Leading lawmakers and the Douglas administration are feuding again over the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant.
House Speaker Gaye Symington — the Democratic gubernatorial candidate — and Senate President Pro Tem Peter Shumlin say Gov. Jim Douglas has shown a failure of leadership with his veto of a bill on the Vermont Yankee decommissioning fund.
Douglas vetoed legislation that would have called on plant owner Entergy Nuclear to make financial guarantees that the fund to dismantle the plant would be adequate before the company could sell off Vermont Yankee and four other nuclear plants.
Administration officials are replying by accusing the Democrats of political grandstanding, saying they turned down a possible compromise on the bill so they could use the issue to attack the governor.