Author: senmikeb

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.”

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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.

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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.”

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Boston Globe

State Senator Michael Barrett, one of the lead authors of Massachusetts’ 2021 and 2022 climate laws, has introduced legislation that would take control of Mass Save away from the utilities.

He said National Grid’s offer to Wellesley embodies what he said is a broad effort by the gas industry.

“This whole issue of the survival strategies by natural gas utilities is framed here,” he said. “They are pursuing a number of stratagems, and imposing these kinds of conditions.”

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WBUR

“It’s hard for me to accept that the minimum $3,500 subsidy — which became law … upon the date of the governor signing the DRIVE Act— is still not available to my constituents and to other people in Massachusetts,” Senator Mike Barrett, who helped craft the climate law, said at a Senate sub-committee meeting this week. “Why is that?”

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The Bedford Citizen

“In the climate front, despite all the dire circumstances we are confronted with, we should have hope,” Barrett said last week in an interview. Barrett, whose district includes Bedford, pointed out that recently-signed federal legislation “seemed dead in the water. And then we have a new state climate bill that seemed destined for a gubernatorial veto but is now law.”

“Two last-minute rescues have resulted in a lot of opportunities for Massachusetts,” Barrett said. But many of those opportunities are competitive, he added.

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Bankers and Tradesman

Beacon Hill has a clear transit to-do list for the coming legislative session, centered around setting the MBTA up for long-term success. First, testimony at last week’s State House hearing investigating the MBTA’s safety overseers at the Department of Public Utilities showed and as state Sen. Mike Barrett identified, we need a dedicated body within state government to handle transit safety supervision.  

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Boston.com

Each state has a designated agency to oversee rapid transit safety, conducting on-the-ground audits in consultation with the Federal Transit Administration. In Massachusetts, that agency is the DPU, which also oversees electric and gas utilities. Co-chair of the Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities, and Energy, Senator Mike Barrett, said a separate transportation commission may be better suited to oversee T safety.

“I am very concerned that the safety division historically has been an afterthought at the agency,” he said. The primary focus of the DPU needs to be climate change policy, Barrett said, and the T safety crisis is a “fire drill situation” distracting from that effort. The hearing comes just over a month after the Federal Transit Administration released its safety management inspection findings about the T.

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GBH News

That prompted Sen. Michael Barrett, chair of the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy, to ask about creating a separate agency that would allow better hiring incentives.

“If the Transportation Oversight Division were an independent commission,” he wondered, “let’s say it might well be able to pay hiring bonuses like the MBTA.”

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WBUR

State Sen. Michael Barrett, co-chair of the Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy, put DPU chair Matt Nelson on the spot after Nelson defended his department’s efforts on T safety.

“So we should be quiet and just let the status quo continue?” Barrett asked.

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