The month of July proved to be extremely busy on Beacon Hill.  The Senate worked on various legislative proposals and many budget items.  Within this busy month, I teamed up with the Caucus of Women Legislators to host a food drive at the State House that provided about 15 large bags full of food that was packaged up and sent to our troops overseas.  Many elected officials contributed as well as their staffers!  I was delighted to see such a positive response from my colleagues who reside all across the Commonwealth. 

My staff and I brought these items to the Leominster Veteran’s Center, where the “American Family Link” Program packaged the items and sent them off.  Housed in Leominster, the American Family Link Program started when Ann Bilowz of Sterling had an idea to bring folks together who had friends and families serving in the military.  Ann’s idea evolved into the American Family Link Program, which is a non-profit, volunteer-run, community-based organization.  The American Family Link program serves both Leominster and surrounding communities.  For more information on this program, I encourage you to check out their website at:  www.americanfamilylink.org. 

In other news, the Senate and the House passed the so-called Sheriff’s Bill, which will yield approximately $10 million dollars a year in savings.  This legislation transferred the seven independent sheriffs to the state’s control.  Sheriff’s are elected by county, but rely on the Commonwealth for operating revenue.  This bill will now make the county sheriff’s uniformed across the state.  Both Worcester and Middlesex Counties are currently under the state umbrella; this legislation focused on seven other counties across the Commonwealth, but will net the entire state significant savings.

The Senate also passed legislation aimed at improving utility companies’ performance and response during a state of emergency.  I was happy to be at the table when this legislation was being drafted by the Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy. 

Some of the highlights of the Senate legislation include:

·         A provision that mandates utility companies to submit their emergency response plans to the Dept. of Public Utilities annually for approval.  Failure to submit this plan, will result in a penalty. 

·         An investor-owned utility’s cost recovery for outage-related expenses will be denied by the Department on the basis of the company’s performance and use of their emergency response plans.

·         Upon the declaration of a state of emergency by the Governor, the Department of Public Utilities will now have the increased authority to step in to restore necessary utility services by issuing response orders to the company, or tapping other companies to assist in the restoration efforts.

·         Remove the existing $1 Million cap for violations of utility companies, generators, and suppliers pertaining to standards for universal service, customer satisfaction, service outages, telephone service, billing service, and public and employee safety.

The House passed a similar version of this legislation, however, there slight differences that are being addressed between the Senate and the House.   I will continue to keep you posted as we move forward with this legislation.

Enjoy the remainder of your summer!