When Alberta Environment Minister Diana McQueen brought her “Sunshine ‘n Tar Sands Tour” to Montpelier on Tuesday, she brought these glossy brochures, chronicling the benefits of carbon-heavy tar sands oil and the devout environmentalism of her government. The brochure is slick and well-designed; but when you read it, you start getting a vague sensation in the back of your mind — the same one you get while deleting Nigerian e-mails from your spam folder. (Photo: Two disembodied work gloves cradling some dark, uninviting tar sands. This is the welcoming sight at the top of page 1. Mmmmm.)

(Anyone wishing a different view of tar sands oil would be advised to visit the website of the Pembina Institute, a Canadian think tank that advocates for clean energy. It has extensive information on tar sands oil that’s, well, a little tiny bit different than Alberta’s shiny happy presentation.)

The trouble starts with the very first sentence: “Experts say the world will be dependent on carbon-based fuel for the foreseeable future.”

Which “experts” are those, exactly? ExxonMobil’s? All the experts I trust say the opposite: we have to wean ourselves off carbon-based fuel as quickly as possible to save the planet from catastrophic climate change.

The next sentences promise “sustainable and responsible extraction,” and offer the reassurance that “Alberta is working with industry and other partners to ensure we continue to develop the oil sands resource responsibly…”

First of all, I like how “industry” gets top billing there. Alberta and industry, sittin’ in a tree, K-I-L-L-I-N-G the planet. Second, “other partners”? What, scientists? Public relations firms? Political cronies?

Next we come to Misleading Chart no. 1: “Foreign Company Access to Proven Oil Reserves 2010.”

Please note that it’s not “Proven Oil Reserves,” but “Foreign Company Access.” The countries in red  control their own reserves, having thrown off the shackles of colonialism. (Ingrates.) The countries in yellow permit “restricted” access to foreign companies. The friendly green bar, third from the left? Canada’s abundant resources, mainly in Alberta, which are available for corporate exploitation by all comers.

But all those countries in red and yellow have dealt successfully with foreign corporations for decades, to the profit of all concerned.  Just because a country chooses to exercise some measure of (often nominal) control over its own resources doesn’t mean we don’t get to use them. Often on insanely favorable (to us) terms. Alberta’s engaging in some “little brown people” and “Muslim” dog-whistling here, to convince us that we can’t possibly afford to pass up Canadian sources.  

Next, we get another dog-whistle chorus in a section on “Benefits to the United States.” Here’s another chart, “Sources of U.S. Oil Imports (2011)”. Just look at that list, and tremble in fear at where our oil comes from. Never mind, first of all, that this is “oil imports” only, leaving out domestic US production. Right from the start, this chart is designed to overemphasize our dependence on unreliable brown people.

Now, let’s run down the list of foreign suppliers in order of percentage, and ask the question: “Who do YOU trust?”

Alberta: Friendly white people next door

Saudi Arabia: Brown people! and MUSLIMS!!!

Mexico: Brown people!

Venezuela: Brown people! Who like CASTRO!!!

Rest of Canada: Friendly white people next door

Nigeria: Black people!

Iraq: Brown people! and MUSLIMS!!!

Columbia: Brown people!

My friends, when you look at this list, I think you’ll agree that our duty is clear. Tar sands oil may be dirty, it may imperil the very planet we call home, but at least it comes from white people.

Well, I believe that’s enough RACE PANIC for now. Let’s move on to irrelevant misdirection, shall we?

This is an inspired bit of graphic mischief, which implies a connection between the amount of money we spend on Canadian oil, with the amount of money Canada spends on American good and services. Problem is, there ain’t no such thing. Canada spent gobs of money on American products long before anyone ever shouted “Eureka!” in an Albertan field, and Canada’s US imports would still be very strong if there was no oil in Alberta. This chart relates two things that are, in fact, unrelated. Our primary export markets got that way for reasons that have nothing to do with their oil reserves.

But at first glance, the message appears to be “Hey, look — if we buy more Canadian oil, we’ll get practically all our money back! Whereas, if we buy Arabian oil, they’ll take our money and laugh at us!”

Next in this Glossy Brochure of Doom is a section devoted to “Climate Change.” Here, Alberta can’t help but reveal some bad news about its contribution to global warming.

It admits, for example, that “Alberta produces about one third of Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions.” Hmm, Alberta’s population is about 12% of Canada’s total. Which means… Alberta is Canada’s big fat carbon pig! There’s some good news.

The brochure then goes on to admit that oil sands extraction accounts for 21% of Alberta’s greenhouse gas enissions, or 7% of Canada’s total. I think they mean this to be reassuring, but it has the opposite effect on me.

Much of the “Climate Change” section trumpets Alberta’s development of “carbon capture and storage” (CCS), which is a nice theory but it’s been a complete failure in reality so far. I have more on this in my previous diary, “Never trust the glossy brochure, pt. 1”. But here’s a chart showing the effect of Alberta’s plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Please note that it takes the province until roughly the year 2035 just to get carbon emissions back down to 2005 levels; it then achieves very modest reductions.

And here’s some very bad news. These reductions, modest though they are, depend on significant development of CCS as a viable technology. See the gap between the blue line and the dismayingly rising dotted line at the top? 70% of Alberta’s plan depends on CCS — an untested and troubled technology. Without CCS, y its own admission, Alberta’s greenhouse gas emissions will dramatically increase over the next four decades.

