[G]ov. Peter Shumlin vetoed a bill Friday that would have expanded the board of Vermont’s Clean Water Fund to include members of the Legislature and the public.
The bill, H.518, passed the Legislature earlier this month. It would have added four people outside of the Shumlin administration to the five-person Clean Water Fund Board, which was created in 2015 as part of the water quality bill designed in part to clean up Lake Champlain.
The board, which recommends uses for the fund, met for the first time in August. The members represent the Agency of Administration, Agency of Agriculture, Agency of Commerce and Community Development, Agency of Natural Resources, and Agency of Transportation.
Under H.518, two of the people added to the board would have been House representatives, or people appointed by the Speaker, and two would have been senators, or people appointed by the Senate Committee on Committees. Each appointee would have been required to hail from separate watersheds, and they would have served three-year terms.
Rep. Robert Krebs, D-South Hero, was the sole sponsor on the bill. It passed the House Committee on Fish, Wildlife, and Water Resources and eventually passed through the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Energy. There were no roll call votes on the legislation.
Sen. John Rodgers, D-Essex/Orleans, sits on the Senate Natural Resources Committee. He said members of the committee “all supported it” largely because Krebs felt very strongly that there weren’t enough members of the public involved. Krebs was not available for comment Friday afternoon.
“I kind of had mixed feelings about it,” Rodgers said. He said members decided in 2015 not to appoint public members to the board “because we wanted somebody who was going to be accountable. If you aren’t getting the results, how do you hold a member of the public accountable?”
In a statement released Friday afternoon announcing the veto, Shumlin said that Administration Secretary Justin Johnson and Natural Resources Secretary Deb Markowitz both raised concerns about changes to the board.
“In enacting the most comprehensive clean water legislation in Vermont’s history last year, we took an important step toward cleaning up Vermont’s lakes and waterways, which have been neglected for too long,” Shumlin said.
“An important part of that is the Clean Water Fund Board, which is responsible for taking public comment and steering funding to targeted projects that achieve the goals of the law,” he said. “The makeup of that Board was a known and negotiated part of the overall bill that I signed.”
“The Board was constituted to be an entity with the ability to act thoughtfully and expeditiously to move us towards cleaner water in Vermont,” Shumlin said. “The Board has been in existence for less than a year, and I believe we should give it time to work before we contemplate making any changes.”
