Partisan Group Complains of Info Shutdown by Gov.

The Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance today criticized Governor Maura Healey’s administration for ending public disclosure of how much the state is spending on the emergency shelter system. The decision means that for the first time in nearly two years, taxpayers will no longer receive bi-weekly updates detailing how hundreds of millions of dollars are being spent on the program largely being used to house newly arrived migrants.

The Healey administration asserts the reporting requirement expired with last year’s budget, but nothing prevents the Governor from continuing the reports voluntarily or asking the Legislature to reinstate them. Instead, the administration has chosen secrecy over accountability, a pattern that has become increasingly common under Healey’s leadership.

“For a Governor who talks big on transparency but consistently fails to deliver, this is a new low. The Healey administration is spending close to a billion dollars a year on emergency shelters, yet she’s decided taxpayers no longer deserve to see where the money is going. Expiration of a reporting law is not an excuse to stop being transparent. It’s a test of leadership, and Healey failed it,” said Paul Diego Craney, Executive Director of the Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance.

The now-defunct bi-weekly shelter reports were created through bipartisan legislation in 2023 after lawmakers demanded more insight into skyrocketing costs driven by the state’s right-to-shelter law and a surge in illegal immigrants flocking to the state to take advantage of our generous benefits. Those reports allowed the public and lawmakers to track the rapid escalation of spending, which reached nearly $1 billion in FY2025.

“Perhaps the most troubling aspect of this is that the infrastructure to produce and publish these reports is already in place. They’ve been doing it for months. The only reason these reports stopped is because Governor Healey doesn’t want the public to know how much she’s spending. The data pipeline is still there. This isn’t about capacity. It’s about control of information,” noted Craney.

“Transparency shouldn’t depend on a sunset clause. Taxpayers deserve to know how their money is being spent every week, every month, every year,” said Craney.

“We’re calling on Governor Healey to voluntarily resume publishing the reports and the legislature to immediately renew the reporting law. The Governor and the Legislature both work for the taxpayers. If they can’t even agree to publish spending data on a billion-dollar program, it raises real questions about what else they’re hiding,” closed Craney.