And remember the words of Alberta Premier Allison Redford, who continues to promote CCS in her “placate the Americans” work, even while cutting back on CCS R&D back home:

Redford let it slip to Alberta journalists in 2011 that she’d prefer to see “better initiatives and opportunities” than CCS to reduce CO2 emissions, although she still hasn’t said what those “better initiatives” would be.

In other words, Alberta will soon become a greenhouse gas nightmare barring a miraculous turnaround in CCS development or the sudden adoption of a now-unknown technology.

The next section of the brochure is about water quality in and around the massive tar-sands mining sites, where extraction operations use large quantities of water. I don’t know enough about Alberta’s environment to offer comment, but based on the brochure’s reliability so far, I’ll emit a sardonic snicker and move on.

And now — oh boy, oh boy — we come to the section on Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), largely discussed in part 1 of this two-part series. I’ll just remind you here that Alberta has funded a total of four CCS projects; it has canceled two of them so far, and even the pro-oil Premier has  serious doubts about CCS’ viability, even as she continues to tout the concept in the US.

The next section is called “Air,” and addresses air quality issues. It begins with an admission that tar-sands development produces “greenhouse gas emissions, nitrogen oxides, sulphur dioxide, hydrogen sulphide, ozone, and fine particulate matter.” Well, that’s a bummer.

But wait, Alberta has good news! It’s continuously monitoring air quality, and is pleased to report that

Annual average concentrations of common air pollutants indicate that the region’s air quality is not deteriorating despite an increase in emissions-related activities and population growth.

Three points. First, there’s a lot of wiggle room in “annual average concentrations,” because I’m sure the mining operations don’t continue 24/7. The impact of periodic toxic blasts can be largely masked by reference to “annual average.”  And second, Alberta is one of Canada’s plains provinces: open, flat topography for hundreds of miles. That tends to produce very strong winds, which quickly carry the toxins away. And third, Alberta’s population may be growing, but it’s still a huge area with relatively few people in it.

How few? Well, Vermont has 625,000 people in 9600 square miles. Alberta has 3.8 million people in 255,000 square miles. (All numbers rounded.) Vermont has a population density of 65 people per square mile; Alberta has 15 people per square mile.

Put it another way, Alberta is the size of Texas and has roughly the same population as Connecticut. Given those numbers, OF COURSE the air is relatively clean.

Now we come to WIldlife and Biodiversity, a section that includes a lovely photo of a blue heron. I think that’s just reflections in the water, but I swear it looks like an oil slick. Maybe coulda picked a different picture.

Speaking of birds, Alberta lets slip another inconvenient factoid here: “Nearly half the species of birds in North America use the [Albertan] boreal forest each year.” Oh yeah, that’s where I want massive mining and fuel-processing operations — in a part of the continent that helps support “nearly half” of our bird species. If you’re trying to convince me to change my mind about tar sands, don’t tell me your province is an ecological paradise! Lie to me! Tell me it’s a vast, barren wasteland that no one will miss when it’s gone!

Up next, Reclamation. That’s a big problem in tar-sands mining, which causes massive disruption to vast areas. For instance, this photo of a blasted landscape devoid of life:

Yeah, that’ll take a bit of “reclamation.” But don’t worry, Alberta is on the case! They have 71 square kilometers “under active reclamation.”

That’s a lot, isn’t it? Well… compared to your backyard, yes. But the same page tells us that 715 square kilometers has been surface-mined already — out of a total surface mining area of 4800 square kilometers. This handy-dandy chart illustrates the extent of the problem; the extremely narrow bands at the top represent areas fully or partially reclaimed, while the vast majority (blue and pink bands) is still a complete wreck.

The brochure also tells us that “it can take 15 or more years to effectively establish a successful ecosystem” in a surface-mined area. That’s the optimistic estimate for lands where reclamation is actually completed. It also boasts that Alberta has given $4.5 million to the University of Alberta to support reclamation research. Which says two things to me, both bad: (1) compared to the size of the industry, $4.5 million is a drop in the bucket, and (2) they’re still doing research, which means they don’t really know how to do reclamation yet. Comforting.

And then there are the deposits accessible by in-situ methods — 80% of the oil sands. An in-situ operation, they tell us, disturbs merely 10-15% as much land as a surface mine.  That’s still a hell of a lot of land. I wonder how much of their profits the oil companies are setting aside for reclamation work?

But if you think reclamation is a tough job, wait ’till you get to the next chapter: Tailings. This section helpfully starts by informing us that “Tailings management remains one of the most difficult environmental challenges for the oil sands mining sector. There are currently more than 170 square kilometers of tailings ponds in Alberta.”

According to the Pembina Institute, a Canadian nonprofit that studies energy issues, tailings are a toxic waste byproduct of tar sands extraction, and more than 200 million liters of fine tailings are produced each day. Here’s a photo of that “production” in process:

Yuck!

More good news: The brochure has a photo of a tailings pond that’s been successfully reclaimed. A full 15 years after it was closed.

And it’s the first tailings pond to be fully reclaimed.

The first one.

Out of  “more than 170 square miles of tailings ponds.”

Bear in mind, this is the happy side of the equation — the stuff that Alberta is willing to admit in a PR document aimed at convincing skeptics that tar-sands oil is peachy keen.

