( – promoted by GMD)

2010 Vermont general election gubernatorial candidates’ responses to homelessness and affordable housing questions (here):

Five-Part Question Posed to Vermont 2010 Gubernatorial Candidates:

If the voters were to elect you as Governor of the State of Vermont, when it comes to addressing homelessness and affordable housing across the state, please answer the following five-part question:

1. What priority would both of these matters hold within your administration?

2. What concrete steps would your administration take to address these matters?

3. What are the expected outcomes by which your administration would measure the effectiveness of such proposals?

4. What timelines would your administration set for addressing such?

5. How would your administration fund such proposals?

[…]

Read responses received thus far*(1), here.

*(1: With the Vermont Democratic gubernatorial primary only recently decided or confirmed after the recount, not all the candidates have responded as of yet; however I followed up in one manner or another with the other campaigns who have not done so in order to ask and remind them once again about the questions submitted to each of the candidates for Governor via e-mail earlier this Summer)

To recount or not to recount (Brattleboro Reformer Editorial; 8/26/2010), here:

The question on everyone’s mind right now is pretty evident: Will there be a recount of the votes cast in Tuesday’s Democratic gubernatorial primary?

There are less than 200 votes separating Windham County’s “hometown boy,” Sen. Peter Shumlin and former Lt. Governor and current Richmond senator Doug Racine.

In addition, Secretary of State Deb Markowitz is less than 700 votes away from the top spot.

So it only seems logical that all of the candidates should at least wait for the official results to arrive before claiming victory.

[…]

One major reason that a recount should be considered is that while 106 of the state’s cities, such as Brattleboro, use optical scanners to tally votes, 140 of them count their ballots by hand.

Town clerks and their assistants do an outstanding job when it comes to any and all elections in Vermont, but all it takes is one or two miscounted votes in each town to swing the vote to another candidate.

[…]

The Reformer agrees with Racine and counsels the candidates to wait for the official results to come in before hoisting a victory flag. If the vote count is as close as it was on Wednesday, Racine and Markowitz should call for a recount and Shumlin should agree. It’s in the best interest of all Vermonters.

Considering everything at stake, it is my hope that Doug Racine and his campaign gives serious consideration to requesting a recount as concerns the Vermont Democratic gubernatorial primary election.

Some rank and file Democrats and also others who voted in the election as well, including some supporters of Peter Shumlin, had stated online that a recount should be done when final unofficial results had not yet been called by the press.

They stated their opinions that it was indeed crucial to make sure all votes were properly counted and accounted for so there would be no doubts of whom got the most votes and is rightly the Democratic nominee.

The fact is the race was way too close, especially knowing how easy it is for things to go wrong during the initial vote counting process in a statewide race, which the state auditors race from several years ago helped to illustrate, when one candidate seemed to win and on a recount another of candidates had been found to have actually received the most votes and had been duly elected.

In addition, since this was a primary election with a lower total of voters, it will not take as long as the aforementioned recount had, so this cannot be an excuse not to do so.

This election is far too important to allow any doubts or questions to linger over it, which would be the case if an official recount was not performed.

Morgan W. Brown

Montpelier

 Loading ...

While there is strong support for Deb Markowitz, Peter Shumlin and Matt Dunne among some Democratic primary voters, the weakness for these three is they are each drawing from the same types of voters, whereas Doug Racine — and while there may also be some overlap there as well — is also drawing from different types of voters who are less likely to vote for Markowitz, Shumlin and Dunne.

In addition, with a lot of people when they say who is among their top two or three candidates, Racine oftentimes is one of them and the same can not always be said for the other candidates as well, so he enjoys both broader and deeper favorables; plus Shumlin has high negative ratings when it comes to unfavorables, etc.

When eating lunch the other day and without my bringing up the subject at all, someone started talking about how they were still undecided about whom to vote for in the Democratic gubernatorial primary, yet seemed to be leaning toward voting for Doug Racine; when we spoke further, they made clear they did not think much of the other four candidates, yet also felt they needed to do more homework before voting. Today this same individual made it clear they will indeed be voting for him.

Another person also recently mentioned to me out of the blue how they had been undecided on who to vote for in the race for Governor and had culled it down to being between Doug Racine and Peter Shumlin, however seemed to feel they have decided to vote for Racine, but did not sound solid yet.

