Last week, Gov. Phil Scott reached another landmark. Not in a good way, and not that anyone noticed. He vetoed two bills, S.230 and H.710. According to the Vermont State Archives, they were his 63rd and 64th vetoes*, which means he has issued more than three times as many vetoes as any other governor in the history of the state. (Howard Dean is in second place with a measly 21, and he was in office longer than Scott.) That fact should not be overlooked when this guy professes a devotion to working across the aisle and getting things done and (cough) not being a politician.

*As of this writing, VSARA lists 62 Scott veto messages but has not officially posted S.230 and H.710. Just in case anyone follows the link and tries to fact check.

This post concerns the latter veto, which borders on the inexplicable — even for a veto-crazy chief executive. The House passed H.710 on a lopsided 108-30 vote, and it was so uncontroversial in the Senate that no one asked for a roll call. It passed without a recorded vote.

You may recall H.710 from the outrageous objections made by Republican Sen. Steven Heffernan, Addison County’s extremist-in-moderate’s-clothing. Mind you, Heffernan wasn’t arguing against the bill; he merely wanted to postpone its effective date by two years so its potential impact could be studied further. His completely imaginary concern was that Vermont farmland was being gobbled up by giant solar arrays, and H.710 might accelerate that trend. Despite his objection, he didn’t offer a “No” vote, nor did he request a roll call.

His concern, as I reported earlier, exists solely in his own mind. The actual amount of farmland given over to solar is vanishingly small.

But wait. That thought, or something even more insidious, also exists in the mind of Phil Scott. Because he whipped out his veto pen and consigned H.710 to the dustbin of Stuff He Doesn’t Like.

High on the list of Stuff He Doesn’t Like is large-scale renewable energy. And in his mind, H.710 would have opened the doors to a major buildout of solar and wind installations that threatened to transform the Vermont landscape.

In truth, the bill proposed a technical alteration in the law that would have made it slightly easier to build renewables under certain circumstances. The potential harm is a figment of Scott’s imagination. (WCAX-TV ran a laughably lazy “both sides” story that quoted two key lawmakers dismissing Scott’s concerns and dredged up anti-renewable activist Annette Smith as the veto supporter. Seriously, if Annette Smith is the best you can do, either try harder or don’t do the story at all.)

Scott’s veto is remarkably tone-deaf to the moment. Trump’s pointless war with Iran just sent fossil fuel process through the goddamn roof. Isn’t this the time to promote our independence from oil? It’d be good for the planet and a boon to Vermont’s economy. The more energy we generate in-state, the fewer dollars we send to distant suppliers. And the less dependent we are on the swings and roundabouts of the world oil market.

Also, there are plenty of safeguards to prevent allegedly viewscape-destroying renewable development. The Scott administration has seen to that very effectively. Wind energy is essentially unbuildable in Vermont, and Scott’s Public Service Department and Public Utility Commission have done their level best to limit large-scale solar.

Now? They’re starting to go after home-scale solar installations. And if Scott does win another term, things seem likely to get a lot worse on that front.

A few necessary definitions. I hope I’m getting this right, because the system is complicated. The PSD is a department within the executive branch whose leaders were appointed by the governor. The PUC is a kind of judiciary body that issues rulings on energy-related issues. Two of its three commissioners are Scott appointees; the third, Margaret Cheney (wife of U.S. Sen. Peter Welch), was originally appointed by Peter Shumlin but has been reappointed by Scott. She has generally voted with her colleagues on renewable energy issues.

Every two years, the PUC has to update the rules of the net metering program., which allows home solar owners to earn credits on their electricity bills if their systems generate more power than they use. They effectively “sell” the remaining power to their utility. The PUC just went through this process with mixed results — but at the same time, the Commission left the door open to further changes in net metering that could hamstring home solar development.

The PSD started the ball rolling with a truly punitive set of recommendations. It proposed a freeze in net metering rates which, taking inflation into account, would amount to a gradual reduction in utility payouts. It would also signal an abandonment of the state’s longstanding commitment to dependable, sustainable net metering rates. The PSD proposal would have applied to new installations and existing arrays alike. In the words of Renewable Energy Vermont’s Jonathan Dowds, it “would have retroactively reduced the compensation owed to more than 20,000 Vermont net metering customers and upended the market for new renewable projects in Vermont.”

The freeze would have created uncertainty for banks and other lending institutions, making it harder for homeowners to pay for new solar installations. For those who already have solar, it amounts to a retroactive take-back — a changing of the rules in the middle of the game.

This comes at a terrible time for solar, when the Trump administration and Congress have ended the 30% federal tax credit for home solar installations. This is an especially terrible time for the state to make solar even less accessible.

The PSD recommendation was met with loud and overwhelmingly negative feedback. During the often sleepy public comment period, the PUC received more than 1,000 comments, an extraordinary amount. All but THREE expressed opposition to the PSD plan.

Do you know how rare it is to get that kind of lopsided response from the public? It’s almost unheard of.

Perhaps it made a difference, because the PUC’s decision was a significant improvement on the PSD’s recommendation. It wasn’t a win for renewables, but it blocked the worst aspects of the PSD proposal. Details available at the link.

At the same time, the PUC’s order included this chilling preview:

The Commission understands that the current version of Commission Rule 5.100 may have run its course, and we will be issuing an order in the next few months announcing a process for making changes to the net-metering rule.

Those changes will almost certainly impose crippling restrictions on net metering, making it even more unaffordable for homeowners. If the governor is in office for another term, the PUC will rewrite the net metering program.

Which leads me back to this post’s headline. If you care about renewables, if you care about Vermont becoming more energy independent and fighting climate change, you have no business voting to re-elect the governor.

I’ve been following this story for a few weeks at the suggestion of several VPO readers. Apparently no one else in our sadly depleted news media has been doing the same, because none of this has been reported by any of our respectable journalistic institutions. None. That’s depressing.