Standing at the beginning of a new year and a new decade (OK, technically the new decade starts in 2011, but whatever…) is a time for reflection, renewal – and most importantly, awards. Yes, everybody has an award for awards season, which seems to begin around about mid-December and continue til the Oscars.
So we at GMD can recognize a good bandwagon when we see one. We decided we needed our own awards that recognize the many levels and flavors of failure in the Vermont political scene.
And like many other annual awards, ours will be named after our first overall grand prize winner whose infamy would be, shall we say, not so much appropriate fodder for a 60 Minutes expose, as for a primetime sitcom.
For being a stunning political trainwreck of legendary proportions, our first annual overall achievement award could only go to Auditor Tom Salmon Jr.
Salmon, of course, needs no introduction. Politically, he was already an uncoordinated mess (hobbling into office only by way of herculean efforts from the State Democrats, making a fair amount of rookie mistakes, allying with Governor Douglas and working against his party’s leadership and fundamental political philosophy, etc.) before he finally jumped ship to the GOP to the collective cheers of Vermont Democrats.
Of course, that’s when the fun really began. Since then, there was the news about his own financial problems (not great for the man picked to watchdog the state’s books), his use of state personnel and resources to follow him around and make videos of his speeches (including at campaign fundraising events), the rambling, self-aggrandizing speeches, his embarassing attempts at folksy witticisms…. and, oh yeah, the DUI.
With early signs that there will be plenty more to come, Tom Salmon is clearly the gift that keeps on giving. Could there really be any other winner of the Overall Achievement Award for 2009?
And as the first overall winner, the GMD achievement awards are now and forever to be known as the Salmon Awards.
But fear not, dear reader. There are more, oh so many more Salmon awards to be handed out. Please join us below the fold for the winners in the other categories…
The 2009 Canned Salmon Award – Suzanne LaBombard
The Canned Salmon award finds a deserving recipient in former Isle La Motte Town Clerk and Treasurer, Suzanne LaBombard who was sentenced to 90 days in the slammer for embezzling $100,000. from the town treasury back in 2007. Ms. LaBombard’s crime was made all the more intriguing by the fact that her father, Richard LaBrecque, who also happened to be the town lawyer and a selectboard member, reportedly gave her $150,000. to turn over to the Town to make things right again. “No backsies,” was the Town’s ultimate response. Even though her former boyfriend, James Senesec, was also a selectboard member, there are just some little indiscretions that stubbornly refuse to go away. And what was it that compelled Ms. LaBombard to go rogue? Apparently, a big chunk of the money paid for her daughter’s wedding in 2006. No news on how that rather expensive marriage is working out.
The 2009 Sockeye Salmon Award – Mayor Thomas Lauzon
If not for the truly extraordinary efforts of our State Auditor, its likely that the awards would have been named for Barre Mayor Thomas Lauzon. Sadly, the Mayor has to settle this year for a lesser – but still notable – honor.
This past Summer at a community Heritage festival, the mayor squared off in a padded ring to challenge the chairman of the town’s select board. Standing on foam pedestals they attacked each other with Nerf paddles. The Mayor took the bait and scuffled his way to several broken ribs. The Times Argus described the action: Sensing the match slipping away, Lauzon lunged toward Selectman Blow, hoping to topple his adversary, but whiffing instead and breaking his ribs when he slammed into the Selectman’s pedestal.
The Mayor shook his opponent’s hand and headed to the ER.
It was a modern day Nerf version of the historic fist fight that decided the name of Barre. It is possible he was only wishing to relive his Fourth of July parade tackle of Governor Douglas’ cream pie assailant.
Most recently, the Mayor made news by pitching a town official’s cell phone across a meeting as it vibrated. “Your phone was vibrating so I took care of it for you,” he said without elaborating. The GMD Salmon Award committee is recommending keeping an eye on Lauzon for future Sockeyes.
The 2009 King Salmon Award (tie) – Thomas Tremblay, commissioner of public safety, and Jonathan Wood, secretary of the agency of natural resources.
The 2009 “King Salmon” award recognizes two of the most haughty, imperious and royally autocratic conspirators against the rule-of-law currently residing in Vermont’s bureaucracy. Thomas Tremblay and Jonathan Wood showed no qualms about putting their personal, political or ideological agendas above their oath-of-office to uphold Vermont’s laws.
