By Daniel Zackin, for 350 Mass
July 18, 2024
A new blog post from 350 Mass Legislative Coordinator Dan Zackin describes how our State Representatives passed an inadequate climate bill on Wednesday, July 18. Read on to learn about our broken legislative process and how you can help make the final bill better before it is signed into law.
We arrived at the State House at 8:55 AM and waited for security to open the doors. Once in, we rushed from office to office, trying to reach 160 Representatives before they started hearing amendments at 11 AM. We pulled it off! Then our Representatives just… didn’t start. They immediately went on an extended recess, cut deals behind the scenes, then returned to the public eye around 3 to start the show.
Our legislature runs on a two year cycle. Over the past 19 months, since January 2023, our movement has pushed for major climate action and justice for the most impacted communities. That includes 350 Mass, our Mass Power Forward Coalition, our allies at the Environmental Justice Table, and more. It includes each and every one of you, our grassroots activists across the state who have taken action for our future. We spoke at hearings, we hosted legislative briefings, we held lobby days, protests, and marches. We wrote snail mail and valentines and endless emails. We mobilized and organized hundreds of activists across the state to push their legislators.
In June, the Senate brought forward a Climate Omnibus bill that was a mixed bag and did nothing to satisfy environmental justice communities. For more information about our campaigns and the Senate bill, read the Mass Power Forward blog post by the Sierra Club’s Jess Nahigian here.
Yesterday, July 17, our advocacy came up against monied interests and our opaque Statehouse. The House brought forward a major climate bill on Tuesday with two weeks to go in the session. Legislators had just 6 hours to read a 90+ page bill and file amendments. Overnight, legislators were expected to find cosponsors for their amendments, educate their fellow representatives, and build support. Then the next day they were supposed to vote on those amendments.
Those votes didn’t happen — every amendment was brought forward, called for a voice vote, and the decision announced. Not a single representative actually voted in public. Instead, every decision was made in advance by House leadership.
This broken process brought us an inadequate bill with:
- A limited process for siting that does not adequately prioritize environmental justice communities;
- No improvements to air quality;
- No halt on new large gas system expansion;
- Minimal provisions to pivot our gas system to non-emitting heat
Legislators included some truly horrible amendments, such as more money for burning trash in environmental justice communities like Lynn. There were some silver linings, like protections for workers on clean energy projects created by the bill. But overall the bill did not accomplish what our movements demand and what our communities need.
Now, the bill goes from a democratic part of the process that is secretly non-transparent (the House vote) to a non-democratic part of the process that is openly non-transparent (the Conference Committee). In a Conference Committee, 3 Representatives and 3 Senators sit down to reconcile the House and Senate bills. The main players to watch are Senator Mike Barrett and Representative Jeff Roy.
The situation in our legislature is bad: Committees aren’t listening to constituents who testify, the house and senate aren’t holding democratic votes, and we have a week and a half to fight for the vital climate wins that are still standing.
Now is the time to be loud and make good trouble. Now is the time to bring our anger and frustration with our broken legislature to the fore and let our elected officials know that we are furious!
We are powerful, even as we face down the most deceitful industry in the state with its army of oil and gas lobbyists. This session isn’t over till it’s over. It’s up to us to push through to the last minute of the session. We can still pull off major wins on commuter rail electrification, local control over siting, and a transition away from gas. We can still meaningfully reduce our greenhouse gas emissions this session.
Join us next week and the week after in the State House: we’ll be making noise and letting the Conference Committee know that our movement, their constituents, care about our climate. From Tuesday the 23rd to Thursday the 25th, and again from Monday the 29th to Wednesday the 31st, we need you from 1-3 PM in Nurses Hall at the heart of the State House. We need you to help us be LOUD and let legislators know that people care about our climate. They think we’ll accept their scraps — help us tell them we demand a full meal of climate action and justice. RSVP here.
We’ll see you there.
Thank you, Dan!
