Last week’s edition of Gov. Phil Scott’s weekly bitchfest press conference centered on his opposition to the House’s FY2027 budget, which basically involved the governor defining “compromise” as “forsake your own position and do what I want,” and also featured him continuing to complain angrily about “bias” in a Vermont Labor Relations Board whose members are (1) appointed by himself and (2) bound by law to be “neutral” and “impartial.”

But there were a pair of passages that should not be allowed to fade into the impenetrable murk of Phil Pressers Past. So before we move on to new business (a competitive race for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, hooray), let’s enter them into the public record.

First, we have Scott reiterating his commitment to nuclear energy, which he’s never actually proposed with any specifics because it’d be politically radioactive (see what I did there). And second, we have Scott claiming that any homeless people who are unsheltered in Vermont are doing so voluntarily. Because sleeping in a car is such an appealing lifestyle?

Let’s start with nukes. “I’ve long been a supporter of nuclear energy,” Scott said. “Even back in my days in the Senate, I voted in opposition to shutting down Vermont Yankee.”

Ah yes, Vermont Yankee, the trouble-prone, mismanaged power plant that left nuclear energy with a permanent black eye to most Vermonters. Yeah, that’s what we need: another Vermont Yankee!

Scott also hints at a longtime Republican shibboleth: that Vermont Yankee was hounded out of business by the Democrats. When in fact, as I’ve written before, VY’s operator Entergy was on the verge of winning the right to keep the plant open in federal courts when it decided to pull the plug itself. Entergy’s press release announcing the closure cited three factors, none of which involved then-governor Shumlin or those perfidious lib’ruls.

The three, for those keeping score at home, were low natural gas prices, Yankee’s “high cost structure,” and “flaws” in the regional wholesale market that kept prices “artificially low.”

In short, a business decision.

Scott then touted nuclear as “part of the answer.” Public Service Commissioner Kerrick Johnson added this:

The greater number of choices we have, the grater number of options we have, the lower the cost of ultimately the choice we have to make for energy sources. The fewer the options, the higher the cost.

I laugh bitterly. Because the Scott administration generally, and the Public Service Commission specifically, has gone out of its way to limit the options available to us by killing large-scale wind and kneecapping the growth of solar.

I sense a contradiction there. Too bad none of the assembled reporters were up to speed on the recent history of renewable energy in Vermont.

On to homelessness, that stain on our collective soul. Inevitably, Scott was asked about the heart-rending article by Carly Berlin (co-published by VTDigger and Vermont Public) about Lisa and Fred Allard, a couple about to be unsheltered from their state-paid motel room in Barre. The husband has severe medical disabilities, and they’re going to try to get by living in their vehicle.

Scott’s reply contained not an ounce of compassion or reflection on the policy choices unsheltering the Allards and hundreds more. He implied, but did not say outright, that there were plenty of emergency shelters — or perhaps there will be at some point in the future. And then he blamed the unsheltered for their own predicament:

Some could go to shelters as I understand it… but they choose not to because of the preclusion of alcohol or drugs or pets. And I know that’s an issue as well. So emergency shelter is available.

The Allards have a dog, so it’s possible that they turned down a shelter arrangement that would have forced them to abandon their pet. But as Berlin reports, Lisa Allard “had been calling shelters and apartments trying to find somewhere for them to relocate but without any luck thus far.”

Berlin also reports that last summer, central Vermont shelter operator Good Samaritan Haven “counted over 250 unsheltered people in the region — more than twice the number of local shelter beds.” And if a huge quantity of shelter spaces opened up in the last nine months, well, it seems to have escaped notice.

Last summer, when the governor vetoed the Legislature’s attempt to replace the hotel/motel program with something more comprehensive, I wrote a piece entitled “Phil Scott Doesn’t Give a Fuck About the Homeless.”

Still true. To him, they are an inconvenience that needs to be explained away, not a problem that needs to be solved.