A veteran budget analyst says the Patrick administration’s plan to cut the 2010 budgets of executive branch agencies by 8 percent makes sense and would result in a spending reduction of about $1 billion.
Michael Widmer, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, told me he had been expecting cuts in the range of 5 to 10 percent in fiscal 2010, which starts next July. He said those cuts are not likely to be shared equally, since some agencies cannot reduce spending dramatically. The Department of Corrections, for example, cannot just shut down prisons and release inmates.
On Monday, I reported that Gov. Deval Patrick’s secretary of administration and finance, Leslie Kirwan, had told county sheriffs at a meeting that she was asking executive branch agencies to reduce their fiscal 2010 budgets by 8 percent. Kirwan declined comment on the specifics of her presentation, but several other sources who were at the meeting confirmed the 8 percent figure.
Widmer said the executive branch accounts for about half of the state budget, or about $15 billion. He said a reduction in spending is needed to respond to a likely downturn in state tax revenues in the wake of the economic slowdown. Other parts of the budget, including the judiciary, are likely to face budget cuts.
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Editor, CommonWealth
About Bruce Mohl
Bruce Mohl is the editor of CommonWealth magazine. Bruce came to CommonWealth from the Boston Globe, where he spent nearly 30 years in a wide variety of positions covering business and politics. He covered the Massachusetts State House and served as the Globe’s State House bureau chief in the late 1980s. He also reported for the Globe’s Spotlight Team, winning a Loeb award in 1992 for coverage of conflicts of interest in the state’s pension system. He served as the Globe’s political editor in 1994 and went on to cover consumer issues for the newspaper. At CommonWealth, Bruce helped launch the magazine’s website and has written about a wide range of issues with a special focus on politics, tax policy, energy, and gambling. Bruce is a graduate of Ohio Wesleyan University and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He lives in Dorchester.
About Bruce Mohl
Bruce Mohl is the editor of CommonWealth magazine. Bruce came to CommonWealth from the Boston Globe, where he spent nearly 30 years in a wide variety of positions covering business and politics. He covered the Massachusetts State House and served as the Globe’s State House bureau chief in the late 1980s. He also reported for the Globe’s Spotlight Team, winning a Loeb award in 1992 for coverage of conflicts of interest in the state’s pension system. He served as the Globe’s political editor in 1994 and went on to cover consumer issues for the newspaper. At CommonWealth, Bruce helped launch the magazine’s website and has written about a wide range of issues with a special focus on politics, tax policy, energy, and gambling. Bruce is a graduate of Ohio Wesleyan University and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He lives in Dorchester.
The spending reductions being proposed by Kirwan come on top of a series of cuts proposed to bring this year’s budget into balance. Last month, the governor announced a plan to close an estimated deficit of $1.4 billion by cutting spending and tapping the state’s rainy day reserve fund. Spending cuts totaled more than $900 million, or about 3 percent of the overall $28.2 billion spending plan.
