So, this whole state trooper/overtime/pension-padding thing. (And Randy Brock’s ham-fisted effort to cash in on it.) A few thoughts to pass along…

Governor Shumlin’s initial handling was brilliant. He got word that the story of Sgt. Jim Deeghan’s alleged time-sheet falsification was about to break, and within a few hours he’d called a news conference with Tom L’esperance and Keith Flynn and Michael O’Neill of the troopers’ union closing ranks behind him. He took what could have been a damaging election-year scandal and owned it — in political and managerial terms.

This is one of the things that Peter Shumlin does best, and it’s one of the most important things an executive has to do. I don’t always agree with the decisions he makes, but he is decisive. The buck stops here, don’t ya know.

It would have been easy to let the story come out, issue a statement through a spokesperson, and let Flynn shoulder the load. Then, of course, he would have been back on his heels playing defense, and handing a nice juicy “wasteful government” issue to Randy Brock, who desperately needs an issue.

(And who made a royal hash of this one. First, the timing: he waited two full days after the initial Deeghan revelation, and then he held his belated news conference right after Maine Governor Paul LePage had left a turd on his doorstep. Brock’s issue, naturally, got buried in the LePage fallout. Completely foreseeable. Second, the substance: his figures included the last six months of the Douglas Administration, and the first six of Shumlin’s. The waters were muddied from the very beginning. Which is why Jeb Spaulding’s response to Brock’s charge was basically a horselaugh.

Yeah, those expensive consultants are really earning their keep.

Speaking of which, $48,000 in salary for Darcie Johnston? For four or five months of work? Astounding.)

Anyway, Shumlin got off to a great start, setting the hounds loose and promising a thorough and transparent investigation. Deeghan was indicted within a few days.

Now comes the hard part: the follow-through.

The state is looking at six years of Deeghan’s time sheets, six months’ worth of sheets from the Williston station where Deeghan worked, and three months of sheets from other VSP posts. And Shumlin is sounding a bit optimistic: (Warning: link will take you to the partially-paywalled Freeploid.)

“So far, it is our belief, based upon what we’ve seen, that this is an isolated challenge,” Shumlin said at a news conference Tuesday.

…”What we’re looking at now is, since it appears – it’s alleged – that that system was abused, what went wrong. Was it a system problem, or was it a personnel problem?” Shumlin said. “I think probably it was a personnel problem.”

Yes, he hopes it’s a personnel problem — a bad apple in a healthy barrel. But frankly, I’d be surprised if it’s not a system problem. The system seems to contain ample motive and opportunity for overtime-fudging. If Deeghan is the only one who took advantage, that’d be somewhat remarkable.

From what we know so far, Deeghan (allegedly, allegedly) claimed absurd amounts of overtime, fabricated incidents that never happened, and screwed around with the VSP’s contract for policing the town of Jericho. He reportedly approved his own time sheets. If all this is true, then the system gave Deeghan an unconscionable amount of freedom to play fast and loose with his own salary.

And his potential reward: a pumped-up lifetime pension based on the two top-earning years of his VSP career. Now, I understand there are good reasons to base a pension on top earnings, to reward a loyal soldier who rises through the ranks and has an honorable career. But when a person has an opportunity to claim overtime pay without any review, basing a pension on top pay is like a bank putting its vault on the sidewalk and leaving the door open all night.

It may turn out that Deeghan was the only one taking advantage of the system. I hope so, and Governor Shumlin certainly hopes so. But that wouldn’t mean there aren’t severe problems with the system itself.

This is an important issue for us liberals. We believe in a government that provides a broad array of services that make our society a better place. We believe in fairly compensating the public workers tasked with providing those services. Scandals in public-sector pay are doubly damaging — to the liberal official in charge, and to the cause of liberalism. Nothing erodes the public’s faith in government and in unions like a public-sector worker charged with defrauding the taxpayer. For Shumlin’s own political sake, and for the liberal cause, I hope he follows through on his initial response to this issue.  

