A correction has been added to this story.
The joint in the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities, and Energy has gone missing.
On Wednesday morning, for example, House members of the committee held a hearing on legislation dealing with electric vehicle charging stations. Later in the afternoon the same hearing with the same witnesses was hosted by the Senate members of the committee.
The repeat performance was part of a rules standoff between the House and Senate chairs of the committee. Rep. Jeffrey Roy of Franklin, the House chair, wants decisions about when to vote on bills to be decided by majority vote, which could favor the House because House members on the committee outnumber Senate members by a nearly 2-1 margin. [The original version of this story said Roy wants to hold votes on when to schedule hearings, but he says he is fine with the two chairs setting the hearing schedule jointly.]
Sen. Michael Barrett of Lexington, the Senate chair of the committee, has vowed to split the committee into two parts until committee rules are negotiated that give him equal leverage in negotiations with his House counterpart. In the past, rules have required the agreement of the two chairs to schedule hearings and votes on bills.
House Speaker Ron Mariano downplayed the notion that the rules fight extends beyond the Telecommunications, Utilities, and Energy Committee.
Is this part of a broader showdown between the two chambers?
“Not to my knowledge. We have a couple of chairmen who have a disagreement,” he said when asked last week. “Business goes on. There have been hearings, there’s been committee meetings.”
But senators say Mariano’s message is misleading. Several senators, who asked not to be identified, said nearly every senator who chairs a joint committee has received a rules proposal from the House chair that would shift power in the House’s direction.
The rules proposal appears to be the same in every committee. A copy of the proposal shared with CommonWealth had a blank space where the name of the committee could be filled in.
One provision deals with the hearing schedule, calling for the chairs to establish a schedule for hearings, which would indicate they would have to agree on the timing of hearings and the bills being heard.
For scheduling executive sessions, where votes on individual bills can be taken either in-person or via email, the proposal requires “mutual agreement of the chairs of the committee or by a majority vote of the committee.”
Majority vote is also required to report a bill out of committee or to take any other action. “A majority vote of the members responding to the request to poll by the deadline shall be required to report the bill or bills,” according to the House rules proposal.
While Barrett has taken a very public stand against the rules changes proposed by Roy, his Senate colleagues by and large have gone in a different direction. They have not agreed to the rules changes, but they also have not walked away and established a separate hearing structure. They have chosen to move forward, apparently hoping the issue will blow over eventually.
Barrett, meanwhile, seems to be settling in for the long haul. At the start of Wednesday’s senators-only hearing of the Telecommunications, Utilities, and Energy Committee, he asked witnesses to suggest ways to make the double-hearing process work smoothly.
“I want to thank you for bearing with us during these rather extraordinary times, this choice to have two proceedings rather than one. Presumably it won’t be forever, presumably collective decision-making will return to [the Telecommunications, Utilities, and Energy Committee] and with that, joint hearings. We can’t have one without the other,” Barrett said. “But my hope is that we’ll start to abide by our traditional rules and we will once again give equal weight to Senate decision-making — not excessive weight, but equal weight — and in so doing, be able to bring the two halves of the hearing process back together as well. But probably that resolution will not be coming this year. And so we have to resign ourselves to the dual hearing process instead and to make it as bearable for all of us as possible.”
BRUCE MOHL
FROM COMMONWEALTH
Federal warning: The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration tells automakers not to comply with a Massachusetts right-to-repair law approved by voters. Federal officials, in a flip-flop, say a law providing access to vehicle diagnostics poses significant safety concerns, raising the possibility that a “malicious actor” could remotely gain access to a car’s steering, acceleration, braking, and air bags. Read more.
OPINION
Coercive control: Psychotherapist Oona Metz said domestic abuse isn’t always physical in nature and urges the Legislature to allow “coercive control” as a basis for obtaining restraining orders. Read more.
FROM AROUND THE WEB
BEACON HILL
Gov. Maura Healey plans to announce seven pardons today, breaking with the pattern of governors waiting until close to the end of their time in office to make such potentially controversial moves. (Boston Globe)
MUNICIPAL MATTERS
The Boston City Council, in a 7-5 vote, approved a 2024 city budget of $4.2 billion that includes about $31 million in cuts to the police department. (Boston Herald)
BUSINESS/ECONOMY
Massachusetts has the third most expensive rental housing market in the country, according to a new report. (Boston Globe)
EDUCATION
Boston’s exam high schools offer a rich curriculum for their overwhelmingly college-bound students, while students at the district’s open-enrollment high schools are often left with “crumbs.” (Boston Globe)
The Ludlow School Committee rejects a bid to ban sexually explicit books from school libraries. (New England Public Media)
TRANSPORTATION
The state’s Registry of Motor Vehicles is hiring more than 200 new employees to handle an expected influx of applications starting July 1 when a state law takes effect allowing undocumented immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses. (Boston Herald)
ENERGY/ENVIRONMENT
State utilities are dealing with the aftermath of more and more storms and passing most of the cost along to ratepayers. The state experienced an average of 10 major storms a year between 2018 and 2022 compared to an average of four per year from 2013 to 2017. (Eagle-Tribune)
CRIMINAL JUSTICE/COURTS
The manager of the Harvard Medical School morgue and his wife are accused of stealing and selling human body parts. (WBUR)
The general manager of an electrical company pleads guilty to defrauding Keolis Commuter Service, the private company that operates the MBTA’s commuter rail service. (Associated Press)
MEDIA
A Berkshire Eagle editorial urges the Massachusetts congressional delegation to support the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act to end the “vampiric relationship” between big tech and news organizations.
PASSINGS
Former House speaker and Holyoke Community College president David Bartley died at age 88. (MassLive)
Robert Gottlieb, noted book editor and one-time editor of The New Yorker who applied his No. 2 pencil to manuscripts by Joseph Heller, Toni Morrison, John le Carré, and Bill Clinton, among many more, died at 92. (New York Times)