Ya know, I’ve been ‘sharing’ a lot of Facebook posts on missing dogs and cats.  But every day when I go to the Montpelier Post Office, I look at the posters of Missing Children (under 18).  I’ve made a habit of this for the last year or so.  Kids from all over the country.  Hardly ever any from here in Vermont, but they change the posters quite a bit in a week’s time, I’ve noticed.  More kids are added-on almost every three or four days.  The posters taken down to accommodate these new ones?  Well, I figure, since I’ve been looking at them, the Montpelier Post Office would have to add-on a very large wing to keep all those missing children’s posters up.  A VERY LARGE Wing.

This is a tragedy in our nation that seems to get little attention.  As I have read about it, missing children account for about 750,000 of the more than 800,000 missing Americans each year.  Many of these missing kids are repeat runaways, or kids who have been sort of kidnapped by a divorced parent, and are quickly found.  But all those only bring the figure down to about, if not more than, 400,000 missing kids in the U.S. every year.  Where are they?

Some, many I hope, are leading some kind of new life under a new identity in a new town or city.  Some of these with the help of people who care.  Others may be into prostitution as a way of surviving in their new environment.  No doubt many of these are controlled by pimps who get them into drugs.  And some are already dead.

But what about the booming Big Business of Sex & Human Trafficking?  How many of these missing American kids are now in some foreign country (Saudi Arabia?  Japan?  Britain?  China?  Wherever?) being used as products in the sex slavery trade?  As I said, it has become a very Big Business.  And what happens to them after X amount of years?

I think we Americans need to wake up to this Human Holocaust of disappearing children and Human/Sex/Child Trafficking.  If 400,000 Black people or Gay people or whatever people disappeared in this country every year, I expect we’d have long ago demanded and got some action.

Why the SILENCE about this?  Yes, there are government agencies and private sector and non-profit agencies working on finding these kids, and compiling data about kidnapping and trafficking.  But how come we never hear about their work or results?  I’m sure there have been many successes and many tales to tell.  Also many blind alleys.  What is wrong here?  Is it that our Establishment Media simply just doesn’t care about this issue/story?  As an old-fashioned ex-print journalist, I would put on my old cynical reporter hat again and say:  “Helleva story here.  Bigger than drugs!”  

Is so much money changing hands between so many Americans and foreigners that the network of corruption is so vast and complicated that law enforcement and government agencies can do little to control it?  Or identify the players?  And are there many players involved who don’t even realize what they’re playing at?  What their place in this network is?  That, to me, would mean that many government folks are in on it too.  For the $$$.  It is reasonable of me to raise these questions.  Moreover, as an ex-establishment journalist, it is my duty to raise these questions.  It should be the duty of all American media to raise these questions.  When Big Money drugs are involved, there is always the payoff to the corrupt cop or city official.  We’ve all read our share of crime mysteries over the years to know this is a given.  Right here in Vermont, read Archer Mayor.  And so it must be with Big Money Human Trafficking.

So, I propose we here in Vermont take a serious look at what might be.  We have been reading and hearing about the growing Heroin pipeline through Vermont.  From Florida, up the East Coast, through Jersey and NYC, Providence, R.I., Mass, up through Vermont to Montreal.  And back again.  Now, it seems to me that if the Heroin Traffickers have this Underground Railway, certainly the Human/Sex/Child Traffickers do.  And maybe some of them are doing both at the same time.  And maybe some of them are getting a lot of help along the way, from some fine upstanding citizens and pillars of their communities.  Vermont is along the way.  Isn’t it?  Why is it so quiet out there?  Hmmm…

I have as much as accused our Attorney General, Bill Sorrell, of falling down on the job of fighting the growing Heroin epidemic.  Now I will add to that by saying outright that I believe Vermont is part of the Human/Sex/Child Trafficking Pipeline, and Sorrell is falling down dead on his ass on that too.  Yes, in our little La-La Land of Vermont.  Something ugly.  Something that smells.  Another dirty little Vermont secret.  As an ex-print reporter, I’d bet money that there’s a big story here.  Is Sorrell just incompetent?  Or is the story bigger?  A more involved story than what appears to be the case?

It is worth looking into?  But I have little hope our AG will come forward and fill us all in.  Or that the Vermont Democratic Party will want to go near this one.  I would expect the silence to become deafening.  But silence speaks volumes sometimes.  

