Middleboro Review and so on

  By  Kelly Garrity ALL HANDS ON DECK —  Building out the state’s budget is always a challenge — and questions around federal funding are threatening to make it even trickier. Under that cloud of uncertainty,  lawmakers got the ball rolling Thursday on the monthslong process that often pits members of the House and Senate against each other as they fight to fit their priorities into a multi-billion-dollar spending bill. But this year, with “escalating uncertainty and increasing geopolitical turbulence,” Senate Ways and Means Chair Michael Rodrigues said, “we find ourselves in an all-hands-on-debt moment here in the Commonwealth.” It’s a problem, that “is going to be too big  for any one branch to think that they'll have a proposal to solve it,” warned Gov. Maura Healey’s Administration and Finance Secretary Matthew Gorzkowicz. But how exactly they could — or would — be able to backstop some of the up-in-the-air funding cuts isn’t clear yet. Healey already has g...