BOSTON — Days after her opponent called for suspension of the gas tax, Gov. Maura Healey proposed a two-month gas tax holiday Tuesday, saying she’ll put election-season legislation before lawmakers to accomplish her goal.
The proposal to suspend Massachusetts’ 24-cent-per-gallon tax could set up a difficult fight over a tax that Beacon Hill lawmakers have repeatedly declined to suspend during periods of soaring gas prices, and House Speaker Ron Mariano indicated this week he has no desire to touch.
Mariano on Monday called suspending the gas tax “fiscally irresponsible” because, he said, there is “no end to the war in sight,” referring to the war with Iran that began over the winter and has led to significantly higher gas and other prices.
The governor blamed President Donald Trump for rising gas prices, citing the war.
“The price of gas has gone up 50% since this war, and we are paying for it every single day,” Healey said at a press conference at the State House. “People in America need relief, and as governor, I want to do what I can to give relief to people here in Massachusetts.”
AAA reported Monday that gas is averaging $4.41 per gallon in Massachusetts, up from $3.10 a year ago.
Healey said she would file the proposal as part of a supplemental budget and acknowledged the suspension cannot happen without legislative approval. She said she has talked with lawmakers and urged them to act, but did not say whether Mariano or Senate President Karen Spilka had committed to supporting the plan.
Spilka did not offer her opinion: “I’m grateful for [Healey’s] commitment to drive down costs, and I will review this with my colleagues in the Senate when the supplemental budget comes to our chamber,” she said in a statement Tuesday.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Mike Minogue last week began running an advertisement calling for the gas tax to be suspended “until prices stabilize.”
“Massachusetts charges the gas tax whether you’re paying two bucks a gallon or five, whether you’re driving a semi or taking the kids to school,” Minogue said in the ad. “That’s why I’m proposing a gas tax holiday until prices stabilize. Maura Healey ignores the question.”
Mariano’s statement came in response to Minogue’s proposal, arguing it was “nothing more than a desperate attempt to distract voters from the source of the problem” and that suspending the tax would constrain transportation funding while doing little to reduce costs for Massachusetts residents.
Healey drew a distinction between her proposal and Minogue’s.
“Let’s distinguish what Mike Minogue is doing versus what I’m doing,” Healey said. “It’s easy to spend millions on glitzy ads and stand at a pump and say to people in Massachusetts, ‘I’m going to stop the gas tax.’ It’s another thing to actually be a governor and do what governors have the power to do, and to do it in a way that is fiscally responsible and provides that relief to people.”
She said she had spent the previous several weeks working with her administration to examine the state’s revenue picture and the mechanics of a suspension, including its potential effects on transportation funding and bond obligations.
In response to Healey’s announcement, Minogue said the governor “could have acted weeks ago.”
“I hope they table everything else and get this done immediately,” he said. “We should see this gas tax suspension go into effect today. If not, then we have to ask why the politicians are slow-walking it.”
He posed several questions for Healey, including, “Why didn’t she propose this when gas was over $5 under President Joe Biden? Perhaps because it was politically uncomfortable for her? Why only two months? To get through the election?”
The proposed two-month holiday would cost the state about $120 million in revenue, Healey said.
The 24-cent tax has brought in roughly $660 million to $775 million annually over the past decade and generated about $704 million in fiscal 2026, according to comptroller records.
Asked whether the $120 million hit was fiscally sustainable, Healey said the state has enough surplus revenue from the 4% surtax on high earners to absorb the cost without cutting transportation programs.
“We have that revenue coming in,” Healey said. “There’s surplus Fair Share tax revenue. This is not going to disturb anything that funds transportation or transportation projects.”
Gas tax receipts flow into transportation funding accounts that support MassDOT operations and debt service, and other transportation expenses.
Minogue’s campaign spokeswoman Elizabeth Hopkins told the News Service his proposal would trigger whenever prices rise above $4 per gallon and last “until prices drop back down.”
Hopkins said Minogue would “also work to permanently eliminate the gas tax” and replace the revenue following an audit of the budget. She said he anticipates finding “100s of millions” of taxpayer dollars currently funding waste and fraud.
“In fact, we could eliminate the gas tax permanently if we conducted a thorough audit of the state and eliminated $600 million in waste, fraud, and corruption,” Hopkins said.
