I just got back from Montpelier City Hall.

In Montpelier there were no contested elections, and everybody on the printed ballot won election.

 We had many budget items. The town and school budgets passed handily. Every other item requesting an appropriation for a social service agency passed, except for a new item for the Vermont Youth Symphony, passed. The Youth Symphony item failed by only twenty votes, 898-878. Who says your voted doesn't count?

In addition, the initiative for an advisory vote to close Vermont Yankee when its license expires was adopted by the voters of Montpelier.

In Burlington, Shay Totten is reporting that Bob Kiss has won reelection in the third round of IRV.

Any news to post from your town?

Tonight was the last of 19 Burlington mayoral debates leading up to Tuesday's election. The debate was sponsored by Democracy for America, Green Mountain Daily, and the UVM College Democrats. Speaking to a packed house, candidates Bob Kiss, Andy Montroll, and Dan Smith handled a wide range of questions, from the first president they voted for, the underfunding of Burlington's pension fund, and, yes, frolf at Leddy Park.

Speaking to a packed crowd at Sapa's Tea and Coffee, the candidates really got a chance to distinguish themselves. GMD was on the scene in the person of front pagers Maggie Gunderson and Jack McCullough, and front pager emerita NanuqFC. GMD had planned to live blog the event, but internet connectivity problems prevented it. Here, though, are some impressions from the debate.

Who's who: Incumbent mayor Bob Kiss finally cashed in on his strategy of downplaying expectations, and showed himself to be the most charismatic of the group. And no, I am not kidding. Bob was animated, knowledgeable, and effective in making his points. Andy Montroll got in some good points, but if he was trying to show off his technocrat cred he came in second to the Mayor. And Dan Smith: very likeable guy, but from his answers it's pretty hard to figure why he doesn't make it official and run as an R.

Some highlights:

Question 1: Who was the first president you voted for?

      Kiss: Humphrey.

      Montroll: Carter.

      Smith: Clinton.

 Question 3, from Maggie Gunderson:

 How to deal with Parks and Rec?

Frolf at Leddy Park?

     Montroll: We should be able to do it somewhere, but we need to find another place, not Leddy Park.

     Smith: I support things that get our kids off the couch. We could do a course at Leddy. “When someone throws out an idea, instead of saying, `Why?' we should start saying `Why not?'”

     Kiss: “It pays to pay attention to the details.” If you walked through the park you would see the impact of cutting down trees. “Open space isn't wasted space.” Maybe the neighbors should have gotten more consideration.

 Part Two: How do we rectify the inability of Parks & Rec to work with neighborhood groups?

     Kiss answers in term of the Farmers' Market rent fight: As soon as I heard about this I was talking to the Parks Department. This is a discussion to reach an agreement, not a fait accompli. I won't support raising market rents by four or five times.

     Montroll: My first reaction to the Farmers' Market increase was that it's outrageous. When people go to the mayor they need to know they will be heard.

     Smith: The rent shouldn't go up by 400% or 500%. The broader question, though, is how to restructure government so everyone has a sense of common cause.

Waterfront: What's your five-Year vision?

     Smith: Here is where he really sounds like a Republican. It's not so much the content, as the way he talks about it in terms of economic development, including marina services, hotel access, a revitalized Moran Plant. “20% public access is better than 100% boarded up.”

     Montroll: We need to protect our values and open spaces, public spaces and uses.. We need a publc, community process. Uses might include a small hotel, but not a convention center.

     Kiss:Bob took the opportunity to review the history of the waterfront and his involvement in it since 1972, and the constant struggle between the push for commercialization of the waterfront and the drive to create public uses which has resulted in the boathouse, Echo, the park, and the outstanding, nearly complete, public space we now see. “We're open for business, but we're not for sale.”

HOW do we make Burlington more bike-friendly?

     Kiss: It's a question I've been asking ever since I moved here. It's still a problem. The police chief gets reports every day, and a bicycle or a pedestrian is hit by a car almost every day. This spring you will see more efforts, including training.

     Montroll: People want to be out on their bikes or on foot, but we prioritize cars. We ned to establish a shared priority that says that bikes are as important as cars.

