DCR capital spending must increase dramatically
Lean times call for realistic, responsible capital spending
The seemingly endless chaos coming out of Washington, D.C., continues to threaten serious negative fiscal impacts for the Commonwealth’s operating and capital budgets. Massachusetts could lose as much as a billion dollars in across-the-board federal funding due to the Trump Administration’s so-called Big Beautiful Bill. Meanwhile, recent reports of rising inflation, rising unemployment, and decreasing job creation are threatening to push the country, and in turn the state, into recession.
Add to that a Massachusetts initiative petition heading toward the November 2026 election ballot. The measure seeks to reduce the state income tax rate from five to four percent over three years starting in FY2027. State budget writers say that this ballot question, if approved to appear on the ballot and passed by voters, could remove $4.2 to $4.8 billion in taxes from state coffers.
The good news is that none of this is yet cast in concrete. And no matter what comes to pass, we have a potent weapon to at least lessen the impact of all of this on our state economy in general, and on our state parks in particular.
If you’ve been following our monthly blog, you know that last summer, the Healey-Driscoll Administration filed a new five-year environmental bond bill, the $3.9 billion Mass Ready Act (S.2542). Bond bills authorize borrowing for capital projects over the life of the bill. Once the bill becomes law, the gubernatorial administration decides how much each state agency can borrow via its annual capital budget. More on that later. The state then sells bonds to finance approved projects over a stated time period.
The last environmental bond bill passed in 2018, and bond authorizations from that legislation are largely depleted. During the run-up to filing the new bill, the Administration asked environmental groups to form a coalition to support the bill, and to be bold in doing so. We did. We were.
The Administration filed the bill in the state Senate in June, a departure from past practice, which was to file it in the House. At a July 15 public hearing before the Joint Committee on Environment and Natural Resources (ENR), environmental advocates from across the state, Mass Parks for All (MPA) included, testified on the bill’s strengths and weaknesses. At the time, we anticipated ENR would mark up the bill, primarily by adding funding, sometimes for specific projects, before reporting the bill out for its next stop, the Joint Committee on Bonding, Capital Expenditures and State Assets.
However, in another departure, ENR reported the Administration’s bill out favorably to Bonding without amending it at all. It is not clear at this juncture if Bonding will mark the bill up before passing it off to its final stop before it comes up for votes in the House and Senate, both chamber’s respective ways & means committees, which will analyze, among other things, the fiscal impact the bill will have on the state’s borrowing ability.
‘As we navigate these uncertain fiscal waters, let’s not unlearn what covid taught us.
Our long-neglected parks are need to have assets, not want to have assets.’
As this matter plays itself out on Beacon Hill, the Bond Bill Coalition, of which MPA is a member, is asking for considerably more spending on several of the Mass Ready Act line items for parks, parkways and trails. The reasons are as simple as they are clear. During and after the 2008 recession, in addition to losing about a third of its staff and a third of its operating budget, DCR built up a $1.0 billion deferred maintenance backlog. While the operating side of the budget has increased considerably during the last few fiscal years, the capital side has languished in a treading water state that makes it impossible to gain ground while keeping up with the inevitable new capital needs that come along every year.
About $400 million of that backlog is deferred work on our historic parkways, envisioned and designed by the likes of visionary landscape architects such as Fredrick Law Olmsted and Charles Eliot. There is a DCR Parkways Master Plan that outlines much of this needed work. But a plan without funding is just a pretty booklet of what could be.
So, the Bond Bill Coalition is reprising its request to ENR via testimony and a letter, now to the Bonding Committee, and eventually to Ways & Means. We continue to seek a $200 million increase from the Administration’s proposal for the line item (2840-7028) that covers DCR’s general parks projects, from $587 million to $787 million. The 2018 bond bill contained $420 million in authorizations.
For Parkways (2890-7036), Mass Ready proposes $177 million, up from 2018’s $160 million. MPA and the coalition are asking for $400 million because that is the portion of the deferred maintenance backlog on DCR parkways.
Finally, we are asking for $75 million over five years for trails, up from $25 million in the 2018 bill. But as it was in 2018, we want to see it in a separate line item for tracking purposes. The Mass Ready line item (2000-7082) that contains trail funding authorizations is currently proposed at $120 million. But there are multiple other uses named in the account, so it is important yet impossible to separate trail spending from other spending. The line item as written calls for investments in land, soil, water, resource conservation, land conservation, and “…MassTrails grants and other capital investments to advance trails of all kinds;…”
While everything in this line item is important, for the Coalition, trails are where the rubber, or the shoe, or the kayak meets the road, the dirt, or the stream. Trails get people off their couches and into our great outdoors - and in many cases, to work - the value of which we learned only too well during the pandemic. That’s why we want it in a dedicated account.
