It was, in the words of one Statehouse reporter, "The best news conference in four years."

Indeed, Gov. Douglas' Thursday news conference took a strange turn.

It has been a bit of a shell-shocking week for the governor. There's this matter of the Bennington State Office Building, which is making employees sick. And then, the state's technology system seems to be scattering people's personal information all over the World Wide Web. Not to mention that moments after agreeing that new taxes wouldn't solve the school spending problem, the Legislature proposed a surcharge in the property transfer tax to pay for farm aid.

Those were the issues reporters grilled Douglas about at Thursday's news conference. Near the end, Ross Sneyd of the Associated Press asked the governor if it had been a rough week and was he being a bit defensive about the crises at hand. Sneyd was, in fact, putting words to the very thought that was in my mind.

That's when things turned strange. Douglas blamed his political opponents:

"There are obviously people who are not interested in my political success, and
they’re certainly exercising every opportunity to try to act on that belief this
year."

Then he blamed the media:

"Some of the questions I get from the media sound an awful lot like some of the
e-mails that come out of the other party headquarters."

Huh? I was speechless. Was he saying that questioning the technology security breaches or the delays at the Bennington office building was somehow political? Which Democratic memo had I been unknowingly following?

Fortunately, Sneyd was not entirely speechless. He asked if Douglas was accusing us of carrying the Dems' water.

"I would never make that assertion," Douglas said.

"I think you just did," Sneyd responded.

Not long afterward - while I fumed about the accusations and Democratic legislators held a press conference of their own on the farm aid issue - Douglas spokesman Jason Gibbs told us the governor wanted to see us again.

There, Douglas apologized for his comments. "It’s not characteristic, as I think you know," he said.

He said he let one question early on in the news conference get to him. That question came from Peter Freyne, the Seven Days reporter who’s long been Douglas’ chief combatant at news conferences. Freyne, just back after his first round of chemotherapy to treat lymphoma but obviously still ready to duel with Douglas, raised an issue brought to his attention the Vermont State Employees Association. Did Douglas know that the owner Fecteau Homes, the company putting in some of the modular buildings in Bennington, was a contributor to Douglas’ campaign?

At the time, Douglas responded calmly, but apparently was steaming underneath. He said he didn’t know that Fecteau was a contributor, but that the company submitted the lowest price and had the smaller of two contracts. Fecteau, he said, would also have to pay for cleaning up the mold in the modular buildings.

At his apology session, Douglas said the question was unfair and irritated him because it questioned his integrity:

"I reacted to a question earlier in the press conference that I think
questioned my integrity and that’s something I resent strongly and something
that affected my answers throughout the balance of the press conference today.''

I've never been one for soap operas, but this edition of the live reality show "As the Statehouse Turns" was a memorable one.

- Terri Hallenbeck