Senator Jamie Eldridge, left, and Devens Enterprise Commission Executive Director Peter Lowitt, right, testify before the Joint Committee on Economic Development regarding proposed changes to the DEC. (Courtesy photo)
State Senator Jamie Eldridge announced this week that he has succeeded in working with the Joint Committee on Economic Development and Emerging Technologies to drop from the Economic Development Bill previously proposed language reorganizing the Devens Enterprise Commission (DEC). The organizational structure of the Devens Enterprise Commission will remain unchanged.
An economic development reorganization bill was recently proposed by Senate President Therese Murray and State Senator Karen Spilka. As part of that larger reorganization, the bill proposed changing the operative law regarding Devens redevelopment (Chapter 498), folding the DEC into a larger quasi-public Corporation Planning Council. Among other things, the changes would have replaced the current executive director and chairman of the DEC and decreased the number of DEC commissioners from 11 to 5, thus eliminating the local makeup of the commission.
When Eldridge learned about the provisions affecting the DEC in that proposed legislation, he lobbied his colleagues to ask that those provisions be removed. He also worked with local officials, including current DEC executive director Peter Lowitt and DEC Board member John Oelfke, to help them make their case to other lawmakers.
In a statement released this week, Eldridge said, “I’m pleased that I was able to make the case to Senator Karen Spilka, chairwoman of the Joint Committee on Economic Development, that the DEC is a Land Use Permitting and Regulatory agency, not an economic development agency, and should be left out of the larger economic development reorganization. Given the importance of the DEC not only to Devens, but also to the towns of Ayer, Harvard, and Shirley, I’m pleased that the commission’s local control will be maintained. The towns of Ayer, Harvard, and Shirley have found the right balance in current law, and I felt strongly that any changes to current law would need to be agreed upon by the towns. I’m thankful my colleagues came around to my point of view after I was able to explain the situation to them in greater detail.”