In recognition of their “I am King” demeanor, GMD recognizes Tremblay who decided that he would re-write Vermont’s Sex Offender Registry law to cover the people or various types of offenses that he preferred the law and the legislature include. After a quickly resolved lawsuit in Washington County Superior Court, Commissioner Tremblay was exposed as the first and most flagrant violator of Vermont’s new Sex Offender Registry law, and the department of public safety was forced to comply with Vermont law and forced to comply with the new Sex Offender Registry statute rather than King Tremblay’s naked skirting of the law.
Commissioner Tremblay’s Sex Offender Registry transgressions merit only a tie for 2009, however, given the competition he faced from ANR Secretary Jonathan Wood. Secretary “King Salmon” Wood didn’t just re-write a law he didn’t like, Secretary Wood changed the language of a statute that read “ATV riding is prohibited in designated natural areas and Vermont State parks” to “gunning your ATV in designated natural areas and Vermont parks is just fine when & where I say it is.”
The 2009 Poached Salmon Award – David O’Brien
Poached Salmon Award goes to Public Service Commissioner David O’Brien who chummed up with Verizon Telecomm and gave it the green light for a final rape and pillage before it sucked the marrow out of Vermont’s telecommunications infrastructure and left a rotting carcass of a business for rate payers and Fairpoint to patch together.
Commissioner O’Brien’s clueless behavior and inability to understand the rudimentary aspects of running a business did not start in 2009, but we saw the O’Brien bankruptcy of Fairpoint come to fruition in 2009, which is why he receives GMD’s Poached Salmon Award. Fairpoint’s “Bankruptcy by O’Brien Blueprint” crashed onto Vermont’s telecomm future in 2009 because the Commissioner was so gung ho to let Verizon leave Vermont and take a run up the river with the value of hundreds of million$ of Vermont rate payer assets. What Verizon took in equity was just as bad as the tens, if not hundreds, of millions of $$ Verizon left behind in unsatisfied liabilities to ratepayers, who had been paying years of monopoly rates for upgrades that Verizon never implemented. It was an arrangement that was economically unfeasible from the beginning. Fairpoint’s failure was predicted and predictable and Commissioner O’Brien not only stood by and did nothing, he actively gave the store away to his friends at Verizon – one of the most notoriously rapacious criminal enterprises in the country. By the end of 2009, it was finally clear to everyone that Vermont rate payers had been poached and all David O’Brien is getting is this stinking Salmon Award.
The 2009 Filleted Salmon Award – Jonathan Leopold
Burlington Mayor Bob Kiss’s Chief Administrative Officer, Jonathan Leopold, has never been Mister Popularity within many local political circles, but he vaulted to a whole new level in 2009’s still-developing brouhaha over Burlington Telecom’s funding.
It’s old news these days; Leopold cut a $17 million loan from the City’s general funds to Burlington Telecom (the city-run telecom entity) without seeking approval from the Board of Finance or City Council. As a result, BT is now violating its “certificate of public good” issued by the state by not repaying the loan within 60 days. By hiding the information from the city council, Leopold appeared to be placing himself above the rules and beyond any accountability. While Kiss and his diminishing number of allies on the council have tried to provide cover, Leopold has been in open, public contempt of the very letter and spirit of governmental transparency and accountability.
In the process, Leopold and Kiss have turned a public tussle into a full-on maelstrom, and where Burlington Telecom was in no real political danger when it all started, Leopold’s pathologically arrogant pride has thrown so much gasoline on the flame as to leave BT’s future in jeopardy.
And as a side result, Leopold has been so pilloried by newspapers, websites, and watercooler conversations of every political stripe that only his most diehard, partisan-warrior defenders have not developed a less-than-glowing perception of the long time public servant. As such, he is really the only possible recipient of the 2009 Filleted Salmon award.
The 2009 Chum Salmon Award – Mark & Todd Smith
For consistently tossing plenty of foul, messy, raw meat chunks into the water to attract sharks and generate a wingnut feeding frenzy, the chum salmon award goes to Caledonian Record Publishers Mark & Todd Smith. The Record’s editorial page is a daily thing to behold. From gleefully calling for liberals to commit mass suicide (har-de-har), to a semi-coherent call-to-arms against the creeping hordes of Greenpeace, the Record’s constant reactionary apoplexy makes it something more akin to Michael Savage than Fox News. As such, we expect this to be the first of many Salmons it will receive in the years to come.
