GeoLawWatch: Tracking Weather & Climate Legislation

The resolution was introduced on 30th January 2019 by Representatives Price and Quattrocchi and referred to the House Environment and Natural Resources Committee. The timing is highly significant - the resolution was introduced on precisely the same day as House Bill 5992, Representative Price's extraordinarily comprehensive sixteen-page geoengineering regulation bill featuring elaborate licensing requirements and severe penalties. This simultaneous introduction of both a second commission extension and comprehensive regulatory legislation suggests a dual-track legislative strategy, either advancing immediate regulation through House Bill 5992 or providing the commission additional time to complete its work and develop formal recommendations through House Resolution 5226. The introduction timing just eight days before the commission's 7th February 2019 reporting deadline indicates the commission recognised it would not meet its deadline and needed additional time. This marked the second extension request for the commission, which had already been extended once in April 2018 from its original April 2018 deadline to February 2019. The request for another two months and twenty-three days would have given the commission a total operational period of approximately twenty months from its September 2017 creation to the proposed April 2019 reporting date, far exceeding its originally contemplated fourteen-month mandate. A hearing was scheduled for 7th February 2019, the exact date the commission was originally required to report its findings under the 2018 extension. This scheduling created a critical decision point for the committee - either grant the extension allowing the commission to continue its work, or decline the extension effectively terminating the commission on its scheduled expiration date of 7th May 2019 without a completed report. The committee also considered House Bill 5992 at the same 7th February hearing, presenting legislators with the choice between comprehensive immediate regulation or continued study. Following the hearing, the committee recommended the measure be held for further study, which is a procedural mechanism allowing committees to decline advancing legislation without formally rejecting it and typically signals the bill will not proceed during that legislative session. The recommendation to hold for further study effectively denied the commission's extension request, meaning the commission would be required to either submit its report by the original 7th February 2019 deadline or cease operations upon its 7th May 2019 expiration without completing a formal report. The committee's simultaneous decision to hold both the extension resolution and the comprehensive regulatory bill for further study on the same day suggests a determination that neither continued commission study nor immediate comprehensive regulation represented the appropriate path forward for Rhode Island's geoengineering policy. The denial of this second extension request, combined with the rejection of the comprehensive regulatory bill on the same day, effectively ended Rhode Island's multi-year legislative effort to address geoengineering that had begun with regulatory bills in 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017, followed by commission creation and extension in 2017 and 2018. No evidence exists in the legislative record of a formal commission report being submitted, and no subsequent geoengineering legislation appears to have been introduced in Rhode Island following 2019, marking the conclusion of the state's sustained examination of these issues.

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