Massachusetts began its new fiscal year on Monday without a complete state budget, bringing the series of late budget submissions to a 14th consecutive year.

A team of six state lawmakers is still working on an agreement between the competing $58 billion budgets that the House and Senate passed earlier this year.

Although the two budget bills propose similar spending overall, they allocate the money differently. The Senate focuses its spending on health care, education and local aid, while the House focuses on areas such as transportation, energy and the environment, and labor market measures, according to an analysis by the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation.

Budget negotiators from the Senate and House of Representatives have said in recent days that they are making good progress.

Senate Budget Chief Michael Rodrigues, a Westport Democrat, said it all comes down to the quality of the budget. He told GBH News he was proud that recent budgets had increased the state's rainy day reserves and helped improve its credit rating, even if it came late.

“Ultimately, the finished product speaks for itself,” Rodrigues said. “These are good budgets. And we're working as hard as we can to get it done as quickly as possible.”

Only two states, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, began the 2025 fiscal year on Monday without at least a final budget for the governor to review, according to a statement from the National Association of State Budget Officers.

Gov. Maura Healey signed a roughly $7 billion budget bill Friday that will ensure funding for state programs and agencies through the end of July. Passing these month-long interim budgets, which have become common practice during the summer, prevents Massachusetts from risking a government shutdown if negotiations over the full annual budget drag on beyond the start of the fiscal year.

Although the consequences of a shutdown are not as dramatic as those of a delayed government budget submission, the delay can still have consequences.

State Sen. Ryan Fattman, a Republican from Sutton, said it can be difficult for cities and towns – especially smaller communities – to set their own spending plans without knowing the final amount they will receive from the state to support their schools and other local programs.

“I mean, that's problematic,” Fattman told GBH News. “So how do you create a budget? You can predict it, but not with 100 percent certainty.”

In addition to the differences of opinion over spending, the fate of several important policy proposals also depends on the budget negotiations.

Community college students, for example, are waiting to see if they will have to pay for their classes in the fall or if the final bill will take up the Senate's plan to eliminate tuition at the state's 15 community colleges. And state lottery officials are anxiously waiting to see if they get the green light to start offering games online, as the House budget bill calls for.

While lawmakers negotiate a budget, they are also trying to reach agreement on other legislation, including a gun reform package, improvements to veterans' benefits and services and a bill that would require employers to disclose salary ranges in job postings. Two multibillion-dollar bills that are priorities for Healey – one focused on housing and the other a comprehensive economic development bill – are also expected to land on the negotiating table, and lawmakers will work to juggle them all by the end of the session on July 31.

Rep. Todd Smola, a Warren Republican who is one of three lawmakers on the Budget Committee, said the Republican minority caucus is concerned about bandwidth given “all these important and big issues piling up.”

“And of course, I'm not sure we're doing our best work when we allow all these important issues to pile up on top of each other,” Smola told reporters last week. “And we're chasing a deadline.”

A looming deadline can be an effective way to clear a legislative bottleneck, but this often happens at the last minute—or, in the case of the budget, technically even afterward.

“It's a negotiation, and nobody wants to give up their position until they're faced with the inevitable outcome that they're not going to get their way. So you keep at it and you keep making your case,” House Speaker Ron Mariano, who has served in the House for three decades, said last week. “After serving on countless mediation committees, you don't like to give up, and that's just the nature of negotiations.”