Boston Globe
Congrats to the girls’ lacrosse team from Lincoln-Sudbury High, this year’s Division I state champs!
Big Win for Lex. High School boys track team
The boys track and field team at Lexington High School just won the Division I state title. Here they are with the gov, who bonded with them over her own athletic accomplishments. I wish I could take some credit for their win, but I just wanted to bask in their glory. Congrats guys!
What’s at stake in a simmering feud over the Mass. Legislature’s rules?
GBH NEWS
To me, progressive climate policy in the MA Legislature turns on the Senate and the House remaining equal in power. For my take on today’s tensions, watch this.
Rules feud leads to 2 takes on committee hearing
CommonWealth Magazine
“I want to thank you for bearing with us during these rather extraordinary times, this choice to have two proceedings rather than one. Presumably it won’t be forever, presumably collective decision-making will return to [the Telecommunications, Utilities, and Energy Committee] and with that, joint hearings. We can’t have one without the other,” Barrett said. “But my hope is that we’ll start to abide by our traditional rules and we will once again give equal weight to Senate decision-making — not excessive weight, but equal weight — and in so doing, be able to bring the two halves of the hearing process back together as well. But probably that resolution will not be coming this year. And so we have to resign ourselves to the dual hearing process instead and to make it as bearable for all of us as possible.”
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What the latest Mass. offshore wind setback means for the state’s climate goals
WBUR
What does the SouthCoast Wind project’s recent move to pull out of its contract mean for Massachusetts’ climate goals? State Sen. Michael Barrett told WBUR’s Dave Faneuf the offshore wind farm developer’s effort to renegotiate for more money will slow down the state’s massive shift to cleaner electricity — but not significantly so. “The delay in generating offshore wind is going to put the 2025 and 2030 emissions limits for electric power in some jeopardy, but only for a year or two,” Barrett said, adding that he hopes to see the state “hit those limits and more” soon after.
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Plan to expand hangar space for private jets at Hanscom sparks concerns about a surge in climate pollution
Boston Globe
“If the [hangar] project goes forward as the developers envision, we fear Massport’s sustainability efforts elsewhere will net out to very little in the way of reduced emissions, and possibly to nothing at all,” wrote Barrett, whose letter was co-signed by more than 30 other local residents and officials. “Pollution attributable to traffic at the new Hanscom hangars threatens to cancel out all the gains.”
Barrett urged Massport officials to reimagine the proposal and require all new hangers to house fossil fuel-free aircraft, such as the 75 electric airplanes that Cape Air ordered last year from a Washington company called Eviation.
“We urge you, in the strongest possible terms, to ensure that Massachusetts does not enable super-emitters,” he wrote.
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House leaders pushing majority rule in joint committees
CommonWealth Magazine
Sen. Michael Barrett of Lexington, the Senate chair of the committee, said the senators won’t return to meeting with their House counterparts until the House members agree to rules recognizing parity between the two branches.
That means the House and Senate chairs have to agree jointly on which bills will be heard at hearings and which bills will get acted on in executive sessions. Without parity, Barrett said, the Senate will lose leverage and House members will prevail most of the time because House members on the committee outnumber Senate members by almost a 2-1 margin.
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Inside the Legislature’s latest power struggle
Politico
State Sen. Michael Barrett on Monday accused his House co-chair on the Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy of scheduling a hearing on energy bills for later this week without his consent. “There’s a small chance this is merely a serious error,” Barrett said in a statement. “Otherwise, I regret to say, the use of my name appears to be fraudulent.”
But Barrett isn’t just peeved about one listening session. He said state Rep. Jeffrey Roy’s “unilateral act” not only violates the rule that joint committee chairs agree on hearing schedules, but also breaks with broader governing practices designed to give the Senate an equal say on panels where their members are outnumbered. And he claimed other Senate chairs “are being pressed along similar lines.”
Barrett is giving voice to what some senators have been privately griping about for months. They say House chairs pushed boilerplate rules this session that would let them leverage their chamber’s numerical advantage on joint committees by using majority votes to call hearings and move bills without senators’ consent.
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Mike Barrett: Climate goals may take longer, but we’ll get there
MIT News
Barrett, who is senate chair of the state’s Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities, and Energy, spoke on the topic of “Decarbonizing Massachusetts” at MIT’s Wong Auditorium as part of the Institute’s celebration of Earth Week. The event was accompanied by a poster session highlighting some of the work of MIT students and faculty aimed at tackling aspects of the climate issue.
Proposed bill would create new commission to oversee MBTA safety
WBUR
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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