The Bloomberg-backed climate law operation at New York University may have shut down, but its personnel and playbook didn’t go far.
NYU’s State Energy and Environmental Impact Center went dark on August 31 after nearly a decade of supporting state attorneys general on climate and environmental matters, including through its controversial program of privately funding lawyers who served as special assistant attorneys general (SAAG).
Since its founding nearly a decade ago, the Michael Bloomberg-funded center attracted intense scrutiny for leveraging private funds to support government-backed investigations and litigation. House Oversight Chairman James Comer, whose committee opened an investigation into the center in July 2025, said he was “glad to see” it go.
But while SEEIC disappeared, its team did not.
Five weeks later, POLITICO has reported that Vermont Law and Graduate School (VLGS) has quietly hired the center’s two top leaders plus all seven of its other staffers. They now run a program called the Multistate Assistance for Public Service Leadership and Excellence (MAPLE) Initiative – same backchannel, just under a different name.
The personnel move is only one piece of a much larger activist-friendly buildout seemingly taking shape at VLGS, and the timing is telling.
Back in Massachusetts, Governor Healey has been, in the words of the Wall Street Journal editorial board, “mugged by energy reality.” She has pivoted to affordability and reliability after years of opposing new pipeline capacity, embracing an “all the above” strategy and recently asking federal officials to fast-track additional natural gas supply into New England.
Yet as the Commonwealth recalibrates its energy posture, many of the officials and lawyers associated with the state’s earlier, more aggressive climate push are consolidating just across the border in Vermont.
Same Team, New Home
MAPLE’s website says it will focus on state government, offering fellowships, trainings, workshops, internships, legal and policy reports, issue tracking, and opportunities for students to engage in state-agency work on energy and environmental law.
Yet the initiative arrived with remarkably little public fanfare. According to POLITICO, VLGS issued no press release announcing MAPLE. An August announcement touting a series of environmental hires and program appointments did not mention the initiative or the hiring of Bethany Davis Noll, the former director of NYU’s SEEIC.
More significantly, VLGS has not publicly identified who is funding MAPLE. Nor has the school said whether the new initiative will revive SEEIC’s most controversial practice: using private funding to support lawyers or fellows working inside state attorneys general offices or other state agencies.
Those questions matter even more when MAPLE is viewed alongside the rest of the climate-law infrastructure now concentrating at VLGS.
A Massachusetts Climate Reunion in Vermont
The news of former-SEEIC staff coalescing in Vermont follows the appointment of Melissa Hoffer as the next president of VLGS, effective December 1, 2026.
Hoffer is currently the first Climate Chief of Massachusetts and she previously served as environment bureau chief in the Massachusetts Attorney General’s office under the leadership of now Governor and then AG Maura Healey. Before that, she held high-ranking roles at the activist group Conservation Law Foundation – a group that public records reveal “coordinated” on “the Exxon issue” prior to MAAG’s filing.
Her departure has raised questions as Governor Healey backtracks on Massachusetts climate goals.
Her arrival creates a striking full-circle moment because Massachusetts was among the first states to participate in SEEIC’s privately funded SAAG program and Hoffer helped lead the state’s climate lawsuit.
Hoffer was even slated to attend the infamous 2016 “secret meeting at Harvard” where state attorneys general gathered to coordinate ways to sue energy companies.
Critically, in the runup to MAAG’s 2019 climate lawsuit, Hoffer played a key role in managing the Bloomberg-funded SAAGs in Healey’s office. As one of the first states to receive a SAAG from SEEIC, Massachusetts accepted two of the Bloomberg and NYU-funded lawyers.
Vermont is No Stranger to Academic Institutions Shielding Activists
The MAPLE Initiative is just the latest example of anti-energy activists operating out of academic institutions with little transparency.
VLGS is also home to emeritus professor Pat Parenteau – a longtime supporter of climate lawsuits and previous business partner to Sher Edling, the law firm representing plaintiffs in most of the lawsuits filed around the country.
Adding to its involvement in climate litigation, VLGS has also been involved in Vermont’s hotly-contested climate superfund law through the Environmental Advocacy Clinic. Christophe Courchesne, Hoffer’s old colleague from the MAAG’s office and a former lead attorney on MAAG’s climate lawsuit, runs the clinic.
Private universities seem to be a common place for activists seeking to bankrupt the energy industry. They find homes in these academic institutions, which are shielded from public records laws, where obscure dark-money funding networks and foreign influence are further obscured.
For another example, also in Vermont, the Beyond Plastics movement has found its home at Bennington College.
Bottom Line: SEEIC may be gone, but its people, its playbook and state-government network are regrouping a couple hours up I-89. But questions remain. What will happen to SEEIC-placed SAAGS? What will the MAPLE Initiative will do next? And who’s funding it now?
