THE PROVERBIAL TOUGH CHOICES stemming from a squeeze on state finances had to show up somewhere in Gov. Maura Healey’s budget proposal, and one of those places is in the Bay State’s environmental programs.
Healey’s opening salvo to fiscal year 2027 budget negotiations proposes a roughly 4 percent cut to the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, amounting to a nearly $20 million reduction. That would bring EEA to its lowest funding level in at least four years even after it was cut by more than $7 million last year.
Almost half of the proposed reductions would be borne by the Department of Conservation and Recreation’s state parks division, along with other potential cuts to the state’s environmental justice, recycling and solid waste, Clean Air Act, and toxic waste programs. Healey is set to defend her proposal before lawmakers on Wednesday.
In a $63.4 billion budget, the potential trimmings at EEA might not seem like much, especially in a tricky budget environment due to climbing health care costs and eroding federal support. But the cuts proposed by Healey can still diminish key functions of state government, said David Melly, senior policy director at the Environmental League of Massachusetts, which is part of a larger coalition that criticized the budget request.
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“The lost federal funding has just made it difficult, without other progressive revenue options, to fully fund all these programs that we need in the budget,” said Jessica Troe, deputy director of research and policy analysis at the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center.