Therefore, as Zola once put it: J’Accuse…!   I accuse Bill Sorrell, the entire Vermont Attorney General’s office and those in State government who could be able to act on this big money crime that THEY ARE NOT </b>ACTING ON IT AND THAT THEIR INACTION IS DELIBERATE!  Something needs to be done.  This is an election year.  Good time for it.

It’s work, these children.  But it is the very best job in the world.



Peter Buknatski

Montpelier, Vt.

Not that it should come as any surprise, but Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO)  has just admitted that they have massively underestimated  the amount of radiation released by the crippled reactors at Fukushima Daiichi, due to “improper measurement.”

“We are very sorry, but we found cases in which beta radiation readings turned out to be wrong when the radioactivity concentration of a sample was high,” TEPCO spokesman Masayuki Ono told a press conference. Beta ray-emitting radioactive materials include strontium-90.

Guilty of epic fail in the realm of public safety, TEPCO is still inexplicably controlling operations at the site of the worst nuclear disaster in peacetime history.

It doesn’t take much to imagine that this latest revelation is just the tip of the radioactive iceberg.

Since the first day of the disaster, there has been an ongoing conspiracy afoot to keep much of the unfolding story shrouded in secrecy for as long as possible.  

This has been done almost exclusively to protect the corporation, and the industry associated with it, from total collapse.  By limiting the effectiveness of the evacuation zone, falsely minimizing the risk posed by radiation exposure in general, and fudging the data from Fukushima exposures in particular, those who collaborated to protect the industry callously sacrificed the public good.

Thyroid cancers are spiking among children in Fukushima prefecture; but the official position is that escaped radiation from the accident is “unlikely” to be the cause.

How many times did the public receive assurances that meltdown would not occur; that contamination could be contained; that groundwater wouldn’t be contaminated; that the ocean fisheries would be unaffected?  If these were not the most bald-faced lies, the only alternative is that TEPCO is singularly incompetent.

In either case, there is absolutely no legitimate excuse for the Japanese government to have left them in control for so long.

In the past, I have variously labeled UVM economist Art Woolf as “Vermont’s Loudest Economist” for his inescapable media presence, and as “Vermont’s Laziest Economist” for his tossed-off weekly emissions in the Burlington Free Press. We at GMD have also criticized him for his obvious free-market bias.

Well, he’s outdone himself with his newest Freeploid “effort” entitled “State taps richest Vermont taxpayers for revenue.” (Gannett paywall warning.) It’s the kind of rhetorical disingenuousness I’d expect from a junior hack at the Heritage Foundation, not a tenured professor at a pretty good university.  

Woolf’s message is that Vermont’s top earners are already shouldering a substantial burden under Vermont’s “highly progressive income tax.” The unstated corollary is that we shouldn’t impose on them any further. But his evidence is so obviously, blatantly selective that it invalidates his entire argument.

The whole thing rests on the narrow foundation of this chart:

That one chart gives birth, in Woolf’s fertile imagination, to a columnful of conclusions about state tax policy past, present, and future. And I’m sure the chart was carefully chosen to “prove” his point, since I’m about to produce other charts that show the hollowness of Woolf’s reasoning.

The chart concerns state income tax only — not total tax burden. And I think you know why: the property tax burden (local and state combined) is relatively friendly to top earners and hits the middle hardest:

(Chart from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy) What’s more, the sales tax is even worse: the lower your income, the more it stings. According to ITEP, the lowest 20% pay 5.1% of their income in sales and excise taxes. The top 1% pay 0.6%. Now, that’s a regressive tax.

The chosen cutoff point in Woolf’s chart — $100,000 — is rather curious. That’s quite a bit lower than the usual wealthy/middle class/working class/poor dividing lines, and lumps quite a bit of the middle class in with the very rich.

Also, please notice that virtually all of the dastardly increase occurred while Jim Douglas was governor. Damn socialist.

After the jump: Lots more charts!

Now, I don’t think Douglas was really soaking the rich. I imagine the increase was due to the pre-Great Recession boost in upper incomes and stock valuations.

But still, the chart does show the income-tax share borne by those earning $100,000 or more increased from 46% to 65% in a decade. That’s quite a leap. Funny thing, though: Woolf does not cite a single change in policy or law that shifted the tax burden upward.

Well, there’s a reason for that: the tax burden has shifted upward because THE INCOME HAS SHIFTED UPWARD. The top earners are taking home more and more of the taxable income. And if you earn proportionately more, of course you’re going to pay proportionately more in taxes. (That’s how it ought to work, at any rate.) Remember this chart?

