For too many Bay Staters, just taking the T to work or to go grocery shopping puts a strain on their budgets. Which is why Gov. Maura Healey’s reduced T-fare program for low-income riders is a great idea.
Too bad there’s allegedly not enough money to make it work.
“There’s no funding source dedicated for it in the long term,” MBTA Advisory Board Executive Director Brian Kane said on “Keller @ Large” Sunday. “Gov. Healey has put $45 million in her budget, just because it’s in the governor’s budget doesn’t mean it’s going to actually pass. The legislature has to do what they do. But there’s no money in year two, and the costs for this program rise to about $100 million after five years.”
That’s a drop in the bucket compared to the hundreds of millions the state has already spent to house and care for the influx of migrants across our border. We’ve found some $45 million dollars a month to foot that bill. The Healey administration is expected to spend nearly $1 billion on state-run emergency shelters in fiscal year 2025.
But $100 million for low-income T fares? No funding for that.
We’re not the only state in this predicament, hemorrhaging money to cover the costs of an influx of migrants, paying to provide housing and care, ramping up work authorizations and helping families find stable housing.
Those are needs many in Massachusetts have needed for years — our emergency shelters also have unhoused residents and families who’ve fallen on hard times.
Residents in other, usually blue, states have called out leaders for putting migrants first. In New York City, Mayor Eric Adams wanted to convert an abandoned luxury apartment complex into a shelter for illegal immigrants. He put the kibosh on that idea after the community in Harlem pushed back.
“No, I don’t agree with it turning into a sanctuary for asylum seekers knowing we have people right here that need the space,” Tiffany Fulton, executive director of Silent Voices United Inc., a local nonprofit that helps underserved communities told Fox News.
We wonder if President Biden will address any of these issues when he’s expected to visit the southern border on Thursday. That is, if he has a real visit to Brownsville, Texas planned, not the Potemkin everything’s-fine photo op of last year.
Biden can say “it was like that when I got here” all he wants, but right now, Americans in Massachusetts and other states bearing the brunt of his broken border policies are literally paying the price.
A sobering fact for Biden: a new Monmouth University poll found that 53% of respondents support backing a border wall, which the polling center says is the first time a majority of respondents supported the proposal since it started asking the question in 2015, The Hill reported.
That’s good news for Donald Trump, who’s also planning to visit the border Thursday. Widely derided for wanting to build a wall on our southern border, the wind is at Trump’s back on illegal immigration today.
But it’s what Biden does after his visit that counts. Will he tighten requirements for asylum-seekers? Take other actions to close the border? Or will the threat of progressive voter backlash send him running.
Read the polls, Mr. President. Don’t blow it.
