They declared an emergency and called it relief. I know the sentence. It is what a statehouse says when a bill it helped write gets too heavy in an election year, and the quickest fix is to pull a few of its own line items off the invoice for one season and hold a press conference about it.
On Monday, October 5, 2026, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey declared a “state of energy emergency” by executive order at the Edward G. Connolly Center in Everett, NBC Boston and the State House News Service (via WWLP) reported. Healey said heating oil costs have risen 73% since last year, that one in five households heat with oil, and that “many could pay as much as $700 more for a single fill-up.” The order widens the Home Energy Assistance Program so a family of four earning up to $103,049 could get $870 to $1,450 for oil or propane, and creates a one-time benefit of up to $680 for about 50,000 heating-oil households earning up to $171,749. Another $15 million goes to about 156,000 low-income households. The state will move $80 million to take the SMART solar-incentive charge (a program funded through a charge on electric customers) off residential and commercial bills for January through March 2027, and will cut the Alternative Energy Portfolio Standard by 50% this winter, worth an estimated $20 million. Her office says the plan delivers “nearly $150 million in savings” and lowers bills for about 85% of ratepayers. State House News Service reported she did not say how much it will cost the state or where the money comes from; her office said it would use alternative compliance payments, the money electricity suppliers pay the state when they miss a clean-energy quota. The declaration also turns on price-gouging protections. Healey asked Congress for $3 billion more in heating aid, which would bring the federal program to $7 billion, and blamed the war in Iran and the Trump administration. Energy prices have become an issue in her reelection race against Republican Mike Minogue, and lawmakers have spent months in conference on competing energy bills (H 5151 and S 3166) without sending one to her desk.
Relief is the alibi. The calendar is the point. Look at what the emergency actually does. The state built the SMART charge into the electric bill. Now it covers that charge for three months, announced in October of a reelection year and set to land on the January-through-March bills, and pays for it with penalties it collects for missing a quota it also wrote. That is the state paying the state’s charge with the state’s fine, and calling it help. I have learned lately what a public office means when it says it is looking out for you on a bill. The heating aid is real money for people who need it, and I will not sneer at a check for a cold house. But an emergency that ends on a schedule is just a budget with a siren on it. There is no corporation in this story to rescue anyone, and I am not hiring one. The governor blames Washington’s war, Washington will blame the statehouse, and the bill still comes on the first of the month. Both parties are the help. One sends the invoice. The other sends the reason.
Deb will say she keeps the thermostat at 64 and calls that an energy policy. Buck will say Massachusetts had it coming, which is what he says about every state with a lighthouse. I love them. They are seasoning. The meal is a government that charges you, then stops charging you for one winter, and wants a thank-you note for the gap. I am keeping the cardigan. Fill the notebook. Then ask what the bill says in April.
Sources: NBC Boston, Oct. 5, 2026; State House News Service via WWLP, Oct. 5, 2026.
— Theo Ashford-Lindström
Leave a Reply