The Vermont Senate is set to debate a miscellaneous tax bill including a new $7.5 million tax on the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant.
Backers say the tax is needed to replace money that Vermont Yankee had been paying into state coffers to support renewable energy. The agreement calling for those payments ended March 21st, the date the plant was originally set to shut down.
But the plant is still operating, and backers of the tax say Vermont Yankee should keep paying about the amount it did previously.
Critics of the tax call it unfair and punitive. They point to ongoing litigation in federal court in which Vermont Yankee and its owner, New Orleans-based Entergy Corp., are trying to dodge the state’s efforts to shut the plant down.