     Smith: As a regular, three times a week cyclist, I see the problem. We need to invest in roads in a way that accommodates bicycles and pedestrian. More than that, we need to find ways to grow so that we can afford the necessary investment, and we need to reemphasize density in the downtown; people will walk or ride if they can live downtown. “Traffic accidents don't happen just because our roads are narrow; it's because our roads are bad.”  I thought this was his best answer because it tied the personal to a broader vision.

As I said, overall it was a good showcase for the candidates. I read each one of them as a “what you see is what you get” kind of guy. Neither of the challengers can match Bob Kiss's scope and depth of knowledge of the job, and city isues. I was actually expecting to see 15-year Council veteran Montroll give Bob a run for his money on this point, but not the way I saw it. 

I give the debate to Kiss on points, but other observers might have seen it differently, so feel free to chime in.

From today's Times Argus:

MONTPELIER – Should Vermonters have a “right to dry?”

For McCormack and other right-to-dry supporters the bill just makes sense: Hanging wet clothes out to dry in the sun is more energy efficient than using an electric dryer, a step forward in conserving energy that most families can easily tackle.

Thumbs up to Senators Dick McCormack, Claire Ayer, Sara Kittell, and Tim Ashe for sponsoring this legislation!

You can find the bill here.

I don't have to go over the whole Ben Stein/creationist/graduation disinvitation thing do I? I didn't think so.

The latest chapter is that the creationist Discovery Institute, always with an eye open for publicity, is still trying to elbow its way onto campus at UVM. Following on the disinvitation of their buddy Ben Stein, they've written to Nicholas Gotelli, a biology proessor at Groovy UV who published an op-ed piece in the Burlington Free Press about the Stein affair, to try to get themselves invited to debate creationism and evolution.

Among skeptic and freethinking circles there is a debate about whether to debate these clowns. On the one hand, they can't go into a legitimate debate and stand up to any criticism; thus, any educated person who watches the debate will see that they have, once again, been thoroughly discredited. On the other hand, even appearing on the same stage with them enables them to claim a degree of undeserved credibility, and to maintain the fraudulent claim that there is a scientific debate in which creationism and evolution are equal competitors.

In this case, Professor Gotelli has it exactly right:

Academic debate on controversial topics is fine, but those topics need to have a basis in reality. I would not invite a creationist to a debate on campus for the same reason that I would not invite an alchemist, a flat-earther, an astrologer, a psychic, or a Holocaust revisionist. These ideas have no scientific support, and that is why they have all been discarded by credible scholars. Creationism is in the same category.

Instead of spending time on public debates, why aren't members of your institute publishing their ideas in prominent peer-reviewed journals such as Science, Nature, or the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences? If you want to be taken seriously by scientists and scholars, this is where you need to publish. Academic publishing is an intellectual free market, where ideas that have credible empirical support are carefully and thoroughly explored. Nothing could possibly be more exciting and electrifying to biology than scientific disproof of evolutionary theory or scientific proof of the existence of a god. That would be Nobel Prize winning work, and it would be eagerly published by any of the prominent mainstream journals.

Follow the link for the rest of the story at Pharyngula.

Time for another look at the Legislative hopper to see what bills have been introduced. The bill drafting deadline has passed, although there are undoubtedly plenty of bills in the drafting process. As of today there are 233 House bills introduced and 93 Senate bills. No surprise there: we always see more bills in the House than in the Senate. After all, there are five times as many House members.

So let's take a look at what's pending. As always, the fact that a bill has been introduced is no guarantee that it will ever see the light of day in a committee or on the floor.

 H. 97–No idling of motor vehicles. You know how many miles per gallon you get while you're idling? That's right: zero. YOU also stink up the atmosphere and make people sick.

 H. 140–Elimination of the preexisting condition exclusion for Catamount Health. We've periodically been critical of Catamount Health around here, mainly for what it could have been than for what it is, but we can't deny that for some people it provides vital health coverage. One problem is that they exclude coverage for preexisting conditions, which means that people who need care the most might not be able to get it. This bill would fix that problem.

H. 145–Composting.  This bill's getting a first look in House Fish & Wildlife Thursday morning. It proposes to exempt small composting operations from Act 250 review.

