State Budget-First Step -the Governor’s Budget (Part Three)
As mentioned in Part One and Two, on January 25th, Governor Baker released his FY18 Budget and to see his full budget see this link: http://www.mass.gov/bb/h1/fy18h1/.*
MALC watches several “line items” in the budget- the Massachusetts Cultural Council (MCC), funding to our libraries, the tourism funding, and the film tax credit program. We also monitor what is filed in the “outside” section(s) of the budget.
Part Three is focusing on the public library funding. The Governor gave slight increases (1 percent) to the library line items- http://www.mass.gov/bb/h1/fy18h1/brec_18/dpt_18/hhblc.htm
Although these increases are welcomed, our libraries have been underfunded for years and are in need of more funding.
An excerpt from Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners’ press release**:
“On January 25th, Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker released his $40.5 billion FY2018 budget, an overall spending increase of 4.3% over FY2017. The seven line items overseen by the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners (MBLC) all received a 1% increase, for a total budget increase of $251,671. This is the first time since FY2015 that every line item is seeing an increase. The per capita that funds the Library for the Commonwealth was kept at 40.7 cents per resident in the proposed budget.
In it’s FY2018 legislative agenda, the MBLC requested a total increase in all of its lines to prevent reductions in library services.”
The MBLC FY2018 Legislative Agenda indicates the funding levels needed to best support our library system: http://www.mblclegislativeagenda.com/
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*The first step in our state budget process is the release of the governor’s budget. To learn about the state budget process see this link: https://malegislature.gov/Budget/GovernorsBudget
**Link to full press release http://mblc.state.ma.us/mblc/news/releases/past-releases/2017/nr170127.php?current=yes