Shannon Seigal, Environmental Voter Project

DEEP DIALOGUE

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 26

4 - 5:30 PM, on Zoom

Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83538742353?pwd=YUU5QU16VVlDMExOMmlPSWVwTG9xUT09

Organizing Environmentalists to Vote in November

As of the date of this newsletter’s publication, there are 272 days (9 months) left until the November election. With many primaries and run-off elections on the calendar, it's not too early to start contacting voters. ECA Mass, as well as our national organization, will be working closely with the Environmental Voter Project (EVP) to remind environmental voters how important their votes are.

We will be joined on the 26th by Shannon Seigal, Organizing Director at EVP. EVP, a national nonpartisan nonprofit based in Boston, identifies millions of non-voting environmentalists and turns them into consistent voters. EVP estimates that over 8 million environmentalists did not vote in the 2020 presidential election and over 13 million skipped the 2022 midterms. EVP accurately identifies these non-voting environmentalists and efficiently converts them into a critical mass of consistent voters that will soon be too big for politicians to ignore. Join our Deep Dialogue on Monday, February 26, 4:00 - 5:30 PM to learn from Shannon how they do this and what role you can play in that effort.

Seth Evans

Committees Report Out Bills

Last Wednesday, committees were required to report out the bills assigned to them or to request an extension to consider a bill further. Eight of our 13 top priority bills received a favorable report (highlighted here) on their own or in a package with other bills. All but the regional transit electrification bill were extended, so there is still a chance these bills may move this session. Energy and Natural Resources (ENR) reported favorably a package of bills on plastic pollution. (For more about ENR committee bills, see “Big Push for Forest Bills” and “It's All About the Trees” later in this newsletter.) There were other promising developments we will be discussing at the upcoming chapter meeting. We are still expecting two climate omnibus bills, one out of the Senate and another out of the House, but it is unclear exactly how and when they will emerge. 

Legislative Process

Individual bills or bill packages (called “accompanied” bills) will go to House or Senate Ways and Means (W&M), if given a favorable report. Otherwise they are dead for the session (unfavorable, “to study”), unless they are extended. We will be continuing our focus on committee leadership for some time and then turning attention to W&M where much political wrangling from within and outside the committees will determine a bill's fate. Bills with enough support go to a floor vote sometime before July 31 in one chamber, where we will focus on last ditch amendment opportunities. Most bills pass one chamber and move on to the other, where we again can have some influence through the amendment process before Senate and House versions of bills are finally reconciled in a conference committee. Look for more Action Alerts between now and July.

Speeding up Energy Permitting

There were some potentially conflicting visions of energy facilities (electric substations solar, wind, etc.) permitting and siting reform that were addressed in a redrafted permitting and siting bill package. Rep. Jeffrey Roy’s Permitting Electric Decarbonization Infrastructure bill (H.3215) focused on major streamlining and acceleration of the permitting process through the creation of a new permitting office. The Energy Facilities Siting Improvement bill (H.3187/S.2113) sponsored by Rep. Madaro, and Senators DiDomenico and Edwards focused on improving the participation and influence of EJ communities in the process while maintaining the current siting board process. ECA Leg Team members worked on legislative language that could address local and EJ community concerns while still simplifying and significantly accelerating permitting, and our recommendations were included in the redrafted bill. We will be studying the new bill and consulting with allies to identify ways it might be further improved.

Budget and Bond Bills.

Despite the increase in proposed State Government spending, revenues are not coming in as high as projections. The Legislative Team is monitoring the Governor’s budget, looking for shortfalls on key climate programs. We expect the Governor to also issue an Economic Development Bond Bill that will include climate investments, but an Environmental Bond Bill will be delayed until next session. We intend to fight for increased spending for the Mass Clean Energy Center.

Big Push for Forest Bills

Our Natural Solutions Working Group has been busy advocating with their allies for three bills in ENR: An Act Establishing a Municipal Reforestation Program (H.869/S.452), An Act Relative to Forest Protection (H.4150) and An Act Relative to Increased Protection of Wildlife Management Areas (H.904). These were the focus of a sizable ECA Mass team meeting with Senator Rasuch’s aide on our lobby day. It is good news that the Municipal Reforestation bill got a favorable report. We will be working on getting the same for the other two bills. 

State Pension Divestment

ECA is joining Mothers Out Front and Third Act to support An Act to Mandate the Review of Climate Risk in Order to Protect Public Pension Beneficiaries and Taxpayers (H.2504) filed by Rep. Mindy Domb. We’ll be tracking its progress and asking for ECA member support.

Roger Luckmann & Jeff Clark

We met with Erica Woloszynski, the legislative director for Sen Rebecca Rausch.

Rep Steve Owens speaks to our ECA group, while Rep Meschino looks on.

Rep Joan Meschino speaks to our ECA group.

Rep Joan Meschino with our ECA group.

Sen James Eldridge, Rep Joan Meschino, and Rep Steve Owens.

