With a possible authorities shutdown looming, the Healey Administration desires state companies to give you a plan on how they’ll function if federal fiscal assist is immediately shut off.
The state comptroller’s workplace mentioned it desires to listen to from the companies by the shut of enterprise Tuesday with their contingency plans, in keeping with a letter it despatched to the state’s chief fiscal officers, price range administrators, and basic counsels late final week.
“A shutdown could create challenges for certain spending accounts in the General Federal Grants Fund, revenue collected through federal reimbursement, and for programs run and funded primarily by the federal government,” the comptroller’s workplace warned.
Probably impacted applications embody the state’s MassHealth insurance coverage program, which depends on federal monetary participation within the type of rebates, applications that draw on the federal freeway capital undertaking fund, and applications utilizing the Normal Federal Grant Funds, which incorporates issues like FEMA grants.
Companies paid for with the latter are the most certainly to be disrupted, in keeping with the comptroller’s workplace, which can impression the power of some companies to make bi-weekly payroll “for employees currently paid from federal sources.”
The comptroller’s workplace asks that division price range chiefs verify “steps affected agencies can take to protect Commonwealth residents and resources in the event of a partial federal shutdown, including the use of other funding sources currently available to them” and describe the impression that turning to different funding streams could have on their applications.
Departments can’t assume that the state could have cash accessible to maintain federally funded applications going, in keeping with the letter.
“Therefore, please identify any state funding that would be required for the state to take on responsibility for critical federal programs and indicate whether and when legislative authorization would be required,” the comptroller’s workplace wrote.
The varied state companies are being requested to supply “for a quick turnaround,” with responses because of the comptroller by the shut of enterprise on Tuesday.
This isn’t the primary time the state has requested division price range chiefs to give you a shutdown plan, having finished the identical in “2013, 2015, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2024,” in keeping with the letter.
Congress has till Oct. 1 to stop the federal authorities from getting into a partial shutdown. The Senate is anticipated to vote on a Home-passed invoice to increase federal funding on Tuesday, forward of the midnight deadline.
U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, in a Sunday social media submit, mentioned that he wouldn’t assist the funding invoice with out some compromise from the Republicans within the majority on extending the Reasonably priced Care Act’s enhanced subsidies.
“I will not vote for any budget that does not protect health care for the people of Massachusetts and our country,” he mentioned.
