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VCV Releases Interim Legislative Scorecard

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Vermont Conservation Voters (on which I proudly serve as a board member)
has just released it’s 2015 Interim Environmental Scorecard for the Legislature, on which all our Senators and House members are evaluated strictly on the basis of votes cast on key issues that came before them this year.

“Vermonters overwhelmingly value clean water, clean energy, and healthy families. We want voters to know if their elected officials are representing their values – or not,” said Lauren Hierl, political director for Vermont Conservation Voters.

After careful consideration, the VCV focussed on just five votes in the House, surrounding three important issues:

H.40 The Revewable Energy Bill (third reading), where VCV was looking for a ‘yes’ vote.

H.40 An Amendment to strip creation of a “Transformation Tier” from the bill.  VCV was looking for a ‘no’ vote on this one.

H. 4 The ban on microbeads, where VCV was looking for a ‘yes’ vote.

H.35 An amendment to strip funding from the Water Quality Bill. VCV was looking for a ‘no.’

H.35 The Water Quality Bill (third reading), where VCV wanted a ‘yes.’
The Senate evaluation looked at:

H.40 The Renewable Energy Bill (third reading); for a ‘yes vote.

H.40 An Amendment on Energy Siting. VCV was looking for a ‘no’ vote on that one.

S.R.70 A Global Warming Resolution acknowledging the threat posed by human influenced climate change and Vermont’s commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and reliance on fossil fuels.

S.139 Which would have stripped effective language from the Toxic-Free Families Act (Act 188). A ‘no’ vote represented the environmental position on that issue.

H.35 The Water Quality Bill (third reading); looking for a ‘yes’ vote.
First, the bouquets:

It is gratifying to see how many (78) House members and Senators (10) have earned a 100% score from the VCV this year, including two representatives from my own home-county of Franklin; Democrat Kathy Keenan of St. Albans and Republican Carolyn Branagan of Swanton.

In fact, only four other Republican reps and no Republican Senators distinguished themselves in this way. The rest were all Democrats and Progressives, too numerous to single out.

And now for the brickbats:

The most noteworthy environmental fail was turned in by gubernatorial hopeful and current Lieutenant Governor Phil Scott, who stepped into the breach to cast the deciding vote to strip language from a health care bill that would have “improved the process
for regulating the use of toxic chemicals in children’s products.” This family unfriendly vote earned him a special mention on the VCV’s “Environmental Laggards” list.

Others on this list were the twelve Representatives and five Senators who each earned an environmental score of 20% or less from their votes. Only one Democrat appears on that list, Senator John Rogers of Essex/Orleans, who came in at 20% and whose lifetime score is barely better at 40%.

I take particular note that while my St. Albans representative, Corey Parent (R) supported the Water Quality Bill in theory, he voted to strip away the funding necessary to achieve its objectives; as did Eileen Dickinson (R) of St. Albans Town.

Our St. Albans Bay is ground zero for the Lake clean-up urgency, so their votes seem particularly ill-advised under the circumstances.

There is a whole lot of valuable information about your representatives to be gleaned from the VCV Scorecard; so I urge you to download and read it; then keep it in mind the next time they ask for your vote.

A Real-Life Act 46 Experience

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Last night I attended a public forum at Saint Albans City School about the Franklin Central Supervisory Union’s consolidation plan. It was the first time I had seen one of the proposed plans in any detail and I have to say it was reassuring on a number of levels. Saint Albans City School board chair James Farr and Fairfield board member Michael L’Esperance did much of the presentation, along with other board members and Supervisory Union Superintendent Kevin Dirth.

1. The Boards and Administrators Get It

Act 46 has a lot more to do with achieving equity between towns, than it does dramatically decreasing property tax rates or school costs. While the Act 46 Committee did estimate nearly $250,000 in efficiency savings by consolidating into one districts, they were quick to point out that this is a conservative figure and that they don’t anticipate big savings from consolidation in the first year.