This one flew under the radar, in the midst of the Rutland County GOP’s own goal and Monday’s blizzard of campaign finance reports. But, according to an Associated Press story distributed yesterday, Vermont Corrections Commissioner Andrew Pallito has quietly scotched the Corrections Citizens’ Advisory Group.

The CCAG was formed in 2005 after a series of inmate suicides and deaths of people in custody, and was designed to provide an outside perspective on prison operations. But Pallito sees no point in continuing:

Pallito said that given the way the Corrections Citizens’ Advisory Group has been operating in recent years, it has become a waste of time and resources.

“I suspended the CCAG for just a period to step back and take a look at whether or not it’s really having the desired outcome,” Pallito said in an interview, adding he expected to make a decision about its future by fall.

After the jump: Ineffective, or hamstrung?

Okay, so maybe the CCAG has outlived its real purpose. Fair enough.

Oh, what’s that?

The decision drew fire from one member of the panel, while another had sent an email to Pallito indicating frustration that the panel didn’t seem to be having much of an impact. 



Committee member Gordon Bock of Northfield said it was disheartening that in Gov. Peter Shumlin’s administration, which “has prided itself since taking office on a commitment to transparency and open government, the Department of Corrections makes it look like it wants to be imperious and clandestine.”

CCAG member Alan Taplow has complained of “several cancellations and postponements,” which indicate to him “that CCAG is hardly one of the Commissioner’s priorities.”

Hm. We appear to have a chicken/egg situation: is the CCAG superfluous, or is it hamstrung because Pallito wants it gone?

Pallito claims that his department gets enough public scrutiny through the Legislature and via public posting of DOC policies. But at least one member of the Legislature’s Corrections Oversight Committee, Bill Lippert, believes the citizens’ panel should continue. The legislative panel has a meeting tomorrow, and Lippert says the issue is likely to come up.  

There’s not enough information for me to choose sides here, but I’m generally skeptical of governmental bodies and officials who want to limit public review of their activities. Especially when the body in question has a troubled past.

Note: After this original post was written, RCGOP chair Rob Towle issued a real, actual APOLOGY. Details after the jump below.

Awwwww. The Rutland County GOP has apparently dumped its Facebook page. You know, the one famous for definitely racist and all-but-racist anonymous postings in the name of topical humor?

Well, it’s gone. Thankfully, we preserved their excesses in the posts linked above.

Ever since GMD first brought the Facebook posts to light on Sunday, Rob Towle, the tone-deaf chair of the RCGOP, had issued a strong of absurd defenses, non-apologies, and attacks in apology form. I guess things finally got too hot for him — especially since the national media is on the case. First Huffington Post, and now NBCNews.com.

Might also have had something to do with VTGOP chair Jack Lindley’s evident displeasure at his southern brethren’s comedic diarrhea, as reported yesterday by VTDigger:

As for an official apology, Lindley said, “I haven’t actually seen it, so it’s a little hard for me to be able to say that I’m issuing an apology.” He repeated that it wasn’t part of “civil discourse” several times, however, also calling it “most inappropriate.”

…”If I had any control over it whatsoever, that would never see the light of day. But I have no control over it, obviously.”

I can almost imagine him hanging up the phone and mixing himself a nice tall Jack-and-Maalox. The last thing he needed, what with the fallout from Paul LePage’s visit and the disastrous campaign finance reports filed by his candidates, is another self-inflicted injury.

Farewell, Rutland County GOP Facebook Page; we hardly knew ye.

Later update: After two full days of defensiveness, false apologies, and attacks in the form of apologies, RCGOP chair Rob Towle has finally — FINALLY — learned the art of the apology. From the Rutland Herald:

“I want to let everyone know that I am truly sorry about the stupid and insensitive post that I reposted to the Rutland County page Sunday,” he wrote. “It was a case of bad judgement and anyone that knows me, knows that the post does not reflect my personal values, nor does it in any way reflect the values or beliefs of any GOP official, Candidate, GOP worker, or any person that I am friends with or associate with. At no time was any person other than myself involved with this post and I wanted to make sure people understand I take full responsibility.