I’m now going to skip a couple of sections and move on to “Economic Benefits,” which promotes the incredible bonanza created by tar sands oil. And it includes a chart that reveals another little problem: the fact that tar-sands investment in Alberta is growing rapidly, even as it’s already contributing substantially to global warming and the destruction of the boreal forest environment.

The scale is in billions of dollars. As you can see, tar-sands investment accounted for perhaps one-third of Alberta’s total through 2006. But from 2008 onward, it was more than half. What this tells me is that tar sands is already an environmental disaster, and the industry is at the beginning of a rapid growth curve.  

There’s more, there’s more. There’s a two-page whitewash of the industry’s impact on aboriginal peoples — their rights, their health, their lands. There’s a section on meeting the challenges of rapid growth fueled (sorry) by the expansion of tar sands. And finally, Alberta welcomes you to find even more slanted, biased “facts” through its Information Portal. Which, frankly, I’m afraid to enter; sounds too much like that time-travel thingy in “Star Trek” that sent Kirk and Spock back to the 1930s and their fateful encounter with a very young Joan Collins.

Besides, after wading through these 30 pages, I’ve had quite enough of Alberta’s happy-face approach to tar sands oil.

Is anyone still reading this?

Well, then, here’s my simple conclusion.

Vermont has an extremely small role to play in this drama; we could conceivably see tar-sands oil crossing a small portion of the Northeast Kingdom. But after all I’ve heard and read this week, I don’t want to have the slightest role in promulgating this multifaceted calamity.  

Oh, I almost forgot. There’s a comforting message in the margins of this brochure — a message certain to assuage the bruised and battered sensibilities of anyone who gives a tinker’s damn about the earth:

This fact sheet is printed with vegetable-based inks on chlorine-free paper made with post-consumer recycled fibre.

Well, okay then.

When Alberta’s Environment Minister, Diana McQueen, dropped by the State House this week to promote tar sands oil, she brought along a 30-page, full-color brochure touting the myriad benefits of her province’s most lucrative — and notorious — export.

It’s a slick document. Problem is, it’s chock full of little white lies, deceptive statements, and deliberately misleading visuals. But there’s one Big Lie, repeated frequently, that deserves special attention: that Alberta is a pioneer in the fight against global warming — in spite of its carbon-heavy oil industry — through its development of “carbon capture and storage” (CCS) — in which CO2 is captured from industrial operations, converted to a liquid, and pumped deep underground, filling spaces in the porous rock that were vacated by fossil fuel extraction.  

It’s a technological miracle, see? We can keep on burning fossil fuel to our heart’s content, and just dispose of the carbon deep in the earth. No fuss, no muss.

Except…

Alberta’s own experiments with CCS have been going seriously awry. The province has canceled two major projects in the past year, one of them just this week. Let’s turn to a February 27 piece by Graham Thompson, political columnist for the Edmonton Journal:

Officially, the government remains committed to the carbon capture and storage experiments as a way to reduce Alberta’s greenhouse gas emissions. But unofficially, Premier Alison Redford has displayed no great confidence in the experiments’ ability to deliver as promised.

Her skepticism is understandable. Carbon capture and storage is a troubled, and unproven, experiment…

… Redford let it slip to Alberta journalists in 2011 that she’d prefer to see “better initiatives and opportunities” than CCS to reduce CO2 emissions, although she still hasn’t said what those “better initiatives” would be.

At the same time, Thompson reports, Redford has no problem with touting CCS “as a way to convince American politicians that her government takes climate change seriously.”

She talked about CCS again this past weekend while in Washington, D.C. However, in a move that was positively Orwellian, at the same time she was touting Alberta’s carbon capture and storage experiments, her government was putting the final touches on a news release announcing the death of one of those experiments.

That experiment, Swan Hills Synfuels, was killed on Monday. It’s proudly promoted in the brochure that Diana McQueen was handing around Montpelier on Tuesday. Oopsie.

The entire brochure is worthy of closer examination, but I thought the CCS Lie deserved its own diary. Expect another Alberta post in the near future.  

I think Deb Markowitz nailed this one.

After the meeting, Markowitz said that it was interesting that within two weeks the Statehouse had been visited by the president of the Portland-Montreal pipeline and Alberta officials.

“It just shows that the pipeline matters,” she said.

The subject is this week’s visit to Montpelier by Alberta’s environmental minister Diana McQueen. She stopped by to deliver some reassuring words, and glossy brochures, about her province’s abundant and carbon-heavy tar sands oil, whose producers are desperately seeking an outlet to the ocean — any ocean will do — so they can export the stuff. One possible route, as we know, is the existing Portland-Montreal Pipeline, whose CEO Larry WIlson has twice visited Montpelier to tout his company’s safety record.

For an important executive who travels with a sharp-suited posse, WIlson outwardly displayed great patience as he waited through legislative delays and other people’s testimony to deliver his message. So yes, as our Natural Resources Secretary noted, this parade of the high and mighty to the nation’s smallest state capitol is a clear display of their desire for a route to the sea. And, it should be noted, McQueen’s delegation also made a stop in Portland on its “Sunshine and Tar Sands” tour. Which followed a weekend in Washington, D.C., buttonholing members of the National Governors Association on behalf of pipeline proposals through America. But no, they’re not desperate for a pipeline, not at all.

After the jump: inept attempts at reassurance.

McQueen, representing the conservative government of Canada’s most conservative province (often referred to as “the Texas of the north,” with its low taxes, oil-based economy, and rumblings of separatism), delivered her message of comfort with a tinge of condescension. (Photo: Still shot from a kinda creepy TV ad featuring McQueen’s talking head superimposed on a highway billboard.)

