“This effort to get a municipality to opt in is going to invigorate grass-roots politics in 2023 like you’ve never seen before,” said Senator Michael Barrett, coauthor of the 2021 climate bill that required the creation of the new, optional building code.
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‘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.
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Beyond Mass Save: Legislators and advocates say it’s time for a change – Boston Globe
Senator Michael Barrett, one of the lead authors of Massachusetts’ 2021 and 2022 climate laws, is among a handful of legislators who has proposed alternatives to the current Mass Save structure. A bill he introduced last session proposes that Mass Save have new leadership installed in the form of a chief executive and board of directors, which would include representatives from various agencies and interests, including the utilities as well as three members from environmental justice communities.
When the Legislature begins a new session next year, Barrett said, he expects the bill to be taken up again, possibly with modified language. “We’ve got to have more accountability,” he said. “And I want natural gas off the starting team. I want public interest representatives, government officials, and electric power leaders on the field, representing Massachusetts interests.”
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Lawmakers ask DPU chief to testify at hearing on MBTA safety – WBUR.org
In an interview, state Sen. Michael Barrett, co-chair of the joint committee, said, “So far as we can tell, the transportation oversight division of the state DPU has 11 authorized positions. Only nine are filled at present. But this division has to cover a lot of ground.”
He said DPU already has a challenging task at hand dealing with the climate crisis and a potential move away from natural gas.
“You’ve got the possibility that the overarching climate crisis will crowd out safety monitoring” at the T, Barrett said. “But you’ve also got the equal possibility that a fire drill around a safety emergency will cause the DPU to backburner the climate issue.”
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Ten cities and towns are poised to ban fossil fuels from new buildings – Boston Globe
“This isn’t a study undertaken by a liberal think tank. It’s not a study undertaken by the legislature. This is Charlie Baker’s Department of Energy Resources, reassuring us that the all-electric house is more affordable,” said state Senator Michael Barrett, a Democrat from Lexington, who negotiated the bill along with State Representative Jeffrey Roy, a Franklin Democrat.
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