The Massachusetts Fair Share tax will help cover the MBTA’s budget shortfall. That’s something everybody should see as a win.
Every time I’m sipping a martini at a country club in Greater Boston, laughing with the bros before my back massage, there’s somebody complaining about how one of their chums missed the bus, causing them to forgo tee time.
We all know how sadistic T drivers can be when they spot someone chasing after with their spikes on and a bag of irons slung over their shoulder.
It’s kind of like how every time I’m waiting on the platform at Park Street with hundreds of others for a Red Line that somehow keeps getting farther and farther away—“6 MINUTES,” “STOPPED,” “8 MINUTES”—the person next to me is usually whining about taxes.
As someone who covers public transit, I like to speak with people during my commute. But in 2022, when the Raise Up Massachusetts coalition put the Fair Share Amendment to establish a 4 percent tax (increased annually for inflation) on annual income above $1 million, I wore headphones rather than suffering through the laments of plutocrats with monocles who ride the rails.
If all of the above reads backwards, that’s because it is. But it doesn’t have to be; as I see it, while country clubbers don’t have much in common with the common person these days, everyone should have a common interest in increased funding for the commons, starting with public transportation.
Sometimes, these relationships and understandings must come about forcibly. The aforementioned amendment, alternatively known and derided by some as the Millionaire’s Tax, is a prime example. Passed by voters on the Massachusetts ballot in 2022, it is expected to generate about $2.4 billion in FY26, most of which is constitutionally designated for public transit and education.
I will dive further into budgeting in later columns, and recommend this simple breakdown by Christian MilNeil at Streetsblog Massachusetts (as well as this extensive funding history). But the short version is that the T needs roughly $700 million to avoid painful cuts. With federal assistance dried up, fare revenue down hundreds of millions of dollars a year from pre-pandemic levels, and the sales tax subsidy not stacking high enough, the current celebration of slow zone cessation could come to a screeching halt.
Fortunately, the Millionaire’s Tax provides. As Raise Up Mass relayed last week, “State budget writers announced … that $1.95 billion in Fair Share funds will be available to invest in transportation and public education in the upcoming budget cycle.” Gov. Maura Healey has also expressed an interest in keeping T progress chugging along, so it looks like the improvement party—deejayed by MBTA General Manager Phillip Eng on the real wheels of steel—will continue.
This should be a cause for celebration at every caste level. Cynically speaking, lots of Massachusetts businesses and the people who profit from them earn from the T. Sometimes they’re politically connected cronies landing multimillion-dollar contracts to do very little; in other cases, like with shuttle service to cart passengers around through track repairs, the procurements can run into the nine-figure range.
There’s even more proof in surveys and data that reliable transit helps riders as much as it does those who eat mustard in the back of chauffeured limos. A 2024 study from the University of Utah and MIT found the “impact of transit on the community surpasses the reduction in automobile usage solely attributed to transit passengers.” “Instead, it is the changes in the built environment within transit-served communities that generate significantly larger (vehicle miles traveled) VMT savings.”
Such ideas and findings can be hard to introduce to anyone who hasn’t seen the inside of a public bus since high school if they’ve ever seen one at all. But if this constitutionally consummated partnership is going to prevail, we need more of a universal understanding of the symbiotic nature of efficient public transit.
If that reasoning doesn’t sound sensible to someone who is bitter about paying their fair share, I’m sure they can find some comfort in Gov. Healey’s cuts to the capital gains tax. According to the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center, “While 86 percent of tax filers in the top 1 percent claim short-term capital gains, only 8 percent of tax filers in the bottom 80 percent do so,” and they receive “less than $45 on average” from the break.
For that lucky 8 percent, depending on where they’re sitting, that’s either half the cost of all their public transit for a month, or another round of cocktails for the foursome.
This column is syndicated by the MassWire news service of the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. If you want to see more reporting like this, make a contribution at givetobinj.org.