Senate wraps up FY27 budget with $1M added to DCR

The state Senate wrapped up work on S.3100, its version of the FY2027 budget, on May 22 by adding $1.0 million to the proposed Senate Ways and Means Committee’s appropriation for the Department of Conservation and Recreation’s (DCR) operating budget (2810-0100). This brings the total proposed funding for that account to $105.7 million. Both the Healey-Driscoll administration and the House came in at $104.7 million.

We thank the 47 organizations that signed our letter seeking a 3.5 percent increase for operations and seasonal accounts. And as we moved through the process, more than 500 of you used our platform to directly email your legislators in support of budget amendments in the House and Senate. We are forever grateful to each one of you.

The entire budget will now go to a yet-to-be-named House-Senate Conference Committee, where both chambers will negotiate a final budget to approve and send to the governor for consideration. The fiscal year begins July 1.

The Senate’s increase came via a floor amendment offered by Senate President Pro Tempore Will Brownsberger. State Sen. Jamie Eldridge also filed two DCR budget amendments. They sought to fund the operations account and the seasonal employees account (2800-0501) at FY2026 levels, operations at $113.8 million and seasonal employees at $29.3 million. Neither of the Eldridge amendments passed. We thank senators Brownsberger and Eldridge and their colleagues for the increase at hand. 

As a result, if the Conference Committee approves the DCR line items as proposed in the Senate, the budget going to the governor will contain a 7.1 percent cut to DCR operations and a 2.7 percent cut to DCR’s seasonal employees account. 

The governor can either approve or reduce the funding the legislators approved. Since the seasonal account is in line with what the governor submitted and the House and Senate approved, it is unlikely this account will receive more attention. 

That leaves the operations account as the subject of a possible veto. Last year, when the Legislature submitted a 3.5 percent increase in the operations account to the Administration, which had asked for a 2.5 percent bump, Governor Maura Healey vetoed $400,000 from the appropriation. The Legislature overrode the veto last October. We sincerely hope that process does not play out again this year.  

While we are grateful to the Senate for adding funding for operations, these cuts if approved will go into effect on July 1, just as summer kicks into high gear. Mass Parks for All (MPA) sees these budget cuts, the first for DCR in three years, as greatly hindering the agency’s ability to deliver well-staffed, clean, safe parks, beaches, campgrounds, and other assets that receive heavy summer use.  

Nevertheless, as we did last year, we will be asking the Conference Committee to support the Senate’s number for operations. And, as we did last year, if that passes the full Legislature, we will ask the governor to refrain from reducing the line item through a veto.

Looking at the big picture, we can’t help but be disappointed that state government has once again resorted to the one step forward, two steps backward budgets that plagued DCR for more than a decade during and after the 2008 recession, when the agency lost about a third of its budget and a like amount of staff. The agency received three years of reasonable budget increases for fiscal years 23 through 26 and has been implementing many of the reforms outlined in 2021’s Special Legislative Commission report. 

Even so, at just more than 1,050 full-time positions, the agency still has fewer employees than it had in 2007, when it had about 1,100 full-time slots. So come July 1, DCR, despite having increased responsibilities, will have fewer people to take on those tasks than it had two decades ago.

If there is a bright light for the future, it’s that both general revenue tax receipts and the Mass Fair Share millionaires’ tax are bringing in more funds than expected. While Fair Share money can only be used for education and transportation operating and capital expenses, other tax receipts can be used as needed to shore up other agency budgets.

In April alone, the state took in $7.4 billion in taxes, about a billion dollars more than expected. That’s completely separate from the $8.2 billion Stabilization (Rainy Day) Fund we have for emergencies. Tax revenues in general have exceeded projections for the first four months of the calendar year. If they continue to do so, we urge the Administration to seek a supplemental budget appropriation from the Legislature to soften the blow DCR is likely to get hit with this summer. 

After healthcare and education spending, which arguably have the greatest overall effect on our quality of life, MPA would argue that our state parks have the next largest impact on that quality of life. DCR is the largest land holder in the state with nearly 500,000 acres under management, which includes more than 150 parks, forests, beaches, campgrounds, pools, spraydecks, playgrounds, trails, and other assets. Our state parks receive 26.2 million visitors a year (Pg. 5) and contribute considerably to our $13 billion annual outdoor recreation economy, the fastest growing in the nation. So there is an economic incentive to fund them adequately as well. Sadly, this proposed budget does not do that. 

At a time when many everyday staples we rely on are getting ridiculously expensive due to circumstances beyond our control, our parks, beaches, pools, trails, and campgrounds are still affordable to the millions of people who use them. By and large, the majority of park visitors do not have a house on the Cape or jet off to ski in Aspen at Christmas. They are average residents looking for recreation opportunities that do not cost an arm and a leg, a little respite from their daily work-a-day lives. 

State budget writers are rightly concerned about the continuing withdrawal of federal funding to Massachusetts and the possibility that a ballot question in November will cut the state income tax, removing billions of dollars from state coffers.

In light of this, we reduced our initial request for the same inflation-beating 3.5 percent increase for DCR we successfully asked for last year. Instead, we sought to fund the operations and seasonal accounts at this year’s level, which, given inflation, is still about a three percent cut. We hope as the state’s fiscal picture comes into sharper focus, the Administration and the Legislature can find the $9.0 million it would take to do this in a $64 billion budget proposed to increase four percent over the current fiscal year.  

Doug Pizzi is the Executive Director of Mass Parks for All.