I see a story in the Saturday 1/21 Burlington Free Press entitled “Vermont House vote could bring property tax relief,” which starts out like this:

Who says politicians can’t agree?



Friday, the Vermont House of Representatives voted unanimously to add a provision to the annual budget adjustment bill that would gradually beef up the non-property tax dollars that support education.

Under the bill, one-half of any future end-of-year budget surpluses would be added to the Education Fund. And the base figure for state education funding would increase by the amount of that surplus contribution. The aim is to gradually restore recent cuts in state school funding.

Support for the bill came together on Thursday and Friday, with the unanimous vote quickly following. An impressive pace for a legislative body, to be sure.

The Freep recounts congratulatory and self-congratulatory words from supporters of the bill, such as “Hooray” from Steve Jeffrey of the Vermont League of Cities and Towns.

And then, in paragraph seventeen, we hear from the Shumlin Administration. Finance Commissioner Jim Reardon averred that he had only learned of the proposal on Friday, and he had yet to confer with anyone on it. Then, in paragraph nineteen, the Voice of Doom:  

Secretary of Administration Jeb Spaulding also didn’t know the details. “It is one of the things we will look at, but I will be surprised if it is there at the end,” he said.

In other words, this bill is dead. It’ll be killed, one way or another, in the state Senate. Governor Shumlin doesn’t want to split any future surpluses; he wants to put all the money into a budget stabilization fund to boost Vermont’s bond rating.

Which seems a bit green-eyeshade to me, but nonetheless, there it is.

In journalism, this is called “burying the lead” — putting the real thrust of a story somewhere in its midsection. The tone of the Freep article celebrated a bipartisan agreement to quickly enact a good idea. Until, that is, Jeb Spaulding entered the stage. A truer article would have said “House Passes Bill That Will Go Nowhere.”