The Budget Browser, created by the
Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center (MassBudget), provides comprehensive
state budget information that can be accessed and understood by anyone
interested in how the state uses its resources. The Browser allows you to view
information on Massachusetts state budgets from Fiscal Year (FY) 2001 to
present, as well as current budget proposals offered by the Governor and the
Legislature.
With the Budget Browser, you may look
up spending for large policy areas or categories (e.g., Health Care), smaller
subcategories (e.g., Public Health), or specific line items. The Browser
allows you to choose whether you would like to look at historical budget
information, current budget proposals or a combination of the two. Finally, in
providing information on historical budget information, or comparing historical
budgets with current proposals, you can choose whether to display your search
results using no inflation adjustment, inflation-adjusted funding levels, or
spending as a percentage of personal income.
The Budget Browser provides a
number of different ways to look at the state budget:
·
Compare Past
Year Budgets allows
you to compare budgets by category and subcategory from 2001 to 2009.
·
Compare Current
Year Budget Proposals
allows you to compare current year budget proposals from the Governor and the
Legislature by category and subcategory.
·
Compare
Current vs. Past Year Budgets
allows you to customize your own budget comparison by selecting from past year
budgets and current budget proposals.
·
Search Line
Items and Categories
allows you to compare spending levels for a single line item or group of line
items from 2001 to the present.
·
Tax Revenue Information
provides a basic overview of the state’s tax system, how it has changed over time, and how it compares to
other states.
·
Resources and Glossary
provides information on how to use the
Browser, a glossary of budget terms and a brief description of the state
budget process.
If you have general questions or would like to learn more about the Budget Browser please feel free to contact our Director of Outreach Katrina McCarty at 617-426-1228 x103 or by email at
kmccarty@massbudget.org
Methodology
I. What Browser Budget Figures Include
The Browser displays final budget
numbers for every fiscal year that has come to an end. The final budget
figures include funding approved in the initial budget, known as the General
Appropriations Act (GAA), as well as any subsequent supplemental or deficiency
budgets, including any reductions made by the Governor under Section 9C of
Chapter 29 of the Massachusetts General Laws. Section 9C requires that the
Governor make immediate cuts if state revenues fall significantly below the
amount projected in the GAA. For the current year, the Browser displays budget
proposals offered by the Governor and Legislature.
Additionally, budget figures not
only include funding appropriated by the GAA, but also funding available as a result
of pre-budget transfers and other budget adjustments. Pre-budget transfers include
certain taxes and fees that are automatically directed to fund specific items
in the budget (for example, a portion of the sales tax is automatically
directed to fund the MBTA). These pre-budget transfers, like line item
appropriations, are a way the state spends money. Because the Budget Browser
does include these transfers, the Browser will show a higher total state budget
than the GAA for each fiscal year.
The Budget Browser provides budget
adjustments to budget totals that allow for accurate “apples to apples”
comparisons of funding for programs. In a few cases, funding that was once a
part of the budget is moved off budget and is funded through fees dedicated to
that purpose. In other cases funding that was once off budget has been moved
onto the budget. In both cases MassBudget “adjusts” the totals allowing
accurate across-year comparisons.
The FY 2009, 2010 and 2011 final
budget numbers also include funding that Massachusetts has received from the
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the federal recovery act) signed by
President Obama in February 2009.
The budget changes many times over
the course of a fiscal year. The Legislature may add funding to certain
programs, and the Governor may cut funding if it is decided that the state does
not have enough money to support the current budget.
II. Organizing the Budget: What's in Each Budget Category?
MassBudget organizes the budget
into “categories” and “subcategories” to make the budget easier to follow.
This structure groups budget items by function, not by the state department or
secretariat that administers the items. Below is a brief description of the policy
areas included in each category and a listing of subcategories.
Education
| |
“Education” includes funding that
supports education, from preschool programming through higher education. This
category also includes funding for school construction.
Subcategories: Chapter 70; Early
Education and Care; Elementary and Secondary Education; Higher Education;
School Building Assistance.
|
Environment and Recreation
| |
”Environment and Recreation”
includes funding for maintenance of parkways, land management and wildlife
preservation, state parks, beaches and pools and keeping the state’s water and
air clean.
Subcategories: Agriculture;
Environmental Administration; Environmental Protection; Fish and Game; Parks
and Recreation.
|
Health Care
| |
“Health Care” includes funding for
the state’s publicly-funded health insurance programs, as well as other health
and mental health care services. This category also includes the payments for
health insurance benefits for state employees.
Subcategories: MassHealth
(Medicaid) and Health Reform; Mental Health; Public Health; State Employee
Health Insurance.
|
Human Services
| |
“Human Services” includes funding
for a wide variety of programs and services for low-income families and other
vulnerable individuals.
Subcategories: Children and
Families; Developmental Services; Elder Services; Transitional Assistance;
Other Human Services.
|
Infrastructure, Housing and
Economic Development
| |
“Infrastructure, Housing, and
Economic Development” includes funding for transportation (including public
transit, highways, and bridges), affordable housing, worker training, and
community development. This category also includes regulatory programs.
Subcategories: Economic
Development; Housing and Community Development; Regulatory Entities;
Transportation; Workforce and Labor.
|
Law and Public Safety
| |
“Law and Public Safety” includes
funding for public safety and the state judicial system.
