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"I think there was a risk with the [House and Gov. Maura Healey's] packages, that they were just going to make the state a little bit too vulnerable to economic downturns by siphoning away some necessary revenue..."

“A lot of stuff counts as spending it on housing,” including paying staff and putting money into designated housing trust funds, and “even by that very loose definition towns aren’t spending very much.”

The report said CPA investments in housing are "especially limited" in Massachusetts suburbs, while urban areas devote more than half of their CPA spending to housing and rural areas more than 40%.

“The pandemic created some unique and difficult circumstances,” said Evan Horowitz. “But it’s still unbelievable that we got our accounts so fouled up that professional auditors can’t spot billions of dollars in misdirected funds.”

The report said that housing has been overshadowed in CPA due to "a clear and longstanding tension between this commitment to housing and the other facets of the program, like historic preservation and the protection of open space."

“We’re in a housing crisis, and we have this great program that can create a lot of housing units,” said Evan Horowitz, the report’s author. “But we’re not taking full advantage.”

“Unquestionably, our fiscal situation just got a lot tighter,” said Evan Horowitz. But “the state has been quite responsible with the supersized tax receipts of recent years and is well positioned to fill any hole that opens up in the FY23 budget.”

Adam Reilly talks with GBH News State House correspondent Katie Lannan and Evan Horowitz of Tufts University's Center for State Policy Analysis about the challenges of fiscal policymaking at a moment of intense uncertainty.

The House’s billion-dollar tax package largely mirrored Healey’s plan, but Senate leaders have downplayed any “urgency.” cSPA Executive Director Evan Horowitz said “sustainable” hits somewhere in the range of $500 million.