2.  The Smallest Town Has A Lot to Gain, But…

Fairfield has about 230 students and the proposed district will be about 2700 students. Saint Albans Messenger reporter Michelle Monroe pointed out that Fairfield has struggled the most with the current relationship between property tax rates and per pupil spending. The loss of a handful of students two years ago caused a 20 cent tax increase even though the school budget didn’t go up at all. The new district would spread the impact of population over all three communities (Saint Albans City, Saint Albans Town and Fairfield).

There will have to be equity in programming, class offerings and educational opportunity among the three elementary schools- and that’s the biggest opportunity for Fairfield in the new district. The hard part is that there will be 9 votes on the new consolidated School Board: 4 Town residents, 4 City residents and 2 Fairfield residents with 1/2 vote each. All members will be elected at-large, which means the two big towns will be able to elect the two Board members from the small town. That was a bit unnerving to some Fairfield residents, but Jim Farr was quick to say- “Every town has 9 votes representing them, we’re going to be one district.” Still, if voters in Fairfield choose to keep riding the tax roller coaster in order to maintain local control, then the plan will fall apart because all three towns must approve the plan for the merged district to be approved on Town Meeting Day.

The Act 46 Committee for Franklin Central S.U. presents their plan for a consolidated district to the public at a forum 12/02/2015

3. The Tax Savings Are Real…

… and those districts who don’t get the benefits by consolidating will end up paying for those benefits to other districts. For a Saint Albans City resident with a $200,000 home the 10 cent break on the penny rate in the first year will be worth about $200, and the projected savings over five incentivized years would be about $1000 for the owner of a $200,000 property in the City or Fairfield and over $1400 for the owner of a similar property in the Town. However given the fact that most homeowners pay based on income I don’t think that the majority of people will see a huge difference in their taxes because of this plan.

Act 46 is going to give the new district’s school board members flexibility and options they never have had  in our one-building-per-district model. We have four school districts and five boards that will now become one unit, with one budget- assuming that the plan is passed in March by all three towns. The transition is going to be tough, but as one City School board member told me after the meeting “we have actually already been working on this for years but none of the prior initiatives passed by the state had enough carrot or stick to work. The only part of act 46 I don’t like is the spending caps.”I imagine we’re not the only Supervisory Union in Vermont where that’s the case.

Lt. Gov. Phil Scott: “I thought there was a sort of stigma,”

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Phil Scott is a clever one …and he says some of his best friends are hippies.

Lt. Gov.Scott who is running in the Republican gubernatorial primary has dredged up a sticker he had made up about four years ago. The sticker reads: “Lt. Gov. Phil Scott asks you to buy local! It’s not just for hippies anymore!” he says it is aimed at promoting the buy local movement to everyone.

Scott “sported’ a sticker during a recent statehouse interview with The Burlington Free Press and he explained:

[…] four years ago, he visited farmers markets throughout the state to meet people. While Scott saw these hubs of local food and artisan crafts as quintessential Vermont, others saw a place only for hippies.

“I thought there was a sort of stigma,” Scott said.

While he’s not one of them, Scott said he has many “proud hippie friends” who also wear his stickers and get a good laugh out of the tie-dye versions.

Huh? “Sort of a stigma” Oh well, good ol’ Phil is just having a good ol’ laugh. Kind of like when, after Hurricane Irene he “joked” that;  those he saw doing clean-up work were mostly Republicans. And you know at least he didn’t stick something like Take back Vermont, buy local on his bumper for his primary campaign.nobestniks

Candidate Scott doesn’t mention, but he might have recalled that Governor Douglas started an initiative (shortly after the buy local movement took hold) at the Agency of Agriculture in 2003 to buy local food for state institutions. Douglas did face criticism for taking a little too much credit (as was his habit) for the start of the  buy local movement. But Jim Douglas didn’t feel any hippie stigma.Governor Douglas was just co-opting an issue as any good politician might and in doing so  hope to scoop up supporters (votes) in an inclusive way.

