Senate Budget Includes Money for District Attorney's Office

Senate Budget Includes Money for District Attorney’s Office

May 29, 2023

Photo courtesy of Alexius Horatius

HYANNIS – The State Senate has approved a $56 billion budget for Fiscal Year 2024.

If approved by the House, the budget would provide boosts to several local initiatives including commercial fishing, fire training, and studying PFAS contamination.

Also included in the budget is $350,000 for the Cape and Islands District Attorney’s office, which DA Rob Galibois is eager to utilize for new initiatives.

“We’re looking to hire a child abuse specialist and this money will allow us to do that. As well, we’re looking to create a public forward-facing website. We don’t have a website at the moment and we very much want to build a website so we can share what’s going on in our court system and certainly that will be a place where we’ll be able to publish an annual report,” said Galibois.

He added that more I.T. experts in general are a major goal for the office.

“We only have a director of I.T. He doesn’t have any help and he works essentially for all 65 employees plus another additional 18 state troopers so if we can provide some relief to him we will certainly do so,” said Galibois.

At the state-wide level, the budget would also allow all Massachusetts students to qualify for in-state tuition at public colleges as long as they attended a Massachusetts high school for at least three years and graduated or obtained a GED.

Unlike the House budget, the Senate decided against including money for universal free school meals in their budget plan. Senate leaders say they hope to take up the issue in a separate supplemental budget.

A final compromise budget, approved by both chambers, must be in place by the start of the new fiscal year on July 1.

STEVE LeBLANC with the Associated Press contributed to this article.