Massachusetts State Senator
State Sen. Michael Barrett, sponsor of a bill that would remove transportation safety from the DPU, said his proposal would create a state agency that can solely focus on transportation.
“It’s not a matter of the people not doing their job, it’s a structural problem,” Sen. Barrett said. “Structurally, the DPU will always be distracted.”
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Moving safety oversight of the MBTA out of the Department of Public Utilities should be an immediate priority, says one Massachusetts lawmaker, who is pushing to create an independent commission that would take over this watchdog role.
A bill establishing this new agency, filed by state Sen. Michael Barrett, will be considered at a Monday Joint Committee on Transportation hearing, the first step in what he hopes will be a successful legislative push.
“I don’t think the federal government will permit us to rest with the status quo,” Barrett said. “We’ve got to do something. The T is not getting any safer. I think it’s high time we acted.”
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Massachusetts state Senator Michael J. Barrett, who has worked on renewable energy issues, said the verdict ”couldn’t come at a better time,” especially in light of delays in the state’s efforts to create offshore wind farms near Martha’s Vineyard.
While the timeline on the project is uncertain, Barrett said that with the court decision, “It’s good to know that clean hydro from Quebec is likely headed our way.”
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The city’s process has left Daley, and supporters such as state Senator Michael Barrett, expressing a mix of anger, frustration — and even bafflement — that Waltham’s purchase of farmland could end up harming the farm itself.
“In Waltham, you have a standout nonprofit agricultural operation that could simply collapse if you drive away the human network that has developed around the farm in the last three decades,” said Barrett, who worked on the deal. “There has to be a better way.”
Sen. Michael Barrett, who co-chairs the Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy, said Healey’s fiscal 2024 budget proposal is “the best executive branch budget I’ve ever seen” and is “a leap over anything a governor has proposed before.”
“Making inroads against global warming is a massive job, and here’s a budget that takes up the nitty-gritty, the nuts and bolts,” the Lexington Democrat said. “It calls for training more people because we’re short on everybody from HVAC techs to solar installers to electricians to electrical engineers. It puts the Mass Clean Energy Center on a stable financial footing for the first time ever. It commits to protecting water supplies because PFAS are a major threat. It bumps up funding for DCR and the state parks, which are starved for attention. All of which takes money, so, yes, this budget asks for money.”
The budget also calls for the hiring of 28 full-time environmental justice employees across the various agencies within the executive office and the establishment of a environmental training program for governmental and nongovernmental agencies.
Sen. Michael Barrett of Lexington, the co-chair of the legislative committee dealing with energy and climate change issues, hailed the focus on the environment and climate. “For efforts in this area, this is the best executive branch budget I’ve ever seen. It’s a leap over anything a governor has proposed before,” Barrett said.
The major funding hike prompted Sen. Mike Barrett, a Lexington Democrat who co-chairs the Telecommunications, Energy and Utilities Committee, to call Healey’s plan “the best executive branch budget I’ve ever seen” and “a leap over anything a governor has proposed before.”
Barrett’s bill would essentially reorganize the program from the ground up. The proposal would create an entity dubbed the “commonwealth clean heat initiative” — though Barrett said he would expect day-to-day operations to continue under the brand name Mass Save, which has wide recognition in the state.
Barrett argues that urgency is essential, beyond the impacts of just the first 10 cities and towns, because the hope is that data gathered from the pioneering communities will help create a roadmap forward for how to meet the state’s ambitious climate goals.
“The additional delays anticipated by the draft regulation mean that we will remain in the dark about how to move forward on our climate strategy for additional months,” the senator said. “We’re hoping the state hears us and hastens the process along.”
State Senator Michael J. Barrett (D-Third Middlesex) describes himself as a “child of Camelot” whose passion for public service was first awakened by the idealism of John F. Kennedy. Barrett has represented Concord, as well as Bedford, Carlisle, Chelmsford, Lincoln, Waltham, Weston, and a large part of Lexington and Sudbury since being elected to 2012. He also served an earlier stint as a state senator for Cambridge and as a state representative for his hometown of Reading.
Barrett likens his work as a state senator to being a jack-of-all-trades, handling everything from individual complaints such as frustration with commuter rail and bus service,to going to bat for local businesses, for instance, helping Plug Power, a Concord based supplier of green hydrogen, bid for special storage incentives, and legislating on climate change as the Senate’s chair of the Climate Policy Committee.