But Jezzum,Phil ! Come to think of it Jim Douglas is just a flatlander from way back.

Three Dead in Colorado Springs

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The headline gets barely a blink, it’s become so commonplace. Maybe it gets a little more attention because it happened at Planned Parenthood; but we’ll be over it just as soon as the next ISIS soundbite bypasses America’s frontal lobe and goes straight to its amygdala.

Who knows why it happened?

The shooter believed heavily altered videos of PP ‘wrongdoing’…

He believed he was smiting the wicked, because ‘all lives matter’…

He had a personal ax to grind with someone who done him wrong…

He was compensating for the lack in his tackle, or.…

He just doesn’t like Fridays?

Who cares?

It happened because it could.

It’s odd how a slim majority of Americans are so utterly terrified by atrocities committed oceans away from them, that they will at least consider abandoning key provisions of the Bill of Rights and centuries of fundamental principles surrounding it; yet, the Second Amendment is not just upheld by them, but expanded, both in scope and rigor, in ways never imagined by the Founding Fathers.

All of those history lessons about the Fall of the Roman Empire? Take a closer look: this is what decadence looks like.

Budding fascists used to be shown the door at their first outrageous suggestion, but Donald Trump, who is both pig ignorant and diabolically crafty, has been able to parlay his xenophobic stream of consciousness and a boatload of television exposure so that he is now the presumptive Republican nominee for president.

His appeal? Pure unbridled selfishness run amok.  His partisans don’t care who suffers, just so long as they get theirs.

The politician’s promise used to be “ a chicken in every pot;” now its a gun in every hand.

Smith and Wesson is over the moon.

Protecting Vermont’s children from toxins

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In a time when good news seems all too rare, Vermont has just taken a giant step forward toward protecting children from toxic chemical exposure.

The Legislative Committee on Administrative Rules has approved an important rule puts into place the effective regulation intended under the Toxic-Free Families Act (Act 188) which was enacted in 2014.

Under the new rule, manufacturers of goods marketed to children under 12 will be required to reveal if their products contain any of the sixty-six identified chemicals of “high concern” that were named in Act 188. Disclosure of this information will allow parents to make informed decisions about the products they choose for their families.

According to Lauren Hierl, political director of Vermont Conservation Voters:“The rule approved today is a huge win for Vermont’s children. We will finally know which products contain chemicals linked to cancer, asthma, birth defects, and more. As a parent, I’m excited to know that I’ll be able to avoid exposing my children to toxic chemicals in the products I’m choosing to bring into my home. I thank the Department of Health for proposing, and legislators for upholding, this important rule.”

To which Falko Schilling, consumer and environmental advocate at Vermont Public Interest Research Group (VPIRG) added:

“For too long the chemical and toy industries have decided which chemicals our children are exposed to, and today they were fighting to continue hiding what’s in products on our store shelves. Vermont chose our children’s health over corporate profits, and our state is now leading the way in letting consumers make informed decisions and help people avoid children’s products with harmful chemicals.”

It’s the least we can do.

Note: I am proud to serve as a member of the Board of Vermont Conservation Voters.

War, huh, yeah. What is it good for?

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Well it took only a short time after the horrible ISIS(ISIL or Daesh) , attack on France for the stock prices of Northrup Gruman,Raytheon,Lockheed,General Dynamics and Boz Allen to take nice leap up in value.

At the Intercept they note: […] The markets could barely wait to start buying. The Dow overall is up today only .12 percent, making these leaps quite pronounced. Reuters, as published on Fox Business, starkly noted the causal connection: “Shares of aerospace and defense rose sharply on Monday in reaction to the attacks in France.” The private-sector industrial prong of the Military and Surveillance State always wins, but especially when the media’s war juices start flowing.

Huh ,yeah who’s it good for?

Shap Smith Leaves Race for Governor

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House Speaker Shap Smith surprised us all today when he announced that he will be leaving the campaign to support his wife Melissa during treatment for cancer. Many of us knew that a family health issue had kept Shap on a lighter campaign schedule, but his announcement today was still a big shock.

