A proposal to dramatically rework the state’s flagship environmental office is just one of many line-items packed into a complex Republican budget passed by the legislature last week.
One item in the bill submitted to Governor Dannel Malloy proposes eliminating the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.
The change would take one of those middle “E”s out of the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, eliminating the agency’s energy mission, refocusing it to the environment, and returning the task of utility regulation to a separate, outside, agency.
“It doesn’t really appear to save money,” said Ted Kennedy Jr., co-chair of the Senate Environment Committee.
Kennedy Jr., said it’s the first time he’s heard about the line item, which was packed into a Republican amendment to the budget and received no public hearings.
“These agencies were combined to provide efficiencies,” Kennedy Jr. said. “I think it makes sense for environmental policy and energy policy to be made in a coordinated, consistent, and coherent manner.”
In 2011, Governor Dannel Malloy combined the Department of Environmental Protection and what was then the Department of Public Utility Control, now known as PURA.
Malloy has said he plans to veto the budget.
Senator Paul Formica, Republican co-chair of the Energy and Technology committee, said this latest idea is to spilt functions of state government, separating makers of policy from those regulating it.
"I think that's an important function of government," Formica said, "to have someone who is making the policy, be autonomous from a regulator."
“I’m not sure where this idea is coming from,” Kennedy Jr. said. “If I had to guess, I think it would probably be those in the energy industry who really balk at our state’s progressive approach to environmental policy.”
Update: 4:39 pm. This story has been updated with comment from Senator Paul Formica.
