by John Osborn ·
Friday, August 16, 2024
Among the bills that failed to make it out of the Legislature this session was Gov. Maura Healey’s economic development bond bill, which in both the House and Senate versions contains measures to boost housing at Devens.
There’s a chance the Legislature will be called back to pass it later this fall, but because it is a bill whose major provisions authorize borrowing for a number of the Healey administration’s initiatives in the life sciences, climate, and artificial intelligence, lawmakers are constitutionally required to take a roll-call vote, which requires House and Senate leaders to convene a formal session.
Unless that happens, the state’s effort to dramatically increase housing at Devens is dead until the next session of the Legislature in 2025.
Both versions of the current bill (S28679 and H4804) would eliminate the 282-unit housing cap at Devens and create a working group to come up with a plan for increased housing at the former U.S. Army base, with particular attention to opportunities to build up to 400 multifamily units at Vicksburg Square. The working group would have 180 days to report its findings.
Both versions also agree that the working group should include representatives of the towns of Ayer, Harvard, and Shirley; the executive offices of economic development and of housing and liveable communities; and MassDevelopment, the agency that oversees the redevelopment of Devens and provides municipal services to its businesses and residents.
But while the House bill includes representatives of the Devens Committee as members of the working group, the Senate version does not, substituting the Devens Enterprise Commission instead.
“It seems to have been an oversight, probably by a staff person who thought adding the Devens Enterprise Commission was a correction,” MassDevelopment’s interim vice president for Devens Meg Delorier told the Devens Committee last week at its Aug. 7 meeting.
However, Delorier and the legislative delegation that represents Devens now say they want both groups to be included. In a July 25 letter to the joint committee, signed by state Sen. Jamie Eldridge, Rep. Dan Sena, and state Sen. John Cronin, who represents the portion of Devens within Shirley’s historical boundaries, the three legislators requested that the compromise bill include the DEC and the Devens Committee.
In an Aug. 5 phone interview, Eldridge told the Press he was confident the change would be made. While he didn’t have anything in writing, he said that state Sen. Barry Finegold, who co-chairs the joint committee negotiating the compromise bill, had acknowledged it made sense to include both committees as working group members.
And at last week’s Devens Committee meeting, Delorier was equally reassuring. “There are no 100% guarantees, but I can tell you that every effort has been made by every group that is involved in formulating the [economic development] bill to make sure the Devens Committee is added back in and that the Devens Enterprise Commission stays.”
Why does it matter? The Devens Committee is the only committee at Devens elected by residents to represent their concerns to MassDevelopment and ultimately the state. Omission of the committee would deprive residents of a say in development of housing in their community.
The DEC is the area’s permitting agency, which functions as planning board, zoning board of appeals, and licensing authority, and whose members are appointed by the governor. Any new housing would need to be permitted by its commissioners.
The discrepancy was first reported by the Press shortly after the Massachusetts Senate finished amending the House version of Healey’s “Mass Leads” bond bill and sent it back to the lower house on July 11. The joint committee was unable to resolve the many substantive differences between the two versions before formal sessions ended on July 31. Should the six members of the committee continue their work and agree on a final version, the House and Senate would have to be called back into formal session to pass it and send it to Gov. Healey for signing.
“That doesn’t happen very often,” Delorier said last week, but she said that both the governor and Legislature had agreed on the need to pass a bill.
Eldridge said he was cautiously optimistic. “Given that August is a time when many legislators are either attending conferences or conventions, I would predict that the special session will be in September,” he said.