These are only two small examples, however I am hearing or have read much the same type of things from others here and there across the state.

Likewise (i.e., just as will be the case for Racine of course), depending on who turns out to vote and how many voters end up voting in the Democratic primary, I see Susan Bartlett as a possible wild card who could do much better than most political pundits and members of the press are assuming.

Therefore I would not be surprised to see a very close race with Racine, Markowitz and Bartlett among the top three, with Racine edging out a win.

Most people tend to vote for the candidate, not for how much money or endorsements a candidate has  raised or mustered.

By the way, in case anyone is interested, read a compiled listing of the responses from each of the five Democratic Gubernatorial primary candidates concerning addressing homelessness as well as affordable housing across the state, here.

Morgan W. Brown

Montpelier

As most GMD readers probably are already well aware, tonight ORCA Media is hosting a Democratic Gubernatorial primary candidates debate at Montpelier City Council chambers at City Hall from 7:00 PM to 8:30 PM.

Being informed that there will be no wifi available on site, plus with it most likely being both crowded and hot there, I will be viewing the debate via local cable access TV as well as also providing live blog event coverage to Vermont Watch from the comfort of home.

If there are GMD front page bloggers as well as potentially others who will be viewing the debate via either local cable access TV it will be airing live on or the live stream available online and whom would like to be considered as possible guest bloggers during the live blog, please let me know via: morganbrown (at) vermontwatch (dot) net (note correction of e-mail address).

If anyone is attending the debate in person and will be tweeting by text via cell phone, iPhone or Blackberry using Twitter, let me know and I can add your tweet stream within live blog as well (use above e-mail address or if I am already following your tweets, DM me @vtwatch).

(cross-posted from Vermont Watch blog, here)

*Updated* (see bottom of post)

Back in 2004, then State Senator Jim Leddy offered the following comments concerning the dreadful conditions of the Vermont State Hospital:

New England Psychologist

Suicide likely to delay plans to revamp Vermont State Hospital

(December 2004 Issue)

[…]

Legislators and others have expressed concern that the administration of Governor Jim Douglas is moving too slowly on the hospital planning initiative. “I suggest we have lost a year,” says Mental Health Oversight Committee co-chair State Sen. Jim Leddy (D-Chittenden) in remarks before the annual meeting of the Association for Mental Health. “I can’t imagine that for another population, another disability, we would take so long to figure out what we should do.”

[…]

[…]

Read the entire article, here.

That was then and, nearly six years later, the following op-ed submitted to area newspapers for publication is now (posted as is with direct permission and with thanks to Jim Leddy for thinking to send it my way; am including an excerpt from his note since it hits the nail on the head as usual):

[…] … The treatment of Vermonters with serious mental illness often exists below the radar screen. Hopefully this op-ed will help focus attention on a problem too long ignored.

[…]

–Jim Leddy 

Op-Ed by Jim Leddy:

Two Crises, One Solution

A Story of Priorities

Nearly eight months ago – October 16, 2009 – the Champlain Bridge connecting Chimney Point, Vermont and Crown Point, New York was abruptly closed because it was determined to be unsafe. Within two weeks Governor Jim Douglas of Vermont and Governor David Patterson of New York announced transportation alternatives, including free ferry and commuter bus service, to assist the many Vermonters and New Yorkers who travel every day to and from work across the Champlain Bridge. On January 14, 2010 – three months after the closing – the two governors announced the design for a new bridge, with the goal to have it open by the end of summer in 2011.

More than six years ago the federal government determined that the Vermont State Hospital was unsafe for mentally ill Vermonters, and revoked the hospital’s certification to receive federal Medicaid and Medicare funding.

Six years later: no new hospital, several failed efforts to regain federal approval, and still no federal funds. In these dire times with many cuts in state programs and services, the continuing loss of these funds will cost the State of Vermont an additional $9,700,000 in the next fiscal year, on top of the millions lost over the past six years.

I wonder if we would be in the same place if it were any other illness or any other hospital than the Vermont State Hospital for the Mentally Ill. The stigma of mental illness still lingers more than 10 years after Vermont enacted pioneering legislation requiring parity in coverage and services for people with mental health and substance abuse problems. It is hard to imagine that seriously ill patients with any other illness would have, as their only option, care in a dilapidated facility which does not meet federal standards. It is unfathomable to imagine that these patients and their families, not to mention their communities, would tolerate, much less accept such conditions in any other Vermont hospital.

