Ask Not For Whom the Leaf Blows

“THEY’RE COMING” reads an all caps font plastered over an AI Slop graphic.  “HIDE YOUR LEAF BLOWERS”.  The image behind it is of redheaded person with a leafblower apparently growing out of the back of their shirt as leaves whimsically scatter in the air in the opposite direction of the blower tube. 

Rep. Dave Yaccarino spammed this across various North Haven community pages, apparently pretty proud of it, declaring himself to against what he called an “egregious proposal” to phase out of gas-powered leaf blowers in Connecticut. Yaccarino deceptively says in the post that the “law would take effect on October 1, 2026”, but the actual bill language would not fully phase out their usage until September 1^st 2030.  Yaccarino knows this is red meat to his base of supporters, who will no doubt be against yet another "stupid Democrat bill" that is enacted just to screw over small business owners because they hate freedom and choice and yadda yadda.  A bill which is recklessly fast to implement and doesn’t give businesses that rely on these tools time to adjust.

In fairness to those opposed to the bill, there are some difficulties with imposing legislation like this.  For one, electric or battery powered leaf blowers just do not last as long as gas-powered ones, making it more difficult for those who operate them professionally to do long-term jobs.  Battery disposal also carries environmental challenges as well.  But running a gas-powered leaf blower for one hour also creates as many emissions as driving a new gas car for over one thousand miles.  They are a huge polluter, and not to mention obnoxiously loud, disturbing the serenity of many a peaceful summer day for those who ever cross the path of one.  California has already imposed a ban, as have hundreds of other municipalities throughout the country, and their businesses and ways of life have adapted just fine. 

Folks like Yaccarino also have no alternatives for asthmatics, those with sensory issues, or those who just don’t like living on an aggressively warming planet and have concerns about the future we’re leaving for our kids and grandchildren.  They’re more focused on feeding talking points to folks for whom any type of lifestyle change is tantamount to treason.  Neither Governor Lamont nor any of the legislative leadership has indicated that this bill is a top priority this session nor taken a stand one way or another, despite Lamont’s hometown of Greenwich already implementing a ban.  In fact, all indications are that the bills is already dead in the water, but you’d never know that by the way Yaccarino and his GOP colleagues are framing the issue.

Yaccarino has been in the capital for 15 years now and his record on the environment has been abysmal.  Though North Haven has a proud history of protecting green spaces, investing in alternative energy, and cautious civic-minded development planning, Yaccarino’s own record of championing industry deregulation and voting against climate solutions lies in conflict with the town he represents.  Connecticut already has a pretty poor record on the environment compared to its peers in New England, but Yaccarino is a consistent no vote on even the minor incremental environmental changes the state has proposed over the past few years. 

In 2024, he voted against the omnibus climate bill HB-5004 (dubbed the “Green Monster”), a bill that otherwise passed the house but never went into effect.  He also said no a bill (HB-5232) to create uniformity and standards for solar projects. The previous year, he had voted against a bill pushing corporate accountability in permits, public meeting notices, and mitigation requirements for negative impact, a pushback against the phenomena of environmental racism.  Lest we think that last one, with all its social-justice-adjacent aspirational language was a partisan bill that split along party lines, his colleague Sen. Cicarella voted in favor of it. In fact, herein lies an unusual pattern there.  The generally more conservative Cicarella also supported a bill to make producers take responsibility for tire waste, while Yaccarino voted against it, despite being from a town which was previously home to an infamous “tire pond”.   The two were also split on a bill from 2022 on setting zero carbon goal dates.  Guess which way Yaccarino fell on getting nasty, warming carbon out of the atmosphere?

In fact, the only times Yaccarino ever seems to support any environmental measure is when the rest of his party is also on board. His reasoning behind each of these votes may vary, but the common denominator arises when you view the clip below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQh3v3olGN4

In the clip, an advocate talks about creating energy efficiency standards for products that do not fall under federal efficiency standards such as the Energystar label. The speaker very carefully and patiently explains why this is actually a competitive measure that would only apply to products where there are a variety of manufacturers who already meet the standards.  Another speaker explains that our neighboring states have already implemented these standards and Connecticut is in danger of "becoming the dumping ground" for less energy-efficient products.  

