Climate change bill faces veto, further moves
Democratic leaders in the Legislature are teaming up to flex their political might over Republican Gov. Charlie Baker, who is under pressure to veto a climate bill that would set the state on course to be carbon-neutral by 2050.
“Climate change is the greatest existential threat facing our state, our nation, and our planet, and so Governor Baker should sign the climate change bill that is now on his desk. Should he not take this important step, the Senate and House are united in our intention to refile and pass the conference committee bill in its entirety and get it onto the Governor’s desk in the coming days,” Senate President Karen E. Spilka and House Speaker Ronald Mariano said in a joint statement on Wednesday.
Lawmakers sent an eleventh-hour compromise version of the climate bill to Baker’s desk last week two days before the session ended. The 57-plage bill lays out a roadmap for a series of benchmarks to cut carbon emissions and boosting jobs in the renewable energy sector.
But industries are pushing back.
Anastasia Nicolaou, vice president of policy and public affairs with NAIOP Massachusetts, which represents commercial real estate developers, said one of those benchmarks could force builders to adapt to net-zero, energy efficiency building codes in one year from adoption. Individual communities can also adopt the stricter codes.
The “uncertainty” over which communities would enact the new codes and what technologies builders would need to employ would send a “ripple effect” that would stifle development and “hamper the recovery” from COVID-19, Nicolaou said.
She said it would also undermine one aspect of a second bill still sitting on Baker’s desk — the economic development package — that aims to make it easier to strike down restrictive municipal building codes and build more high-density multi-family housing.
On Tuesday, Baker signed six major pieces of legislation — including one that will make it easier for craft brewers to cut ties with beer distributors and another that will hold colleges and universities to a higher standard in their handling and prevention of campus sexual assaults.