“We know that it’s an emotional issue as well, but we’re here just to let people know here’s the facts on it, here’s the data, and if you have questions we’re more than happy now or in the future to answer any of those,” she said.

Yeah, thanks, Diana, for dismissing concerns about toxic spills and global warming as “emotional.” Too bad we’re not all as rational as you are.

Although many of us do have a firmer grasp of the English language:

“Our oil will be having many markets,” said McQueen. “Certainly into the United States, the West Coast as well, Alaska’s another route that we’re working on, the East Coast, as well. We know that there will be many different routes and they’ll be over many different time frames, but we will develop our resource.”

Yogi Berra couldn’t have said it any plainer.

Now, let’s check in on the Albertans’ visit to Portland, whose port would be the terminus of a reversed pipeline carrying tar sands oil.

At a breakfast meeting Monday at the Portland Regency Hotel, McQueen said Alberta tar sands account for only a tiny percentage of greenhouse gas, and that the province has stringent industry regulations and monitoring protocols to minimize the danger of pipeline leaks.

Gosh, that’s nice. Completely irrelevant to concerns about pipeline spills outside Alberta, but nice.

[Portland City Councilor Dave] Marshall mentioned a much-publicized 2010 pipeline burst that spilled millions of gallons of tar-sands oil into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan. But that spill was unique and largely the result of operator error, said Tristan Sangret, another Alberta official at the meeting.

So, it was “unique” because “operator errors” never, ever happen. Except this once.

This is Alberta’s idea of reassurance?

Sangret also pooh-poohed concerns about the heavy, toxic nature of tar sands oil, which requires high temperatures and extra pressure to pump through a pipeline. He pointed out that the oil is diluted before it’s piped, so it’s the same viscosity as any heavy crude oil and well within the capability of, say, the Portland-Montreal Pipeline.

Which might be reassuring in terms of extra wear and tear on pipelines. But, as one environmental lobbyist pointed out to me, it doesn’t change the fact that when tar-sands oil is spilled, the diluting agents evaporate. What’s left is heavy, globby stuff that tends to sink. That’s why the 2010 Kalamazoo River spill has yet to be fully remediated, and likely never will be.

I have a feeling that the “Sunshine and Tar Sands” tour will turn out to have as little effect as Pipeline CEO Larry WIlson’s smug reassurances. I think our lawmakers are smart enough to take everything these oil advocates say with a few tons of salt. If anything, their all-out offensive may —  adding a sense of urgency to the drive to pass H.27, the bill that would make a tar-sands proposal for the Portland-Montreal Pipeline subject to the Act 250 process.

Note: I intended to explore the Albertans’s shiny happy brochure as part of this diary, but it’s already plenty long. So the brochure review will come as a separate post in the near future. Stay tooned!

Oh goody. The State Senate’s leading Windies, Bob Hartwell and the Slummin’ Solon Peter Galbraith, fresh off their smugtastic performance in passing the anti-wind S.30 through committee yesterday, will be taking a victory lap Friday evening in Grafton. They’ll be joined by fellow Senate Windy, Joe Benning.

The event is billed as “a public information meeting,” but naturally the stage will be filled by Windies promulgating their misinformation.

And I would ask Senator Hartwell, who is generally known as a reliable environmental voice in the Legislature, to consider the company he’ll be keeping. Specifically, one Lisa Linowes, ardent Windy and head of the Industrial Wind Action Group (IWAG). See, there are some things the Senator — and everyone else — should know about Linowes. (I reported some of this on GMD last year, after Linowes had spoken at another stacked “information meeting” in Lowell.)

In the Grafton event press release, Linowes is described as “an expert on the impacts of industrial-scale wind energy development on the natural environment, communities, and the regional grid systems.” However, trustworthy independent sources have described her work in far different terms. For instance…

Last August, the Sierra Club documented the increasing attacks on renewable energy in its report, “Clean Energy Under Siege.”  The report described IWAG as one of a growing network of anti-renewable groups promoting fossil fuel-funded “research” at odds with mainstream science. The report also documented her ties to notorious anti-renewable advocates, which can be seen at the “free-market energy blog” MasterResource, which is vociferously critical of all types of renewable energy. And she was one of the attendees at a February 2012 gathering of “wind warriors” — free-marketeers, many of whom with ties to fossil fuel barons like the Koch Brothers, who met to develop anti-renewable strategies.  

The Sierra Club describes IWAG as “run by husband-and-wife team Jonathan and Lisa Linowes. Jonathan is a politically active Tea Party member and the listed owner of the IWAG website. Lisa is the face of the organization…”

Speaking of Jonathan, here’s a picture of him playing dress-up at a Tea Party rally and blowing the ever-popular “OBAMA MUSLIN” dog-whistle. Jonathan’s got some interesting political views, including: “children have been brainwashed by public education,” and “Obama is so anti-capitalist I’m stabbed in the heart by him.” He also believes we don’t need the Postal Service because FedEx and UPS “giv[e] us reliable mail service.” Also, the social “safety net” should be purely a matter of private charity, and it’s unnatural for people to be governed.

Oh, and he’s a climate change denier. The evidence, he claims, has been falsified by “agenda-driven” scientists who have been lavishly funded for their alleged fakery.

