Updated at 5:39 p.m.
For the second year in a row, Gov. Phil Scott plans to veto a bill that would set up a clean heat standard, the biggest climate priority of Vermont’s legislative session.
“I will veto S.5, and I’m asking Vermonters, even the many who have already contacted their legislators, to make their voices heard and ask their representatives and senators to sustain this veto,” Scott wrote in a statement on Friday.
Both the House and the Senate have passed the bill, but it has not yet reached the governor’s desk.
Though a similar measure failed by a single vote to overcome Scott’s veto last May, lawmakers may have the votes this time. Both bodies would need a two-thirds majority of those present to make the bill law, should Scott exercise his veto power.
The House will override the veto, “full stop. There’s not a question in my mind,” said Conor Kennedy, chief of staff to House Speaker Jill Krowinski, D-Burlington.
The Senate voted 20-10 Thursday to agree to changes the House made in the bill, sending it to the governor’s desk and indicating that the body likely has the votes for an override. But in an interview on Friday, Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Baruth, D/P-Chittenden Central, didn’t make any promises.
“When you’re whipping votes, you’re always doing it with your knuckles white,” Baruth said. “We will stay in touch with our people and make sure that the disinformation that’s coming from the other side doesn’t sway them unnecessarily.”
Scott’s statement on Friday underlined his concerns about the bill’s potential financial impact and a process he said wouldn’t guarantee that “the details and costs will be debated transparently through the normal legislative process, in full view of their constituents.”
The bill, which lawmakers have titled the Affordable Heat Act, aims to reduce fossil fuel emissions that come from heating and cooling Vermont’s homes. It’s designed to accomplish that goal through a clean heat standard, which would require businesses that bring heating-related fossil fuels into the state to help fund the transition to new heating systems that pollute less.
The clean heat standard would operate through a credit market. Fuel dealers would owe a certain number of credits to offset the emissions associated with fossil fuels they brought into the state. At the same time, individuals and entities, including fuel dealers, could earn credits by installing certain “clean heat” measures, such as cold-climate electric heat pumps or home weatherization. Credits would be traded through a designated agency.
Scott’s announcement comes amid a fierce disagreement among those who support and oppose the bill about the basic meaning of its text.
To make sure that the impacts of the bill would be studied in depth before the program was implemented, lawmakers added a “check-back” provision to the bill that requires that it be voted on again by the Legislature in 2025.
In the meantime, the state’s Public Utility Commission would construct the program and prepare to implement it. Then, the commission would present the plan to lawmakers in 2025, and at that point lawmakers could choose to pass a separate bill implementing the program, make changes, or do nothing.
Some pieces of the program — including registering fuel dealers with the state and designating an agency to potentially manage the program — would move forward between now and 2025.
But, according to the Legislature’s lawyers, the credit market portion of the clean heat standard — the meat of the bill, and the part that has sparked the most debate about how it could impact Vermonters financially — would not move forward until it’s studied more.
Opponents of the bill, such as Scott, say that, due to paragraphs in the bill that appear to contradict each other, the bill could actually allow the Public Utility Commission to move forward sooner.
“Even Democratic senators who voted for the bill acknowledged the check back is a ‘leap of faith,’ meaning a future Legislature could interpret the language much differently and only pass legislation that rubber stamps the rules and insulates themselves from the tough policy conversations, including details and costs,” Scott said. “I believe it is irresponsible to move forward on a policy with such enormous consequences based on a ‘leap of faith.’”
Baruth called Scott’s statements from Friday and last week “highly political” and said they “contain inaccuracies that the other ones don’t,” referring to Scott’s assessment of the check-back provision.
“My feeling about his last two statements has been that they were very long on politics and completely short on any solution of any kind to deal with the climate change crisis,” he said.
Political debate about climate change in Vermont is looking more like what happens nationally, Baruth said, “where Republicans are refusing to legislate or create policy.”
“Phil Scott is a trusted voice in Vermont,” he said. “And it’s a shame when he moves into a more political partisan mode, because in a sense, it’s abusing that trust.”
Scott said he agrees that the state needs to take action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the thermal sector.
“However, I strongly believe the right approach is to help people make the transition, not financially punish those who cannot afford to do so,” he said.
Kennedy, Krowinski’s chief of staff, said in an interview Friday that the transition to heating systems that pollute less is already underway in Vermont. The clean heat standard, he said, is “a system and a process to support Vermonters” by giving them “access to the resources that they are going to need to help weatherize their homes and, in the long run, actually save money.”
House leadership doesn’t understand Scott’s concern with the check-back provision, he said.
“I think at this point, most of the Legislature is kind of, I would say, dumbfounded at his concerns with the bill, given that we’ve specifically worked hard to address his issues around the check-back provision, and making sure that we really do have the extra oversight of the process before things are enacted,” Kennedy said.
The bill was likely to land on Scott’s desk by the end of the day Friday. Because the bill originated in the Senate, the body would be first to attempt an override.
Clarification: An earlier version of this story did not specify which of Gov. Scott’s statements Sen. Baruth claimed was inaccurate.