“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.Read more... ...
Featured Posts
‘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 ...
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 ...
The Current Buzz: Mike Barrett – Chelmsford TV
“Fighting climate change is not just about generating clean energy because the planet is choking — it’s also about the economy. It’s a jobs movement …
Climate change is a young person’s business not just because young people are worried about climate change — they certainly are — but because young people can and should be going into the business of solar panels, offshore windmills, and energy efficiency.”
~ Senator Barrett, in conversation with Dean Contover of Chelmsford TV
The new Mass. climate law has generous electric vehicle rebates. Here’s what’s currently available for residents – WBUR
A spokeswoman for the Department of Energy Resources did not answer questions about why these benefits are delayed and why the MOR-EV website doesn’t list them under their section on what’s coming in 2023. But she did say in an email that the state is in the process of hiring a new vendor, and the department hopes to begin making these rebates available in the spring of 2023.
WBUR shared the new information with state Sen. Mike Barrett, an author of the law who was under the impression that all elements, with the exception of point-of-sale rebates, had been implemented.
“It is quite disappointing to realize that certain statutes that have been the law of the land here in Massachusetts since August of 2022 are being disregarded,” he said.
“All of us were [under the] impression that these provisions were effective along with other provisions.”
Read more…
MBTA oversight should move from DPU to new agency, report says – 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.”
Read more…
‘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.
Read more…
Lawmakers look to remove MBTA oversight from Department of Public Utilities – The Lowell Sun
“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.”
The DPU is also the oversight authority for other regional transit agencies across Massachusetts, he said, and the “threshold question” will be whether any new agency deals with just the T or with the other transportation authorities as well.
Read more…