I realize that you can’t judge a person by their spouse’s political beliefs. But it’s clear that Jonathan Linowes is a (silent) partner in IWAG, and Lisa Linowes should, at the very least, be questioned about her beliefs on climate change.

Next, we have the Checks and Balances Project, an independent watchdog on corporate lobbying. It reports that IWAG…

“…routinely promotes discredited problems and messengers instead of credible sources. On their website, the Industrial Wind Action Group links to articles and information from sources whose work is unscientific or has been linked to the fossil fuel industry – rather than objective sources that could help residents and government officials make informed decisions.  According to our investigative research, the Industrial Wind Action Group continues to hype anti-wind rhetoric above reality.”

Checks and Balances found that IWAG relies heavily on the work of “experts” employed at “think tanks” heavily funded by fossil fuel interests, including Koch Industries and ExxonMobil. This ain’t penny-ante stuff, either; the Kochs and Exxon Mobil have spent at least $85 billion on anti-climate change propaganda in the last 15 years.

Lisa Linowes is clearly part of this anti-science, anti-planet “astroturf” campaign. Senators Hartwell and Galbraith, who claim that (1) they are devoted to combating climate change and (2) their pet bill, S.30, is “not an anti-wind bill,” should be embarrassed to appear alongside her at a “public information meeting.”

If they do go ahead with the event, they should at least have the decency to question Linowes’ motives, her funding, and her views on climate change. But I’m not holding my breath.  

A couple of days ago in this space, I reflected on the Department of Public Safety* audit, which was widely reported as good news for DPS — no big fraudsters aside from Jim Deeghan, and relatively few staffers showing significant risk for fraud. I saw it quite differently: the audit revealed remarkably slipshod processes for reporting and monitoring overtime by DPS employees.

*Correction: I originally wrote “Department of Public Service,” which was a mistake. Stand down, Chris Recchia!

Well, big ups to frequent GMD commenter “inigma,” for digging up a two-year-old story in the Burlington Free Press that links very nicely to the new DPS audit. The two, taken together, tell a tale of widespread — but modestly-scaled — overtime abuse and pension padding among Vermont’s Finest.

And it’s a tale that I’m very surprised the Freeploid isn’t telling itself. For one thing, the ‘Loid usually loves these kind of stories — public employees feeding at the trough. For another, the 2011 story and this week’s rather forgiving account of the DPS audit were both written by the same guy — transparency maven Mike Donoghue. I’m sure he’s written a lot of stuff in the last two years, but did he miss the myriad reflections of his own 2011 reporting in this new audit?

In 2011, the Freeps (wasn’t the Freeploid at the time) listed the top 100 pensioners among state retirees, and found that the top of the list was packed with former judges — but a large majority of the top 100 were former State Police. 78 of the top 100, in fact. The article opened with the story of Bruce Lang, who became a state trooper in 1977 at age 18, and retired in 2007 with an $84,522 annual pension.

He retired, it should be noted, at age 48. He’s likely to keep pulling down that $85K for as many years as he was an active trooper. Or more.

If he does live to be 77, he will have taken home $2.5 million in pension. Not counting benefits, presumably including health insurance. (After age 65, his state pension will be reduced by the approximately $24,000 he will receive from Social Security. So some of that $2.5MM is federal money, not state. All public funds, in any event.)

I don’t know how much overtime Lang accrued as he approached retirement. But his case illustrates the problem when state troopers boost their pay in the years before retirement. Their pensions are based on their last few years’ pay, so we go on paying and paying and paying for every hour of overtime claimed by every senior state trooper. Even a “minor” abuse turns into big bucks after three decades or so.  

Not to say that troopers don’t deserve generous retirement benefits, after working long hours and routinely facing hazardous situations. But their pensions shouldn’t be perpetually inflated through improper overtime claims.

In 2010, the Legislature passed limits on how much overtime can count toward a pension. As a result, starting in July 2012, a maximum of 20% of a retiree’s pension can be based on overtime. (For teachers, the limit is 10%.)

However… excluded from the bill is overtime earned through federal grants for specific programs, such as drunk-driving checkpoints, seatbelt enforcement, and immigration patrols. Those grants were highlighted by the just-released DPS audit as “inherently vulnerable to abuse.”

The Freeps then described the practice of “spiking” — working extra overtime during the last few years before retirement in order to boost pensions. This relates to a couple of findings in the new audit. Auditors describe a “first-come, first-served” system for taking overtime hours — which allows troopers who value their downtime to limit extra duty, but also leaves the door open for senior troopers to load up the overtime and hence their pensions. The audit also indicated that senior DPS staffers, as a group, may be taking more overtime than warranted by the nature of the work.

Which could be interpreted as “pre-retirement guys soaking up the easy OT.” But perhaps I’m too cynical. In any case, the system is open to that kind of abuse.

There’s also that enticing item about how 88 DPS employees cut their reported overtime by at least 20% in the weeks after Governor Shumlin ordered the audit. This could be taken as a sign of widespread but low-level overtime padding. Which, when done by senior staffers, increases exponentially in pension costs.

When the Freeps published its 2011 article on the top 100 pensioners, VSP Director Tom L’Esperance sent an e-mail to troopers strongly defending their pension plan, celebrating “the countless sacrifices made during a trooper’s career,” and bemoaning the negative tone of the article.  

Again, I respect the hard work and sacrifices made by law enforcement personnel. They are entitled to pension benefits requisite to their service. They are not entitled to anything more than that. And L’Esperance’s ardent defense of his troops, well intentioned though it may have been, seem to indicate that a “lax organizational culture” is still alive and well.  

