Hoffer Vowed to determine the cost of Massachusetts’ Net Zero mandates, but is leaving without making that information public

The Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance is criticizing the announced departure of Governor Maura Healey’s Climate Chief Melissa Hoffer, who is preparing to leave Massachusetts without completing and making public what she at one point identified as the No. 1 priority of her climate agenda: determining how much the state’s Net Zero climate mandates will actually cost.

Hoffer, who has served as the nation’s first cabinet-level Climate Chief since the beginning of the Healey administration, announced Thursday that she will leave Massachusetts to become president of Vermont Law and Graduate School beginning December 1.

In recommendations released by Hoffer in 2023, her top agenda item called for an economic analysis of the investment necessary to meet Massachusetts’ legally mandated greenhouse gas reduction requirements and an examination of how those costs could be financed. Hoffer set a deadline of the end of 2024 to complete that work.

More than a year after that deadline, the analysis still had not been released to the public. Earlier this year, the Healey administration confirmed to CommonWealth Beacon that the report remained outstanding and did not explain the delay.

“Melissa Hoffer made determining the cost of Massachusetts’ Net Zero mandates her No. 1 priority and gave herself a deadline for the end of 2024. Now she is leaving Massachusetts with that job unfinished, and leaving Massachusetts residents in the dark,” said Paul Diego Craney, Executive Director of the Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance. “At this point, withholding that information from the public looks like a cover-up. The mandates continue moving forward, the costs continue piling up, but the Healey administration still will not tell taxpayers what the final price tag will be.”

MassFiscal has repeatedly called on the Healey administration to disclose the costs associated with its Net Zero agenda. Hoffer was recently confronted directly about the missing cost analysis and failed to provide an answer.

“Hoffer may be leaving Massachusetts, but taxpayers cannot leave behind the mandates she helped implement,” said Craney. “Before she walks out the door, she should finish the job she said was her top priority and tell Massachusetts taxpayers exactly what her signature agenda is expected to cost them. If the Healey administration continues to keep that information from the public, taxpayers have every reason to ask what they are trying to hide.”

MassFiscal is calling on Hoffer and the Healey administration to complete and publicly release the economic analysis before Hoffer leaves her position.