Consistency has never been a hallmark of Congress, but sneaking an amendment to kill a Massachusetts wind farm into a spending bill shows there isn’t much substance behind recent claims that lawmaking will be more transparent.

The last-minute maneuver, which would give the governor of Massachusetts veto power over the project, is also in opposition to Congress’ stand that the federal government, not the states, will have the final say on siting another source of energy, liquefied natural gas facilities. The amendment must be stripped from the Coast Guard authorization bill.

Alaska’s delegation first tried to stop a plan to install 130 wind turbines in federal waters in Nantucket Sound with arbitrary new rules. Rep. Don Young, an Alaska Republican, attached an amendment to a Coast Guard Reauthorization bill that would prohibit wind energy facilities within 1.5 nautical miles of shipping and ferry routes (oil rigs, by the way, can be within 500 feet of a shipping lane).

While ensuring wind turbines don’t interfere with navigation is important, there was no basis for this arbitrary, one-size-fits-all prohibition, especially in light of an ongoing Coast Guard review that took these concerns into consideration.

When this didn’t work, Rep. Young and fellow Alaskan and Republican Sen. Ted Stevens teamed up to sneak a different amendment into the bill. The amendment, which allows the commandant of the Coast Guard to nix the Cape Wind project for navigational reasons or the Massachusetts governor (Mitt Romney has repeatedly expressed his vehement opposition) to veto it for any reason, was added in conference committee and never debated in the House or Senate.

At a time when the president has said more alternative energy is needed to reduce America’s reliance on oil from foreign countries, one governor should not be able to stop a federal project that would produce the same amount of energy annually as 113 million gallons of oil while reducing greenhouse gas emissions by nearly 1 million tons a year, the equivalent of taking 162,000 cars off the road.

Giving Gov. Romney veto power also runs roughshod over the Massachusetts Energy Facilities Siting Board, which was created more than 20 years ago by the state assembly to oversee such projects. The board approved Cape Wind last year.

Also last year, Congress approved, over the objection of many states, a bill giving final authority over LNG projects to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Either the federal government should regulate energy projects with national implications or it should not, but such determinations can’t be made on a case-by-case basis.

Rep. Tom Allen is working with his New England colleagues to remove the amendment from the bill. Two senators who are leaders on energy issues, New Mexico’s Pete Domenici, a Republican, and Jeff Bingaman, a Democrat, are doing the same and have been joined by Sen. Susan Collins. Sen. Olympia Snowe should join this effort.