State Senate President Therese Murray announced on Tuesday her support for a bill that would reform state government finance laws, altering the way taxpayer dollars are allocated to state agencies, according to a May 3 article in The Boston Globe.
The bill would rid of “clumsy and outdated” finance laws and require state agencies to provide justification for their existence and base budgeting off of performance rather than past levels of funding, Murray said to the State Administration and Regulatory Oversight panel.
The state’s anticipated $1.9 billion budget gap is encouraging lawmakers to craft legislation that would eliminate wasteful and unnecessary spending.
Murray said other proposals to reform state budgeting were complicated and have been stalled in the House. However, because this bill has Murray’s support as the Senate president the bill may have a better chance of passing.
Murray said the outdated finance laws date back to the early 20th century.
“Many of our state finance laws are organized around the notion that the starting point for and purpose of any state budget is to preserve existing programs and agencies,” she said to the panel. “These notions are at odds with the more modern form of budgeting.”
Under the current system of budgeting, budget writers determine agencies’ budgets based off budgets from the previous fiscal year and do not look to see if departments are using their funding effectively, Murray said.
He also said budget writers ask the members of the agencies how much it would cost to do the same amount of work and agency members can request additional funding.
The bill would require departments to prove their efficiency and effectiveness in front of a commission of six lawmakers and four people not affiliated with the government in order to continue receiving state funding. Inefficient agencies could be eliminated or incorporated into other agencies.
One member of the committee would be from Associated Industries of Massachusetts, a nonprofit, nonpartisan association of state employers. John Regan, the executive vice president of AIM, said an updated, more transparent budget process could enhance the business climate in the state by increasing confidence in the government.
Murray said initial cost and time expenses would be worth eventually adopting a zero-based budgeting process in which legislators write budgets from scratch every fiscal year.
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