Our ECA lobbying group!

On January 24, twenty-nine ECA Mass members attended the first in-person Lobby Day at the Massachusetts State House in Boston in over three years, sporting their green ECA Mass T-shirts! It was an energizing day of meetings with legislators, including a noon rally at the grand staircase with Reps Joan Meschino, Steve Owens, and Senator James Eldridge. It was a great team organizing effort.

ECA Mass members met face-to-face with 19 legislators and/or their aides. We focused on legislators from key committees, including Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy (TUE), Environment & Natural Resources (ENR), and Transportation and Workforce Development and advocated for our legislative priorities and key elements of bills to be included in an omnibus climate bill. We brought a handout summarizing our top legislative priorities to all our meetings and dropped it off in the offices of key legislators we were not able to meet with. 

We received very positive feedback from legislators and their staff, who really appreciated that we made the effort to come to the State House to meet with them in person. We had many substantive discussions and learned a lot about State House politics that will help us with our strategy as the legislature goes into its six month home stretch.

We thank Stan Eichner for great photos from the day. 

Tina Grosowsky

Our Natural Resources Working Group is very focused on trees and forests as a carbon sink and way to protect the natural environment. All of our bills are before the Environment and Natural Resources (ENR) committee. We are advocating for the Municipal Reforestation (S.452/H.869) bill to cool down urban hotspots, which are mostly in low-income neighborhoods, as a way to mitigate adverse health impacts from the growing heat. We sent a letter last week to Co-Chairs Rausch and Cahill that was signed by 1,660 MA citizens and 130 organizations, asking for their support.

Our other bills focus on using forest ecosystems to mitigate climate change and would significantly increase our ability to reach net zero by 2050. For more, see Forest Protection (H.4150) and Protection of Wildlife Management Areas (H.904) We may have more opportunities to advocate for the passage of these bills in the coming weeks. Watch for alerts in your email.

Rick Lent

It takes all of us to continue the advocacy and education work of our organization. We are asking you now, as a supporter, to help with some of these expenses if you are able.

Please consider donating to ECA Mass to support chapter activities, educational programs, and materials by clicking on the button below.

Our Small Budget

Our chapter’s expenses are not great: for 2024 we estimate our total expenses at about $4,000 – a small decrease from previous years. We have no paid staff, no office, and we don’t pay ourselves for mileage or incidental expenses. Rather, we have the expected, but escalating costs of producing written materials, subscribing to services for our legislative advocacy work, paying occasional consultants for help with our website and other media projects, and mailing services for our newsletter and other communications. 

Our Fundraising Goal

Our hope is to raise about $3,000 from you, our members, and match this amount with monies donated by the leadership team. Most of our members give, even a modest amount, once or a few times a year. If you have attended even just a few meetings which were valuable to you, when you learned something or were inspired, please donate even a modest, minimum amount in return to help us carry on.



It’s rare for us to ask for anything from our general supporters, besides your actions to help address climate change. Our actions today are more critical than ever as we enter a dangerous period where hopes of keeping global warming below 1.5 ℃ seem to be fading fast. We’ll need all hands on deck as we push local and state governments to implement the steps set out in the Next Generation Roadmap Bill and the Inflation Reduction Act with even greater urgency.

We're counting on you joining the rest of our members with a donation now to keep us pushing on in 2024.

Seth Evans

Alexis Walls, Mass Public Health Association

Nearly 250 people attended the Environmental Justice Forum, either in person or online, on January 20th in Concord. Several ECA Mass members were there.

“We support a transition to renewable energy but need laws and regulations that carefully consider the costs, risks, benefits, burdens and needs of hosting environmental justice communities,” said Rusty Polsgrove, a Springfield organizer at Arise for Social Justice.

The Environmental Justice Legislative Table, which hosted the event, is promoting the Siting Improvement Bill - to green light good projects and nip bad projects in the bud. The bill updates the Energy Facilities Siting Board to incorporate public health and climate into approval criteria. It also requires upfront community engagement and analysis, prohibition of more pollution in already overburdened communities, stopping bad projects early before they waste time and resources.

For information on ECA’s support of the elements of the Energy Siting bills, please see the Legislative Update earlier in this newsletter.

You can sign the petition to support the bill for siting improvement.

Here is the recording of the event. And here are the slides and the forum handout. 

Tina Grosowsky

State House rally.

Youth from Senator Eldridge district meet with his Chief of Staff Michael Carr to discuss priority bills on climate change. 

On Tuesday, January 30th, over 200 high school and college students attended the Massachusetts Youth Climate Coalition annual Lobby Day at the State House in Boston. Under the direction of Eben Bein, youth have been learning about the legislative process and how to advocate for bills that provide solutions for climate change. The youth held a rally outside the building before going to meetings with legislators and their staff.

ECA Mass members Tina Grosowsky, Kevin O’Reilly, Sue Swanson, and Tom Rawson participated as allies.

Tina Grosowsky