An economic forum focused on what lies ahead in Springfield and much of the Pioneer Valley brought state, local and business leaders under one roof Friday. “Outlook 2025” spotlighted last year’s biggest accomplishments on Beacon Hill and beyond, but also featured an air of caution on the national front.
The MassMutual Center’s convention space was once again filled with the heads of universities, hospitals and companies including MassMutual, as well as elected officials.
Most of the Pioneer Valley’s job sectors were represented at the Springfield Regional Chamber’s annual Outlook 2025 luncheon – billed by organizers as the region’s biggest “legislative and economic forecasting event.”
It means a host of local leaders speaking at length about what got done in 2024 and what the rest of 2025 could entail.
Mayor Domenic Sarno promoted how, redevelopment work is ongoing for multiple parcels surrounding the MassMutual Center, including multi-story buildings near MGM Springfield.
“Soon, the new Civic Center garage will open up … McCaffery [Interests], a major developer out of Chicago, will be doing the State and Main buildings all the way down to the South End area across the street,” the mayor said, referencing plans to turn several structures dating back to the early 20th-century into apartments and storefronts. “The old chicken building will be redeveloped, there will be a marquee and entrance on the other side of State Street, the MassMutual Center, working with Governor Healey and Lieutenant Governor Driscoll. And I look forward to MGM fulfilling their HCA commitment and redevelopment of 101 State Street, and I'm hopeful to finally get that scaffolding and those jersey barriers down.”
Lieutenant Governor Kim Driscoll touted everything from the Healey administration’s 2023 tax cuts to last year’s $5 billion housing bond bill that looks to put a dent in the state’s ongoing housing crisis.
She also promoted a recently-released ClimateTech economic development “strategy” that the Pioneer Valley factors into.
“Last week, in collaboration with the Clean Energy Center and our Executive Office of Economic Development, we released a 10-year plan for helping startups not only stay here, but scale here in Massachusetts,” Driscoll said. “We believe this can project close to 35,000 jobs, support 1,300 companies and train 25,000 individuals over the next decade.”
The plan listed renewable hydropower in Holyoke, former mill sites throughout the Valley, as well as the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the innovation work it supports as “key strengths.”
Driscoll also touched on what seemed to be an elephant in the room that factored into a number of speeches – a fluid national economic picture, including federal changes to everything from immigration to funding to research grants Massachusetts’s universities rely on.
“We're going to move our state forward, we are going to be disciplined for the things that are in our control - we are going to work with the federal government in any way possible. But when it comes to the Trump administration or Elon Musk doing things that harm our state, we're going to stand up and speak out,” she said to applause.
Cuts and freezes to federal funding have affected Massachusetts across sectors.
For example, the state’s one of the biggest recipients of National Institutes of Health grants (around $3.5 billion in funding awarded, according to United for Medical Research) - millions of dollars of which have been cut or called into question by the Trump administration.
Those actions are the subject of a recent court injunction involving a federal judge in Massachusetts.
Governor Maura Healey’s almost-$60 billion budget proposal also factors in around 16 billion in federal dollars, highlighted at a recent state legislature Ways and Means committee meeting.
It came up as Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation President Doug Howgate ran through the state and region’s economic picture in general.
He noted some good news, at least when it comes to tax revenue collections. For FY25, through February, “revenue collections are exceeding last year’s pace by $2 billion,” or 8.6 percent, and are “$688 million above benchmark,” his presentation noted.
But, when it comes to figuring out the budget, lawmakers still face significant challenges, especially amid spending increases and the state still relying on billions of dollars coming in from federal reimbursements for MassHealth, the state’s Medicaid program.
“There's a fundamental challenge - the fundamental challenge is that spending is slated to grow by about $3-$4 billion over the budget that was signed into law last July, and tax revenue assumptions, once you account for money that goes to our pension fund and goes to building schools and other things - there's about $150 million in net new tax revenue to cover those costs, so how do you make up that gap? How do you make up that difference?” He said, referencing Healey’s FY26 budget proposal. “That's really the challenge we see in this year's budget and guess where a lot of it comes right now? A lot of it comes from federal reimbursements for our state's Medicaid program, MassHealth - it just shows you the critical nature of that state/federal partnership that there's so many questions about right now.”
Medicaid funding in general appears to be in a precarious situation. The U.S. House passed a budget resolution/framework that, in order to fund $4.5 trillion in tax cuts, could translate to deep federal spending cuts, including as much as $880 billion being cut from Medicaid over the next decade, the Associated Press reports.
The potential cuts were touched on by Congressman Richard Neal of the 1st District. Noting that 1.6 million people in Massachusetts rely on MassHealth, he added that local hospital systems, some of the biggest employers in the region, rely heavily on Medicaid and Medicare dollars.
“More than half their revenue comes from Medicare, another 15, or in the case of one, 25 percent, comes from Medicaid. Where would Holyoke hospital be without Medicare and Medicaid? How about Pittsfield or North Adams? How about Harrington Hospital in Southbridge, Mass.? This is not an esoteric argument,” the congressman said. “This is about healthcare, but you know what else? No surprise - these are amongst our biggest employers. Just about everywhere you live now, across this country, the hospital is the biggest employer, and it's important to remember that we don't have the same private pay base here in Western Massachusetts and Central Massachusetts that they have in Boston, which, oftentimes, can make the difference. The impact that these proposed cuts would be devastating for our area. 300,000 residents in the 1st district received their health care through Medicaid.”
Other speakers Friday included ABC News Washington Bureau Chief, Rick Klein.
