With tax revenues continuing a months-long slide, and the cost of the state’s migrant crisis showing no signs of abating, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey is hitting pause on executive branch hiring, according to published reports.
Starting Wednesday and running until June 30, any new executive branch hires will have to be approved by the state Office of Administration and Finance, State House News Service reported.
The freeze was first reported by the Boston Globe.
Direct care and public safety positions are exempt from the “hiring controls,” as are seasonal jobs, positions that have to be filled as part of a court order or settlement, and returns from leave, State House News Service reported.
“The Healey-Driscoll administration is implementing hiring controls within the Executive branch for the remainder of the fiscal year as one tool at our disposal to responsibly manage spending over the next three months,” the administration’s budget czar, Matthew Gorzkowicz, said in a statement.
“These hiring controls, while temporary, will help ensure that the administration can balance the budget at the end of the year and preserve critical funding for core programs and services,” Gorzkowicz said, according to State House News Service.
News of the freeze came ahead of Wednesday’s expected announcement by the state Revenue Department on the state’s March tax collections, the wire service reported.
A mid-month report from the agency, sent to the top budget-writers in the state House and Senate, showed collections up by 2.7% during the same time period in March 2023. Increased income, sales, and corporate tax collections were “partially” offset by a decrease in “all other” collections, the agency said.
The state collected a little over $2 billion in taxes in February. That was $27 million, or 1.3% more than actual collections in February 2023, but still $11 million, or 0.6% behind projections, MassLive previously reported.
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Year-to-date collections through the end of February totaled around $23.4 billion, which was $186 million, or 0.8% less than collections during the same time period last year, and $275 million, or 1.2% less than projections, that same state data indicated.
Saddled with a $1 billion budget gap, Healey’s office has already announced it was trimming $375 million in state spending from the current year’s budget, MassLive previously reported.
State House and Senate negotiators met for the first time earlier this week on dueling supplemental funding bills that would pump more money into the state’s cash-strapped emergency shelter system.
While the state has the reserves to help cover its costs for the new fiscal year that starts July 1, that may not be the case in the 2026 budget year, and programs could feel the pinch, House Speaker Ron Mariano, D-3rd Norfolk, said.
“Every program that we fund is susceptible to being tapped to get to fund this shelter program -- not in this budget, but in the next budget,” Mariano said during an event at the State House, as he lamented the lack of help from the federal government. “People continue to come, and we have a commitment to keep this emergency shelter program open.”