The tax is set by state law, meaning the Legislature would have to approve a suspension.
In his Monday statement, Mariano said the Legislature has historically declined to suspend the gas tax because doing so would “limit our ability to fund critical infrastructure projects while doing little to alleviate costs for residents.”
Healey made a similar argument in 2022, when, as attorney general, she opposed a suspension.
When asked about her change in opinion on the suspension, Healey said Tuesday, “Different time.”
“We weren’t at war,” she said. “We didn’t have a president in Donald Trump who every day is jacking up the cost of everything, and we didn’t have a situation where it looks like there’s no end in sight and no plan.”
The state Republican Party released a statement Tuesday claiming that Healey is pushing Minogue’s gas tax holiday.
“When Democrats have to steal great Republican ideas six weeks before an election, you know they realize their policies just aren’t working for the people,” said MassGOP chairwoman Amy Carnevale. “It is nice to see Mike Minogue is already achieving results for taxpayers. Thanks Mike!”
Healey rejected the idea of permanently eliminating the tax.
“No, no,” she said. “This is something that I think is important to do as a temporary measure.”
Asked whether the administration would crack down on price gouging if the tax were suspended, Healey said they had already spoken to the attorney general’s office about its authority to act.
Doug Howgate, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Association, said the “impetus for a proposal like this is pretty understandable” but the relief would have consequences both on the state’s near term finances and on future decisions.
“The gas tax is pledged towards infrastructure bonds. When we sell bonds one of the ways we’re able to get a good price is they’re backed by the gas tax,” Howgate said. “It looks like the governor’s proposal has two mechanisms to address those concerns: it’s time limited and they backfill it with surtax dollars. There’s some important public finance concerns with how we adjust taxes in the near term in light of larger economic factors.”
Responding to a question about Minogue’s proposal to work towards permanently suspending the tax, Howgate said it would have “real implications for how we have pledged these revenues for basic transportation infrastructure in the state.”
“People have bought Massachusetts bonds with the obligation that those would be repaid and supported by the Commonwealth Transportation Fund, and we have legitimate and serious constraints with what we can do to change that,” he said. “This is part of a mechanism that has been used for decades to support how we pay for roads and our transportation system. It’s critically important that we take how that works seriously.”
Healey’s proposal would apply to both gasoline and diesel and, under Healey’s description, take effect one week after the Legislature approves the legislation and the governor signs it.
The legislative hurdle is significant given the history of the gas tax on Beacon Hill. On the likelihood of Healey’s success to get the idea through the Legislature, Howgate said, “One lesson in both life and public policy is, well, you never know.”
Healey is attaching the idea to the closeout budget for fiscal year 2026, which lawmakers typically pass in the fall to close the books on the prior fiscal year. If legislative leaders don’t include the gas tax suspension in their version of the bill it could still come to the floor as an amendment.
Massachusetts went 21 years without changing the tax. The rate remained at 21 cents per gallon from 1991 until 2013, when lawmakers raised it to 24 cents as part of a transportation-financing package and tied future increases to inflation.
In 2014, voters repealed the automatic inflation adjustment, leaving the 24-cent rate in place. The tax has remained frozen for more than a decade.
The tension between the need for transportation revenue and raising a highly visible tax has repeatedly resurfaced.
In 2020, House Democrats passed legislation that would have increased the gas tax by 5 cents, to 29 cents per gallon, and the diesel tax by 9 cents. The House vote was 113-40, but the proposal stalled in the Senate as the COVID-19 pandemic sent unemployment soaring.
The pattern has run in the opposite direction during gasoline-price spikes: when prices jump, calls to suspend the tax emerge, especially from Republicans, but the Legislature has repeatedly resisted.
When Massachusetts gasoline prices reached a record $4.16 per gallon in 2022 amid the fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Republican gubernatorial candidate Chris Doughty called for suspending the 24-cent tax until prices fell below $3.70, similar to Minogue’s $4 price trigger proposal.
Efforts in 2022 to suspend the tax met resistance from legislative Democrats, including Mariano, who was speaker then as now. At that time, however, Healey joined him on the opposing side.
That leaves the governor now asking Democratic lawmakers to approve a policy they have rejected during earlier gas price spikes, while arguing that her version is different because it is temporary and can be absorbed by other state revenues.