Massachusetts is taking aim at climate change with a bold new proposal: the Freedom to Move Act. It would track vehicle mileage and emissions to help the state meet its climate goals to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. It’s facing opposition, and not just from climate change skeptics; some are raising concerns over privacy and equity.
Axios Boston reporter Mike Deehan reported on this story and joined GBH’s All Things Considered host Arun Rath to break down what the bill could mean for drivers, lawmakers and the future of transportation here in Massachusetts. What follows is a lightly edited transcript of their conversation.
Arun Rath: The Freedom to Move Act aims to track and measure vehicle emissions across the state. That sounds pretty innocuous, but reading your piece, it sounds like the devil is in the details. How does the Act propose to track emissions exactly?
Mike Deehan: It’s one of those things where the Act — the bill, whatever they want to call it — is kind of secondary to the idea itself. This is something that, as policy is made over the next many, many years, this idea is going to pop up and have a little bit more purchase. That’s what we’re looking at right now, with this Freedom to Move [Act] — that’s what it’s called right now.
Basically, what this bill would do is it would establish an interagency council that would develop strategies and reduce car dependency. That’s kind of a goal the state has had for decades, and that would mean, you know — let’s improve transit, improve walkability, improve bike-ability, things like that, so that we can get cars off the streets and have [fewer] emitting cars.
It’s all part of reaching the state’s carbon emission goals, which have been set at net-zero for 2050. A lot of people think the state is not going to be anywhere close to that in that time frame, over the next 25 years. So, again, this bill doesn’t necessarily do anything other than look at the issue, but it’s hugely significant if Beacon Hill puts its stamp of approval on looking at the issues of recording mileage because that would be a sea change in a lot of ways, because we don’t do that right now. We don’t factor in how much people are driving into how we decide on policy.
Rath: Pushing aside, for the moment at least, the debate over carbon emissions and whether we need to be tracking them, talk about the privacy concerns people are bringing up. What kind of data is collected? How is it going to be used?
Deehan: Again, it’s early days, so we don’t really know exactly how much data would be collected. But when you think about how computerized cars are becoming, when you register — and they all have to be registered, of course, with the state — we can already track people on, like the Mass Pike and things that have those gantries that scan license plates.
So, there are plenty of ways — and more ways every day, on a technology level — where the state could, if they wanted to, see how much an individual driver is driving and how far they are going. Tracking mileage, for a lot of people — from maybe even a civil rights perspective — [seems like] it’s kind of behavioral control disguised as an environmental solution.
This is a concern for a lot of regulations, not just environmental ones. It’s that you really have to crack down and monitor what your residents are doing in order to have the conversation about how to limit the thing that you think is bad. You know, this is kind of a more conservative viewpoint, but it’s a pretty valid one — at least in the eyes of Beacon Hill lawmakers who take these things seriously.
Another side of it is rural legislators who would see a policy like this and worry that it could have an unequal impact in communities that don’t have the MBTA, that don’t have a bus system, that don’t have walkable lanes, where driving really is the only way to get around. Are you going to start taxing people to get to work when they don’t have, really, any other options?
Again, these are early days. This is what they’re weighing, and there is some skepticism among democratic leaders that this is the way to go.
Rath: You reported that Massachusetts would be joining a multi-state pilot program. How is that going to work, and how will the state learn from it?
Deehan: That’s another thing. Because this is so early — this is my refrain here, but I want to make the point that since it is so early, this would be the state kind of getting involved in the game and seeing what other states are doing.
I think Oregon has a proposal in the works right now to kind of start looking along the same lines, and that’s where [Massachusetts] would then identify how other states are getting this data. How are other states factoring this into their climate? How are other states working with, potentially, their highway departments to do this kind of stuff, and what will it mean in the long run toward our emissions goals? So, you know, a statewide compact kind of thing.
A lot of agencies work together like this in a lot of ways. And, of course, this would be something that the federal government might have something to say about, at some point. So, looking at it, again, very long term — we’re talking decade-plus — other states getting pilot programs and getting their own individual programs off the ground could influence how Massachusetts wants to pursue something like this.
Rath: I’m trying to understand the opposition more, aside from the privacy concerns and the concerns about equity that you brought up. For climate change critics, I mean, the state’s goals are what they are. Hasn’t that battle already been lost? Why don’t they want this to go through?
Deehan: Well, there’s something even beyond that that’s kind of between the lines here, and that’s taxation. You know, a lot of conservative feels that this is the first move in a series of moves that could lead to taxing mileage. Right now, we have the gas tax — you know, you pay per gallon. What this could open the door to in their eyes is the state now saying, “We’re going to have a tax per-mile traveled. It doesn’t matter what kind of emission vehicle you’re in or how efficient that is.”
Conservatives and anti-tax folks definitely see this as a slippery slope to yet another new tax that Beacon Hill could apply to travelers. This would have huge ramifications, not just for individuals in automobiles, but for transportation companies, trucking and really, anything that uses the roads, essentially.
There are revenue sides to this as well. If the state is making less money off the gas tax as engines get more efficient and EVs come on the road, the state itself is making less money on that tax, and it kind of needs to be replaced. A mileage tax is something that has been brought up to fill that revenue gap down the road.
Rath: The opposition, broadly speaking, is conservative. Beacon Hill is pretty Democratic.
Deehan: But still conservative. I think that’s the point — you know, a lot of Beacon Hill Democrats are pretty middle of the road. They have D’s next to their name, but they’re very open to more moderate and conservative positions on things, especially things like taxation and monitoring the public.
Rath: With that, how do you imagine this is going to fare? What kind of political pushback do you expect to see?
Deehan: I definitely think Democrats will face some questions if anything like this goes forward. I think, you know, in the next couple of years, we might see this kind of policy — this early stage, “Let’s think about thinking about this” kind of stage — that might advance a little bit and become a little bit more serious. And then, you could see it become more of a tool that Beacon Hill can use when they try to approach their emissions goals.
So, you know — long, long term, but this bill, particularly if it passes, could become the state policy. Again, to think about thinking about it.