But mental illness is different, I guess. Stigma lives on. Parity is a word, not a reality. And clearly not a priority.

A bridge fails. And eight months later there’s a plan, free ferries transport people back and forth across Lake Champlain, and Governors Douglas and Patterson break ground on a new bridge on June 11th. Where there’s a will,….

A hospital fails, and six years later it is still failing. For six years the State of Vermont has allowed failure to become the status quo. What’s different between these two pictures? What’s wrong with this picture? Priorities, it’s always priorities.

The recently adjourned Legislature did resolve to support a secure residential program in Waterbury, but this depends on receiving $10,000,000 from an uncertain federal Medicaid bonus payment. And the estimated cost for building this new facility is more than $15,000,000, with no plan of how the project would be completed. Still no new hospital.

For patients at the Vermont State Hospital, their plight often invisible, there is a sense of abandonment. There is also a sense of shame that the State of Vermont has allowed failure to win. So many challenges, so little change.

No more excuses, no more delays. If we can build a new bridge lickety split, we should be able to build a new hospital for some of our most vulnerable relatives and neighbors. It isn’t an either/or decision. Priorities. It’s always about priorities. Enough. It’s time. It’s long past time.

Jim Leddy, South Burlington

Retired Director of Howard Center, Former State Senator and Co-Chair of the Mental Health Oversight Committee

*Update*: In addition to his previous public service and for the sake of full disclosure, Jim Leddy is president of the Vermont chapter of AARP (AARP-VT) as well as having been recently appointed by Speaker of the House Shap Smith to the state Health Care Reform Commission; the latter of which is currently being challenged by Doctor Deb Richter of the group Vermonters for Single Payer. Read a report concerning such via Vermont Public Radio, here.

(cross-posted from Vermont Watch blog; yet edited for posting to GMD. with apologies for what might be perceived as blog pimping)

Introducing TOTD (Thought Of The Day) as tweeted via my Vermont Watch Twitter account: @vtwatch

• Even when they do not bother to focus on them, all politicians have their own ‘issues’. (here)
• Some lawyers are said to be ‘ambulance chasers’, however most such lawyers never seem to be willing to drive one when needed. (here; also posted to a NY Times City Room blog post, here, which is the reason I tweeted it so soon after my initial TOTD and did not wait until the next day to do so; edited: deleted ‘s’ from what was originally worded ‘ambulances’)

For more of the same in either coming days or whenever I am so inspired, check out the new TOTD (Thought Of The Day) page now available on the Vermont Watch blog; which is available via the tabs – fourth tab to the right — at top of blog pages and just underneath blog header and sub-header.

(cross-posted from Beyond Vermont State Hospital (VSH) blog, here)

Within the two-year legislative session that recently ended, the State of Vermont once again attempted to make it both easier and quicker to impose its will upon people who come within the mental health system concerning what it perceives and terms as being a necessary form of treatment (here; via ACLU-VT legislative update).

It should also be noted that the context of these efforts were addressing non-emergency settings only and not emergency situations.

In fact the Agency of Human Services (VT AHS) and the Department of Mental Health (VT DMH) tried to sneak it in as part of the Challenges for Change 2 bill (the legislature declined doing so however).

That stated, rather than focus on those efforts and how they played out, I will instead speak to the use of language and what appears to be behind such as well as some of its consequences, relating to the use of the term involuntary within the context of mental health treatment settings.

When it comes to the use of force and violence imposed by the state upon persons in any mental health or behavioral treatment setting (i.e., institutional or community), the jargon usually employed is involuntary treatment as well as involuntary medication.

These uses of the term involuntary makes such actions against individuals much more socially acceptable and also causes many people to further their beliefs that whomever is on the receiving end must be well deserving, oftentimes without any questions or concerns being raised (read: deliberate indifference).

Although it might be true that definitions of the term involuntary include any action done against the will of an individual, not willing or voluntary or, put another way, something done without the informed consent of the individual upon whom an action is taken, it is also true that the term is defined as an action having been without intention or done unintentionally, etc.

The truth of the matter is that when the state inflicts its will upon individual persons in this fashion, it involves outright force and violence as well as degradation inflicted upon the person.