H. 161–Clean energy financing.  This is a creative proposal that will alow municipalities to bond for energy efficiency projects for local homes and businesses, and then recoup the investment by an assessment on the properties that get the improvements. 

H. 177–The Snelling Surcharge. Once upon a time we had a governor who recognized that in troubled financial times the state might need to increase taxes on people who could afford to pay, and lo, that governor was a Republican. This bill would follow the wise counsel of Governor Snelling by adopting an income tax surcharge to help meet the state's critical budgetary needs. The Douglas tax plan? “Read my lips. No new taxes.”

So I've been trying to figure out what to think about the Andy Montroll/Jonathan Leopold conflict of interest story. We are being told that it was definitely a conflict of interest, we're also being told that the Leopold story is definitely a hatchet job being pushed by Bob Kiss to hurt his political rival, but there is no definitive answer that I've seen.

In my work I regularly have to look into questions of legal ethics, and whether a conflict of interest exists, and each time I do I need to start with two main points: what are the actual facts, and what do the rules say? I find that it's too easy to start out with a vague idea of what's going on and conclude that there's something wrong, and it's only by reference to the rules that you'll really know.

The facts: As presented, the facts are that Andy Montroll sat on Burlington's Boardof Finance, with access to the financial records of Burlington Telecom, while also representing  Valley Net, a telecom provider doing business out of White River Junction, in a proceeding before the Public Service Board to obtain a certificate of public good to operate a cable television network. We don't know where Valley Net was planning on providing cable TV service,and there is no demonstration that Valley Net was a direct competitor with Burlington Telecom. Nevertheless, Leopold says confidential Burlington Telecom information should not have been provided to a potential competitor.

In addition:

Burlington Telecom General Manager Chris Burns said that because BT operates in a “very competitive space,” proprietary information about pricing strategies, “market strategies around bundling our services” and other business information was closely held.

“Honestly,” Burns said of Montroll’s work for Valley Net, “it makes me uncomfortable. Not knowing and not having control over the information is concerning.”

 And furthermore, the activities of Burlington Telecom have been an issue in the campaign: Montroll said recently in the campaign that Mayor Bob Kiss had been remiss in not working to expand Burlington Telecom’s reach to other communities.

The rules:  Here's what the Burlington Municipal Code says about conflicts of interest:

§ 133.  Conflicts of interest.

So, was Montroll doing anything wrong?

It isn't clear. The mere fact that he is on the Board of Finance while representing another cable or telecom company might not be enough to create a conflict. In fact, the comments of Chris Burns seem more based on hypothetical situations (“If referenced in another situation . . .”) and generalized discomfort at the lack of control over the information than anything else.

On the other hand, the code does says a city officer may not “participate or vote on any question in which such participation or vote would reasonably create in the mind of an objective person the appearance of a direct or indirect conflict of interest.” It's possible that while serving on the Board of Finance, Montroll had access to information and participated in discussions related to Burlington Telecom's budget or operations that might have been useful to any company looking to compete against Burlington Telecom. We don't know whether Valley Net was trying to compete against BT, given that they're located all the way across the state, but I've read suggestions that the real issue might have been VOIP, and a potential conflict betwen BT and VN in the Public Service Board on that issue. 

This still seems pretty nebulous to me, since I still haven't seen anything that indicates that BT and VN are really competing with each other, in the sense of trying to go after the same business, in which knowledge of one competitor's costs could be really useful to the other competitor. If anything, what seems more likely is that a case could be made out to show an appearance of a conflict, rather than any actual conflict.

 Leopold's action:  There is one troubling thing about how Leopold handled this.The ethics code tells a city official what to do when a conflict arises:

. . .  In the event a conflict of interest situation arises, the affected city officer shall at the first opportunity formally declare the existence of the conflict of interest situation.

Determination of a conflict of interest:

(b)   The proscribed appearance of a conflict of interest shall be deemed to be present when either the city officer formally announces the existence of such or two-thirds of the whole number of the city council . . . shall vote in a particular situation that such a conflict of interest situation exists for a particular city officer

In other words, if Montroll was in a conflict interest, it was his obligation to disclose it and recuse himself from further involvement in the matter in which the conflict exists. If he didn't disclose a conflict the council still has the authority to vote on whether a conflict exists, and make that determination, which would also have the effect of precluding him from dealing with the issue.