“In writing this statement (with a heavy heart and great sorrow), I hope this message will reach those offended and will take this apology for face value and find it in their hearts to forgive.”

Touching. And I’m glad he finally came clean — not only in his recognition that the “joke” was offensive, but also that he was, himself, responsible for posting it.

Still, the fact that it took him two days does him no credit. And I suspect it came only after heavy pressure from state and/or national GOP officials.  

Yesterday I pronounced Randy Brock’s gubernatorial effort DOA. after his campaign finance report showed that he’d loaned $300,000 of his own money to his campaign — accounting for nearly 60% of his unimpressive fundraising total. (And given my near-Merlinian omniscience, cough, I don’t know why Randy hasn’t just given up already.) Then, this morning I read a sentence by VTDigger’s political analyst Jon Margolis that, in my fevered imagination, seemed to be pointed directly at me: “No, the campaign for governor is not over.”

This came after his determined effort to make lemonade out of Randy Brock’s big bag of lemons:

Lending money to your own campaign is neither improper nor unusual. Shumlin did it in 2010, though his loans were never as large a percentage of his total campaign treasury as Brock’s. And considering that Brock didn’t really start running until a few months ago, raising $527,000 isn’t a paltry showing.

… No, the campaign for governor is not over. A candidate doesn’t need more money than his opponent. He just needs enough to run his own campaign and get his message out to the voters.

I respect Jon Margolis. He’s certainly accomplished far more in his journalistic life than I have. But on this one, he’s wrong. He’s bending over backwards to give Brock every benefit of the doubt. Perhaps he wants to appear “balanced” by artificially evening out the pluses and minuses of the Brock effort.

Or, as I’d put it, “the doomed Brock effort.” Sorry, he has no chance. And the race for Governor may well spin completely out of his control, giving Peter Shumlin a victory of historic proportions. I’m more convinced of that today than I was last night, after an initial perusal of the campaign finance reports.

After the jump: dispatches from Death’s waiting room.

A few points:

Out of Brock’s $300,000 in loans to his own campaign, $210,000 came on Thursday, July 12 — a sign that Brock was desperate to put up a halfway-decent number in his finance report. For that matter, he may have even been desperate to cover all the checks he has to keep writing to his big-bucks campaign consultants.

And Brock has spent far more on his campaign than any other candidate in any race. He rightfully points out that he has to spend heavily to make up for Shumlin’s advantages in name recognition and free publicity. However, that doesn’t address the fact that Brock’s outgo is faster than his intake. Vermont Pundit Laureate Eric Davis told the Freeploid that Brock will need to raise $100,000 a month from now until the election to be competitive in the fall. So far, he’s averaging less than $40,000 a month.

The Freeploid also points out that Brock’s paltry fundraising puts him in some bad company:

That’s less than two of the three unsuccessful Democratic challengers of Republican Gov. Jim Douglas had raised at the point in their campaigns. Only Gaye Symington in 2008 had a smaller contribution total – $205,309. Scudder Parker in 2006 had raised $299,677 and Peter Clavelle in 2004 had $260,204.

Eesh. Brock raised a total of $226,000 from other people. Symington’s total, in 2012 dollars, was $219,000.

Can we all agree that if you’re a gubernatorial candidate, you do NOT want to be comparable, in any way, to Gaye Symington?

Given his campaign’s unfortunate burn rate and Symingtonian fundraising performance, it’s clear that Randy Brock is not only in danger of losing the race — he’s in danger of falling into political irrelevance long before the first vote is cast. He’s going to have to do a lot better just to avoid the appearance of irrelevance.

One other thing: Brock’s $226,000 in contributions from people other than himself includes $82,000 from donors who are already maxed out — having given Brock the legal maximum of $2,000.

To be fair, many of Shumlin’s donors have maxed out as well. But the Governor is a proven fundraiser, netting almost a million and a half dollars for his 2010 candidacy. There’s little doubt that he will be able to maintain or increase the flow of dollars into his warchest. Brock will have to more than double his pace, while operating from an extremely weak position.  

