The major funding hike prompted Sen. Mike Barrett, a Lexington Democrat who co-chairs the Telecommunications, Energy and Utilities Committee, to call Healey’s plan “the best executive branch budget I’ve ever seen” and “a leap over anything a governor has proposed before.”

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Because I represent so many historic places, my district has a lot riding on 2025. But so do Boston, Cambridge, and Arlington — three other communities in the line of march on April 19th — plus Braintree, Salem, Marblehead, Gloucester, Framingham, Worcester, Somerville, and a host of other places important now and important then.

Beginning 24 months from now, we can expect scads of visitors, VIPs included. President Ulysses S. Grant came for the 100th, in 1875. President Gerald Ford came for the 200th, in 1975. All of which means trade for local businesses, not to mention justified pride, which will be good, and crowds and traffic and security costs, which will be problematic.

The House and the Senate will work plenty of changes to this supplemental budget, which contains a number of important other items. But here’s hoping everyone receiving this message will speak out and help carry this $2 million for “Rev 250” across the finish line.

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Barrett’s bill would essentially reorganize the program from the ground up. The proposal would create an entity dubbed the “commonwealth clean heat initiative” — though Barrett said he would expect day-to-day operations to continue under the brand name Mass Save, which has wide recognition in the state.

The initiative would be governed by a chief executive officer and a board of directors including representatives from the state energy, environment, and housing offices; the energy efficiency advisory council; the Metropolitan Area Planning Council; and the utilities. At least three board members would live in Boston, a low-income area, or a so-called Gateway City, a designation that refers to midsize cities that were once manufacturing hubs. 

“We can’t have transitions off natural gas being run by the natural gas utilities,” Barrett said. “I want the utilities to still be at the table, but I don’t want them sitting at the head of the table.”

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“It’s important that state government permit the towns that want to do this to go forward as quickly as possible,” state Sen. Mike Barrett told GBH News. “The Legislature wrote this language because a handful of towns had already moved way out in front. The communities had gone through the laborious process of drafting local bylaws and ordinances.”

The state’s Department of Energy Resources released draft regulations and a model rule at the end of December, soliciting public comment up through last week. The law mandates that, for participating communities, both new construction and major renovations would have to be fossil fuel–free operations, with some exceptions for settings like research labs and hospitals.

Under DOER’s proposed regulations, municipalities that have already asked the state for permission to ban fossil fuels in new construction, via a home-rule petition sent to Beacon Hill, would need to wait until early 2024 at the earliest to implement their bans.

It “proposes to delay the entire process much longer than the Legislature ever imagined,” Barrett said.

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Senator Michael Barrett, who represents the area, said that while there is understandable confusion about the situation, the interest in helping “nicely counterbalances the angst.”

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