Yaccarino seems to be reaching for a reason to disavow this as another in the long line of regulatory chokeholds on business, but struggles to articulate it. Before setting off on an irrelevant tangent about data centers and AI, he wonders aloud why any company wouldn’t want to have the most efficient products, baffled by the mere idea that anyone might want to sell an inferior product. But it’s pretty naïve to fail to see that not all companies are created equal.  Businesses are incentivized to sell products that will make them the most money.  For some this may mean making equipment that meets a higher energy efficiency standard than their competitors.   But for others, they may realize that if no one is forcing them to adapt to ecological standards and they can avoid the costly R&D required for modifying or creating new products, it makes more business sense to just keep churning out energy-guzzling crap to unsuspecting customers.  The only investment required is a small marketing budget to brand their products in a deceptive way that makes them look equivalent to more efficient products.  Or perhaps they can just corner the market on consumers too price-tag fixated to research how much impact any given product will have on their electrical bills.  We’ve all bought hunks of junk that looked great on paper and immediately failed the second we took them out of the box or the warranty wore off.  Were we all just dupes or does the manufacturer bear some responsibility in making sure there's a minimal standard of quality their product has to meet before we surrender our hard-earned pay?

As our legislator, Representative Yaccarino is supposed to be looking out for residents.  Yet, it’s clear that he has a pretty consistent vision that business should never bear the responsibility for any hidden costs or side effects created by their dubious practices.  Instead, it’s “buyer beware”.  I don't think this vision comes from a place of malice.  I think he and I share a fundamentally different view on the primacy of markets and their responsibility to the myriad stakeholders they interact with such as consumers, workers, and municipalities.  I think he's also been hanging around too long with folks that have swallowed the carefully concocted Kool-Aid of industry mouthpieces like the Yankee Institute and the CBIA, organizations which work hard to pass off lobbying talking points from big business as legitimate community feedback. Regardless of Yaccarino's intent though, intent is not impact.  

One can never be as reductive as "buyer beware" when looking at matters of environmental protection.  Even consumers who don’t purchase gas-powered leaf blowers, tires that have outlived their shelf life, or energy inefficient products wind up eating the costs of deregulation.  They manifest as higher utility bills, property maintenance from climate disaster, skyrocketing property insurance, or, worse, doctor and hospital bills.  Governments also wind up absorbing its share of externalized cost too.  It took years for North Haven to work with buyers willing to remediate the old Pratt and Whitney site, where far too many workers walked away with mysterious cancers.  North Haven has more Brownfield sites than most of the surrounding towns, but fixing them would cost millions of dollars that we don't have.  Those are huge revenue losses, in a town where property costs just keep rising.  Residents here didn’t create these problems, but long-gone industry gobbled up profits and then left us with the bill, less livable space, and several giant messes to clean up.

Part of the reason I provide my regular legislative updates is because while plenty of people come out to vote on the state legislature race every two years, very few know what’s actually happening in Hartford.  With the local press completely gutted, hardly anyone is around to hold our representatives to account.  Certainly very few people hear about what our elected officials are saying or voting for/against on a day-to-day basis.  So, the lasting impression voters get on the perennial Republican incumbents is largely a constructed one, built from press releases of them smiling at a VFW hall, hosting a civics guest lecture, or cutting a ribbon. It's based on anecdotes about answering phone calls and attendance records. This is all very nice and good and commendable, but it's a fraction of the story.  

Voters may appreciate the kind gestures, but they also elected them to legislate.  So the very particular and sometimes idiosyncratic way they legislate matters a great deal. If we’re serious about sending the best people up to Hartford to represent us, we should make sure that their values are actually aligning with our own.  It sounds like if you own a business that wants to protect its market share from pesky environmentalists who want breathable air and less wildfires, Representative Yaccarino has got your back.  But what if that doesn't describe you?