While Shap may have been seen as too moderate for some of my fellow GMD bloggers, I came to respect and admire his ability to build consensus and cut through the muck when I served a term in the House. It always seemed like Shap was keeping the ship on an even keel, even though the waters were often choppy.

Sue Minter and Matt Dunne are both incredible candidates for the Democratic nomination. I’m sure we are all in for a strong primary campaign as Sue puts up her experience with Irene Recovery and the Agency of Transportation against Matt Dunne’s business credentials at Google and ‘outsider’ status in recent years.

Shap has an incredible moral compass, and I bet he’s made the right choice for his family. I’m sorry he won’t be running for Governor in 2016, but I doubt his years of service to the state are totally over. He did announce that he would complete this term as Speaker, but would not seek re-election in 2016.

Updated: Climate Courage (and foolishness)

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Yesterday, while environmentalists  were focused on the much trumpeted Keystone XL decision,  the White House apparently held a stealth ‘Summit on Nuclear Energy’ to which only proponents appear to have been invited.  The upshot is an administration commitment to greater reliance on nuclear energy.  There appears to have been no interest spent on the toxic stockpiling of nuclear waste that will be our nuclear legacy.

This is a variation on the ol’ bait and switch move: using the Keystone XL decision as protective cover for a decidedly less attractive agenda.   ___________________________________________________________________

We can’t let this day pass without commenting on President Obama’s announcement that he is rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline on behalf of the American people.

For all of my differences with  Mr. Obama’s foreign policy decisions, I have nothing but respect for this further demonstration of his determination to reclaim  a bit of the progressive mantle in his final two years as president.   No ’lame duck’ he!

In the long run, it is quite possible that this will become the most important decision of his presidency.

Deprived of this cheap form of transport through the U.S., and in combination with plummeting oil prices, will tar sands oil deposits become less attractive for exploitation?  It is just possible that failure of the pipeline will have an inhibiting effect on the industry; long enough, one might hope, for Canada to come to its senses about the environmental calamity the practice represents.

It’s a small climate victory, but the President’s framing of the decision gives one hope that we can look forward to more progress on climate change initiatives.

I was disappointed to read that none of Vermont’s gubernatorial candidates will support  carbon tax legislation. I think that is a real shame. It would take courage to do so, but I, for one, would have supported the brave candidate who stepped up to that responsibility.

Art Woolf: NH is just VT with lower taxes

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Art Woolf’s latest tax rant was in the Freeps 11/04/15. I keep seeing it posted and shared on Facebook. It’s great fodder for those who want to grouse about taxes, but don’t actually read the article to draw their own conclusions. I read Mr. Woolf’s analysis of Vermont’s per capita tax collections and came to different conclusions than he did.

Let’s assume his data is right. A population of 626,000 Vermonters were taxed (in 2013) $3.4B, meaning $5,423 for every man woman and child. National average per capita is 10.4% of income and Vermont taxes 12.1% of income. So, the state of Vermont collects 1.7% more tax than the national average. I’ll accept that much, even if the chart Mr. Woolf included has a chopped Y-axis to make the difference in Vermont collections appear to be higher than the national average. Taking a page from the Fox News Graphics Dept. are we?

1) Vermonters Don’t Pay It All

Mr. Woolf rightly points out a major flaw in his own methodology. Many of Vermont’s taxes are paid by folks who visit our state and pay sales tax, rooms and meals, and gas tax. Out of state residents own homes and pay property taxes.

2) What About Fees?

When I was at a National Council of State Legislatures meeting a couple of years ago a politician from NH joked that their state motto was “Live Fee or Die”. NH is able to collect tolls on Interstates because of higher traffic volumes and their fees (see DMV schedules) are higher than Vermont’s.

