On the last day to act on the 203 bills passed in the legislature’s annual session, Gov. Ned Lamont vetoed a measure Tuesday that would have given the Eastern Connecticut town of Plainfield leverage in blocking a proposed trash-to-energy plant.

In vetoing House Bill 7004, the governor heeded calls by labor and business groups. The measure would have allowed environmental justice communities of a certain size to reverse decisions on permitting by the state through referendums.

“Allowing permitting decisions to be overturned by referenda undermines the principles of objectivity embedded in our state permitting processes, will discourage important investments in infrastructure and ultimately will drive up cost of living for residents,” Lamont wrote in his veto message.

The veto was his third and least controversial: The others were an omnibus housing bill that had been drafted in consultation with his office and a measure that would have provided jobless benefits to strikers, which had been passed despite his veto threat.

The governor also had previously used a line-item veto to excise sections of two other bills that became law.

No attempted veto overrides are expected.

House Bill 7004 was passed by the Senate in the final hour of the annual session in a deal with the Republican minority, which can control the flow of business in a session’s final days by extending debates. The measure was called for a vote with the expectation of a veto by Lamont.

Construction trade unions had lobbied against the bill on the grounds it could prevent job-producing projects. The Connecticut Business and Industry Association also was opposed.

“Predictability is critical for those seeking to do business in our state,” Lamont wrote.

Under current law, referendums challenging permitting decisions by the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection are only allowed in certain environmental justice communities located in towns with populations under 10,000. In addition, those referendums can only challenge a permit denial, not an approval. 

The bill would have increased that eligibility to towns with up to 16,000 residents, covering Plainfield and two dozen other communities, and would have allowed residents to challenge approved permits.

Its sponsor in the upper chamber, Sen. Heather Somers, R-Groton, denied before the veto that it had been drafted specifically to address the proposed waste-to-energy plant in her district.

Instead, she said it was intended to apply more broadly across Eastern Connecticut, which she noted is dotted with former mill towns that still bear the consequences of industrial pollution, and which is already home to three waste-to-energy facilities, in Plainfield, Lisbon and Preston. 

“Many of us in the delegation are tired of having the most populated area of Connecticut want to put stuff in the eastern part where it’s less populated, where people live here,” she said, even pointing to a year-old example when then-Gov. Dannel P. Malloy sought to build a state police firing range in Griswold. 

“Everything that maybe nobody else wants, they want to always push in Eastern Connecticut,” she said.

But another member of the Southeastern Connecticut delegation who served as the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Aundre Bumgardner, D-Groton, said that the Plainfield proposal had been the primary impetus for the bill. Bumgardner, whose district does not include Plainfield, said that Somers had introduced him to a few of her constituents from the town in order to hear their concerns about the proposed facility. 

“That came out of Plainfield,” he said. 

Bumgardner, who served as vice chair of the Environment Committee, said that he agreed with Somers that the region has had to accept more than its fair share of polluting facilities and that local governments should have more say in future siting decisions. 

“I think at the end of the day, every resident of a community should have the ability to vocalize strongly, vocalize where they stand on projects or infrastructure projects or facilities that are proposed to be sited in their backyard,” Bumgardner said. “Again, whether they’re urban, rural or suburban communities, they should have that right.”

On Tuesday, Somers called the veto “disappointing and unfortunate.”