Author: senmikeb
Rally at Concord church to demand justice after Jan. 6 uprising
Boston Globe
Other local officials stepped up in Clark’s place Saturday to rally the crowd and tout the influence that the Democrat from Revere will hold as Democratic whip after she was elected to that role in November.
“Talk about Massachusetts catching a lucky break and seeing one of its truly great legislators on the cusp of assuming national power,” State Senator Mike Barrett said, drawing cheers from the crowd. “Her performance over the last several weeks has been heroic.”
The Healey administration begins
Politico
Key lawmakers quickly showed interest in some of Healey’s ideas. Senate President Karen Spilka said she’d “love to sit down” with the new administration about hiring for the T. State Sen. Mike Barrett said there’s impetus to act on Healey’s call for a “climate corridor,” telling reporters that “the Healey stamp, joined with Baker’s prior initiative, gives it that bipartisan character that we really need.”
Healey taps Rebecca Tepper, of attorney general’s office, as secretary of energy and environmental affairs
Boston Globe
State Senator Michael Barrett, a lead author of Massachusetts’ major 2021 and 2022 climate laws, said Tepper was a “shrewd” choice for EEA secretary.
“She knows the advocates. She knows the business community. She knows lots of legislators. She can make things happen for the Healey-Driscoll team,” he said.
He noted that Katie Theorides, who served as EEA secretary under Governor
Charlie Baker from 2019 through mid-2022, didn’t come into state government with the same extensive contact list.
“She brought some serious tools with her, but started from zero in terms of personal relationships and friendships in the legislative branch,” he said. “Tepper has the know-how and the contacts. That’s a very rare combination.”
With new report, Massachusetts charts the path to net-zero emissions by 2050
Boston Globe
One example of how quickly things move: The plan released today does not account for any delays associated with Avangrid pulling out of Commonwealth Wind, according to state Senator Michael Barrett, a Democrat of Lexington.
“Going forward, I expect they’re going to have to make adjustments every several months because the world is changing rapidly and in unexpected ways,” said Barrett, one of the lead authors of the Massachusetts 2021 and 2022 climate laws. “Whether or not you put a revision down on paper and publish it every several months, your real strategy has to be congruent with the real world. So what’s required here is nimbleness and strategic agility even as you keep your eye on the long-term goal.”
Healey taps Melissa Hoffer of the EPA to serve as state’s first climate chief
Boston Globe
State Senator Michael Barrett, one of the lead authors of Massachusetts’ 2021 and 2022 climate laws, applauded the Hoffer pick, while noting that she will face numerous challenges, including the delays in the deployment of offshore wind, supply chain issues with the availability of electric vehicles, and the high costs of getting heat pumps into homes, which will probably require additional subsidies.
“At every turn, there are questions to confront,” Barrett said. “None of them are insuperable, but all of them mean real work. Melissa Hoffer is going to have a lot on her shoulders.”
The new Mass. climate law has generous electric vehicle rebates. Here’s what’s currently available for residents
WBUR
A spokeswoman for the Department of Energy Resources did not answer questions about why these benefits are delayed and why the MOR-EV website doesn’t list them under their section on what’s coming in 2023. But she did say in an email that the state is in the process of hiring a new vendor, and the department hopes to begin making these rebates available in the spring of 2023.
WBUR shared the new information with state Sen. Mike Barrett, an author of the law who was under the impression that all elements, with the exception of point-of-sale rebates, had been implemented.
“It is quite disappointing to realize that certain statutes that have been the law of the land here in Massachusetts since August of 2022 are being disregarded,” he said.
“All of us were [under the] impression that these provisions were effective along with other provisions.”
MBTA oversight should move from DPU to new agency, report says
Boston Herald
The only other “feasible” option for Massachusetts lawmakers, according to the report, is shifting oversight of the T from the DPU to a different, existing oversight entity, such as the state auditor, inspector general or the MBTA Advisory Board, the latter of which is composed of local mayors and other municipal officials.
State lawmakers are drafting legislation that considers both options put forward by the report, state Sen. Mike Barrett, co-chair of the Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities & Energy, told the Herald last week.
“I’m interested in moving transportation safety out of the DPU for two reasons,” Barrett said. “First, the DPU has blown it in terms of consistently attending to its oversight responsibility, but secondly as the climate issue looms larger and larger, I don’t want to see the DPU distracted by other issues.”
‘Bowels of hell’: Commission to probe history of Mass. state institutions
MassLive
State Sen. Mike Barrett, who also spearheaded the legislation for the special commission, recalled his college years in the 1960s, when a mentorship program brought him to Fernald to play with a 6-year-old boy. Barrett struggled to understand why the boy, who appeared to have no cognitive defects, was at the school, surrounded mostly by older adults.
“His story and the story of everyone with whom he lived hasn’t been told. We don’t know, even to this day, much about the lives that were lived,” Barrett said, drawing an analogy to The New York Times’ 1619 project that reminded “all of us that we don’t really know our own history as a country, or as a state, or as a community.”
“The truth here has eluded us,” Barrett, a Lexington Democrat, said of Fernald.
Lawmakers look to remove MBTA oversight from Department of Public Utilities
Boston Herald
State lawmakers are drafting legislation to move MBTA safety oversight out of the Department of Public Utilities.
“Work on the subject is quite intense,” said state Sen. Mike Barrett. “We have to decide whether all the transportation functions currently organized in the DPU should move over to an independent agency, or whether a new agency should focus only on the MBTA and safety.”