And what if he acted on a matter in which he has a conflict of interest?

(c)   Any city officer who violates the provisions of this section shall be regarded as guilty of bad conduct.  . . .  The mayor or a member of the city council shall be subject to official censure upon affirmative vote of two-thirds of the whole number of the city council with the mayor presiding and voting as a member thereof.

If he had a conflict and failed to recuse himself, he could be censured by a two-thirds vote of the Council.

 Under these rules, Jonathan Leopold clearly had the ability to talk to Andy Montroll, tell him that it appeared that he had a conflict of interest, and ask him to disclose the conflict to the City Council.

Failing that, the City Council had the power to examine the question without Montroll reporting it himself, and to vote on whether a conflict existed.

It appears that instead of either asking Montroll to disclose the conflict or asking the Council to vote on the existence of a conflict, Leopold called the Burlington Free Press. Now we learn in today's Free Prss that the Board of Finance will be taking the matter up this afternoon. If somebody (i.e. Leopold) has known about this since early this month, why did it have to be plastered all over the newspapers before being taken up by the appropriate public body?

I don't know if that makes it a smear, but it doesn't look good to me.

 By the way, GMD sent e-mails to both Andy Montroll and Jonathan Leopold seeking comments on this story, but to date has not heard from either of them.

Okay, not political, but cultural.

For the many who don't know the name, Tom Rush is one of the last men standing from the Great Folk Music Scare of the 1960's. He became famous for recording great songs, by songwriters like Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, and Murray McLaughlin before anyone else had ever heard of them. Tom's also from just over the river in Merrimack, New Hampshire, although he's lived in Wyoming for several years.

Tom has a new album coming out, his first studio album in thirty-five years. You can get a preview of it here. Even though he hasn't been recording in the studio, he's been touring, and he's going to be playing at Lyndon State College on Saturday, March 7, as part of the Catamount Arts series.Maybe I'll see you there.

Do we really want it to be relicensed?

( – promoted by Jack McCullough)

You may recall a story we ran a little over a year ago:

Religious indoctrination in our public schools

by: Jack McCullough

Fri Jan 25, 2008 at 00:00:31 AM EST

Well, the news today is that it is. In a story in today's Times Argus we read about Mel Downs, a parent in Irasburg whose daughter's teacher posts the Ten Commandments in his classroom, includes links to religious sites on his official school web page, and sends home materials like “Why Jesus Is Better Than Santa Claus”.

 Now we learn from the Times Argus that the parents, who objected to having the Irasburg public schools spending their time forcing Christianity on their kids, are now suing the school district. 

In a federal lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on their behalf, the families accused Irasburg Village School teacher Wally Rogers of including religious books he bought with school funds in a reading program and creating incentives for students to read them.

They also said he posted the Ten Commandments on the wall, distributed religious materials and directed students to his Web page, which contained information on creationism. By allowing it, the school district violated their constitutional rights, according to the lawsuit, which was filed Friday.

Irasburg is a smal town, with just over 1,000 residents and barely 150 students in their schools. This can't be easy for these parents. I praise the parents for their courage in doing this.

What did they teach you about marijuana when you were a kid?

It's addictive.

It leads you to use other drugs.

It destroys your respiratory system.

It destroys your motivation.

So someone who smokes marijuana couldn't possibly have the aerobic capacity or motivation to train for and win 14 Olympic gold medals, right?

Today's bill is H. 150. Here's what it would do: 

This bill proposes to change the penalties for the
14 possession of small amounts of marijuana. A person who possesses one ounce
15 or less of marijuana would be assessed a civil fine of up to $100.00, while
16 possession of larger amounts would continue to be criminal offenses subject to
17 imprisonment.

VALID, the Vermont Aliance for Intelligent Drug Laws, which is sponsoring this legislation, is holding an advocacy day this Friday at the State House. Get out there and tell your legislators that you're not afraid to suffer the health problems that have prostrated Michael Phelps.