Phil Scott’s veto pen must be hotter than ol’ No. 14’s engine block at the finish line of Thunder Road because he’s racked up a fresh batch of vetoes this week, bringing his lifetime total over the half-century mark. Yep, he’s now vetoed 52 bills (according to the State Archives’ list of veto messages) including eight this year alone. Reminder that the previous record-holder was Howard Dean with a measly 21. And Dean served 12 years as governor while Scott’s been in the corner office for a mere seven and a half.

(Gubernatorial Trivia Time: Dean first Wielded His Veto Pen^TM to strike down a bill that would have legalized the sale of sparklers. Yes, really. His letter is a marvel of fearmongering; Dean wrote that sparklers may “appear innocuous,” but are, in fact, “quite dangerous,” burning at temperatures of “between 1600 and 2000 degrees,” and they “caused more than 1,000 emergency room visits” in 1989 alone. Which sounds like a lot, but 300 times as many people go to the ER with dog bites, and I don’t see anyone trying to ban dogs.)

We eagerly await the Legislature’s override session on Monday, where seven bills could be on the table. (An override of the eighth, a ban on flavored tobacco and vapes, failed in the Senate in April.) I’ll give you my back-of-the-envelope rundown of likely overrides in a tick, but first I’d like to point out three vetoes where the governor happily displayed his ignorance of the subject matter and of the process that went into the bills.

Scott unsurprisingly vetoed H.687, the big housing/Act 250 reform bill because it didn’t go far enough in opening Vermont’s doors to developers. He depicted the bill as a backward step when, in fact, the bill arose from a long, careful process with input from an array of experts and stakeholders — environmental groups, developers, architects, academics, business leaders, public officials, farmers, realtors, you name it.

Pish tosh, says Governor Nice Guy, who may never have read Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink but he sure makes decisions that way. We don’t need no stinkin’ consensus here. It’s too bad he prefers the dysfunctional status quo to signing a bill that would give him some, but not all, of what he wants.

Then there’s H.121, the data privacy bill that passed the House on a vote of 139 to 3, and whose lead sponsor was a Republican. Scott cited “fear and concern” among some businesses. The bill’s lead sponsor, business owner Rep. Michael Marcotte, lamented the “misinformation” some business groups used to “spread fear” among businesses.

Seems safe to deduce that Scott listened to lobbyists more than to his VTGOP colleague, who managed the bill through the process.

Ditto H.706, the proposed ban on neonicotinoid pesticides that are an established danger to pollinators, a bill that also drew overwhelming support. (The Senate vote was 25 to 2.) In his veto message, Scott asserted that Vermont’s “honeybee population has grown,” which is true with a big fat asterisk.

His Agriculture Agency reported last year that Vermont’s honeybee population was at an all-time high, a report that drew bitter laughter from beekeepers. The Agency conflated migratory colonies, which are imported from elsewhere to boost pollination, with stationary colonies, which are the bees that actually live in Vermont. Their numbers are still falling and they face a variety of threats, including neonics. But the governor prefers his administration’s artificially inflated numbers to the unpleasant reality of the situation.

I could write similar accounts for most, if not all, of Scott’s vetoes, but I do try to keep these posts below Tolstoy-level word counts. So let’s take a quick peek at Monday.

Unless legislative leaders are exceptionally well organized, perhaps because they’re tired of being kicked around by Governor Nice Guy, they aren’t likely to tackle all seven of the bills. Although it must be said that there were six overrides in 2023, so seven isn’t beyond the realm of possibility. But let’s say they can’t tee up all seven. I see three rough categories: the necessary, the high priorities, and the rest.

They’ve got to address the yield bill, because we kind of need one of those every year so our school funding system can work. They’ll get that done, and give Scott the juicy campaign issue he clearly desires.

Next we have two bills central to this year’s legislative agenda: H.289, which modernizes the renewable energy standard, and H.687, the housing/Act 250 bill. I expect override attempts on both, unless leadership decides they don’t have the votes.

Which leaves us with the other four, where failure would be disappointing but not earthshattering. These include H.121 (data privacy, see above), H.706 (neonics, ditto), H.645 (restorative justice, discussed previously), and H.72 (including an overdose prevention site in Burlington, discussed previously).

If I were to rank those four in terms of likely override, I’d guess:

• H.121. Seems like a layup considering its overwhelming tripartisan support.
• H.72. Nice little “fuck you” to the administration. And given that House Speaker Jill Krowinski and Senate President Pro Tem Phil Baruth are both from Burlington, I could see them pushing this bill forward.
• H.706. Aside from the renewable energy standard, this is the biggest remaining priority for the environmental community.
• H.645. Might fall victim to the numbers game.

It’d be hella fun for the Legislature to go seven for seven. They don’t seem to have a relationship with Scott anyway, so why not go for the gusto? The Democratic ticket could boast of a solid record of accomplishment. 13 overrides in two years would be a strong statement that the supermajorities have worked, that the voters’ support in 2022 made a difference.

Caveat: I haven’t talked with leadership, and if I did I wouldn’t expect them to reveal their plans. This is the view from outside the forest. Individual trees may be difficult to detect.