ML Strategies

With Beacon Hill off and running in the new year, Governor Charlie Baker and House Speaker Robert DeLeo this week unveiled key parts of their policy agendas for 2016.

Welcome to 2016 and our annual look at what’s in store for the United States Congress in the coming year. Here you will find a preview of the US legislative agenda as well as a look at the Obama Administration’s regulatory plans.

On Friday, January 8, Governor Charlie Baker ordered $49 million in emergency spending cuts aimed at erasing a projected state budget shortfall. In a letter to state lawmakers, Baker said his administration had identified a $320 million gap between projected spending and revenues through the end of the fiscal year in July.

Now just days away from the December 11th expiration of a short-term Continuing Resolution (CR) that has been funding federal activities since the start of the current fiscal year on October 1st, Congress is feverishly working to reach agreement on a long-term Omnibus spending bill that will fund the federal government through the remainder of the fiscal year.

On November 12th and 13th, the Food and Drug Administration hosted genome scientists from across the nation at its campus in White Oak, Maryland.

Building on the momentum of early October hearings on the state’s growing health care expenditures, the Health Policy Commission (HPC), the Joint Committee on Health Care Financing, Governor Charlie Baker, and others spent the past two weeks crafting new policies for the industry and its consumers.

Amid a recent surge in opioid-related deaths in Massachusetts, with over 1,200 accidental deadly overdoses last year, the Senate passed legislation on October 1st that is designed to fight the epidemic on various fronts.

Coinciding with the end of the current fiscal year, the EB-5 regional center program is set to expire today but will get a temporary reprieve with expected final passage of a Continuing Resolution (CR) that will fund the government through December 11 and also temporarily extend the regional center program through that same date.  

After a busy final few weeks of activity, the Massachusetts Legislature departed for its summer recess with a new budget and progress on several priority policy issues. In addition to overriding $97 million in Governor Baker’s vetoes, Boston lawmakers considered tax, public records, energy, healthcare, and labor issues.

In a hearing before the Joint Committee on Labor and Workforce Development on Tuesday, July 21, roughly two dozen lawmakers and a wide range of business officials, advocacy groups, non-profit leaders, and academics testified in support of a pay equity bill aimed at eliminating the wage gap between genders in Massachusetts.

After many weeks of deliberation, the Massachusetts House and Senate sent a budget to Governor Baker’s desk. This budget passed the Senate 31-5 and the House 153-1 and represents a compromise between the House and Senate versions, described in previous ML Strategies advisories.

Created by the Immigration Act of 1990, the Immigrant Investor Program, more commonly referred to as the EB-5 program, offers foreign investors an opportunity to secure permanent residency in the United States by making a minimum capital investment of $1 million per investor into a New Commercial Enterprise (NCE) that will create at least 10 jobs for US workers.

Responding to criticisms that state regulations are burdensome and make Massachusetts a more costly and less competitive place to live and do business, Governor Charlie Baker signed Executive Order 562 to simplify the Commonwealth’s regulatory regime.

In the previous Congress, we saw a burst of policy and industry attention to telehealth as lawmakers and stakeholders alike recognized the cost, quality, and accessibility benefits of telehealth.

On May 22, the Massachusetts Senate unanimously approved a $38.1 billion budget for FY2016. The Senate budget hews closely to the spending plans proposed by the Massachusetts House of Representatives in April and Governor Charlie Baker in March.

Massachusetts’ Earned Sick Leave Law, which voters passed by ballot initiative last November, is set to become effective in less than two months on July 1, 2015. On April 27, Attorney General Maura Healy’s office released proposed regulations to clarify how the ballot law will be implemented.

On April 29 the Massachusetts House of Representatives approved a $38.1 billion spending plan for FY2016 by a unanimous vote of 158-0. Over roughly 28 hours of sessions, the House dispensed with over 1,000 amendments to pass a final budget that spends $10 million less than Governor Baker’s spending plan, but closely resembles it in many regards.

The first energy bill of the 114th Congress is heading toward the President’s desk for signature.

On March 16, Massachusetts officials announced a tax amnesty program, effective immediately, to recoup delinquent corporate taxes. The program is part of a larger effort by the Baker administration and the Department of Revenue (DOR) to raise funds to close the Commonwealth’s midyear budget deficit.

Wednesday, the Baker-Polito administration revealed the details of their $38.1 billion FY2016 budget. Seeking to overcome a structural deficit, which at $1.8 billion, represents nearly five percent of the total budget, the Governor doubled down on cost-saving measures rather than raising taxes, increasing fees or drawing from the state’s rainy day fund.