The New York Public Interest Research Group has a new leader.
Megan Ahearn was named NYPIRG’s new executive director on January 1st.
Ahearn, who previously served as the non-profit advocacy organization’s program director, has been involved with NYPIRG for nearly 20 years.
She takes over for Blair Horner, a WAMC board member and commentator, who will remain as NYPIRG’s Senior Policy Advisor.
WAMC's Lucas Willard spoke with Ahearn just before the start of the legislative session about what she wants to bring to the table…
I started working at NYPIRG in 2006 in our New York City campus. So, I was going door to door. I just graduated college and found a canvassing job at the organization working on environmental protection policy around mercury pollution coming out of New York State still in existence, coal burning power plants way back in oh six and fell in love with being an activist as a full-time job and also this sort of person to person, grassroots organizing, people power campaigns that NYPIRG was running at the time and still does today. So just shy of 20 years of that sort of experience, doing a whole slew of jobs at NYPIRG, from working with students at our college chapters to running canvas operations again in the New York City office to working on our policy campaigns and our grassroots organizing drives over the past 10 years as NYPIRG former program director.
How has that grassroots organizing effort evolved over the years? Are more young people interested in sort of the state of affairs? Are more people jumping in? What does the involvement look like when we're talking about the college students and university students from across the state of New York?
Student organizing is at a really exciting time. For one, there's a ton of groups that students can get involved in, including NYPIRG, but a ton of other youth led organizing arms out there. NYPIRG is unique in that our board of directors is students, college students from across the state. And you know, they're a group of directors who choose the direction of the organization, who I work with closely, who I have been working closely with as program director, and will continue to as executive director, and just in response to the state of the political life of the state and the country, particularly amid the pandemic, the need for and the desire for creating community and supporting one another, we saw heightened involvement reaction from that. So that's been really exciting to see over the past few years, and see how excited and engaged students are on issues like climate action and free and fully funded public higher education and getting involved in our elections and getting their peers involved as well.
You just mentioned climate, so I wanted to talk a little bit about the Climate Change Superfund Act that Governor Kathy Hochul signed in December. What do you think of the impact that the Climate Change Superfund Act will have and why are you excited for it?
Yeah, this was a major, major win. We're really excited for the governor's signature being on the law, and it's a game changer. You know, the fossil fuel industry has known for decades and decades and decades that what they were doing to reap massive, massive profits was destroying our climate, and we've had to pay for the damages, for more intense flooding, for rising sea levels, so to have the oil and gas companies be on the hook now really puts them on notice that we're not going to take it anymore. They have to clean up their mess. I was walking down a street two Halloween ago in the East Village, and someone was dressed up as a flooding subway station for Halloween. So there's sort of just a Zeitgeist to that, and just an awareness that these sort of intense storms are part of our norms now and what we'll have to deal with moving forward.
What will you be advocating for, and what will NYPIRG be advocating for in the new legislative session?
So, whenever we're we have a victory like the super fund, we also pay attention to its implementation. So, we'll have our eyes, eyes on how that's moving forward over the next few years even. But on, we're also going to be highly focused on. Building decarbonization efforts, supporting homeowners to help to decarbonize and make their homes more energy efficient, which will help them save on their utility bills. There's a new bill called bucks for boilers that we are helping to move forward that would do just that, to give homeowners the support they need to decarbonize their own homes, and also the HEAT Act, which will help our utilities move past mandatory fossil fuel pipeline expansions that end up costing rate payers money, and to also cap utility bills at no more than 6% of a person's income. That's on climate action. And we also have our sites on solid waste bills, including expanding the bigger, better bottle bill to increase recycling rates. It's one of the state's top most effective recycling laws on the books, and we want to update it for its over 40-year history and the packaging, So this PRRIA, so, a long acronym, Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act, there we go to have a life cycle approach to industries, packaging of items to reduce, to reduce waste ending up in our landfills and have a more circular economy.
I also wanted to mention your predecessor, former, now, Executive Director of NYPIRG Blair Horner, who will be sticking around in some capacity. So, you'll be working with Blair in the new year too, right?
Yeah, Blair will still be around. I'm sure the legislature will be happy to hear that. He'll be running around on all of our Albany based issues still this year. And you know, a part of our environmental team, our consumer justice team, and public health bill and government reform says, as he's well known for
So, Megan, is there anything else that you're particularly excited for that you haven't mentioned for the new year, the new session and beyond?
Yeah, I think that, just hearkening back to our conversation about student involvement, I think particularly as the new federal administration takes office, there's going to be a lot of excitement for students to get involved at the state level and at the city level. In you know, urging the state and the city to be leaders in areas like climate action and about funding for higher education, you can't be a student activist if you can't afford to stay in school.
