetts doesn’t kick the can down the road. Her new budget includes:
- $500 million to stabilize the MBTA’s operations, more than doubling support
- Maintaining key initiatives such as the Income-Eligible Fare Relief program, the MBTA Academy, and grants to support fare-free programs at Regional Transit Authorities
- Make huge improvements to existing rail infrastructure by leveraging $5 billion over the next 10 years for capital investment
- Moving forward on important regional projects like West-East Rail
But it’s not just the MBTA that needs investment. Maura is making infrastructure improvements across our entire transportation system. Driven by $5 billion in capital investment bonds in rail, roads, bridges, Regional Transit Authorities and culverts, getting around Massachusetts will be safer and quicker. Her budget includes $617 million to support MassDOT operations, including $55 million from Fair Share revenues, with $80 million specifically designated for snow and ice removal.
Education
Investing in education is investing in our future, and Maura is making sure that Massachusetts stays #1. From Pre-K to college, her budget lays the foundation for stronger, more accessible, more affordable learning.
Early Education Through K-12
- Allocates $475 million to support our system of early education and care providers, as well as $1.1 billion for Child Care Financial Assistance funding, supporting approximately 65,000 children at over 4,000 providers
- Provides funding for a multi-year investment to increase enrollment in Pre-K programs
- Increases state aid to schools via Chapter 70 by $420 million
- Fully funds the Special Education Circuit Breaker, increasing funding by $132 million
- Maintains free universal school meals
- Provides $25 million for Literacy Launch to ensure quality reading instruction for our youngest students, an increase of $5 million
- Supports early childhood mental health with a $5 million investment
Higher Education
- Unlocks $2.5 billion in capital funding for long-needed infrastructure improvements to modernize public higher education campuses
- Includes $80 million to provide financial assistance to students and families earning up to $100,000 annually
- Allocates $94 million to sustain Free Community College that Maura launched in 2024 and which resulted in massive increases in enrollment, reversing historic trends
- Provides $8.2 million to maintain mental health supports at public higher education institutions
We hope this gives you a sense for how much this new budget gets done. We don’t have enough room in this email to go so in-depth on every issue area, but if you want to review the full announcement, you can take a look here!
Thank you for reading, and thank you for supporting Maura as she builds a Massachusetts that works for everyone.
-Team Healey