Gov. Deval Patrick’s budget, which has been criticized for its proposed income tax increase, is partly an effort to spread the wealth that Greater Boston has enjoyed to other parts of the state, his secretary of housing and economic development said yesterday.
In a 90-minute interview with the Herald, Greg Bialecki said the gross state product in 2011 — the most recent year for which figures are available — was above the level in 2007, before the financial crisis.
“But this recession has caused a lot of companies to rethink in Massachusetts,” Bialecki added yesterday, as Boston Scientific, one of the state’s largest employers, announced it will cut another 1,000 jobs. “Unemployment has still not reached where it was. … For a lot of people, how well the economy is doing depends on whether they have a job.”
And that, he said, goes hand-in-hand with the kind of affordable housing and transportation that make people want to locate and stay here.
The governor has already sought to address the latter by funding improvements for the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, Bialecki said.
“But he’s going to push very hard to say that is not enough,” he said. “If we’re going to put the MBTA on good financial footing, what about all of these other regional transportation authorities? People outside Greater Boston are very aware they don’t have a transportation system like Boston’s.”
Patrick’s $34.8 billion budget proposal would increase operating funds for transportation by $269 million, raise unrestricted local aid to cities and towns by $31 million and increase education funding to cities and towns by $226 million.
It would also raise the income tax rate from 5.25 percent to 6.25 percent and reduce the sales tax from 6.25 percent to 4.5 percent.
Bialecki said it was “perfectly appropriate” for Mayor Thomas M. Menino to say last week that Boston already has made a “full recovery” from the recession thanks to job growth and new construction investment.
“It’s encouraging at least because there’s enough economic potential for it to spread,” he said.
Bialecki pointed to the Big Dig, the modernization of Logan International Airport, the extension of the Red Line and UMass Medical School’s expansion as examples of projects that are paying dividends.
“When you make those significant public investments,” he said, “good things happen.”