I could be wrong. It’s happened before and, God knows, it’ll happen again. But I stand by my statement: the Brock campaign is DOA.  

Well, the filing deadline has come and gone for campaign finance reports in Vermont. It’s a big day; thanks to the state’s antiquated campaign finance reporting rules, candidates haven’t had to file since one full year ago. (From this point on, they have to report once a month through the rest of the year.)

So, lots of numbers. Earlier, I reported the headline: Randy Brock reported a better-than-expected total of $527,000 — but only because he loaned his own campaign $300,000. In actual contributions, it’s a disappointing total. And that, plus the fact that he reported expenditures of nearly 300K on his campaign — far, far more than any other candidate — puts him in a deep financial hole in his race against Governor Shumlin.

Now, on to some other tidbits.

In the only high-profile primary race on the Democratic side, incumbent Bill Sorrell had a decent report, but challenger TJ Donovan outraised him by a significant margin. Sorrell raised $83,000 in cash — including a $2,000 loan to his own campaign — and reported in-kind contributions of over $9,000. He has spent nearly $38,000 already*, which leaves him with about $46,000 cash on hand.

*Most of Sorrell’s expenditures have gone to payroll; he has four paid campaign staffers who are drawing regular paychecks.

Donovan raised a total of $128,000 (no loans), with expenditures of just under 40K, leaving him with $88,000 cash on hand — nearly double Sorrell’s total. And bear in mind that we’re only about six weeks away from the primary, so Sorrell has very little time to close the money gap.

It was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day for Vermont Republicans. Aside from Randy Brock, noted above, their three candidates for US Congress reported pitiable fundraising totals while the incumbents, Dem Peter Welch and Indy Bernie Sanders, reported huge numbers.

After the jump: Beth Pearce, Vince Illuzzi, Doug Hoffer, and the Lt. Gov race.

Jack McMullen, the no-hoper Republican candidate for Attorney General, reported goose eggs across the board. Well, he loaned his campaign a few thousand bucks to cover expenses incurred so far, but he has received not a single dollar in contributions. Haunted by the ghost of Fred Tuttle.

Treasurer hopeful Wendy Wilton, as reported earlier, raised very little money: a total of less than $16K, with about 11K still on hand. She’s in a very deep financial hole against (appointed) incumbent Beth Pearce, who reported total fundraising of $76,000 for the reporting period, and total money raised at $84,000. Pearce has spent 33K, but she still has a roughly five-to-one advantage in cash on hand. That’s not good for Wilton, who was supposed to be one of the VTGOP’s bright hopes for 2012.

There’s one race where the Republican has a clear financial edge, and one that’s fairly close in dollars.

The former is the race for Auditor. Vince Illuzzi has substantially more money than Doug Hoffer — but for two reasons unrelated to his fundraising prowess. Illuzzi reported total donations of $31,641. But $17,600 of that was in transfers from “Vince Illuzzi for State Senate.” His campaign actually raised less than $12,000. (To be fair, Illuzzi has a big fundraiser coming up, as has been reported here previously.) He also reported a personal loan to his own campaign of $25,000 — which apparently was not reported under “Contributions.” On Brock’s report, his personal loan of $300,000 was listed under “Contributions.” Could it possibly be that our Auditor wannabe made a substantial mistake on his campaign finance form?

(Comedy side note: On the front page, the filer has to sign and print his name. Illuzzi signed his name, and in the space for the printed name, he printed “CANDIDATE.” Hope he does a better job filling out forms if he becomes Auditor.)

Illuzzi has spent a little over $4,000 so far — with the biggest line item being mileage reimbursements to himself, for driving to campaign events from his home in Newport.

Doug Hoffer reported contributions of just over $10,000, with total expenditures of $3,650. So, with Illuzzi dipping deeply into his own wallet and his other campaign warchest, Hoffer is at a distinct financial disadvantage. If you’re considering a tactically sound contribution, he’s not a bad choice.

