| Please help us elevate the need for strong investments in housing and homelessness programs by weighing in one more time with your State Legislators before the Conference Committee releases its FY’15 budget recommendations.As you know, once the House and the Senate vote on their respective budgets, each branch appoints three members to a joint committee (the “Conference Committee”) to work out and resolve all differences between the two budgets. The compromise budget that comes out of Conference Committee is then brought to the House and Senate members for a final vote before being sent to the Governor.
This year’s House Conference Committee members are Representatives Brian Dempsey (D-Haverhill, Chair of House Ways and Means), Stephen Kulik (D-Worthington, Vice Chair of House Ways and Means), and Vinny deMacedo (R-Plymouth, Ranking Minority Member of House Ways and Means). The Senate Conference Committee members are Senators Stephen Brewer (D-Barre, Chair of Senate Ways and Means), Jennifer Flanagan (D-Leominster, Vice Chair of Senate Ways and Mean), and Richard Ross (R-Wrentham, Ranking Minority Member of Senate Ways and Means).
The Conference Committee has been meeting for the past two weeks. While we do not know the current status of the behind-closed-doors negotiations on housing and homelessness issues, we are asking you to once again weigh in with your legislators to help ensure that the Conference Committee’s budget has the best language and highest levels of funding possible for housing and homelessness issues. In order to help urge the committee members to create a compromise budget that prioritizes these programs, please contact your own Legislators today and ask them to convey their support to the Conference Committee and to Leadership for the language and funding levels detailed in the sections below and in this letter from the Coalition to the conferees.
To learn more about the Coalition’s FY’15 Conference Committee budget priorities, please click here. For program fact sheets and additional materials, please go to our Present Policy Campaigns page.
Thank you for your advocacy and your continued support of housing and homelessness issues!
-Kelly Turley
Director of Legislative Advocacy
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