Despite strong economy, times are hard for the average family, Massachusetts Gov. Healey’s message: “We feel your pain; we’re just like you.”

• Sam Drysdale

STATE HOUSE, BOSTON, JAN. 24, 2025…..Despite evidence that the economy is strong, times are hard for the average family, and Gov. Maura Healey’s message to them this week was “We feel your pain; we’re just like you.”

“We’re controlling spending and tightening our belts, just as any other family or business has to do,” Healey said Wednesday, after unveiling her recommendation for a $62 billion spending plan for next fiscal year.

The annual state budget continues popular programs like free school meals and free community college, invests heavily in public transportation, and steadily increases the size of major pots of aid to cities and towns.

For the second year in a row, it appears that the governor’s team looked under every couch cushion to cobble together enough money to make spending increases, all while working with a projected 2.2 percent increase in state tax revenues and without broad-based tax raises or any draws from the state’s big stabilization fund.

Healey answered “no, no, no, no no” when asked about raising taxes broadly, but her budget showed that she views tax law changes as fair game.

Under their budget, the next time Healey and Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll have a hankering for peanut M&M’s from the State House cafeteria — their shared favorite candy, Healey revealed during Wednesday’s press conference — they could pay $3.50, instead of the current price of $3.29.

The governor is recommending adding sales tax to the sweet treats (prompting criticisms from conservatives, such as Paul Craney of the Mass. Fiscal Alliance: “She’s literally taking candy from a baby.”)

Healey also recommended capping how much taxpayers can write off from charitable deductions, which she estimates could save the state $164 million; closing “loopholes” in tax statutes to bring $312 million back into the budget; and adding the tobacco tax to new synthetic nicotine products. Now it’s up to the Legislature to decide whether to go along the governor’s tax plans.

Altogether, the administration tapped into $1 billion worth of one-time revenue sources to make their budget math work.

Another cost saving measure: closing two state-operated health care facilities, and slashing the state’s mental health case manager workforce, ideas that raised eyebrows given the recent focus on behavioral health.

Many of the headline policies Healey and Democrat lawmakers have touted over the past few years have been funded by the surtax on high earners approved by voters in 2022, which has fattened the bottom line and perhaps helped the state avoid big fiscal troubles associated with rising spending and softening revenues.

Significant MBTA investments; leveraging bonding for higher education and transportation infrastructure improvements, plus a reform of the Chapter 90 road and bridge repair program; free community college; free school meals; early education and care expansion: in Healey’s bill, it’s all done with surtax money. For the first time, the governor is even recommending supplementing Student Opportunity Act funds with surtax money.

Democrats would have far fewer options today if voters had decided differently in 2022.

Yet, the $59.6 billion figure headlining the governor’s press release excludes $1.95 billion in surtax spending as well as hundreds of millions of dollars for the Medical Assistance Trust Fund. It also compared all state spending in FY25 (including large amounts of supplemental spending) to the baseline FY26 budget (which underfunds expensive shelters, and will require more money later this year.) The resulting math created a much smaller year-over-year percent increase.

Which meant when reports on the governor’s budget hit screens and papers on Wednesday, some readers saw headlines akin to “Governor wants to increase state spending 2.6%, to $59.6 billion” while others saw news of a 7.4% increase to $62 billion.

How the governor’s team calculated its FY26 budget bottom line and annual spending increase may not be water cooler talk outside of the 02133 ZIP code — but here’s why it matters.

Healey telegraphed a message Wednesday of belt-tightening and approaching budgeting the same way households look at their budgets. Administration and Finance Secretary Matthew Gorzkowicz specifically pointed out that the budget increased less than inflation. But it only does when using the governor’s numbers.

In addition to all the interest the governor’s annual budget filing brings, Beacon Hill was also abuzz this week with reactions to the first few days of President Donald Trump’s second term in the White House.

A flurry of executive orders gave Massachusetts Democrats plenty to fret over: Will the offshore wind industry, important to the state’s climate and economic goals, survive another Trump term? What will happen to immigrant residents of the commonwealth, after the president declared an end to birthright citizenship? Will prices go up, while residents are already struggling with the cost of living, as a result of new tariffs?

One area where Democrats are looking to D.C., is on immigration, refugees, and how Trump’s actions could affect the shelter system. On Wednesday, the Trump administration cancelled travel for refugees who had been approved to come to the U.S., and he’s promising a deportation crackdown for undocumented immigrants.

Though all of the new arrivals in the state’s shelter system are said to be here legally, many of them are refugees and asylum seekers who came to the U.S. under Biden-era expanded protections.

“We need them to act on the border, and I hope that’s something that President Trump and Congress does day one. This is his problem to fix right now. He ran on this issue, and he’s got the House and the Senate, and they need to fix this,” Healey said last month of Trump’s immigration policy.

Now, as the House contemplates another $425 million into a system that has become difficult for Democrats to manage, they may be counting on Trump to reverse some of the immigration policies of his predecessor — who Healey and most Democratic legislative leaders supported in his race against the now-president.

House Ways and Means Chair Aaron Michlewitz certainly has some questions before he signs another blank check for the right-to-shelter.

ODDS & ENDS: The T is trying to pick up speeds on the Red and Orange Lines … Massachusetts could get more than $100 million as part of a settlement with Purdue Pharma … During a nine-hour City Council hearing, Boston residents kept beating the drum against the city’s plan to renovate White Stadium … What was the true intent of the right-to-shelter law? The News Service dug into the 1983 debate this week … Trump appointed a new U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts, Leah Belaire Foley

SONG OF THE WEEK: I want candy… that’ll cost you an extra 6.25%.