House Minority Leader Blake A Filippi: Clarifies Amendment

I'll try and keep my comments brief responding to some of the arguments my colleagues made. The first that's required is for this climate council to pass a plan that comes back for us to enact. I agree with her that's how things should be because if we pass my amendment that's what the law would be but there is no requirement that this plan come back to us for ratification or for us to enact under the laws proposed. Our amendment would require us to take an enactment action and that's the right approach. That's basically the shibboleth of the amendment. What we're all debating about is whether this plan should be self-effectuating where upon passage by the council it has the force of law or it is simply a recommendation to us and exercise our lawmaking power to bring those recommendations to actually to bring them forth with legal authority. That's the whole basis of the amendment. I want to go back to something that my my brother Christopher Blajewski said because it's really critical about the marijuana lawsuit and how it relates to this amendment. I know we put in a lot of amendments Mr. Speaker and with all due respect to my colleague I think he was speaking on the wrong amendment because we have another amendment and that other amendment is forward slash. Well wait a minute wait a minute you have to we have to vote this amendment. We're not debating the amendment but my my colleague Christopher Blajewski was arguing on a different amendment because that other amendment deals with us having to ratify the plan similar to the marijuana regulations that was the subject of the lawsuit. We are not having a what's called a legislative veto on the regulations enacted by the plan. That's another amendment we decided not to do because of this argument. The amendment that we are dealing with today is not subject to the legislative veto arguments brought forth by Governor Raimondo because it says the plan is simply advisory. It's not it doesn't start out as a regulation that then we have to bless in order for it to have the force of law. The regulation we're debating is simply making it advisory so there's no legislative veto argument. You know my my friend we need to act now. I think we all do agree we need to act now but that art is blighted by the fact that the first enforceable plan by the council isn't due until December 2025. So why are we rushing? If we have to rush through this we don't have time for robust public hearings. We can't get the people in the building. We're cutting people short when they try and testify on certain bills. This fundamentally changes the relationship of our people to their government. It shouldn't be rushed through and the argument that we have to do something now is just undermined by the plain application of the language that they don't have to produce a plan until 2025. So this amendment makes a lot of sense. It's a question of duty. Are we a body that's going to delegate that duty? And there's one more thing I actually want to respond to too was with the comments that we will exercise oversight if they get out of whack we'll pass a law. We have to remember that in order for us to nullify anything that this commission does it has to pass both houses and sustain a veto. That isn't a sufficient check and balance respectfully Mr. Speaker. Many of us in this chamber have lamented over the past years about what's going on in the executive branch. Most of you who are going to vote for this bill have come to me at a certain time and said what's going on with the PUC, with Deloitte, with DCYF, with UHIP, with the lottery. We didn't do anything about that. We had a hearing once a month, screamed and yelled as we should and the executive branch just carried on, did what they wanted to do, sent a couple lackeys into our testimony, into our hearings for testimony, yessed us to death and just carried on as normal. So the notion that we're somehow going to come in and exercise a veto authority through enacting legislation it's just it doesn't reflect reality that we've all lived in this state. 30 seconds please. Thank you Speaker. To stop this plan or any provision of plan a bill would have to pass both houses of the General Assembly and then sustain a veto. That's not sufficient when the lives and pocketbooks of our constituents, businesses and municipalities are being regulated by an unelected group of bureaucrats who Representative Knight named and I've never seen one of them on a ballot. Thank you. Thank you. Representative Morgan and then Representative Place. Thank you Speaker. We're elected by our constituents to put their best.