The Department of Conservation and Recreation budget and Public Lands Protection Act are going before the House this week. We need your advocacy on both.
Last week, we alerted you to the release of the House budget for the balance of FY2021. Things are moving quickly. Debate on this spending plan will start this week. Please thank Chairman Aaron Michlewitz and members of the House Ways & Means Committee for supporting our petition by recognizing the importance of parks and open spaces as essential infrastructure for our physical and mental health, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Now is the time to advocate for the House’s $2.3 million increase for DCR’s operations account (Line Item 2810-0100) and a common sense $4.0 million decrease in the sum DCR must try to raise from the public to fund the retained revenue account (Line Item 2810-2042). This will take considerable pressure to increase user fees for our parks off of DCR.
Also up for a vote, as Budget Amendment 23, will be a streamlined version of the Public Lands Preservation Act (PLPA). If PLPA becomes law, there can be no change in use of public open space covered by Article 97 of the Massachusetts Constitution without notification to the public and the secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs (EEA). PLPA would also mandate that change in use proponents provide compensatory land of equal size and ecological value, the so-called no net loss policy. In September, MCV signed a letter supporting this version of PLPA. The streamlined version of the full bill, filed at the beginning of the legislative session, would mandate the main features of PLPA and allow state environmental regulators to craft the finer points of the law as regulations.
Enacting PLPA as a law will codify the state policy currently enforced by EEA. Multiple attempts to end run this policy going back decades prompted advocates to try to make EEA’s policy the law of the land. This is the closest PLPA has ever come to passage. Please help us get it across the finish line.
Please contact your state representatives today and ask them to support House budget line items 2810-0100 and 2810-2042, as well as Amendment 23. The park you save may be your own. Thank you.
Yours in conservation,
Doug Pizzi
Executive Director