BUFFETED BY THE CROSSWINDS of federal funding cuts and preexisting budget pressures, the Healey administration drew heightened scrutiny to Beacon Hill’s spending and saving practices by floating the idea of cutting a sizable chunk of state jobs.
Administration officials in recent weeks have approached at least four unions representing public-sector employees to begin discussions about a potential buyout program, the latest flashpoint in a debate about the use of state resources amid delays to food aid and cuts to child care programs.
Buyout talks are preliminary, and Gov. Maura Healey said Wednesday that she has not made any final decisions. Still, the scope could be significant: two labor leaders told CommonWealth Beacon they think the administration is weighing ways to reduce headcount by 2,000 positions or more.
Several union heads said the Healey administration has not yet provided many details about what’s on the table and which state agencies would be affected.
“I’m actually quite befuddled that it doesn’t appear that anybody has a handle on the whole process,” said National Association of Government Employees president David Holway, whose union represents more than 15,000 state workers in Massachusetts.
Chatter about trimming the state workforce burst into the spotlight on Tuesday, when the Boston Herald reported that SEIU Local 509 bosses informed their members that a possible voluntary buyout program was on the horizon.
Higher-ups at three other unions — NAGE, AFSCME Council 93, and the Massachusetts Nurses Association — confirmed to CommonWealth Beacon they had been approached by the Healey administration to discuss the topic. None have agreed to any deal, and all are seeking more information from the state.
Labor leaders said the administration is considering $20,000 buyouts for public-sector workers who retire and $10,000 buyouts for those not yet eligible for retirement, though Holway said the actual offers could vary by state agency.
“It’s not written in stone and it’s not across the board,” he said.
Holway said he believes Healey and her deputies are eyeing about 2,000 cuts between attrition and buyouts. Jim Durkin, director of legislation and political action for AFSCME Council 93, said the administration told his union it was considering leaving 1,100 vacant positions unfilled and cutting another 1,750 through attrition.
“We heard about it, but they’re scant on the details and the agencies involved,” added MNA public communications director David Schildmeier, who added that “all the unions are looking for more specifics and who’s impacted.”
Healey’s office did not provide details about the number of possible buyouts or the timing of any deal.
But when asked about the topic during a radio interview Wednesday, Healey blamed President Donald Trump and his policies for inflicting upheaval on Massachusetts.
“This is a hard time right now, given what’s happening, especially with the federal government and what Trump is doing to the economy,” Healey said during her latest appearance on GBH News’s Boston Public Radio. “We’re trying to work through all these issues right now. I’ve made no decisions about what’s going to happen with respect to state employees. It’s something we’re trying to manage.”
“We can’t take care of people unless we have the people to do that work, so I’m very mindful of that,” she added.
Buyouts in the state workforce are uncommon, but not unprecedented. The most recent instance appears to be 2016, when 900 employees accepted an offer from the Baker administration to retire early or leave their posts, saving a projected $82 million over two years.
Massachusetts budget-writers have been stressed for months about a cascading set of factors eating away at any financial flexibility. State spending commitments have increased significantly in recent years as tax collections softened.
Add in the dramatic policy changes enacted by the Trump administration, and the picture gets even darker.
“If something dramatic doesn’t happen to reverse these federal cuts, then we’re looking at some really difficult times,” Durkin said.
The Department of Revenue expects the federal reconciliation law will shrink state tax collections by $650 million this fiscal year. That package, sometimes called the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, could also shrink health care funding for Massachusetts by more than $530 million in fiscal year 2026 and more in subsequent years, according to an analysis by the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation.
“We’ve all been talking about the need to manage state spending growth in light of what the feds are doing and in light of ongoing budget pressures,” said Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation president Doug Howgate. “Exploring tools available to do that, including managing personnel costs, is the right thing to do.”
SEIU Local 509 president David Foley said although he understands the state is caught in a bind as a result of federal action, he finds it “disappointing that the first step that we’re seeing here is a reduction in state workforce.”
Instead, Foley wants Beacon Hill to pursue a new tax on multinational corporations — an idea other labor leaders have been pushing for months — or to dip into the state’s “rainy-day” savings fund.
“Otherwise, it’s everybody fighting for themselves over where the austerity cuts will hit,” he said.
The rainy-day fund, also known as the stabilization fund, has a balance of about $8.6 billion. Anti-hunger activists have been targeting the account in recent days, urging the state to use some of that funding to replace federal food aid.
SNAP’s outlook remains unclear after Trump suggested he would defy court orders and keep benefits on hold until the shutdown ends.
The Raise Up Massachusetts coalition, an influential group of labor, business, and faith leaders, this week joined calls to fund benefits using state savings in the interim.
“People cannot eat retroactively. We cannot wait for the funding to get to people from the federal government,” said Cindy Rowe, president of the Jewish Alliance for Law and Social Action.
Top Democrats continue to resist, however, arguing that the scope of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program is too large — more than $210 million per month in Massachusetts — for the state to absorb the costs even temporarily.
Healey on Wednesday noted that other federal programs, including heating aid and Head Start child care, have also been disrupted as a result of the ongoing shutdown.
“You’ve got to look at the whole picture of what’s happening, including these devastating Medicaid cuts. Trump and the Republicans have taken a trillion dollars of funding out of health care. That has a huge impact on states all over the country,” she said. “I am trying to do the best I can to manage the situation. It is absolutely unnecessary. It’s totally unacceptable. But no state can come forward and replace what the federal government has taken away.”
One part of the Beacon Hill constellation might be softening on the idea of using stabilization funds. As Politico first reported, House budget chief Aaron Michlewitz wrote to ratings agencies last week asking how the state’s credit might be affected if it drew some money from the long-term savings account.
“We wanted to be perfectly clear where the parameters were and what we are able to do to make sure our constituents can meet the challenges that are being faced by the federal shutdown,” House Speaker Ron Mariano said Monday.
Beacon Hill power players have been wary to draw down savings after their willingness to do so in 2017 prompted S&P Global Ratings to downgrade the state’s bond rating, making it more expensive to borrow money and finance capital projects.
Activists with Raise Up think the time for that degree of caution has passed. They point to a talk that S&P Global Ratings managing director Geoffrey Buswick gave in August, during which he suggested states can receive “the highest assessment score for our consideration of your reserve policies” if their long-term savings balances are 8 percent or more of annual general-fund spending.
The $8.6 billion balance in Massachusetts’s rainy-day fund is about 14 percent the size of the fiscal 2026 state budget.
“In our view, if you have had the wherewithal in good times to put money away for bad times, when those bad times, those rainy days are occurring, to draw it is not a credit negative,” Buswick said during a panel at the National Conference of State Legislatures summit in Boston. “We hear people all the time saying, ‘Oh, we can’t touch our rainy day fund. That would be terrible.’ If it’s raining, that’s what it’s there for.”