David Michel

The legislative session has come an end after weeks of debate and voting in both the House and Senate. We have passed some great proposals that support energy customers, schools, seniors, but did not pass much meaningful legislation tackling climate change. Please read below to get a breakdown of several environmental bills during this session.

BEAR BILL CONCERNS

I voted against the amended bear bill that passed through the Connecticut General Assembly. Senate Bill 1148 allows humans, who feel threatened, to kill a bear in self defense. The word threatened is ambiguous and opens the door to an increase in future human-bear conflicts. For some people, just seeing a bear is a reasonable threat.

The proposal also bans the feeding of bears in an effort to reduce the number of encounters with these majestic and wild animals. I take issue with the fact that unintentional feeding of animals is not addressed. Bears risk getting close to humans to eat from birdfeeders especially when there is a drought and a lack of acorns. Please watch the video below as I remarked on these issues.

Breaking down my concerns with the bear bill.

SB 1148 does not change any language pertaining to the orphaned black bear cub policy. Right now, the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection classifies cubs younger than six months and less than 60 pounds in the same category as bears that exhibit aggression toward humans. The recommended response is to kill the bear. The original bill, that I supported in the Environment Committee, had language offering to cover remediation methods in the communities with higher bear sightings. 

There is still so much more we can do to protect our bear population and avoid human-bear conflicts. We must revisit our black bear legislation once again in 2024. Hopefully we will not end up in a scenario where the Senate again threatens to kill all our environmental bills if we do not pass this bad bear bill through the House. So many of my colleagues had to vote yes on SB 1148 despite not being in favor of it. I will work next year to ensure that our committee language cannot be used as a leverage against all of our other bills.

DECARBONIZATION ROADMAP

I'm proud to have cosponsored House Bill 6397, which requires Connecticut state agencies to create a roadmap to decarbonize our state’s economy and secure federal funding for this effort. The roadmap places a strong emphasis on innovation to drive the decarbonization process.

The bill encourages the development and adoption of new technologies, practices, and business models that enable the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Innovation can be seen in areas such as renewable energy generation, energy storage, energy efficiency, sustainable transportation, and circular economy solutions.

The House passed the measure, but it never made it to the Senate floor. 

Lori Brown, the executive director of the Connecticut League of Conservation Voters, and Nathan Frohling, the director of external affairs for the Nature Conservancy in Connecticut, co-wrote a piece on the path to achieve our climate goals.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE ARTICLE

HELP FOR ENERGY CUSTOMERS BUT CONCERNS OVER NUCLEAR POWER

The House passed Senate Bill 7, which will secure energy predictability, affordability, and transparency for all of us who are rate payers. I cosponsored this legislation, which empowers the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA) to look out for the rate payers in our state.

I supported all the consumer protections in SB7, although they could have been stronger. However an amendment changed the bill to add part of a concept that would work on expanding nuclear energy. As we are incrementally putting out an equal amount of energy than we have in nuclear for offshore wind, we do not need to expand nuclear energy. This would compete with and slow down the transition to renewables.

Like many other bills on the Environment Committee, strange amendments were added in the Senate and came to us, in the House, quite differently than expected. In fact, it made the bill so different that I decided to not vote on it at all. I cancelled my yes vote and walked out of the chamber.

I plan on speaking more about these bills and answering your questions at a session wrap-up town hall put on by the Stamford delegation. The event will be held on June, 20 at 6:30 pm at the Ferguson Main Library Auditorium. Please stop by and give us your feedback on the results of this year's legislative session.