A legislator from a sprawling rural district says it takes collaboration to represent Western Massachusetts on Beacon Hill.
Peru resident Paul Mark just began his fifth term as the state representative for the 2nd Berkshire District.
“I come from a town of less than 2,000 people and I’m the only legislator in the state – I live in one of the towns that I don’t have the high-speed internet, I don’t have cell phone service at my house, and I don’t have access to television,” he told WAMC.
The district stretches from Dalton in Berkshire County to Northfield in Franklin County. Mark, a Democrat, is a member of both the Berkshire and Pioneer Valley legislative delegations. The latter has gone through a facelift.
“We have five new members, so we have a new senator for the first time in I think 30 years, and we have four new state representatives,” said the state rep.
Mark is now that delegation’s veteran member, and he says he’s helping develop his new colleagues’ abilities in the House as he co-sponsors a raft of bills.
“Unemployment insurance and workers’ rights, I have two bills that we’re working together as joint sponsors – myself and Representative Lindsay Sabadosa of Northampton, who’s brand new – regarding rural policy," said Mark. "My new colleague Representative Natalie Blais, from Franklin County, is the lead and I’m the co-lead on a bill about the rural policy advisory commission, which makes recommendations on how we can make sure that rural communities like the Berkshires and Franklin County aren’t left behind and are really treated fairly by the rest of the state.”
The bill would create a new office of rural policy explicitly to represent rural communities on Beacon Hill. One issue Mark highlights is PILOT money – 'payment in lieu of taxes.'
“Small towns like where I live, Peru, almost half the land is owned by the state," he told WAMC. "And so we find that the amount of money that is paid for by the state isn’t always adequate. And Eastern Massachusetts expects those of us in the west to kind of be a recreational sanctuary or caretakers of land for them – but I think it’s only fair if we’re going to do that, and we’re happy to do that and preserve the environment out here, that the entire commonwealth needs to help pay for that. And so myself and Representative Whipps – who’s from the Athol area – we’re working on a bill regarding PILOT funding and establishing a commission to try to make that system a little more fair and make sure that the money coming out here is adequate.”
Beyond bolstering the political identity of the region as a whole, Mark says his agenda focuses on the environment. He says his effort to encourage the use of renewable energy is a response to inaction on climate change.
“Expanding solar, incentivizing and forcing electric companies to use more solar increasingly, raising what’s called the cap on net metering,” listed off Mark.
He says restrictions on net metering – offsetting the use of power grids by using solar energy – hit rural municipalities hard.
“In Windsor, which is one of my towns, and the town of Colrain, these are towns that – they’ve undertaken solar projects and they’re green communities, and when they go to try to interconnect with the grid, the electric company, they’re told the capacity has been reached, and so it takes longer than it should, and the money that these towns have spent isn’t – they’re not able to get the return on their investment right away, and so we’re trying to raise that,” said Mark.
Mark’s agenda also deals with increasing state funding for public universities and finding ways to lower costs for students pursuing higher education.
