’Everyone deserves to be counted’: Massachusetts advocates push back against president’s memo excluding undocumented immigrants from census count

The Senate and House chairmen of their respective chambers’ budget committees, Michael J. Rodrigues and Aaron Michlewitz, prepared to host a virtual roundtable with experts to determine how dire Massachusetts’ financial picture is.

“There’s a budgetary crisis happening,” said Marie-Frances Rivera, president of … Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center.

The Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center decided not to prepare a revenue estimate number for this hearing, said its president, Marie-Frances Rivera, citing “all the uncertainty and variables.” In April, MassBudget said that if patterns from prior recessions hold and there is some limited growth, fiscal 2021 collections could land between $5 billion and $5.7 billion shy of the estimates budget writers agreed to in January.

“We think that there’s a budgetary crisis that’s happening and we all have to be just fully aware and eyes-open about that,” Rivera said Wednesday. “There’s danger because all of the public goods that we’re relying on to guide us through this public health economic crisis, whether it’s health care, whether it’s housing people, whether it’s educating our young people, a lot of these are in jeopardy and the needs are growing.”