For years, the Baker administration sought to tackle the MBTA’s perennial budget shortfalls by forcing the agency to rein in its spending. In the late 2010s, the T cut hundreds of millions of dollars in spending and hundreds of positions from its workforce. But that ultimately led federal investigators to warn in 2022 that the agency’s staffing shortages contributed to serious safety problems on the system. It’s been a very different spending story lately.
T officials will request final approval this week on a budget that would ramp up spending considerably once again, extending a years-long hiring and investment spree intended to put the darkest days of slow zones and runaway trains in the past. As has become the new normal, the MBTA would lean heavily on state dollars to make the growth — more than $1 billion over a five-year span — possible.
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Now nearing the end of Gov. Maura Healey’s first term, the MBTA and Beacon Hill have settled into a cooperative rhythm, with policymakers more open to helping the T close its budget gap than they were even a few years ago. But the process these days is still ad hoc. The MBTA spends hundreds of millions of dollars more than it brings in, investing in a bulked-up staff and reliability improvements and service expansions, and closes the gap through a combination of one-time state aid and its own savings account. Meanwhile, lawmakers and the governor use a sizable pot of unallocated surtax revenue each year to replenish the T’s recently drained savings, giving it a short-term cushion that dwindles.
The pattern is set to play out again. Lawmakers last week sent Healey a $1.5 billion supplemental spending bill that would direct $595 million in money from the surtax, or so-called millionaire’s tax, toward the T. They’re also negotiating a final state budget for fiscal year 2027, which would boost the MBTA with hundreds of millions more dollars.
