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Tensions on the legislative committee that handles climate policy are bubbling over, and the House and Senate wings of the panel appear set to go their own ways.
Senate co-chair Sen. Michael Barrett announced Monday that the Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy's House and Senate members will convene separately this week for "parallel hearings" on bills concerning offshore wind, clean energy, and energy storage.
The split was triggered earlier Monday when House co-chair Rep. Jeffrey Roy announced a committee hearing without the consent of Barrett and other Senate members, Barrett said.
Mincing no words, Barrett said, "I'm listed as the co-sender today of an official joint committee hearing notice, along with the House chair.The House chair knows I haven't approved the scheduling of this hearing. There's a small chance this is merely a serious error. Otherwise, I regret to say, the use of my name appears to be fraudulent."
Barrett said Roy's "unilateral act" violates a legislative rule requiring joint committee chairs to agree on the scheduling of hearings and executive sessions, and said he assumes Roy's decision "is the first of what will be others."
The intra-committee squabbling could spell trouble for Democrats facing important and difficult decisions this session across the energy spectrum, and perhaps in other policymaking areas.
He didn't offer evidence, but Barrett said other Senate chairs are "being pressed in similar fashion."
"It's almost as if the House is done with the delicate power-sharing that enables joint committees to work," he said. "It wants either to dominate the joint committees due to the House's sheer numerical advantage or drive us towards the Congressional model, in which the House and Senate handle bills separately. Either way, this is quite a turn in the road."
The House has more members than the Senate on joint committees, which has long been a sore point between the branches. The full branches often take different paths on policy and spending, resolving their differences on conference committees, where the branches have equal representation.
Barrett said House committee members plan to convene on Thursday, and Senate members on Friday.
The co-chairs of another joint committee -- Rep. John Lawn and Sen. Cindy Friedman -- reported they were not experiencing hearing-schedule discord on their panel akin to the situation Barrett described.
The Health Care Financing Committee's chairs, who were talking with each other in the hall after attending an event Monday, told the News Service they will hold their first hearing on Tuesday.
"And then we've got a whole schedule lined up," Friedman said.
Lawn said the pair "worked together well last term," to which Friedman replied, "we're just continuing."
Friedman said she was unfamiliar with the situation on Barrett's committee. Of her experience with Health Care Financing, she said, "I think we're strifeless at the moment."
Roy, for his part, kept the rhetoric to a lower key. “The Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities, and Energy is conducting a hearing this Thursday, May 18th. Given that most joint committees have begun the hearing process, it is my hope that the Senate members of the Committee on TUE will participate in our first official hearing this session."
"The broader discussion on adoption of official committee rules should not prevent the Committee from holding hearings on critical legislation," he continued. "As House Chair of the Joint Committee on TUE, I am advocating for committee rules 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 also wielded last session to delay the consideration of major energy legislation, and to block hundreds of other bills from advancing through the Committee,” Roy continued.
