Massachusetts State Senator
Early education costs are high and getting higher. The Senate has taken note and just passed a bill to lower expenses for families. The bill expands access to childcare subsidies for lower-income families and caps fees for recipients at 7% of their income. It also makes permanent the pandemic-era “C3” grants, which provide monthly payments to many of the state’s early ed providers. Hats off to the Senate President, Sen. Rodrigues, and Sen. Lewis for making this a priority.
Data collected by the Massachusetts attorney general’s office shows that between 2015 and 2021, residents who signed up for competitive electric supply plans paid $525 million more than if they had continued buying electricity from their utility. Low-income residents were nearly twice as likely to be enrolled with competitive electric suppliers, and they consistently lost the most money.
“This has been a 25-year experiment. It’s fair now to conclude on the basis of the evidence that [the market has] failed to produce value for large numbers of consumers,” said Senator Michael Barrett, the Democratic lawmaker who will help lead negotiations on a climate bill later this year. “At some point, you have to throw in the towel.”
Sen. Michael Barrett, a Lexington Democrat, told GBH News he sponsored the legislation — which would open Massachusetts’s state records after they have aged 75 years — in part because he worked at the Fernald School as part of a “buddy” program for disabled children decades ago when he studied at Harvard College. Barrett says he mentored a blind child who was housed in a ward with people who had “cognitive difficulties.”
“Did he belong there? We’ll never know until researchers can excavate the histories of the folks who were there and begin to determine why they were sent there and why they, in many cases, never found their way back into the community at all,” he said.
Offshore wind is coming through, delivering onshore jobs and clean power, despite topsy-turvy business conditions in the short term. Smart to stay the course and stick to the plan.
Developers of hangars out at Hanscom for super-polluting private jets for the super-rich, the IRS is dinging your business model. Massport, please get your head out of the bucket of money it’s buried in, and realize you’re morally tainted:
Customers typically have three options: stay on their utility’s basic service plan; opt into a municipal aggregation program if their town buys energy for its residents in bulk; or buy from third-party energy suppliers. One problem: Customers who sign up for third-party suppliers routinely get a bad deal. An Attorney General report found that from 2015-2021, third-party retailers overcharged customers by $525 million. Smart commentary by Attorney General Andrea Campbell and Boston Mayor Michelle Wu:
These initiatives tackle huge issues, like the convenience of charging for condo and apartment dwellers, the greening of Uber and Lyft, the task of keeping chargers in good working order, and the electrification of heavy-duty trucks. Ambitious stuff.
Wednesday’s order may have felt like an especially big win for climate advocates, considering how far things have moved, and how quickly. After the proceeding began three years ago, the DPU asked the gas companies to lead the first phase of the process, giving them the ability to write the first draft of a plan for reaching net-zero emissions in 2050. What’s more, advocates said they were shut out of the deliberations after the DPU under Baker took steps to limit their involvement.
Then in 2022, the playing field shifted. Healey was elected governor, and the DPU was filled with her appointees who could rewrite the rules of the game. A bill signed into law earlier in 2022 included language that ensured the ultimate decision would be wrested from the Baker DPU, and handled instead by Healey’s administration.
“Carrying this over to the new governor’s regime was putting it on uncharted ground,” said state Senator Michael Barrett, a coauthor of the 2022 climate bill. “If you’re a gas utility, I think they had every reason to be concerned and this report would bear that out.”
The State Senate just passed legislation that caps out-of-pocket spending on some prescription drugs used to treat diabetes, asthma, and chronic heart conditions. For each of these conditions, insurers must select one name-brand drug and one generic drug. The bill requires insurers to eliminate deductibles and cost-sharing requirements for the generic drugs and cap co-payments at $25 for the brand-name drugs. Kudos to Sen. Friedman for leading on the issue.
Plastics, and waste reduction in general, has been an orphan. We just haven’t managed to acknowledge that reducing waste and reducing plastic is critical to reducing emissions.