As a kid watching Saturday morning cartoons back in the 1970’s, I used to love singing along to episodes of Schoolhouse Rock, and one of my favorites was “I’m Just a Bill,” a bouncy, bluesy three-minute explanation of how ideas become laws in America.
Those catchy little ditties were a combination of grooviness and wonkiness, and somehow made learning about civics, mathematics, language, and physics seem both simple and cool.
Well, it’s June in Massachusetts, the time of year when colleges like NECC are in the home stretch of advocating for the funding and legislation they want in next year’s state budget, a process which can seem bewilderingly byzantine to the casual observer.
So, with apologies to the brilliant creators of this savvy seminal series from my youth, here is my, admittedly more detailed, Schoolhouse Rock-like explanation of the annual budget process for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (2026 edition):
“It’s the Budget” (Sung to the tune of “I’m Just a Bill”)
It’s the budget
Yes, the state’s big budget
And it’s how we know how much we will get
Well, it’s a long, long journey
From the fall to the spring
While we lobby and debate
So it will have everything
That we need for our students all year
At least we hope and pray that they met
Our requests in the state’s big budget
Here in Massachusetts, community colleges like NECC rely on the state for a portion of our annual budget, as well as funding for special initiatives, and of course for laws that impact how we operate and sometimes how important changes are made.
The state’s “fiscal year” (the 365 days in which it spends its money) runs from July 1 – June 30, so June is usually a pretty important month, as the legislature and governor work out whatever differences they may have and (hopefully) finalize a new budget in time for the next fiscal year to begin.
While June may be a critical time of year for this process, in one way or another, it’s almost always “budget season” in Massachusetts, and it usually looks something like this:
September – December
Well, it’s a long, long journey
From the fall to the spring
Hundreds of state agencies, from the Architectural Access Board to the Water Resources Commission (here is the complete A-Z State Organization Index, an alphabetical list of government organizations, including every commission, department, and bureau in the Commonwealth) submit their spending plans for the next fiscal year to one of eleven state Executive Offices.
There are fifteen community colleges in the Bay State, and we work together through our Massachusetts Association of Community Colleges to develop a list of budget and legislative priorities, which we share directly with the governor’s office and legislature, and with the state’s Department of Higher Education, which submits its proposed budget to the Executive Office of Education.
This year, we shared four priorities, including:
- Continued funding for the state’s “Free Community College” programs (MassReconnect and MassEducate) which, over the past three years have boosted enrollment on our campuses by 38% and helped thousands of new students access valuable career credentials.
- $28 million for the SUCCESS (Supporting Urgent Community College Equity through Student Services) initiative (to serve those thousands of new students arriving on campus for Free Community College).
- Resources to improve faculty and professional staff compensation on our campuses (to pay the people who are teaching the classes and providing the support services).
- Investment in the proposed BRIGHT Act, a $2.5 billion bond bill that would help the state’s community colleges, state universities and University of Massachusetts campuses catch up on deferred maintenance needs and accessibility requirements, modernize aging facilities, and build new classrooms, laboratories, and student spaces.
In addition to allocating money to state agencies, the annual budget also regularly includes “outside sections,” which are ways to pass policy proposals or laws as part of the overall budget package.
As an example, last year the community colleges supported an “outside section” in the budget that would require graduating high school students in the state to either complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) or to opt out of applying. As Representative Andy Vargas, uAspire Policy Director Femi Stoltz, and I explained in CommonWealth Beacon, each year thousands of graduating high school students in Massachusetts, mostly in low-income communities, leave more than $50M in federal aid behind and don’t consider college because they think they cannot afford it.
While all of this is going on, the Administration (i.e., Governor’s office) holds public hearings on the budget proposals from all those state agencies and considers public feedback, while the Budget Bureau forecasts what tax and other forms of revenue are likely to be for the next year so the Governor and legislature can decide how much money will be available and how to prioritize where that money gets spent.
This year, the Governor, Senate President and Speaker of the House of Representatives agreed on a Consensus Revenue Estimate (CRE) of $44.9 billion in mid-January, an increase of 2.4% over last year’s state revenue.
But wait…
In the year ahead, that revenue forecast might change dramatically. The “One Big Beautiful Bill (or “OB3” if you prefer) passed by Congress and signed by President Trump in July of 2025 includes significant reductions to safety net line items in the federal budget like Medicaid that aren’t expected to happen until after November’s mid-term elections.
As a result, if those reductions are implemented as planned in early 2027, Massachusetts may lose as much as $3.5 billion in federal funding, leaving 300,000 residents uninsured and sending shockwaves throughout whatever budget the state passes this summer.
