Bring on the Budget Amendments

Last week from 1:00 PM on April 13th to 5:00 PM on April 15th, the Massachusetts House of Representatives released 1,521 amendments to their FY23 (fiscal year 2023) proposed budget (HB4700). In comparison to the House budget for FY22, the proposal in HB4700 had 355 more amendments, marking a 30% increase in the number of filed amendments between 2022 and 2023. This increase in proposed amendments is not atypical of the House of Representatives, but analyzing the budget reveals some interesting trends for FY23 in Massachusetts.

Of the 1,521 amendments, a total of 1,072, or 70.5%, were earmarks that either allotted or increased expenditure for certain purposes. An earmark amendment is often filed by legislators in order to take or increase funding from existing budget line items for a specific recipient. Interestingly, while there was an increase in overall amendments filed between FY22 and FY23, the number of earmarks relatively stayed the same between both budgets. This is possibly due to the fact that certain federal funding is extended through 2023, but the percentage of the earmarks in each budget still shows a need for more support in many cities and towns. One clear difference between each budget, however, was the number of amendments filed by individual legislators. 

As shown by the graphic above, in HB4700, Minority Leader Rep. Bradley Jones Jr. led the way with 38 amendments filed, followed by Representatives Frank Moran, Bud Williams, and James Kelcourse. The average number of amendments filed per legislator was approximately 10 per representative, which was three more than the average for the 2022 House budget.* This is due to the fact that in the FY23 House budget, some legislators filed significantly more amendments than in the FY22 proposal. For example, 19 representatives filed 18 or more amendments in HB4700, whereas only three did in FY22. Each of the top four ranked representatives for FY23 filed ten or more amendments than in the previous House budget.

Taking this into consideration, there is a greater possibility in this budget for certain legislators to have more amendments included in future versions of the bill. While keeping track of over 1,500 amendments can be taxing, this is made easy with the help of MassTrac! Our amendment tracking service allows you to search, filter, and track the amendments you wish to be alerted on, and export them to Excel with ease. For a preview of how this works, check out one of our recent blog posts, or for a personalized demo and more information, reach out to info@instatrac.com.

*FY22 budget average includes Rep. Sheila Harrington whereas the FY23 calculation does not, due to her leaving the legislature for judicial position.