Governor Shumlin has issued his first and only veto of 2012, and it’s deeply troubling in a couple of ways. The vetoed bill would have required the Agency of Human Services to issue monthly reports to the Legislature on elder abuse in Vermont — a program that’s been understaffed for years, resulting in a hefty backlog of cases.
Shumlin’s veto came with some blistering words, viz. VTDigger:
The governor lanced into lawmakers for proposing a bill that “does nothing to advance the goal of protecting those vulnerable Vermonters, and adds yet another layer of bureaucracy to state government, and wastes taxpayer dollars.”
Small problem. Backers of the bill say they took pains to ensure that the legislation was acceptable to the administration.
Rep. Sandy Haas, D-Rochester*, said she was flabbergasted by the veto.
“We worked with them and we came to an accord, and they said, ‘Fine, we can do it,'” Haas said. “That’s the place where we’re scratching our heads.”
[Sen. Claire] Ayer took umbrage at the governor’s message to lawmakers. “It was an insulting, condescending veto,” Ayer said. “I think he must have the wrong information because it’s a good bill.”
*Correction: Rep. Haas was identified by VTDigger as a Democrat; she is, in fact, a Progressive.
So when the bill passed, the Administration was fine with it. Now that the Legislature has left town, the bill is excessively bureaucratic and a waste of taxpayer money. Fascinating.
After the jump: a rare Doug Racine sighting, and another small problem.
Lawmakers sought the reporting requirements because the Adult Protective Services division has been fraught with problems. And the Shumlin Administration doesn’t seem to have made much progress on a backlog of “several hundred reports” of elder abuse that stacked up during the salad days of Jim Douglas. The lack of progress led Vermont Legal Aid and Disability Rights Vermont to file a lawsuit against the state in December.
Human Services Secretary Doug Racine briefly emerged from an undisclosed location to slam the lawsuit as a “distraction,” and as for the vetoed bill:
“We were clear the legislation wasn’t needed and could get in the way of getting the work done,” Racine said. …The monthly reporting mandate, he said, would take away resources from the staff of 10-12 investigators in Adult Protective Services.
(A reminder to Mr. Racine: When you leave the Administration, don’t forget to retrieve your soul from escrow.)
Well, that sounds reasonable. We don’t want to turn our overworked investigators into paper-pushers, do we?
Small problem: According to Ayer and Haas, the whole bureaucracy/paperwork complaint is completely unfounded.
[Ayer said] the information queries are built into the “off the shelf” software program the department recently purchased, and so lawmakers felt the requirements were wouldn’t be a burden for staff to produce.
“We understood it was just a matter of pushing the button,” Haas said. “It takes longer to print than to do the work to ask for it.”
It appears that Shumlin’s rationale has no connection to reality. So why do this? Why veto a bill that had been worked out to everybody’s satisfaction, therefore incurring a significant dose of anger and mistrust in the legislature?
I can only think of one explanation: that the reports would be so full of bad news, made public on a monthly basis, that it would be an ongoing PR nightmare and could hurt the state’s defense in the lawsuit.
That’s a pretty damned noxious explanation, but if you can suggest a better one, I’m all ears.
merely one more to add onto yours, which in my opinion is dead on target, save for it not including the following: i.e.,
It is an election year!
Duh!
Thus, not only does the Governor make himself out to be protecting taxpayers against misguided legislators who are wasting hard earned taxpayers dollars (much like his two predecessors were known to suggest as well) and in this way be able to score lots political points with anyone who actually believes his official (campaign) spin; however, especially on the campaign trail when it would count the most, even worse than what the monthly reports would have been in terms to being “an ongoing PR nightmare” to “the state’s defense in the lawsuit”, it would have proven to have been even much worse during the political campaign season.
The political handwriting was on the wall and certain hand-wringers within the Governor’s office as well as on his campaign staff and probably Governor himself well-knew that this had to be squashed at all costs, no matter what.
Hence, more than likely, this is what the veto was about. Pure politics, plain and simple!
is a P, I do believe.
I think Doug Racine is a vampire, and he can only come out at night.
Mark Johnson was just recently talking about Governor Shumlin’s veto of H.290 and the issues it relates to and is looking for people to call into the show about it during the last half hour: Call in: 877-291-8255
In fact he also mentioned the vtdigger article as well as this Green Mountain Daily blog post in general.
Where was everyone so up-in-arms about this during the legislative session.
This is a difficult issue with no easy solutions. Jumping on the Governor for vetoing a bill fails to report the entire problem here: What would the bill Shumlin vetoed really accomplish?
“The legislation calls for an independent, $75,000 study, commissioned by the Legislature. (It was originally requested in 2009.) The Department of Disabilities, Aging and Independent Living recently asked a consultant to analyze the Adult Protective Services protocols for investigating allegations of abuse and that report came out in January; lawmakers say the study doesn’t answer questions they’ve raised about the effectiveness of the troubled program.”
“Advocates are also asking the state to adopt a “credible and effective emergency response system” for recognizing and responding to abuse, neglect and exploitation charges far more quickly.
Sen. Jane Kitchel (D-Caledonia) tells Seven Days that the oversight commission hasn’t decided what to do with those recommendations yet, but plans to put together a working group of stakeholders to explore these and other issues and report back to the legislature by March 15.”
http://www.7dvt.com/2009advoca…
This story is from 2009. It would seem that the legislature does not have a handle of a problem that they have already spent $75,000 on a study for.
I think the governor is right to veto this. It has done more to draw attention to the problem than the bill would have. Shame on us for letting this issue languish on the sidelines for so long. I’ll add that Shumlin unexpectedly canceled his appearance of the “Mark Johnson Show” this morning. His veto will turn the heat up on Doug Racine and DFS in the short-term to make some changes. This should not be an issue that wait till the next legislative session.
WHAT SHOULD THE LEGISLATURE HAVE DONE?
WHAT CAN THE ADMINISTRATION NOW DO?