They call it “the news hole.” It’s the amount of space (or airtime) you’ve got to fill. Sometimes it’s not nearly big enough; sometimes it’s a gaping maw staring you down as deadline approaches. And when that happens, it’s time to break out the Hamburger Helper and mountainize those molehills.

The titans of Vermont journalism bring us two prime examples today: The Freeploid, filling its front-page Big Story news hole with a thoroughly underwhelming story about “possible cases” of time-sheet fraud by state employees, and Paul “The Huntsman” Heintz filling most of his weekly “Fair Game” column far-fetchedly fulminating about a possible case of political nepotism that didn’t, in fact, actually happen.  

Let’s take ’em in order, shall we?

The Freeploid’s transparency bloodhound, Mike Donoghue, has conducted “a more than two-week investigation” into time sheet fraud. Well, when you spend that much time, you’d damn well better produce something. And even though Donoghue found precious little, the ‘Loid decided to put it on the front page today.

How little? Since the Jim Deeghan case broke in July 2012 — when, presumably, state officials started giving the green-eyeshade treatment to every single time sheet — the state has “investigated 21 cases of possible time-sheet fraud by employees. …Four cases have been referred to law enforcement for possible criminal invdestigation.”

Now, we’d hope the number would be zero, but let’s look at what Donoghue actually has here.  

The state has a workforce of about 8,000. There are 21 “possible cases.” By my calculator, that’s one-quarter of one percent of all state workers, or one worker out of every 400 who might have committed fraud.

But out of those 21 “possible cases,” only four — FOUR — have been referred for “possible criminal investigation.” That’s one-twentieth of one percent. The numbers are tiny, and the “possibles” are rampant.

If the state has done a thorough review of time sheets and only found four potential criminal cases, I’d call that a big fat victory for good government. Again, it’d be nice if the number was zero, but hey, this is the real world. If I ran a corporation with 8,000 employees and found only four had padded their time sheets, hell, I’d be relieved.

Beyond that, the Freeploid was severely limited in what it could report because state officials won’t release information about ongoing investigations. As they shouldn’t. Which meant Donoghue had to find something to fill that Big Story news hole. He managed to get details of one time-sheet case — so he reported every single detail of that case, which remains unproven. Donoghue, of course, names the state employee and fills roughly half of the article with every bit of information he could get.  

Which I have to say, isn’t at all fair to the employee, who has yet to be indicted, let alone convicted. If he ends up in court, then Donoghue’s coverage will have been retroactively justified. If the case washes out, then the employee will have been subjected to public disgrace for no reason other than the Freeploid’s need for a Big Story every damn day.

And now, on to the current occupier of the Peter Freyne Chair in Political Punditry and this week’s installment of “Fair Game.” “The Huntsman” fills the bulk of his news hole with a story that deserves far less.

The story in one sentence: former Vermont health care guru Anya Rader Wallack offered a job to Governor Shumlin’s daughter shortly after Wallack’s company got a no-bid consulting contract from the state.

Aha! Featherbedding!

Well, Heintz labors mightily to make it seem so. But there appears to be a lot less to the story than he’d like you to think.

Rader Wallack, as you may recall, stepped down from her state health-care job earlier this year because her family lives in Rhode Island and she couldn’t take the workweek separations and long drives anymore. Nine days after her departure, her consulting firm Arrowhead Health Analytics won a no-bid contract worth $100,000.

I’ll pause here to note a dirty rhetorical trick pulled by Heintz:

Barely a week after her departure, Secretary of Administration Jeb Spaulding signed a no-bid contract with Rader Wallack’s consulting firm to oversee a $45 million federal grant she had helped Vermont obtain while she worked for the state.

Wow. “Barely a week after her departure.” Smells awfully fishy, doesn’t it? But here’s the real lowdown:

Rader Wallack announced her resignation in March, with a departure date of July 31. The contract was signed on August 8. Heintz’ framing is technically true, but distorts the reality. Rader Wallack’s departure was a known fact for almost five months before the consulting contract was signed.

But aside from that, Rader Wallack was uniquely qualified to oversee the consulting contract because (a) she’s a world-class expert in the field, and (b) she was intimately involved in Vermont’s reform process from day one. If ever a no-bid contract was justified, it was here: the state could take advantage of Rader Wallack’s expertise without requiring her constant presence in Vermont.  

Now we turn to the implication of featherbedding. Heintz reports that a few weeks after Arrowhead got the contract, Rader Wallack offered an assistant’s job to Shumlin’s daughter Olivia, who’s about to graduate from Brown University.

Aha, I can almost hear Rob Roper saying. Rader Wallack gets a fat contract and hires the Governor’s daughter for a plum job! Shady Shummy at work!

Problem is, Heintz doesn’t have the goods. All he has is a timeline, which he lays out in the most pernicious possible way. Some mitigating factors:

— This is a low-level job, the kind Rader Wallack gives to “people right out of college who need experience.” Sounds like a glorified internship to me. (There’s no mention of the job’s pay grade.)

— Rader Wallack has a history of hiring politically-connected grads, including the sons of Gaye Symington and KSE Partners lobbyist Bob Sherman. You could say she’s greasing the wheels, or she may simply be hiring people she’s come to know in the course of her daily business: “Rader Wallack said she had met Olivia Shumlin several times at political events and came away impressed.”

— In the end, Olivia Shumlin didn’t take the job. Even if there was supposed to be a quid pro quo, it didn’t actually happen.

Heintz actually takes credit for that:

…in response to questions from Seven Days, Gov. Shumlin’s spokeswoman, Sue Allen, wrote in an email, “Liv is not going to work for Anya. She did receive an offer, but declined.”

Maybe the Seven Days inquiry did kill the offer. If so, then congratulations, Paul: you labored mightily and brought down a mouse.

But he still has some column inches to fill, so he goes on to muse about the possible conflicts of interest that might have happened.

It’s unclear whether state-contracting regulations would prevent a recent administration official from hiring a family member of the governor to help implement a state contract. But the state’s executive code of ethics, which was signed by Shumlin and governs him and members of his administration, would appear to bar him from using his office to advocate for such employment.

In short, the situation may or may not have run afoul of state rules, and if the Governor had pushed for his daughter to get the job, it “would appear” to be an ethical violation. But Heintz admits he has no proof whatsoever that Shumlin was actively involved at all.

After that, Heintz fills out his word count with intimations of possible backscratching. He raises a series of questions left unanswered because he doesn’t have the answers. All he has is a bunch of questions.

And even if all his hints and intimations were true, this’d be more a molehill than a mountain.

Ah, the news hole. It’s big, it’s dark, and it sucks. Hard.