Conference Committee Releases State Budget Without CPA Registry Fee Language
July 18, 2018: After more than six weeks of behind-the-scenes negotiations, the FY19 state budget was released from the Conference Committee this morning. Despite being a part of the Senate's budget approved in May, the language to increase funding for the CPA Trust Fund was not included in the Conference Committee's report. Needless to say, this is a tremendous disappointment after the widespread support for the language in both the House and the Senate and hundreds of hours of work by the Coalition and CPA advocates across the state.
Since the negotiations during conference committees are kept private, it's hard to know why certain provisions are included and certain ones are not. This was an unusual and extraordinarily difficult budget negotiation between the House and Senate that went way past the deadline, leaving Massachusetts as the only state in the union without a permanent FY19 budget. In addition to CPA, nearly 160 other policy provisions were left out of the final conference committee report.
"They weren't simple policy pieces," House Ways and Means Chairman Jeffrey Sanchez told reporters. "At times you have to dive in on these policy pieces, and you really get stuck in the woods."
The legislature still has much work to do before they recess on July 31st, and that means there may still be an avenue open for CPA in the final two weeks of the legislative session.