On a dreary, overcast day with very wet snow falling from the sky, the Governor’s weekly press conference was, naturally, held outdoors. It was originally supposed to be on the front lawn of the State House, where he would drive the ceremonial First Tap of the Mapling Season into a handy maple tree.

He did so as scheduled (purty pix for the teevee folks), but the presser itself was moved. But not indoors; instead, it was held on the portico of the Statehouse, between the giant pillars and the massive front doors.

Yeah, I guess the Governor of the State of Vermont couldn’t find a room inside. So instead, we all stood around a tiny lectern while he waxed rhapsodic about Vermont’s maple industry. (Photo: the good old Vermont boy quaffing a Mason jar of maple milk. Vermont syrup, of course, 2012 vintage.)

But then, we learned the method to the apparent siting madness. Shumlin announced that Vermont’s crisis-fuel fund is just about flat broke. He’s ordered his functionaries to find $900,000 (source as yet unclear) so the fuel fund would last another three weeks — long enough to top off recipients’ fuel tanks and get them through the remaining cold season.

And then it hit me. How better to drive home the message that Vermonters are suffering, than to make the press corps stand around outdoors for 45 minutes on a glum, cold, rainy/snowy day?  Brilliant stagecraft, right?

That’s the only explanation I can think of, for needlessly letting the state’s political media stand around getting thoroughly chilled.

Either that, or he hates us.

After the jump: hate.

The Gov had been provided with a teeny-tiny lectern for the event. Before the presser began, we dutifully piled our microphones and recorders onto every available inch of space.

A few minutes in, Shumlin invited a representative of the maple industry to say a few words. He settled behind the lectern, put down his notes, and BANG my recorder was knocked to the ground, batteries flying across the concrete.

Shumlin: “I’ve been wanting to do that for years.”

Nice.

Fortunately, my recorder still works.

p.s. The Governor offerred no explanation for the shortfall in the crisis fuel fund, which is quite substantial. According to VTDigger, the fund’s budget was $2.8 million. And it’s come up $900,000 short — so far. That’s a one-third overrun, and it may need even more emergency funding. Shumlin admitted the shortfall came as a surprise to his administration.

And it’s not good news, when we’re facing the prospect of more federal cuts in the future. Better get that weatherization program running pronto.  

(Note: This is the promised update of my brief post from earlier today.)

You know that health care bill? The one supposedly “killed” by the House Health Care Committee on Friday on a 5-5 vote?

Well, IT’S ALLLLIIIIIIIIVE!!!

(Always wanted to say that.)

The panel approved it this morning, unchanged from its Friday form, on a pair of 7-4 votes. (Procedural thing.) The bill includes the penny-per-ounce tax on sugar-sweetened beverages.

There was some last-minute wrangling. Progressive Chris Pearson tried once again to add $800,000 more in premium subsidies for the working poor. This time, he suggested trimming the bill’s increase in Medicaid reimbursement to doctors and hospitals from the proposed 3% to 2.9%. But the Democratic majority balked; some feared that trimming the Medicaid reimbursement, even by a mere tenth of a percent, would jeopardize the health-care industry’s support for the Governor’s reform plan.

Two Democrats joined Pearson and Independent Paul Poirier in voting “yes.” One of them, Dr. George Till, asserted that the Medicaid trim might actually be a good deal for doctors and hospitals. If higher costs force more people to go without insurance under the exchange, he argued, then health care providers get stuck with more charity and Medicaid cases. And, he added: “In the exchange, the hospitals and doctors [will be] paid commercial rates, way above the Medicaid rates.”  

After the jump: a non-emergency, and a lot of intransigence.)

Pearson defended his pursuit of additional subsidy funds, not only as a matter of compassion but also as a way to help ensure the success of health care reform:

I would say that the strength of the health care system as we try to transition to [single payer in] 2017 depends on achieving our targets for the rates of uninsured. And I’m not at all convinced that this gets us there.  

Speaking of Till, remember how Friday’s vote ended in a tie because of Till’s sudden departure? Turns out he wasn’t responding to a medical emergency as reported; he left the room with the intent of postponing the committee’s final vote:

There was no medical emergency. It was not unreasonable for people to assume it was an emergency, because it has happened multiple times over the years here. But on Friday I was hoping for a little more time to get one side or the other to make a little movement. Because I thought people were being stubborn to the point of not being rational.

… I was hoping that over the weekend, we could get some movement from somebody, one way or the other, and I failed.

Till also asserted that “We have an absolute roadblock to adding $800,000 to that from the leadership.”

In any case, after Pearson’s amendment was disposed of, the committee again took up the Friday version of the bill, including the sugar tax. Poirier insisted on two separate votes: one on the state subsidy funding, and one on the remainder of the bill. His purpose was to get everyone on the record as supporting or opposing better subsidies.

Before the first vote began, House Minority Leader Don Turner entered the room and urgently requested a “two-minute caucus” with the three Republicans on the committee. (VPR’s Bob Kinzel pointed his microphone in Turner’s direction hoping to get some insight into the urgency, but Turner stayed mum.) Chairman Mike Fisher assented, and the Republicans left the room.

When they got back, the first vote was taken — on the subsidy sections of the bill. It passed 7-4, with two Republicans, surprisingly, voting “yes.” Pearson, Poirier, Till, and one Republican voted “no.”