In the race for Lt. Governor, incumbent Phil Scott didn’t raise a whole lot, but he still did a lot better than Dem challenger Cass Gekas. Scott raised about $27K in cash and has only spent about $4K. There were some technical problems with Gekas’ report so I only got the topline: she raised $7,785. So she’s off to a slow start.

If these first financial returns are any indication, most of the Republican candidates are already in deep trouble. And the only two who are doing well are the two “mavericks” — Vince Illuzzi, who is aggressively positioning himself as a person who has worked with both parties, and Phil Scott, who (almost always) tries to position himself somewhere near the middle of the political spectrum.   What does that say for the VTGOP’s 2012 strategery of moving aggressively to the right?

And what will it mean for the future direction of the VTGOP if their only statewide officeholders are Republican nonconformists?

I’m sure I didn’t catch all the big news from today’s filings. Watch VTDigger and Paul Heintz at Seven Days, as well as the Freeploid and Vermont Press Bureau if not blocked by their paywalls.

If anyone has any corrections to my diary, or questions I didn’t cover, please write them in the Comments and I’ll be happy to amend my post.  

For a few moments, it looked like there was some happy news for the Randy Brock campaign today — the deadline for filling the first finance reports of this year. As his report was filed, we got the top line number: $527,000. That looked pretty darn healthy; Vermont Pundit Laureate Eric Davis had said Brock needed to raise $350-400K to stay competitive in the race.

So at first glance, it looked like had ha cleared that barrier with ease.

BUT… then we got the actual report. And it turns out that Randy Brock’s $527,000 includes a $300,000 loan from Brock to his own campaign.

Money bomb FAIL.

And there’s more bad news: Brock reported campaign expenditures of $282,000. Which means he spent more money than he raised — when you subtract his personal loan. I guess those “expert” out-of-state consultants don’t come cheap.

Let’s remind ourselves of the context: Peter Shumlin raised almost $700,000 and spent only $77K. So Shumlin has about $625K cash on hand, while Brock has $244K. And if he hadn’t loaned himself a buttload of money, his campaign would be significantly underwater.

Yikes. Allow me to be the first to say it: Randy Brock’s campaign is DOA.  

Yes folks, today at 5:00 p.m. is the deadline for Vermont candidates to file financial reports covering the last 366 days. (Leap Year, ahem.) I stopped by the Secretary of State’s office around 1:30 to see what had been turned in so far. The answer: not much. Peter Shumlin, Phil Scott, Wendy Wilton, early filers among statewide candidates.

(I’m only looking at the statewide races, because the prospect of looking at all those Legislative candidates is just way too daunting. And I’ll concentrate on the topline. If anyone has specific questions about particular donors or anything, feel free to post ’em in the Comments. I will be picking up the rest of the reports today before the SoS closes.)

So, the big headline: Peter Shumlin is Mr. Moneybags. And on a hot sticky day like today, how better to cool off than to take a swim in your Big Vault O’Loot? Shumlin’s total: $just short of $680,000, including about 3K in in-kind contributions. That’s pretty damn awesome for a guy who isn’t quite officially (cough, cough, choke) running for re-election.

Add to that, a surplus of $26K from 2010 (waste not, want not). Subtract total uncampaign expenditures of $77K (wow, it’s expensive to not run for office). Grand total on hand, in the bank: $625,130.02.

Hmm. Randy Brock’s $40,000 “money bomb” is looking more like a defective sparkler. We’ll have his total later today.

After the jump: Wendy Wilton and Phil Scott. Can’t you just hardly wait?

The other toplines: Wendy Wilton, Republican candidate for Treasurer, raised $15,970 and spent just under 5K. Not a great start for someone aspiring to be Keeper of the Public Purse. About half her cash came from seven big donors: 2K each from Joyce Errecart of Shelburne and Richard and Jody Wilcox of Mendon, and 1K each from Ralph Colin, Jr. of Manchester Center, Bog and Judi Sherman of Leicester, and Gene Richards/Spruce Mortgage of Burlington.

(No word yet on Dem incumbent Beth Pearce.)

