Facing criticism for not addressing steep tax hikes in Boston and a legislative stalemate on Beacon Hill, the Senate plans to sidestep the House and possibly advance its own proposal that could deliver limited relief in any Massachusetts city or town.

On Thursday, Senate leaders plan to pull proposals from Sen. William Brownsberger and Sen. Nick Collins (S 1933 and S 1935) out of the joint committee process and place them before the Senate Ways and Means Committee, according to a senator familiar with the plans. The move is designed to open a legislative path for a bill that had been stuck for months. The senator said this step is necessary because House leaders blocked the measure from receiving a hearing, leaving it trapped and effectively frozen.

But even if the Senate advances the measure swiftly, the move does not resolve the larger impasse: the House appears to continue to back Boston Mayor Michelle Wu’s home rule petition to temporarily shift more of the city’s property tax burden onto commercial property owners, and the Senate continues to oppose it. Both chambers are eyeing solutions the other chamber refuses to touch, and neither proposal — the Senate’s tax relief bill nor the mayor’s tax-shift plan — can become law without the other’s cooperation.

Related Articles

Boston Mayor Wu’s tax battle intensifies ahead of City Council vote to set residential tax hike at 13%

Editorial: Solving Boston’s tax burden is Wu’s great white whale

Boston city councilor demands White Stadium cost update from mayor amid budget crunch

The result is a standoff with major consequences. Boston is projecting that the average single-family homeowner will see a 13% property tax increase, and thousands of households could receive unexpected spikes in bills scheduled to go out Jan. 1.

Boston officials, senior advocates and labor unions warn that without action from the Legislature homeowners will absorb some of the steepest increases in more than a decade.

Senate concerns over statewide consequences

At the center of the standoff are two different views of how to deliver relief — and how far the state should go in allowing Boston to adjust the delicate balance between residential and commercial taxpayers.

Wu’s proposal (HD 4422) would temporarily adjust Boston’s property-tax classification formula so that a larger share of the levy falls on commercial owners, softening the blow for residents but burdening commercial owners in a year when commercial property values continue to sink. She argues this is the only available lever to prevent extreme increases and says final Department of Revenue valuations confirm the city’s projections.

But senators — particularly Boston-area Democrats Brownsberger and Collins — have warned that allowing Boston to deviate from statewide rules could open the floodgates for similar requests elsewhere.

State Sen. Nick Collins (Nancy Lane/Boston Herald, File)

Last week, Brownsberger said the mayor’s plan could “upend a tax limitation that has been in place for the better part of 50 years and result in tax changes all across the state.” If the Legislature were to grant Boston an exception, he said, other municipalities would want to follow: “This is something we were already starting to hear when we started to go down that road last fall. Municipalities were reaching out.”

Business groups and some statewide policy organizations share those concerns, arguing that shifting more of Boston’s tax burden onto its commercial sector could weaken the already-struggling office market and create ripple effects far beyond the city’s borders.

A spokesperson for Senate President Karen Spilka emphasized that perspective on Monday night, saying:

“The Senate is deeply committed to making Massachusetts more affordable and there are many ways to provide meaningful relief—including proposals from Senators Brownsberger and Collins that would support the most vulnerable residents without placing burdens on small businesses that will ripple throughout the state—and the City should have engaged with the Senate on these options well before now.”

What the Senate bill would do

The Brownsberger–Collins bill offers an alternative to Wu’s citywide tax-shift plan. It would allow any municipality to create a “tax shock prevention credit” in years when residential property taxes rise by more than 10% in the third quarter. Municipalities could opt in only during such “tax-shock years” and choose which eligible groups to cover — seniors over 65, residents eligible for MassHealth, or unemployed taxpayers. Relief would be delivered as a percentage reduction in a homeowner’s third- or fourth-quarter bill, tailored to the size of the year-over-year residential levy jump.

