The Vermont Public Utilities Commission is considering GlobalFoundries’ application to break away from Green Mountain Power and form its own utility. The proposal may or may not be taken up; there’s a question about whether the PUC has statutory authority to consider the plan. That must be resolved before the PUC can fully consider the plan itself.

But it looks as though the Scott administration has a backup idea. Its officials, who occupy eight seats on the 23-member Vermont Climate Council, are trying to slip the basic tenets of GF’s proposal into the Climate Action Plan being developed by the Council.

As a reminder, GF wants to set up its own utility and save money by buying its power on the regional wholesale market. Its proposal would exempt the bespoke utility from the Global Warming Solutions Act as well as a variety of other state laws and regulations and a gross receipts tax levied on power providers.

The busybodies at the Conservation Law Foundation, which is arguing against the GF plan, has filed a comment with the Council that describes a very permissive carve-out for “Semiconductor Manufacturing in Vermont,” a.k.a. GlobalFoundries, that administration officials are trying to insert into the Climate Plan.

According to the CLF memo, the carve-out is generous indeed to GF.

It was yet another Covid briefing full of same-old, same-old. Carefully chosen statistics, evidence-free optimism, whistling past the graveyard, vigorous straw-man punching, self-pity, and not a lick of policy change despite the fact that new cases and hospitalizations continue to be distressingly high. Rather than trying to find a new theme in today’s performance, here’s a collection of random notes from a dispirited observer.

The question of the day came from the Vermont Business Journal’s Tim McQuiston: “Why should we care about kids getting Covid at all?”

Lest you think I’m unfairly plucking that out of context, here’s the rest of his statement (only slightly abridged):

There’s been a lot of difficulty in child care and finding workers for child care. The parents have to stay at home. Now with cases in schools, kids might have to be quarantined and stay at home. … Why should we care about kids getting Covid at all? It’s creating a lot of disruption for them. It’s obviously disrupting the economy. Cases and their symptoms are very low, but there’s a lot of effort still going on, still a lot of disruption.

Eesh. McQuiston works for a publication that caters to business, but that’s approaching Ebenezer Scrooge territory. Gov. Phil Scott replied that we have to keep cases down among children because they might spread it to more vulnerable people.

And then Health Commissioner Dr. Mark Levine said something that shouldn’t have been remarkable, but it was. He actually mentioned long Covid!

This week, we’ve already “honored” Gov. Phil Scott with one of our not-at-all-coveted Veepie Awards (given to those guilty of stupidity and/or obtuseness in the public sphere). But our Selection Committee hasn’t been sitting on its hands. No, it’s been out there scouring the highways and byways — ahh, who am I kidding? Potential Veepies are abundant. They practically come a-knockin’ on our door.

So, our first regularly scheduled Veepie is the What? A politician is fundraising? Oh, my heart! Award. It goes, not to an individual or group, but to a concept. This week, VTDigger published one of those “Oh well, we gotta do this” stories about the July 1 campaign finance reports. The only nugget of news was Lt. Gov. Molly Gray raising $50,000 so far this year. And there was a distinct undercurrent of disapproval.

This is partly because Gray stood out among her fellow statewide officeholders. But it also feeds into the widely-held view of Gray as a political opportunist who hasn’t paid her dues. Well, folks, I have to tell you I have no problem with Gray raising money in an off year. Those other officeholders are established in their positions. Gov. Phil Scott does as little fundraising as he can. The Democratic statewides are politically bulletproof.

Gray isn’t firmly established, and she had a surplus of only $20,000 from her 2020 campaign. She can use a bigger war chest. And sure, it feeds into the perception that Gray is a climber with her eyes set on higher office. I see nothing wrong with that, either. A politician being ambitious? Get the smelling salts!

After the jump: An extremely belated make-good, an outbreak of NIMBYism, and a media misstep.

A little good environmental news, courtesy of the Valley News by way of VTDigger: The long, expensive, difficult cleanup of the Elizabeth Mine Superfund site may be finished by the end of this year.

Huzzahs all around. Great news for our environment and for the town of Strafford, which has borne the brunt of the cleanup effort.

But the story also mentions two other Superfund sites in eastern Vermont: the Pike Hill Copper Mine in Corinth and the Ely Copper Mine in Vershire. Which made me wonder, how many Superfund sites does Vermont have, anyway?

The answer, according to the EPA’s website, is 14. (Not counting the Saint-Gobain site that’s wreaked havoc with Bennington-area water supplies. The actual site is in New York.)

Next question: How does our total compare with other states?

The answer: in absolute numbers, pretty good. On a per capita basis, not so much.

I ran the numbers for other New England states and threw in my home state of Michigan, a former industrial powerhouse that might be expected to have a lot of Superfund sites. Sad to say, Vermont’s the worst of the lot.