Trail spending over the past few years has increased considerably, from $5 million in 2019 to $11.6 million by 2024. That dropped down to $7.5 million for 2025. But with MassTrails grant applications for next summer being accepted now, DCR does not yet have a figure for how much funding will be available for the grants to be awarded next summer, according to agency comments at the December meeting of the DCR Stewardship Council.
In the end, though, it matters not how much in authorizations the Mass Ready Act ultimately has if DCR doesn’t have the governor’s permission to spend enough of it each year to make timely progress on the billion-dollar backlog. Between 2021 and 2025, DCR received modest but steady increases in its capital budget, until the current fiscal year, FY2026.
FY2021 - $122.2 million
FY2022 - $125.6 million
FY2023 - $140.7 million
FY2024 - $147.7 million
FY2025 - $153 million
FY2026 - $143.3 million
MPA would submit that now is not the time for the Commonwealth to take its foot off the gas pedal on capital spending on parks because the backlog is so large, it will take decades to erase without large increases in the annual capital budget. MPA has been on record saying DCR needs $250 million a year in capital spending in order to retire the backlog over the course of a decade, and we stand by that statement today.
As we navigate these uncertain fiscal waters, let’s not unlearn what covid taught us. Our long-neglected parks are need to have assets, not want to have assets. We started Mass Parks for All specifically to drive this point home on the heels of more than a decade of woefully inadequate tax dollar funding on public open space.
This was a dark time that saw Massachusetts fall to last in the nation in per capita tax dollars spent on these jewels that benefit us physically and emotionally. They also happen to contribute mightily to our $16 billion annual outdoor recreation economy, the fastest growing in the nation. It is not even a slight exaggeration to say that our parks kept us alive and somewhat sane during the worst public health crisis since the 1918 flu pandemic.
And no matter what ill fiscal winds we are facing, now is not the time to let up on bringing our parks squarely into the 21st century. Much is owed to those who lost so much. While no one can predict the future with certainty, our need for parks is at least as great, if not greater than it was just a few years ago. And the through the roof demand for access to these spaces has only increased since then.
Bond bill capital projects by their very nature restore resources and build infrastructure. They put people to work and infuse money into the economy, and can be paid off in installments over long periods of time while having zero impact on operating budgets. In short, they are a necessary hedge against whatever this uncertain economy sends our way.
As 2025 comes to an end and the new year begins, we look forward to working with all of you, including our more than 200 organizations from all over the state, the Legislature and the Administration to make sure DCR gets its fair share of this $3.9 billion bond bill. Our parks and the millions who visit them every year, spending billions in the process, deserve nothing less.
First Day Hikes, Another Massachusetts First
There is no better way to work off the additional calories we all consume during the holiday season than with some outdoor activity on New Year’s Day.
DCR started First Day Hikes in 1992. What started out with a few hundred people at one park, the Blue Hills Reservation in Milton, has morphed into a statewide effort for thousands of outdoor enthusiasts in Massachusetts, and perhaps tens of thousands of people in all 50 states.
So whether you head out on one of the many park friends group sponsored hikes, or strike out on your own, get out there and start the New Year off right, with exercise outside.
MassTrails grant applications due February 2
Each year the Commonwealth awards millions of dollars in matching grants to communities, non-profits, Native nations, and other groups to, among other things, renovate existing trails or create new ones. Grants range between $5,000 and $500,000.
The application process is now open and will be until February 2. It is an involved process so if you have an idea you want to see come to life, the sooner you start, the better.
We wish you the best of luck in getting your project funded.
Thank you for helping us have a successful year
Finally, we at MPA want to thank you for helping us have a successful year. We are particularly thankful to those of you who generously helped us meet our fundraising goal. We are also thankful to those of you who contacted your elected officials in the successful effort to get DCR an inflation-beating operating budget in what has been a particularly difficult fiscal year. As we look toward next year, which may be equally or perhaps more difficult, knowing you have our back, and through us, our state parks’ back, makes a tough job a little easier and much more gratifying. We hope you have a happy, healthful holiday season, and we will see you again in the New Year.