A companion Collins bill (S 1935) would authorize uniform rebates for households that received the residential exemption in the prior fiscal year. The rebates would be calculated by local treasurers, funded by municipal appropriations, and could not reduce a property’s taxable value below 10% of fair cash value unless otherwise allowed under existing law.

Both bills represent an approach aimed at targeted relief for the most vulnerable, while avoiding what senators see as statewide risks associated with altering Boston’s classification tax-cap structure.

The procedural maneuver

Earlier this week, the Senate took up an extension order (S 2758) granting the Joint Committee on Revenue more time to take action on several bills, including S 1933 and S 1935. But Brownsberger and Collins offered an amendment removing both of their bills from the extension. That maneuver — normally a path toward study, and thus to legislative limbo — instead in this case triggered a Senate rules process that allows the bills to be routed through the Senate’s own procedures and placed directly before Senate Ways and Means.

The Senate plans to take this action Thursday to tee the bills up for future action, said a senator involved.

The senator said are using this tactic because House leaders prevented the Joint Committee on Revenue from holding a hearing on the bills. The bills had been scheduled for a July 22 hearing, which was canceled. Almost every other bill from that agenda was rescheduled for Nov. 7 — except for four, including S 1933 and S 1935.

House and Senate chairs of a committee need to agree to put a bill on a hearing schedule.

Joint Committee on Revenue Chair Sen. Jamie Eldridge said in an interview, “I was an advocate for the bills to be heard, just like I’m an advocate for all bills to be heard.”

House Chair Rep. Adrian Madaro said it is a “total mischaracterization” that the bills were blocked from a hearing.

Mayor Wu’s bill still on ice

The proposal the House seems most interested in exploring — the mayor’s home rule petition — also lacks a hearing because the Senate has not yet admitted it to any committee.

“I was led to believe the clerk would release those three bills in tandem. I don’t believe anyone on the House side believed that we’d basically be in a holding pattern waiting for that petition to be admitted for nine months,” said Madaro, of East Boston.

He said they were waiting to give S 1933 and S 1935 a hearing until it could be heard alongside the Boston home rule petition, as they concerned the same subject.

“We want to have an open honest dialogue on all three proposals that have an impact on the city of Boston,” he said. “We’re unable to have that conversation. The third bill is the only House bill out of the three, and it’s still locked up in the Senate clerk’s office. It’s hard to have a conversation about this issue without having an open dialogue. There hasn’t been one hearing where we’ve divided issues in this fashion.”

Madaro said the Senate is “playing games” and Boston’s petition is “rotting away” because of “personal issues that exist between stakeholders.”

He added that Eldridge did not push for the bills to be brought back for a hearing after their original hearing was cancelled.

House Ways and Means Chair Aaron Michlewitz, one of Wu’s strongest allies, said Friday of the Boston petition: “The Chair looks forward to the legislation being referred to committee so that the legislative process can begin.”

Until the Senate concurs with the House referral or assigns its own, the bill cannot get a number, cannot get a hearing and cannot move.

It means that the two proposals most seriously considered by either chamber for relieving Boston’s escalating residential and commercial tax pressures both have not faced the public scrutiny and airing of ideas that come with a formal public hearing.

Pressure rising

Wu’s office maintains that unless the Legislature acts on the home rule petition, residents will see tax hikes next year averaging 13%, with many homeowners experiencing higher increases.

Meanwhile, the Boston City Council is moving forward with its annual property tax classification and exemption process — with a vote scheduled for Wednesday — but officials said Monday that those measures cannot shield residents from what is coming without state intervention.

With the Senate moving its tax-shock bill into Ways and Means and the House continuing to back Wu’s tax-shift plan, the pressure on legislators will intensify as January approaches. Whether either chamber will blink — or whether any compromise can emerge — remains uncertain.

— Sam Drysdale / State House News Service

Sam Drysdale is a reporter for State House News Service and State Affairs Pro Massachusetts. Reach her at sdrysdale@statehousenews.com.