Massachusetts State Senator
The Massachusetts Legislature’s labor committee has voted to approve a bill setting a $15 an hour minimum wage for fast food and big box retail workers.
“People have got to make a living if they work full time,” Barrett said.
“The chairman of a powerful state Senate committee on Wednesday called on the Division of Insurance to reconsider the substantial rate increases granted to two of the state’s largest home insurance companies and open hearings on whether increases are justified.
“Barrett, chairman of the Senate’s Post Audit and Oversight Committee, said the rates deserve further scrutiny and public hearings, something consumers have urged, but the Division of Insurance has rarely held.”
Read the article on Sen. Barrett’s work on homeowners insurance rates
Victory — if not forever, then for now. The T will delay cuts in train stops in Concord and Lincoln until May of 2016. It has committed to reconsidering its planned changes and will entertain “robust public engagement” before making further decisions. New scheduling proposals will likely come out next month, following which there will be the kind of opportunity for comment that was lacking this time around.
“A key state lawmaker said Tuesday that he will file a bill that would require the state Division of Insurance to provide consumers with more information about proposed rate hikes and allow the attorney general to weigh in on them before they are approved.”
“It’s a discussion worth having. Climate change won’t wait for Congress to show leadership. Where better than Massachusetts, birthplace of innovation, to launch an aggressive response to the threat of climate change?”
After an independent group called for reforms to the way the Department of Children and Families handles appeals, Senate President Stanley Rosenberg on Wednesday called the report “very disconcerting” and committed to working with the administration to resolve the highlighted issues. Lawmakers last year ordered the state’s Child Advocate to hire an outside consultant to review DCF’s “fair hearing” process. The report released Monday from the Ripples Group found a growing backlog of cases waiting to be decided, a lack of access for families to easily-understood case materials and a system that lends itself to a perception that hearing officers are not independent from department administrators.
Read more“British Columbia, with its population of about 4.4 million people, first imposed a carbon tax in 2008 as part of the province’s climate action plan. By 2012, the province had hit its goal of reducing carbon emissions by 6 percent below 2007 levels at the same time that British Columbia’s population was growing and its gross domestic product climbed 9 percent.”
“This is carbon pricing,” State Senator Mike Barrett said, “and the idea is to make it a little more expensive to pollute, a little more expensive to buy something that results in the emission of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere — which is the greenhouse gas that causes climate change — make it a little more expensive to do all that, but then you send the money back so that you spend it on something less polluting.”
In the The Boston Globe, Mike Ross writes on my bill to combat climate change by pricing carbon:
“The idea of a lone state like Massachusetts getting out ahead of the rest of the country and leading a program of this magnitude might strike some as incredulous. But this is precisely what the Commonwealth has been doing on a host of issues — from marriage equality to health care. Being ahead of the curve is a good thing, especially when our future depends on it.”
Joan Cirillo, President and CEO of Operation A.B.L.E., makes the case for two bills I’ve filed.