One politician's bacon is another's pork, so it was no surprise to hear local legislators crying over Gov. Mitt Romney's veto of projects promised for their districts.

But while we've applauded the governor's fiscal conservatism and commend him for taking a close look at the myriad items contained in the $724 million supplemental spending bill passed by the Legislature this month, two of his vetoes leave us scratching our heads.

One was for the $5.7 million for flood relief in Peabody Square. The other was for expansion of a cooperative program involving Salem State College and North Shore Medical Center designed to help solve the state's critical shortage of qualified nurses.

Both were recommended to the governor by agencies within the executive branch — the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency in the case of the Peabody flood control project and the Board of Higher Education in the case of the expansion of Salem State's nursing program.

Thus the claim by the governor's spokesman that the administration did not have sufficient information or justification for these projects rings hollow.

Indeed, Peabody Square was Ground Zero for television reporters covering last spring's deluge that caused serious flooding throughout the state. He couldn't have missed the fact Foster Street was underwater for several days.

Having been built on what was once a mill pond at the confluence of several streams, downtown Peabody has always been subject to serious flooding problems. But according to several who attended a meeting in Mayor Michael Bonfanti's office in April, it was actually at MEMA's suggestion that legislators led by Senate Majority Leader Frederick E. Berry, D-Peabody, sought to secure the state funding that might leverage more than $20 million in federal money to install new culverts that would fix the situation once and for all.

There are many established businesses and a growing number of housing projects that populate the area around Peabody Square. They aren't going away. And unless someone is willing to suggest they simply have to live with the occasional disaster, something should be done to help divert the water that rushes into the area during long periods of heavy rain or when there's a sudden thaw with lots of snow still on the ground.

City officials have a plan, but it's an expensive one that the city can't afford to implement on its own. But the sudden availability of state and federal relief seemed to open a window of opportunity — until it was slammed shut Friday by the governor's veto. There were indications this week that the administration might be having second thoughts and would be amenable to an appropriation when the Legislature returns to formal session early next year, but Berry's fear is that by then the federal match might have been gobbled up by projects related to the recent series of hurricanes in Florida that will be competing for those funds.

Equally inexplicable was the decision to veto a modest appropriation — about $1 million — that would have allowed Salem State College to upgrade its laboratories, hire more instructors, and increase enrollment in its graduate and undergraduate nursing programs.

Berry and the program's sponsors saw this as an absolute win-win for the administration. It would allow Salem State to offer more students — there's currently a waiting list — an opportunity to train as nurses, and would at the same time alleviate the serious shortage of personnel that hospitals, including North Shore Medical Center, are suffering.

Romney, like many politicians on both sides of the aisle, have made much of the need to provide training for young people interested in careers in well-paying and growing career fields of which health care is certainly one. His actions, in this instance, hardly match his words.