Senate Budget Roundup (Part One: MassArt & the MCC)

Today the the Massachusetts Senate Ways & Means Committee, which is responsible for crafting the Senate’s budget, released its Senate FY 2017 Budget. This is the third step in our state’s budget process:
https://malegislature.gov/Budget/Process

The first step of the budget process was the release of the Governor’s budget. The second step was the release and finalization of the House budget.

To review the Senate FY 2017 proposed Budget:
https://malegislature.gov/Budget/FY2017/Senate

There are several line items MALC is watching. (Note the line items are the same in the Governor’s, House, and Senate budgets.)

MassArt and the MCC line items

We will highlight two of the line items in this post:

MassArt’s budget (line item 7117-0100) is $18,481,083.  (Note the final House FY2017 budget funded MassArt at $17,899,354).

Mass Cultural Council’s budget (line item 0640-0300) is $13,000,000.  (Note, the final House FY2017 budget funded MCC at $12,189,000.)

The Senate Ways & Means funded the MCC at a higher level than the final House FY17 budget, which is a good. However, the MCC’s current budget for this year, FY16, is just over $14 million. So the Senate Ways & Means in its FY17 budget actually cut the MCC’s funding by just over $1 million dollars.

Please help restore the MCC’s funding

Senator Eric P. Lessor is filing an amendment to restore/increase the MCC’s budget. Please call your State Senator and urge them  co-sign on to his amendment to restore the MCC budget. make sure you say the his amendment is for “line item  0640-0300, the MCC/state arts council’s budget“.

How to find who your state senator is click here:
http://www.wheredoivotema.com/bal/myelectioninfo.aspx

Stay tuned!

Tomorrow, our blog post will focus on the libraries, MOTT and the film tax credit.