As the two-year legislative session comes to a close, a lot is happening on Beacon Hill. Here is an update.

Climate/Energy Bill
Yesterday morning, the House and Senate conference committee came to an agreement on a climate/energy bill that they've been working on for some time, and both the House and Senate voted to pass the final bill. The final bill number is H.5060. 

The Senate version of this bill included language removing wood from the RPS (biomass power) and APS (modern wood heat) - existing systems would be grandfathered in. Utility-scale biomass power plants were already ineligible in both the current and the new RPS regulations (after uproar over the proposed (and now dead) Springfield plant caused DOER to return to the status quo), so there was little effective change there.

But MFA put together a coalition of businesses, farms, and nonprofits to rescue modern wood heat in the APS. We worked to educate members of the conference committee and their staff and in the end we were able to persuade them to keep modern wood heat eligible in the APS in the final bill. The case shouldn't have been very difficult to make, as modern wood heat is a proven decarbonizer - just look at the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center's chart of net carbon emissions to heat a 2,000 square foot home (scroll down). Thanks to MFA business members who joined the coalition and other members who contacted their legislators on the bill.

Estate Tax
The House and Senate are finalizing work on an Economic Development bill which contains some tax relief. One important part of this relates to the estate tax. MFA joined with farming groups several years ago to change estate tax treatment of farm and forestland. Previously, it was valued as if it were to be sold for development, driving estate taxes so high that many heirs couldn't afford to keep it in the family and ironically were forced to sell for development to pay the taxes. We successfully fought for a change to the estate tax to value farm and forestland at their current undeveloped value, which significantly reduced estate taxes and helped keep family forest in the family.

However, even with that change, land prices are escalating so quickly that more forestland was becoming subject to estate taxes each year. The current law has a threshold of $1 million for estates to be subject to tax, and then the tax is applied to the entire amount of the estate, down to the first dollar. The change proposed by Governor Baker and adopted by the House increases the threshold to $2 million and applies the estate tax only to the amount over $2 million. The Senate attempted to accomplish the same goal in a different way, by giving a tax credit to all estates. The final bill must be reconciled, but a positive change is coming that will benefit family forest landowners. With so many in their 70s and 80s, this is a welcome development that MFA advocated for.

Anti-Wood Construction
The concrete industry has been filing bills to make light-frame and mass timber construction of condo and apartment buildings either illegal or too expensive for developers, in the hopes that they will use concrete instead. This session a bill again advanced out of committee and there was an attempt to add it as an amendment to the economic development bill last week, but it was beaten back. MFA has worked with the American Wood Council and other partners on these bills.

Other Bills
While the formal session ends at the end of the month, that doesn't mean that all legislative business ends. Bills can still pass - but only unanimously, as a single legislator can kill a bill. We're still hopeful that some of the bills we supported, such as one allowing the use of pup trailers to transport timber and another offering a simplification of overweight permits for farm plate holders may still make it through. We'll keep you updated as we move forward.

• direct financial assistance to businesses to support increased recovery of long-lived wood products from trees harvested in Massachusetts, workforce retention, advanced manufacturing practices, strategic electrification, and sawmill energy efficiency;  
• incentives for developers to purchase cross laminated timber (CLT) made regionally from eastern hemlock
• pilot incentive program to enable local housing authorities/trusts to use native lumber in construction projects
• financial support for local durable wood product markets and workforce training