Subcategories: Courts and Legal
Assistance; Law Enforcement; Prisons, Probation and Parole; Prosecutors; Other
Law and Public Safety.
|
Local Aid
| |
“Local Aid” includes funding that
cities and towns receive to help pay for municipal services. This category
includes all forms of local aid except for Chapter 70 education aid which is
included in the “Education” category.
Subcategories: General Local Aid;
Other Local Aid.
|
Other
| |
“Other” includes funding for a
variety of administrative functions, including funding for the Governor,
Legislature and all the constitutional officers, funding for pensions and debt
service, funding for the state library system, and funding for a number of
small offices and commissions. This category also often includes many of the
funding reserves for collective bargaining agreements.
Subcategories: Constitutional
Officers; Debt Service; Executive and Legislative; Libraries; Pensions and
Other Administrative.
|
III. Viewing Meaningful Budget Comparisons
over Time or Among Various Accounts
Over
the years, the organization of state government has changed many times.
Programs and services may move from one department to another. The Browser is
designed to accommodate these changes, allowing for meaningful comparisons over
the years.
In
the Search Line Items and Categories” option, the Browser provides comments that
explain any reorganizations and consolidations that may affect the line items
in your search.
For
example, between FY 2005 and FY 2006, the administration of early childhood
education programs moved from the Office for Children within the Executive
Office for Health and Human Services to a newly-created Department of Early
Education and Care (EEC). In doing so, many programs that had been under
other state agencies were moved to EEC and given new line item
numbers. If you choose to look at funding for certain early
education and care programs, the Browser will provide a comment at the bottom
of the page that provides your search results that explains any reorganizations
or consolidations that may have affected this program.
Adjusting for Inflation
The Browser allows you to you
compare past and current spending in several ways that help to make those
comparisons more meaningful. If you are looking at just one particular year’s
budget proposal you can use Nominal growth, to view spending for that year
without adjusting for inflation. The challenge is when you try and compare
spending for a particular program over several years because the value of a
dollar is different today than it was a year ago, ten years ago, or a hundred
years ago. In comparing spending from different years it is important to
adjust for these affects of inflation but inflation affects different costs in
different ways. For example, over the long term the cost of clothing and
manufactured goods has declined relative to the cost of services, such as
health care. At our request, the New England Public Policy Center at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston provided a more complete analysis of these issues,
available here: http://www.bos.frb.org/economic/neppc/memos/2009/tannomara030409.pdf.
Inflation – consumer goods and
services: The standard solution to this comparison problem was to create an
official “market basket” of goods and services a typical consumer buys and to
calculate a weighted average of the changes in costs of those goods and
services. This is how the standard inflation measure, the consumer price index
(CPI), is calculated. The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ site for the Consumer
Price Index can be found here: http://www.bls.gov/cpi/.
One problem with this measure, or any measure, is that most people are not a
typical consumer. In different regions cost changes are different
(particularly for housing, for example) and different consumers buy different
things (senior citizens buy more health care, for example). Thus the CPI is a
pretty good, not perfect measure of inflation for consumers.
Inflation – Government goods and
services: The consumer price index is not a good measure of inflation in
the context of government spending. The market basket of goods and services
that a state government buys is totally different from the goods and services
that a consumer buys. The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics developed a
better measure for this situation. The Budget Browser allows you to use this
other inflation adjustment, called “inflation adjusted – government goods and
services.” This is not perfect for all sectors of government spending because
each item that government spends money on actually has its own rate of
inflation (healthcare inflation is different from inflation in the costs of the
components of building roads). In the absence of identifying dozens of
different inflation factors for each area of spending, this government measure
is a good approximation of overall changes in the cost of providing the same
services from year to year. Users of the Browser should be aware, however,
that even after adjusting for general inflation increases or decreases in
spending on a particular line-item could be due to changes in the cost of the
service provided in that item rather than policy decisions to provide more or
less of that service.
Economic Growth: Finally,
the Browser provides a measure that allows users to see if spending on various
government services is growing more or less rapidly than the overall economy.
This is an important measure because it allows us to see if various government
services are requiring a larger or smaller share of our state’s overall
economic resources. This answers a different question than the inflation
question. In adjusting for inflation we are essentially trying to see what the
cost would be from year to year of providing the same services. In comparing
costs of government services to the overall economy we are able to examine
whether spending levels are growing faster than the overall economy (which
would create budget deficits unless taxes were increased or spending was
reduced) or whether spending is growing more slowly than the overall economy
(which would mean the state would show surpluses unless new spending is added
or taxes are cut). This adjustment, therefore, is particularly useful in
examining changes in the state’s fiscal condition over time. We call this
measure “Economic Growth: Spending as a Percentage of Total Income Earned in
the State” because it uses changes in personal income as the measure of private
sector economic growth that is compared to changes in public sector spending.
When you choose to look at spending
on a particular program or set of programs as a share of the state’s total
economy (percent of personal income), the Browser’s results will provide the
percent of the total economy that is spent on the program(s) you choose. For
instance, if you asked the Budget Browser to tell you how much the state has
spent on Public Health programs between FY 2001 and the most recently completed
fiscal year, 2008, the Browser provide you with percentages for each year of
public spending. In FY 2001 the state spent about .2 percent of its total
personal income on Public Health programs. By FY 2008 that percentage fell to
.17 percent of the total economy indicating that the state has devoted less of
its total income to public health programs in FY 2008 than it did in FY 2001.