For-profit utility companies have been getting away with driving up your energy bills for years. More than half of what you pay each month is not even the electricity or gas you use. It goes to a black box on your bill called delivery charges. Last year, Eversource's profits more than doubled to $1.69 billion, and on calls with their shareholders they attributed their profits to the high energy bills paid by ratepayers here in Massachusetts.

This happens because utility giants have outsized influence over our political system. They don't even bother testifying in public committee hearings, because they have access behind closed doors where the major decisions are made by a handful of legislative leadership. It is why the rest of the legislators are handed a bill of more than 100 pages, dense with statutory language we have never seen before, and given less than an hour to vote on it. Once the decisions are made, a bill moves through the legislature so fast that even the press cannot meaningfully report on it until the final vote is cast.

That is how it has always worked. Until we made every vote public. That's why I led the campaign for transparency and why our win for transparency has completely shifted what is possible on Beacon Hill.

Last fall, an energy bill emerged on Beacon Hill that read like the utilities wrote it themselves. It pulled back our climate commitments at the very moment the federal government abandoned its own, taxed ratepayers to build new pipelines, and handed Eversource and National Grid more of what they wanted. With Washington actively hostile to climate action, the responsibility falls squarely on states like ours, and this bill chose retreat. It was publicly supported by the most powerful lawmakers in the building, and in the old days it would have become law before anyone outside the State House had read it.

Instead, something happened that I have never seen in my nearly 10 years working with and inside the legislature. Because the process was finally visible, climate justice activists across the state sounded the alarm while the bill was still moving. A core caucus of legislators unwilling to accept this broken status quo pushed on the inside. And we stopped this bill in the middle of the rapid legislative process.

Stopping it was only the beginning. Alongside allies and activists, I have been working to transform that first draft into a bill we can be proud of, which means removing every poison pill that hands the utilities more profits with no guardrails to lower energy bills for the rest of us. On the House floor, I filed an amendment to strike a one billion dollar cut to Mass Save, the program that returns three dollars in savings for every dollar invested. A family that insulates their home pays less every month for as long as they live there. Cutting the thing that saves people money in order to say we saved money is not fiscal responsibility. It is the opposite. I also filed my Constituents' Right to Know amendment requiring utilities to open their books before raising your rates, and I pushed for a roll call so that the votes on the floor were public.

Yesterday, the Senate passed its version of the energy bill, and the difference is night and day. The billion dollar cut to Mass Save is gone. The public's right to vote on new nuclear plants is preserved. Our climate commitments remain intact. And the gas pipeline program that has quietly cost ratepayers $6.2 billion, buried inside those delivery charges you have been paying for a decade, is finally being wound down. This bill has improved in a direction far better than we could have imagined when the first draft was being rushed through the legislature, and I am so grateful for the work all of us have put in to make that possible.

The work is not done. The House and Senate versions now go to a conference committee, and every provision stays on the table until the final bill is signed. Starting next week, I will share a multipart newsletter series on what is at stake for lowering our energy bills and confronting the climate crisis, and what we can all do about it.

We are less than two months from election day, and this campaign runs on people, not utility money. If you can, please chip in $10 or $25 today to keep us knocking doors across Somerville, Cambridge, Medford, and Winchester.

Follow on Instagram · Follow on Bluesky

Facebook · Instagram · Bluesky

Paid for by Committee to Elect Erika Uyterhoeven · Somerville, MA
Contributions are not tax-deductible · $1,000 max per individual per calendar year

Unsubscribe | Manage Preferences