I’m beginning to think of Sen. Steven Heffernan as the Mr. Magoo of the Vermont Statehouse, especially since I learned on Wikipedia that Magoo was originally intended to be “a mean-spirited reactionary.” That would have been an interesting choice in 1949 when the Red Scare was raging, but the character was recast as an amiable bungler before the first cartoon was made. Heffernan manages to encompass both the “mean-spirited reactionary” bit with the daft digressions of the Magoo so familiar to us children of the Sixties.

The reactionary was on display in Heffernan’s May 15 musings about having sex with dogs. He pivoted to his Magoo persona on Tuesday, and baffled his fellow solons with a lengthy objection to a bill that no one seemed able to follow and he was at a loss to explain.

At issue was H.710, one of those bills that causes deep slumber in anyone besides fanboys of lawmakin’ trivia. The title itself makes you think Mr. Sandman is sprinkling fairy dust on your eyelids: “An act relating to defining electricity generating facilities.” What it would do is allow multiple renewable energy generators located contiguously to be defined as a single plant. Say, if there are three solar arrays sited next to each other, they could be considered a single facility under state law.

The bill passed the House on a 108-30 vote. The Senate Natural Resources & Energy Committee rewrote the bill and approved it unanimously. Senate Appropriations also gave unanimous consent. It was on the Senate’s Tuesday agenda, and that’s when Heffernan offered an amendment to delay the bill’s effective date by two years. He explained himself in a long, discursive statement that he appeared to be reading for the very first time, so halting and unsteady was his delivery.

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