It might not be desirable for someone to be locked up against one’s will for any length of time, however it is even worse to be drugged and otherwise receive treatment (e.g., shock treatment, also referred to as ECT) in such a manner; which can often happen by the use of rubber stamp court appointed guardians that the state recruits for these purposes so they can get their way, if they cannot do so otherwise.

Many of those who have undergone force drugging and treatment compare it to no less than rape.

Not only have I heard people refer to forced drugging as such, but I have also witnessed the obvious and sometimes not so obvious wounds and scars caused to their emotional health and soul.

This makes one wonder why, if it would of course be totally unacceptable among most people within our society to term either sexual molestation or rape as being involuntary touching or involuntary sex, why is it then permissible as well as acceptable — simply due to it being done on behalf of the state — to term forced drugging and forced treatment as being involuntary medication and involuntary treatment?

Such actions taken against citizens by the state should rather be understood as well as termed what they indeed are: i.e., forced drugging and forced treatment.

It should also be noted that none of this is about the use of politically correct language either.

Instead, what this is about is calling things what they truly are, as well as, defending the civil rights of all citizens, including those whom some in society would like be kept out of sight, out of mind (sometimes quite literally, or so it seems).

If you have not already done so, please read related commentary of mine, here (via Beyond VSH blog).

(cross-posted from Beyond VSH blog, here)

Do Not Cut to the Bone

The state should be cutting where the fat truly exists, not to the bone as had been its inclination: i.e., there is no need or justification for many departments or agencies across state government — most particularly within the Vermont Agency of Human Services (VT AHS) — to retain and have so many top and middle management positions that have grown since the current administration came into office: e.g., deputy commissioners.  

As specifically concerns the Vermont Department of Mental Health (VT DMH), one of the positions that should be cut is the Deputy Commissioner position as this would result in cost savings and sparing much more needed positions further down the food chain.

While the DMH commissioner and others within the department may depend on the deputy commissioner quite a bit, it would seem that when one measures priorities about what is truly most important and what gets the taxpayers the most for their dollars as well as provides the most to those the DMH is supposed to serve, this and other such high level positions should be cut instead.

Morgan W. Brown

Montpelier

(cross-posted from Beyond VSH blog, here)

Dear Governor Jim Douglas, State of Vermont:

An Open Letter re: Reverse VSH Canteen Closure Decision

Sent to: Secretary Hofmann, Vermont Agency of Human Service (VT AHS); and,

Commissioner Michael Hartman, Vermont Department of Mental Health (VT DMH)

cc: State Representative Michael Obuchowski, Chair, Joint Fiscal Committee;

State Senator Ann Cummings, Vice Chair, Joint Fiscal Committee

While the Vermont State Hospital (VSH) remains open, I have come down on the side of opposing the closure of the VSH canteen out of respect for each and every one of those currently as well as formerly incarcerated at VSH who it is reported have indicated the canteen is needed for the time being as their one small bright light at the end of the tunnel, even if only a glimmer of hope is provided by such.

That said, I am also among those who have long been working to have VSH closed down as well as at the same time working to have put into place a very different system of providing for the actual needs of those either currently or previously incarcerated there as well as those who could be in the future and, will not shy away from continuing to do so at all.

These needs include real, safe, decent and affordable housing, income, training, employment, transportation and other such supports and services that allow one to live independently where and how they may choose to reside.

This of course runs contrary to what has basically been the sole focus of the commissioner and his supporters to chiefly replace the role of VSH and merely move what is done there in the form of institutionalization in one fashion or another to other places elsewhere, while mostly providing poor lip service to providing truly community-based opportunities and real inclusion for people whom too many within our society would rather keep out of sight out of mind, unless the plan is to allow them to rot on the street or in jails and prisons, etc., which already happens often enough already.

The fact is that dumping people without their being offered basic housing as well as independent living opportunities and supports or services they can freely choose from when they are without such is no solution either. Not everyone has the means to provide for and support themselves after being released from such incarceration, particularly right away or so easily.

The current administration in office and the commissioner of mental health along with their supporters have mixed up priorities and, as such, have been headed in the wrong direction for quite some time.

Even though closing VSH and, not merely moving its functions elsewhere, is highly desirable and sorely needed in order to move ahead with what will be required, the closure of the canteen while the current facility remains open is not, certainly not by those who are incarcerated there, nor by those of us who stand in solidarity with them either.

Morgan W. Brown

Montpelier