Page 16 THE EVERETT ADVOCATE – FRIDAY, DECEMBER 10, 2021 BHRC | FROM PAGE 15 referred to as the roll call attendance record. More senators have 100 percent roll call attendance records this year than at any time in recent memory. Thirty-seven of the 39 members did not miss any roll calls and have 100 percent roll call attendance records. This can be attributed to the fact that under emergency rules adopted because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the vast majority of the 39 senators are not in the Senate chamber during a session. Most are watching and listening to the session from their home or business and voting remotely. Senators’ votes are communicated to Senate officials during the session or prior to the session if senators are informed in advance that there will be a roll call vote. If a member wants to speak on an issue under consideration, they do so on a separate “debate phone line” and their voice is then heard in the Senate chamber and by anyone watching the broadcast online. The number of senators who had 100 percent roll call attendance records in the prior four years was 33 in 2020; 28 in 2019; 20 in 2018; 24 in 2017; and 17 in 2016. Sen. Mike Barrett (D-Lexington) and Senate President Karen Spilka (D-Ashland) were the only two senators who missed any roll calls this year. Barrett missed 13 roll calls (11.4 percent) out of 115 for a roll call attendance record of 88.6 percent. “In my capacity as State Senate chair of the Utilities and Energy Committee of the Legislature, I attended the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Glasgow for its climactic second week,” Barrett told Beacon Hill Roll Call. “In doing so, I missed several roll calls back in the Senate, all taken on a single day. I regret this, but feel my responsibilities to my constituents were best satisfied during that particular time by my working at the U.N. event. Achieving emissions reductions relies heavily on ‘subnational’ governments like state legislatures, where so many of the actual programs are designed and funded.” “Over 400 private jets crammed Scotland’s airports and Massachusetts sent several of our state’s leading green elites to virtue signal and share their moral authority with other self-absorbed bureaucrats and politicians,” said Paul Craney, spokesman for the Mass Fiscal Alliance. “While his legislative colleagues were trying to determine how to best help their constituents with COVID relief money, the Lexington state senator was boasting about serving on a climate panBHRC | SEE PAGE 17
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