3) State and Local School Taxes

Vermont has a pretty novel statewide property tax system to fund public education. It levels the playing field so poor towns don’t have dramatically lower investments in education for their students. According to the NEA for the 2014-2015 school year 95.3% of Vermont’s school spending was collected by the state and only 33% came from the state in New Hampshire. We do spend more per pupil, no doubt and there are ways we could cut school costs (see my post on Act 46). We also have world-class public schools across the state. If Mr. Woolf compared apples to apples I bet he’d find that property taxes, when State and Local were summed would not be as disparate as his methods would have you believe.

4) Published versus Effective Tax Rates

Are we talking about the effective rates that Vermonters actually pay, say after we get homestead property tax adjustments? Or is Mr. Woolf using the raw dollars collected by the state to do his math, regardless of whether or not some of those dollars are returned to towns and taxpayers? I can’t tell.

These are just the things I could think of off the top of my head. I think the bigger problem than having state taxes being 1.7% higher than the national average is that lower and middle income Vermonters are paying a bigger share than they should be. That’s really why the “affordability crisis” and these anti-tax rants appeal to people so much. If we had a truly progressive tax structure then Vermont would be in much better shape. We think of Vermont as being a progressive state, but our tax structure isn’t really all that progressive according to the Public Assets Institute.

Art Woolf blithely asserts that if Vermont just lowered its revenues by a billion dollars, things would keep going on the way they have been. I’d love to hear a list of the cuts he’d make in our state budget. Would he close schools, lower the number of insured Vermonters, or maybe let our roads and bridges crumble like they do in New Hampshire? It would hit Vermonters pretty hard to cut that much out of the budget.

For the most part I think New Hampshire just makes up the difference in their low state taxes with higher local taxes and fees. I’d be happy to live in Vermont, even if I really did have to pay 1.7 pennies per dollars more to the state. In reality though, I don’t think I pay that much more. Mr. Woolf is just counting on people to accept his methodology and join him in lamenting about taxes. It will always get you a few votes, but it doesn’t solve a darn thing.

 

Cultural Mysogyny and the Defense of Norm McAllister

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Well it appears that Norm McAllister may soon face his fellow Senators in an expulsion hearing initiated by fellow Republican Senator Joe Benning, who makes a very effective case for expulsion in this editorial.

It’s fairly clear from Senator Benning’s words that he appreciates the over-arching issue that too many still seem to ignore: Mr. McAllister admits to having sex with his teenaged employee.

That is just plain wrong.

The wrong is amplified by the fact that Mr. McAllister has sworn an oath to serve and protect his constituents, one of whom is that child.

Others, including his fellow Franklin County Republican senator, Dustin Degree, say they will support the expulsion, but only because Mr. McAllister, having earlier been stripped of his committee assignments, has lost his ability to effectively represent the interests of his constituents at the Statehouse.

Beyond that, Sen. Degree and others say that Mr. McAllister is “innocent” until proven guilty of the charges in a court of law.

That position ignores his own admission of having violated someone whom most of us would readily regard as a child.

Mr. McAllister apparently debates the exact age at which he began forcing himself on her, insisting that she was “at least sixteen;” but does that make it any less an act of abuse?

This reluctance to judge Mr. McAllister in the court of public opinion is very puzzling to me, since it is routinely done to less influential individuals under far less damning circumstances.

As a woman, I cannot help but wonder whether or not, if the young victim were male rather than female, outrage concerning the magnitude of Mr. McAllister’s admitted violation would be greater.

If Mr. McAllister had violated a sixteen year old boy who worked on his farm, I suspect he would have been publicly shunned as soon as the news became public.

As things now stand, Mr. McAllister feels free to stroll around the county fair as if nothing had happened, insisting on his innocence.  According to online comments, some people apparently wish to see him completely exonerated; they’re talking about ‘poor Norm McAllister’ and the injustice of it all.

Because his victim was a female there seems to be a question in some people’s minds as to whether or not what this 70-year old man did could technically be regarded as rape.

Something in the culture suggests to them that sixteen-year-old girls can give their consent to violation by employers who are old enough to be their grandfathers.

What that says about some of my neighbors I find truly disturbing.