EARLIER THIS WEEK, it was those worried about an explosion of gambling addiction who ripped Gov. Maura Healey’s proposal to cut in half the gambling proceeds that would go to a fund to help problem gamblers. On Wednesday it was advocates decrying cuts in Healey’s 2025 budget plan to reentry programs for formerly incarcerated people aimed at reducing the revolving door of recidivism that has long plagued the criminal justice system.
Being governor in times of plenty comes with the ability to make lots of people happy. When the revenue picture turns grim, Healey is learning, the mood quickly shifts.
With a downgrade in the state’s revenue forecast, Healey is trying to balance the books with nips and cuts here and there. None of them, on their own, amount to huge dollars in the scheme of a $56 billion budget, but the cuts become a very big deal to those who rely on the funding that’s suddenly on the chopping block.
Which is why a few dozen advocates, including several formerly incarcerated people, convened a State House press briefing yesterday, where they spoke out against Healey’s plan to cut two programs and level-fund several others that serve those transitioning back to the community after serving time behind bars.
In the wake of a sweeping 2018 criminal justice reform law, which eliminated several mandatory-minimum drug sentences among other changes, the state has seen a sharp drop in incarceration rates. The decline in the Massachusetts incarceration rate over the last decade has been twice as large as that in the US overall, where rates have also fallen.
Advocates say that has made it even more critical to fund services for the larger population of people being released from prison or those whose cases are being diverted from incarceration to probation or other outcomes that have them back in the community.
“Now is the time to expand those programs,” said Lew Finfer, a leader of the Massachusetts Alliance for Justice, which organized Wednesday’s briefing.
Instead, advocates say, Healey’s budget level-funds three programs, while cutting in half a grant program supporting a range of reentry services – from $15 million to $7.5 million – and trimming a further $250,000 from a separate workforce grant program.
“I did 16 and a half years incarcerated, and I had nowhere to go, I have no family, I have nobody in my life,” Alyssa Wittkowksi said at the briefing, fighting back tears. “I destroyed my life from the use and abuse of drugs.”
Wittkowksi is currently living at the McGrath House, a 33-bed residential reentry facility in Boston’s South End. “I don’t understand funding and all of this other stuff. I just know I need support for housing,” she said. “McGrath House saved my life.” Without it, Wittkowski said, “I would have gone back to what I know best. I would have been one of those Mass. and Cass people running up and down the street begging people for money.”
The governor’s office said the administration will look to Healey’s recently filed economic development bond bill to make up some of the $7.5 million gap between her budget proposal and the 2024 funding for the Community Empowerment and Reinvestment Grant Fund.
Finfer pointed to sources the state could tap to maintain the reentry funding or increase it, including an excess capital gains fund and the new millionaire’s tax on high earners, which is supposed to be divided between transportation and education spending. He said a number of the reentry programs have educational components.
Several lawmakers at the briefing said they’ll be fighting to restore the funding as the Legislature takes up Healey’s budget proposal.
Rep. Carlos Gonzalez, a Springifield Democrat, praised Jamal Gooding, who was formerly incarcerated and now runs a Brockton jobs program.
“He’s a taxpayer now, not a tax burden,” said Gonzalez. “But it’s these programs that get you from Point A to Point B. So it’s an economic investment in the residents of Massachusetts.”
Gonzalez said it makes a lot more sense to spend money on reentry programs than prison. “You’re either going to spend $40,000 per person in services or you’re going to spend $115,000 per year incarcerating him or her,” he said. “That’s fuzzy math.”