Gov. Peter Shumlin signed a bill into law Monday that proponents say will impose tougher sound standards on wind turbines and give towns a greater say over where renewable projects are built.
Shumlin signed the bill at the Addison County Regional Planning Commission office in Middlebury, in a county where a number of large-scale energy projects have been proposed.
S.260 was approved by the Legislature during a veto session convened Thursday after Shumlin refused to sign an earlier version that detractors said would halt wind development in the state for at least a year.
House Republicans wanted to override the governor’s veto and keep the original bill, S.230, in place, but House Speaker Shap Smith didn’t have the votes for a veto and supported the new version of the bill, S.260.
The new legislation corrects errors introduced into S.230 at the end of the legislative session.
House Republican Minority Leader Don Turner, R-Milton, said he and his colleagues lacked sufficient time to adequately vet S.260.
The bill was drafted and shepherded through the Legislature by Sen. Chris Bray, D-Addison, who urged his colleagues before Thursday’s one-day veto session to leave politics out of the bill.
The Senate ultimately supported S.260 in a tripartisan vote, 27 to 2 vote.
“I want people to have faith their publicly elected officials show up and want to do the best work they can, and I think that’s what we did last week,” Bray said.
The senator disputed Turner’s complaint that legislators lacked enough time to vet the bill. Bray says he emailed the new bill to every legislator three days before the vote, which should have been enough time for lawmakers to review the 14 lines in the 43-page bill that had been altered.
Bray also rejected accusations of improper corporate influence, frequently leveled by anti-wind groups against him, Shumlin and Rep. Tony Klein, D-East Montpelier. Klein and Bray head the House Natural Resources and Energy Committee and the Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee, respectively.
“I have not had any request from [industry] folks to do this, to make these changes, to bring this bill forward — it’s just not true,” Bray said. “I have not been paid by anyone to do this either.”
Bray said his work on the bill was motivated by the 18 towns in Addison County that wanted more of a say over the renewable energy project approval process.
In his first Senate race, Bray said he received a donation from Vermont wind developer David Blittersdorf, but said he hasn’t seen Blittersdorf in years.
Klein also denied anyone in the renewable energy industry had influenced his actions in the House.
“There seems to be this underlying theme that anything anybody does around here is a conspiracy,” Klein said last week. “It isn’t true. If I’m part of a conspiracy, I’m not getting very rich at it.”
Correction: The bill-signing was in Middlebury, not New Haven.
