Editorial

Messing up on energy

Our congratulations to this county’s delegation to the state House of Representative (well, all but one of them) for voting against the energy bill that passed on the second-last day of the Legislative session.

Voting against it was the county’s only Democratic representative, John Rodgers of Glover, and all the Republicans — John Morley of Orleans, Duncan Kilmartin of Newport, Michael Marcotte of Coventry, Scott Wheeler and Loren Shaw of Derby, and Bill Johnson of Canaan, who represents Westmore.  Voting for the bill was the county’s only Progressive, Dexter Randall of Troy.

There were a few things wrong with the bill. It was ill-timed, certainly. When the Senate surprised the House by inserting a new tax against Vermont Yankee, there was little time left for negotiation. The Governor has promised to veto the bill, so the Legislature will have to come back to override the veto. It will fail, the vote counters suggest, and we’ll have no energy bill at all.

It was ill conceived.  For all the complexities of energy policy, Governor Jim Douglas needs just one word to justify his opposition to this bill:  unfair.

Entergy Nuclear, the company that made a fairly risky decision to buy Vermont Yankee, has long since made a deal with the state — a deal that includes payments to promote energy efficiency.  When he came up with the new tax on Vermont Yankee, Peter Shumlin said it is making a lot of money, so the state should take some. This is not an argument he will win with the voters, nor will the Democrats who lined up behind him to push the bill through. 

Oddly, while it imposes new taxes on an old and tested source of energy that doesn’t contribute to global warming, nuclear power, the bill awarded a tax holiday to a sexy new source of clean energy, wind power, that may only be economically viable because it gets a lot of tax breaks.

Energy policy was one thing the Legislature should have got right this year. The Democrats who dominate the Legislature messed it up.  We hope they are suitably embarrassed.  — C.B.