The rest of the bill was then moved, and passed on a slightly different 7-4 vote. This time, all three Republicans plus Poirier were the “no” votes; Pearson swallowed his objections and voted with the Democratic majority.

After the votes, Till stated his ardent support for the sugar tax, displaying a chart that projects skyrocketing costs for treatment of obesity-related illnesses in the next five years. (Photo: Till explains his position to Peter Hirschfeld of the Vermont Press Bureau.)

If we don’t control the rate of spending on obesity, it’s going to swallow our budget. So to me, the sugar-sweetened beverage tax is an important part of that, because of the unique contributions that sugar-sweetened beverages make to obesity.

It’s fine if you want to drink them, but you ought to be willing to pay that. It’s the same thing as cigarettes. If you want to smoke, you ought to be willing to foot the cost of that. The whole cost of it.  

The committee’s vote was a victory for the alliance of health advocacy groups who have promoted the sugar tax. But it faces an uphill battle — first in the Ways and Means Committee, then in the full House and the Senate, and ultimately Governor Shumlin — who today reiterated his objections to the sugar tax idea. Long odds, indeed.  

Expanded version of the brief item I posted earlier.

As expected, the Senate Natural Resources Committee has approved its new version of S.30, which imposes new regulatory hurdles on new energy projects. The vote was 4-1 with Democrat Mark MacDonald the only holdout.

As I reported yesterday, the bill was completely overhauled at the last minute, and the three-year wind moratorium was removed. The committee majority sought to portray the bill has strictly a local-control measure. “This is not an anti-wind bill,” insisted the Sllummin’ Solon, Peter Galbraith.

I beg to differ, sir. The first four pages of the bill — the committee’s “Findings” — are packed with arguments straight from the Windies’ playbook. (Following its token acknowledgment of climate change, a.k.a. lipstick for the pig.)

Those anti-wind arguments include the oft-repeated assertion that Vermont’s carbon footprint results largely from transportation, not from electricity generation. But there’s a big problem with that. It’s based on 2010 figures for carbon emission. In 2010, Vermont’s portfolio included a lot of power from Vermont Yankee. That’s no longer true; although VY continues to operate, Vermont doesn’t have a contract with VY. That power has been largely replaced by “market power,” usually generated from carbon-heavy sources. Which means that the carbon footprint caused by Vermont’s electricity demands is substantially larger than in 2010.

There’s also the little question of our moral obligation to the rest of the world. The bill considers Vermont in isolation: if we can provide for our needs, then we don’t need to think about anyone else. If you think that attitude is appropriate, I’ll leave you to it.

Global warming won’t. It’ll float blithely across our state, wreaking its fundamental changes, no matter how pure we manage to remain.

After the jump: more on those insidious Findings.

Finding #2 refers to the fact that Vermont allows energy producers to sell renewable energy credits, which means we don’t get the “green” benefit from wind projects. This is true, but the solution is not to block new wind farms — it’s to change the damned renewable-portfolio law, so utilities can’t sell our carbon credits across state lines. It’s a good argument, but it has nothing to do with Senate Bill 30.

Other Findings repeat the Windies’ claims about massive environmental and health effects of wind farms — claims that are founded on questionable “research” and “experts” who have ties to fossil fuel interests. They ignore the vast majority of actual research, which undermines their claims.

There are also the unquantifiable factors of “scenic beauty,” “quality of life,” “property values,” and “aesthetics”. (I presume we can thank the Slummin’ Solon for that bit of classical/British spelling.)  

In short, S.30 has been stripped of its most dramatic provision — the moratorium — but it remains a fundamentally anti-wind bill, Galbraith’s assertion notwithstanding. Its “Findings” are laden with anti-wind rhetoric, and it’s designed to throw as many obstacles as possible in the path of new wind projects.

One other provision I didn’t mention in my previous post: S.30 would establish a new Legislative Electricity Generation Oversight Committee with three members each from the Senate and House Natural Resources Committee. Well, we know the Senate half will be stocked with anti-wind voices, so at best the committee would deadlock on important issues. This new panel would be well placed to further hamstring the process — if, for instance, the Governor’s Siting Policy Committee issues recommendations the Windies don’t like.

The next step for the bill is unclear. Committee chairman (and S.30 co-sponsor) Bob Hartwell is seeking a quick path to the full Senate. But there are sections of the bill that may need to be considered by at least three other Senate committees.  

Hey look: an outside auditing firm has released its report on Department of Public Safety paysheet/overtime policies. The audit was ordered after the Jim Deeghan scandal.

The audit has some good news, and some really bad news.

Guess which news DPS Commissioner Keith Flynn chose to emphasize? WCAX:

“There is not widespread fraud or abuse within the Department of Public Safety,” Vt. Public Safety Commissioner Keith Flynn said.

…Flynn said he is pleased the independent audit showed a low risk for possible time sheet fraud, abuse and waste by a majority of the department employees.

… “I feel confident that we’ve done all we can at this point,” Flynn said.

… “Just the fact that someone was identified as having a risk is not indicative that there was some type of fraud,” Flynn said.

The audit covered timesheet and pay records for all DPS personnel from January 2010 to September 2012. It found only one case of gross abuse — Deeghan. Good news, eh?

