The Senate chair of a climate-focused committee mentioned Friday that an inter-branch feud over inside guidelines governing how payments transfer ahead early within the legislative course of is a widespread debate within the State House.
State Sen. Michael Barrett traded public barbs this week along with his counterpart, state Rep. Jeffrey Roy, on the Telecommunications, Utilities, and Energy Committee over how a lot sway every department’s members have on committee selections.
It is a technical battle that may have an effect on the destiny of a whole bunch of proposals protecting local weather change, renewable vitality, and the state’s electrical energy procurement. The dispute led the 2 Democrats to schedule separate hearings this week on the identical precise set of payments. House members met Thursday and senators on Friday.
After the Senate listening to, Barrett mentioned “a number of” House chairs want to rework joint committee guidelines.
“We didn’t see it coming. Back in February, there began to be problems,” Barrett mentioned. “We assumed that they were temporary, that we would do business the way we always have. It’s been a shock to realize that the opposition to the continued parity between the branches is for real.”
Asked which committees are having points, Barrett pointed to the Emergency Preparedness and Management Committee, chaired by Sen. Marc Pacheco and Rep. Bill Driscoll; the State Administration and Regulatory Oversight Committee, chaired by Sen. Nick Collins and Rep. Antonio Cabral; and the Public Health Committee, chaired by Sen. Julian Cyr and Rep. Marjorie Decker.
Cyr mentioned most Senate chairs obtained steered committee guidelines from their House counterparts, together with himself. And whereas Cyr and Decker weren’t in a position to attain an settlement, Cyr mentioned they determined to “move forward and begin holding hearings.”
“We’re trying to put that disagreement aside and get to work,” he mentioned. “We’re not letting a disagreement over rules hamper our work.”
Barrett mentioned his disagreement with Roy will not be a “personal thing. It came from somebody above his pay grade. I just don’t know who it was.”
Asked if he believed House Speaker Ronald Mariano was directing Roy to dig in on new guidelines, Barrett mentioned “not necessarily. I’m not going to speculate. But there’s a part of this story that none of us understands.”
A spokesperson for Mariano referred inquiries to Roy, who mentioned on Thursday that he’s advocating for guidelines “that prevent one chair from maintaining absolute control over which bills are released from committee.”
“A power that not only diminishes the influence of each individual member of the committee, but that was being used in the last session to block many bills from being advanced,” he mentioned.
House chairs seem to have been supplied a template for brand new guidelines that decision for a handful of committee processes to be finished by majority votes as an alternative of mutual settlement among the many chairs, in accordance with a duplicate obtained by Herald.
In one space the foundations say an government session — used to vote on which payments advance out of committee — will be convened by mutual settlement of the chairs “or by a majority vote of the committee.”
Another part of the template permits for a majority vote to resolve which payments will be introduced up for consideration by committee members, in accordance with the copy obtained by the Herald.
The template guidelines additionally require a majority vote to ship laws to a unique department than the place it initially got here, like a House invoice being reported out to the Senate or vice versa.
As for listening to schedules, the foundations template says the committee chairs “shall establish a public hearing schedule and shall determine the groupings of similar bills to be heard on each hearing date.”
The model of the foundations Roy proposed for the Telecommunications, Utilities, and Energy Committee mirrors the template reviewed by the Herald.
Senate President Karen Spilka mentioned she expects “all chairs” to abide by agreed-upon guidelines and “to follow the long-established precedent of using committee rules from the previous session if unable to reach a new agreement on committee rules.”.
Cyr mentioned Senate joint committee chairs didn’t have a template response to solutions from their House counterparts.
“We’re trying to let individual senators figure this out with their House co-chairs,” he mentioned. “We’ve always got to work through tough issues together.”
Source: www.bostonherald.com”