And the People’s Cheerce, Phil Scott, is doin’ his grass-roots thing. Raised a total of $31,408, including 4K in in-kind contributions. Spent less than 4K. No word yet from Cass Gekas.

Nothing so far on Auditor, AG, US Senate or Congress. More news as it becomes available. Stay tuned!

Lately we’ve heard of the stellar composition of Vince Illuzzi’s fundraiser “host committee” — notably including some of his State Senate colleagues of the Democratic persuasion: Dick Mazza, Hinda Miller, and former Senator Elizabeth Ready, crossing party lines to support Illuzzi’s latterly-declared bid for Auditor and (implicitly) oppose their party’s choice for the gig, Doug Hoffer.

Something in the water in our senior chamber, perhaps?

Well, here comes more happy news of Senate bipartisanship in the Auditor’s race. Or, to use a different word, betrayal. The (paywalled) Vermont Press Bureau brings us this touching anecdote:

Senate President Pro Tem John Campbell served as Illuzzi’s personal photographer during the Independence Day parade in Montpelier,taking shots as Illuzzi shook hands along the parade route.

Illuzzi said Campbell also acted as a sort of “choreographer” during the parade. “He’d say, ‘Stand here and go here,'” said Illuzzi. “It was very helpful, actually.”

Campbell hasn’t replied to VPB’s request for comment, but Vince certainly has. Is Campbell going to cross party lines and actually endorse Illuzzi?

“Endorse is an interesting word,” he said. “He is sympathetic.”

“Let’s put it this way,” Illuzzi added. “He’s certainly not opposing me.”

Awwww. So cute you could puke. Especially if you believe in some semblance of party loyalty, eh?

This is the same John Campbell who seemed to have more trouble with his own Democratic caucus than with the other guys, who repeatedly bollixed up the agenda, fell way behind the House’s pace on key bills, got into a public argument with fellow Dem Dick McCormack (in which he called McCormack “a horse’s ass” within hearing distance of a reporter), and blamed freshmen Senators for screwing up the Senate’s inner workings and basically telling them to STFU. He didn’t name names in that quote, but he clearly had significant differences with fellow Dems Peter Galbraith and Phil Baruth during the session.

To recap… John Campbell gets along just fine with his longtime Senate buds, regardless of party. He has trouble with Democrats who don’t toe his line. He’s engaged in a PDA with one of the Republicans’ statewide candidates. Gee, maybe we should redraw party lines in the Senate: you’d have the Prog/Dems, the Republicans, and the Old Buddies’ Club. If the Buddies can’t scare up a majority, then we can set up a brace of comfy chairs in the corner where they can smoke cigars and mutter imprecations at the whipper-snappers of the Senate.  

So yesterday we learned that unsubtle racism is the Rutland County Republican Party’s idea of “comedy based in reality.” (The offensive “joke” was scrubbed from the RCGOP’s official Facebook page after we revealed it here. Courage of your convictions, RCGOP.)

Here’s another sample of the RCGOP Facebook page’s comic stylings:

Bwahahahaha. Oh, you Rutland County GOPpies, you know how to tickle a funny bone, that’s for sure. Hey, y’got any of them pictures of a watermelon garden on the White House lawn? That’s a real knee-slapper. Bone-in-the-nose Obama? Always good for a laugh. Obama with a Hitler mustache? Yeah, that’s political commentary with tongue in cheek.

Hey, Wendy Wilton, candidate for Treasurer and Rutland County Republican in good standing: Got anything to say about your compatriots’ Facebook page?

I’ll just add one little bit of historical fact to this diary. If you really want to choose Presidents based on military service — as opposed to how purty they look in a uniform — then Jimmy Carter would have beaten Ronald Reagan (who spent World War II doing stateside PR for the armed services) and John Kerry would have trounced G.W.  

… Randy Brock’s money bomb has had a delayed explosion. The “money bomb” graphic just went right to the top.

I guess we’ll be seeing a self-congratulatory press release any time now.

And then we can see how the real fundraising race shapes up on Monday afternoon, when the first campaign finance reports since last July are due at the Secretary of State’s office.