Monday, February 7, 2011

The Governor's budget in depth

The Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center (Mass Budget) had previously released a quick look at the Governor's 2012 budget. They have followed up with a more in depth look that can be found at this link.
Mass Budget does a great job of tracking the budget as it moves through the appropriations process. The Governor's budget proposal has gone to the state House ...

... where it is designated, House 1. As the various budget items are considered and revised by the House, it becomes the House Ways and Means budget and then is forwarded to the state Senate for similar consideration. The Senate considers and revises the budget and then a joint budget is passed by both bodies. Finally the Governor, who has line item veto power, can markup th final and then the legislature may override his vetoes or not.
The whole process takes several months. municipalities would like the budget sooner rather than later as they must make decisions on their own budgets and state figures impact their decisions

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Governor Patrick did away with policemen working at road details and saved the state millions of dollars on road construction safety. I haven't seen one flagman at a Dartmouth construction site and that includes town construction. Just passing through the Bliss corner area where road construction has been very active. All I can see is blue police uniforms. What ever happened to the flagmen??