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This week’s newsletter covers environmental policy updates at the municipal level and state level, my new endorsements from the Mass Sierra Club and organized labor, and recaps of some important points from two recent candidate forums.
Mass Sierra Club endorsement
I am honored to have received the endorsement of the Massachusetts chapter of the Sierra Club, one of our Commonwealth’s leading mass-membership environmental policy advocacy organizations. Environmental action for the people has always been and always will be my number one issue – and it's how we can work on addressing many other issues at the same time: housing, transit, inequality, health justice, and more!
I also just received the endorsement of the Ironworkers Local 7 union! Their big policy focuses right now are on stopping wage theft and ending exploitation of immigrant workers on job sites.
Check out my other endorsements on my website!
Electrification ordinance update in Newton
I wanted to pass along this exciting local update on Newton’s efforts to join Brookline and other municipalities in the Ten Communities pilot program for electrification: The Newton City Council last week adopted our local implementation ordinance just in time for the end of the month deadline from the state, with only one vote in opposition. Green Newton described this as follows:
“The Ordinance is the last step that Newton needed to become one of the ten Massachusetts communities that can participate in a pilot program, referred to as the Ten Communities Program. The goal of the pilot - and the Ordinance - is to eliminate the use of fossil fuels in new buildings and significant renovations.”
Although the final vote was not close, we did have some close calls earlier in the process, even after working with the restaurant community and healthcare sector to create certain exemptions for now, because one City Councilor wanted to create a blanket exemption permanently for indoor gas cooking in new construction and major renovations. That amendment surprisingly passed the City Council at the previous meeting, despite never having been debated or voted on in committee.
I immediately moved for postponement of the item for two weeks, so that the public would have time to write in with their objections to this sweeping change to the ordinance, which would have made us the only community in the pilot program to include such a huge loophole and which would have continued to allow our streets to be ripped up for new gas lines that will soon be considered a stranded asset with very high bills to holdout customers.
When we reconvened – after two weeks of listening to Councilors and taking suggestions from the public, staff, and our local Citizen Commission on Energy policy – I moved to substitute an alternative version of the ordinance that did not include any exemption for indoor home cooking in new construction and phased out the major kitchen renovation exemption after only one year (during which time even those renovations would be required to install electrical equipment for future non-gas cooking appliances). My version was debated for a while before being approved without further modification by a majority of the Council. An amendment to extend that one exemption by a further year was narrowly defeated. The full ordinance was then adopted.
Thank you for all the teamwork that went into this over several years. When I ran for City Council in 2018 and 2019, I told voters at the doors that it was time to stop adding to our gas infrastructure and begin the long process of turning it off completely. We are now in motion on this.
Although some of this will take a bit of getting used to, our state’s Department of Public Utilities has made clear that there is no viable future for gas in our state (in large part because the cost to repair our aging and leaky gas infrastructure would be massively outside the realm of possibility). The indoor air quality problems from gas appliances are also significant.
So, from a consumer protection standpoint, it is time to begin our march towards a gas-free future. The good news is that the induction cooking technology is fantastic at this point, and I encourage everyone to give it a try.
Climate update at the state level & recent debate on green issues
Our next task in Newton and Brookline will be to make sure this doesn’t remain as a limited pilot program forever. It needs to go statewide fairly soon.
Meanwhile, the legislature has been struggling to pass a comprehensive climate action and investment bill this session, including many proposals from Gov. Maura Healey and others, and it is unclear if anything at all will be passed into law before the session ends next month. The Senate is in a mad scramble to try to pass something, while the House seems to be taking no initiative and has seemingly done very little work on this existentially pressing issue for a year and a half of this term. (They’ve passed one watered-down energy siting reform bill out of committee and then it has not gone anywhere further.)
Business as usual in the House is not getting the job done on environmental issues. That’s the case I made in the Green Newton/Mothers Out Front Newton/350 Mass Newton candidate forum on climate issues this past week, which you can watch on Facebook. My top policy priority, long before running for office, has always been climate action and it will continue to be that. There is nothing more important facing us, and we can address most of the other policy challenges in our society by comprehensive efforts to combat climate change, if we work together and link these problems together logically.
Something I feel strongly about given my many years of advocacy on state policy in Massachusetts and in Delaware (where I attended college) before I was in elected office, as well as what I have learned as a Councilor, is that we get better results on policy when we mobilize the grassroots and organized labor and bring them into the process. This is not about pandering to the base, but about empowering people to understand how things get done in government and how they can have the most influence on those decision points.
At the environmental issues candidate forum, I made the case that this theory of change is especially important for advancing environmental policy specifically at the State House. We know that even the best policy in the world, grounded in the most scientific research, does not just get passed into law on its own. Making sure that our constituents (and labor allies) know when items are coming up for debate or votes and having them raise their voices to move issues up the priority list and move legislators with personal stories is the key to success. That’s the approach I bring to government as an elected official, and I will continue to use that strategy as your representative!
Democratic Committees debate
On Monday night at the Newton Free Library, the 12th Middlesex District's four Newton Ward Democratic Committees plus the Brookline Democrats hosted a State Representative candidate debate moderated by the Massachusetts Democratic Party Secretary, Joseph Kaplan. It was a great opportunity for voters to hear more about us and our differences.
Questions from the organizers included labor relations, housing for public workers, transparency in the legislature, state legislative policy on housing, lessons we’ve learned from Council service, MBTA reliability and funding, and relationship-building in the House.
Audience questions were about what issues we would champion, emergency shelter funding, the bottle bill, support for local business, how our professional experience will inform our representative style, and the North-South Rail Link.
There was also an illuminating portion of the debate where we each had a chance to ask a different question of both of the other candidates. One question I got, which has from time to time come up from voters during this campaign and so I will address it in this newsletter too, was about a July 2022 Councilor sign-on letter condemning an anonymous, Antisemitic, Massachusetts-focused website called “The Mapping Project.” I had not signed the letter and was asked during the debate if I would sign on to a letter of that kind today.
To be clear: The disagreement over the letter is not about the substance of the seriousness of Antisemitism – every candidate in the race takes Antisemitism seriously – but about how best to handle these types of incidents, which also depends on the context of when and where the incident happens. One approach is to publicize and spotlight when something like this happens. As I explained to constituents at the time if they asked why I hadn't signed the letter, in some instances, online hate groups are looking for more attention and publicity. Obviously in the context we’re in right now after October 7th, they don’t need much help with that, but in some periods when things are quieter, these groups are trying really hard to get a huge amount of attention. I have repeatedly said that I believe it is not always responsible for elected officials to shine a huge spotlight on every hateful fringe internet project, but I respect that there is a tactical difference of opinion among experts on hate speech on how to respond. That’s also why I chose not to comment to the Boston Globe at the time when asked why I didn’t sign, since that would have defeated the purpose of remaining silent publicly. I have said (and reiterated during the debate) that if the letter had come up after October 7th of last year, given the elevated level of Antisemitic incidents happening everywhere right now, I would have signed on to condemn the website. I also noted that I have always immediately reported Antisemitic incidents or vandalism in Ward 5 to the Newton Police and the ADL.