January – April
While we lobby and debate
So it will have everything
That we need for our students all year
The state’s Constitution requires that the Governor must propose a budget for the next fiscal year within three weeks of the Legislature convening its new session. Since the Legislature typically convenes just after the holidays in early January, most years this means the Governor delivers a “State of the State” address and releases a proposed budget, called either “House 1” or “House 2” depending on whether it is the first or second year of the legislative session, by the fourth Wednesday of January.
And so it was that on January 28, five months ago, Governor Healey released her “House 2” budget for fiscal year 2027, a $62.8 billion proposal that laid out the funding for all of those hundreds of state agencies (like community colleges) that depend on it, and for her other spending priorities, which this year include free community college, housing affordability, universal pre-K access in Gateway Cities, early literacy, transportation infrastructure, and addressing the woeful state of the MBTA.
Governor Healey’s higher ed funding proposals included increases to campus operational budgets and Free Community College and mostly level funding for other items like Early College and the SUCCESS fund. It also included an extra $10M for the University of Massachusetts to create its own SUCCESS (Supporting Urgent Community College Equity through Student Services) program.
Level funding, as the state’s fifteen community colleges are seeing historically large enrollment increases, is a huge caution flag waving for the Commonwealth’s Free Community College effort. Without additional funds to serve the thousands of new students arriving on campuses, at some point soon Massachusetts may have to follow the lead of other states, like Oregon or California, that have not sustained sufficient support for increased enrollment, and had to change eligibility requirements, or turn students away.
Once complete, the governor’s “House 2” budget is delivered to the Ways and Means Committee (a.k.a. the budget committee) for the House of Representatives.
The House then has a few weeks to develop their own version of the budget (usually agreeing with many of the governor’s ideas while ignoring others), to discuss and debate them, make amendments, and take a vote.
This year, the House of Representatives released its version of the fiscal year 2027 budget on April 29. In mostly agreed with the governor’s proposals for higher education, except it proposed $10M less for Free Community College and $4M more for the SUCCESS program for both community colleges and state universities. It also agreed with the governor about allocating $10M for UMass to create a version of the highly effective community college SUCCESS program.
Once the House’s initial budget is made public, representatives have a few days to offer amendments, usually based on requests from their constituents and state agencies.
After the House votes on and passes its budget, the bill is assigned a new number, “engrossed,” and sent to the Ways and Means Committee for the Senate.
May – August
At least we hope and pray that they met
Our requests in the state’s big budget
The Senate then has a few weeks to take the governor’s proposed budget priorities, along with the budget bill passed by the House, develop their own budget, hold hearings, offer amendments, debate, and take their own vote.
This year, the Senate approved its version of the fiscal year 2027 budget on May 5.
This year, the Senate’s budget was similar to the governor’s and the House’s budgets, and included modest increases to campus operational budgets, along with level support for Free Community College. It also eliminated a line item for early childhood education training, gave a $6M boost to Early College, and level funded the SUCCESS program for community colleges, while agreeing with the Governor and House about providing $10M for UMass to follow our lead.
We filed an amendment to increase the SUCCESS budget to $18 million which garnered the support of several senators, including NECC’s own Senator Pavel Payano. However, there were 1,158 amendments filed, which would have added around $1.5 billion to the state budget. While the Senate did approve more than $70 million in additional spending on public safety initiatives, health and human services, educational programs and other local interests, our SUCCESS amendment, along with most of the others, was not adopted.
With both the House and Senate budgets voted on and finalized, the next step in the annual budget process is the creation of a “Conference Committee” consisting of three members of the House of Representatives and three members of the Senate who confer and resolve differences between the two budgets to create the “Conference Committee Report.”
And this is where we find ourselves today, June 10: The Conference Committee is meeting over the next few weeks with the goal of delivering its report, the final, un-amendable proposed budget from the legislature, back to the Governor for her consideration.
The next few weeks in this process are the final opportunity for state agencies, like community colleges, and others with an interest in the budget to appeal to their senators and representatives and get their resources or their legislation into the final Conference Committee Report.
When the Governor receives that final Conference Committee Report she will have ten days to review it and either approve it as is (quite rare), veto the entire thing (also rare), or veto particular line items or sections (very common). She cannot add anything.
Ideally, this will all be accomplished in time for the state to start its new fiscal year on July 1, though Massachusetts is known for taking its time (until last year, it had been more than fourteen years since Massachusetts passed its last on-time budget), and we are often the last state in America to wrap it up—just in time for a short summer vacation before “budget season” starts all over again.
Here at NECC, and at community colleges across the Commonwealth, we’re grateful for the positive attention our campuses and our students have received recently, but also concerned and hopeful, now that we have opened our doors even wider, that we will receive the resources needed to support all of those students.
We’ll keep our fingers crossed (and our toes tapping) that our biggest priorities make it into that final bill…