The 2009 Smoked (Out) Salmon Award – Major Thomas L’Esperance
Back in March, Governor Douglas announced the promotion of Major Thomas L’Esperance to the post of Director of the Vermont State Police. At the time, Douglas called L’Esperance “a proven leader, a trusted public servant, and he models the spirit of law enforcement cooperation that is essential for the future success of policing in Vermont.”
As readers of this site may remember, that law enforcement “spirit” apparently includes a disregard for personal privacy, as well as reserving the right to expand police powers when deemed convenient (and being, shall we say, less than forthcoming when asked about it by the media). L’Esperance was the key spinmeister during the 2007 Pharmacy Record-Fishing Scandal, in which State Police were approaching Vermont pharamcies and demanding they dump mass presciption data on an entire class of medicines in defiance of both state and federal law.
GMD was the first to break the news, and L’Esperance (who was reportedly involved with the implentation of the “fishing derby,” although that can’t be independently confirmed) quickly hit the Mark Johnson Show, where he denied it was a systemic issue, insisting it was simply a “training issue” and an isolated case. That was just before lobbyist Anthony Otis (whose clients include the Pharamacists’ association) phoned in to correct the Major, informing him and the radio audience that at least two other incidents across the state had been identified. L’Esperance did the radio equivalent of a deer in the headlights routine, and by the end of that same week, the State Police held its “mistakes were made” press conference and stopped the practice.
Although the pharmacy issue was two years back, L’Esperance’s promotion in 2009 makes him an easy choice for the Smoked (Out) Salmon Award.
The 2009 Steelhead Salmon Award – Washington County Sheriff Sam Hill and His Mystery Deputy
In early December, a Washington County sheriff’s deputy accidentally fired his gun in a Barre courthouse. Washington County Sheriff (What in) Sam Hill has not released the name of the deputy ’cause, you know, its all so embarrassing.
As Julie Waters wrote at the time, “Sheriff’s deputy brings personal gun to work. Decides to take it to work because he’s on a motorcycle and can’t secure it properly. I’m guessing the rest of the story goes something like this: Sheriff’s deputy, thinking gun is unloaded, decides to play with it in courthouse. Hijinks ensue.”
As far as Sheriff Hill was concerned, the whole silly business only merited a week long suspension for a little safety training. Presumably a two week suspension would have necessitated the involvement of a grenade.
The 2009 Pink Salmon Award – Rep. Sonny Audette
South Burlington Democratic Representative (King) Sonny Audette voted against marriage equality in the Vermont House. A devout Catholic, the longtime lawmaker indicated that he felt torn between what he saw as his religious duty and, let’s face it, what conscience clearly indicated was the right thing to do. After the veto, Audette was the first to express great umbrage at the way the Governor handled (bungled) the announcement of his intent to veto, suggesting that he would likely vote to override simply to rap Douglas’s knuckles.
But the pressure mounted from all sides on Audette. On the big day itself, though, he was generally expected to vote for the override, which was likely going to rise or fall on his single yea-or-nay.
And then he called in sick.
Audette claimed his gout was acting up. But even though word was out that he was going to vote to override, he told the Free Press that he would’ve voted to uphold the veto. So not only does he call in sick for the highest pressure vote of his career, he tries to find a way to get credit among both camps for being on their side through it all.
You be the judge. Thankfully, his vote wasn’t necessary, and history was made. For his conveniently gout-driven “Schroedinger’s vote,” Rep. Audette gets the 2009 Pink Salmon Award
Should go to the legislators who forgot to put in a start date in a bill that would have stopped a bunch of state worker layoffs. What were they smoking?
“What in Sam Hill have you done now?”
A regular reader of late, I am proud of GMD: you folks have some cojones. The recipients seem to have one thing in common: arrogance. Evidently power, even the slightest bit, still corrupts.
Not to put too fine a point on it and detract from what is certainly a well thought out and deserved set of awards but the last year of the first decade of the 21st century was 2009. 2010 is the first year of the second decade. I’m certain you agree that 2000 was the first year of the 21st century. Start counting at 2000 and when you get to 2009 that’s a decade, ten years.