Well, not so much. If the abuse was isolated, it’s no thanks to DPS’ own policies, which were harshly criticized by auditors. As I’ve said before, if this kind of lax administration happened in Human Services, there’d be hell to pay. But the DPS is relatively insulated from political blowback, so they’re going to get away with locking the barn after a horse revealed exactly how many doors were open. A few samples:  

— Employees’ ability to “self-activate” to on-duty status is “inherently vulnerable to abuse.”

— Third-party contracts, such as the infamous Jericho contract massively abused by Deeghan, are also “inherently vulnerable.”

— Anecdotal evidence of supervisors giving “rubber stamp approval of time reports and perform[ing] inadequate review.” Apparently this involved “electronic signatures,” not actual ones.  

– “Absence of formal chain of custody process.”

— “DPS current payroll system data validation checks are largely undocumented.”

— Top commanders “perform high-level review of overtime with a focus on budget, rather than detecting fraud.”

— DPS staffers are unconcerned “that overtime abuse will be detected.”

All this, in a department that will always have an unusual amount of overtime because of the unpredictable nature of its duties. This department, above all others, ought to have had rigorous checks on overtime claims.

A couple other notes. Although the audit found that only Deeghan had committed large-scale fraud, it did find that 21 others had some warning signs of possible fraud. And, fascinatingly:

Auditors found that overtime dropped by at least 20 percent for 88 employees in the weeks that followed Shumlin’s announcement [of the Deeghan case], compared with the weeks before he ordered the audit.

Were we feeling a little guilty, hmm?

Is this, perhaps, a sign that a lot of low-level fraud was going on? Especially since, auditors say, staffers weren’t worried about getting caught?

To his credit, Flynn has already instituted many of the measures called for by the auditors, so the system is a lot more robust now than it was last summer.

But still, to me, the big unanswered question is: How did the DPS’ procedures get so damn sloppy in the first place?

I have a feeling that Flynn’s blithe assurances will be enough to mollify uncomfortable politicians, and those responsible for this excessively lax management will go unpunished.  

On the eve of a committee vote, backers of new restrictions on utility-scale wind projects have dropped a three-year moratorium from their legislation. The Senate Natural Resources Committee, which includes three ardent opponents of wind energy, will take up the revised S.30 tomorrow morning.

The moratorium’s removal comes on the same day a new poll was released, that shows continued strong support for wind energy in Vermont. The Castleton Polling Institute survey showed:

To the question, “Do you support or oppose building wind energy turbines along the state’s ridge lines?”  66% said yes, 19% said no, and 14% were not sure.

When asked if you would favor or oppose “a wind farm in your community,” 69% said yes, 19% said no, and 12% were undecided.

And when asked if the state “should subsidize alternative energy generation,” 66% said yes, 20% said no, and 14% were undecided.

Support for utility-scale wind was strong across the board — male/female, party affiliation, household income, educational level. The top-line result was essentially identical to the numbers in a Castleton poll taken in May 2012 — 69% support, 17% oppose, 13% not sure.

I’m sure the Windies will scoff, and perhaps point to the infamous Castleton survey of the Democratic Attorney General primary last August, which gave Bill Sorrell a big lead over TJ Donovan with two weeks left in the race. But that was an outlier; Castleton has otherwise been reasonably accurate. Also, the poll showed a huge number of undecideds, and a low-turnout primary is much more volatile than a statewide race or issue. And in the case of wind, we have two polls, taken nine months apart, with fairly-worded questions, that show the same result. I don’t think you can ignore the results.

Now, back to the Senate Natural Resources Committee.

Until today, the panel had been considering two bills — S.30, the three-year moratorium; and S.21, which would make new wind projects subject to the Act 250 process. What the committee did today was to merge the two bills into one — a new S.30  — removing the moratorium and adding some new provisions.

At first glance, this seems to be bad news for the Windies. And indeed, the most prominent Windy, Annette Smith, told VTDigger that the new S.30 isn’t strong enough.

But the state’s leading environmental groups, which support a measured expansion of wind, aren’t happy either. They see the new S.30 as more politically palatable than the moratorium, and believe it has a better chance of passing in the Senate.

I haven’t seen the legislation; the new version hasn’t yet been posted online. But I’ve heard that the new S.30 adds some poison pills — new obstacles in the path of wind development. It reportedly includes a one-year “suspension” — not a moratorium, but effectively the same thing for a shorter period. It would also force wind projects to go through the Act 250 process plus the Act 248 process they’re already subject to, banish development on conserved land, bar development on land higher than 2500 feet above sea level*, and force any public official to disclose any payments received from developers.

*This provision reportedly touched off a debate between fellow Windies Sen. John Rodgers and the Slummin’ Solon, Peter Galbraith. Rodgers feared that the new S.30 would limit expansion of ski areas. To which Galbraith apparently replied, well, that’s kinda the point, isn’t it? Protecting mountains? I hope to have more on this in the near future.

The bill would also allocate $100,000 for a new study of economic, health, environmental, and even property-value implications of utility-scale wind projects.

The new S.30 is certain to sail through the Windy-heavy Natural Resources Committee. The next big test is on the Senate floor. If it passes the Senate, it would face an uncertain future in the House, where Speaker Shap Smith has said he wants to put off new legislation until the Governor’s Siting Commission issues its report. That’s not expected until April, near the close of the legislative session. If Smith sticks to his guns, S.30 faces long odds in the House.

And Governor Shumlin, who supports wind as part of an expanded renewables portfolio, would need a lot of convincing if S.30 were to somehow reach his desk.