First, to be clear, this is a “wealth” chart, not an “income” chart. They’re different. But this chart is still relevant to Woolf’s sophistry. Those bars at the far right, showing the top 5%, shoot way, way up off the chart. The bigger point is that the upward curve doesn’t kick into high gear until about the 89th percentile. The bottom 80% just don’t own very much of our total wealth.

Now, let’s look at a couple of readily available charts on Vermont income that Art Woolf chose to omit. Both come from our friends at the Public Assets Institute. The first shows how the top 1% of Vermont earners have seen their incomes skyrocket since — how about that — Ronald Reagan took office. (The chart ends in 2005, but the trend has continued since then.)

The second PAI chart shows how the income share has skewed to the top in the last two decades.

As PAI notes, the state economy “saw respectable growth” in the period, as did real personal income. But the median income level — the dividing line between the upper half and the lower half — barely moved at all. Which means virtually all the growth in real personal income was concentrated in the top half. And, by other measures, we’ve seen that it’s mostly concentrated at the very top. According to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, the bottom 20% of Vermont earners take home $25,500; the middle 20% earn $65,700; and the top 5% earn a whopping $243,900. The average top earner’s share is nearly ten times higher than the average bottom earner.

What’s worse, those figures include the Earned Income Tax Credit, which helps buoy the working poor.

So of course the top earners are paying a bigger share of the total income tax burden than they used to. THEY’RE TAKING ALL THE DAMN MONEY.

Whether they’re actually paying as much as they should is another question. Vermont’s top income tax rate — for those earning more than $398,350 — is 8.95%, which is pretty hefty. But thanks to the way Vermont calculates taxable income, and thanks to the many tax breaks and deductions available to top earners, the real income tax rate paid by the top 1% is 5.2% — more than three and a half percentage points lower than the official rate.

That 5.2% figure is from the Inetitute on Taxation and Economic Policy, as is the following chart, which puts the whole picture together:

To sum it all up, Vermont’s income tax takes a bigger bite from top earners, but not nearly as much as the official rate — and the total tax burden actually falls hardest on the lower and middle classes. The working poor get a break on income tax thanks to the EITC, but they still pay almost as much as anybody else — and they actually pay a higher percentage than the top 20%. Does anyone really think that’s fair?

The top earners pay proportionately more dollars in taxes, but that’s because their share of the total dollars is so absurdly high. They are not paying more than their fair share; indeed, a far better argument can be made that they aren’t paying enough.

Which means that Woolf’s implicit argument — the rich are paying too much — is nonsense. And his assertion that “Vermont has a highly progressive income tax” is accurate but fundamentally misleading.

He makes another statement near the end of his column:

The downside of that progressivity is that Vermont’s revenues become much more sensitive to the business cycle. When the economy does well, income tax revenues soar. But when the economy falters, state revenues fall by a lot more than they would if Vermont’s tax structure… was less progressive.

Hm, so we need to increase taxes on the bottom and middle in order to equilibrate revenues? Psssh. When I look at that, I see a powerful argument against income inequality: we’d have a more stable society, and more stable government revenues, if income were shared more equally.

Thanks, Art. That’s not what you meant to say, but it’s a nice takeaway from your otherwise abysmally dishonest column.  

The big news out of last Saturday’s Vermont Republican Party meeting was the resolution calling for all Republican candidates and officeholders to actively oppose single-payer health care. The measure was a clear slap at the state’s most visible (and successful) Republican, Lt. Gov. Phil Scott, who refuses to publicly denounce a plan that hasn’t been unveiled yet.

Yeah, he’s funny that way.

But the meeting also tooted out another resolution — this one on education. It supports independent schools, and opposes former Education Secretary Armando Vilaseca’s call for new limits on independent schools including a ban on public schools going independent.

So blah blah blah, Republicans bash public schools and promote the dilution of the system by encouraging towns to go indy. That’s not news.

What is news, is that the VTGOP’s resolution includes three grammatical errors.

In an official document on education.

You can’t make this stuff up.

Two of the three mistakes are in the very first sentence:

Whereas: Vermont has had a 150 year tradition of sending their students to independent schools

First, and pickiest, is that the verb tense “has had” implies that the tradition is in the past tense, that we no longer have such a tradition. Just drop the “had” and go with “has.”  

Second, the mismatch between “Vermont” and “their.” It should either be “Vermont” and “its” or “Vermonters” and “their.”

The third mistake comes in one of the resolutions:

That changes in the Vermont statutes and regulations proposed The Vilesca Report  will have a profoundly adverse effect on the education of our children and should not be implemented

Ahem. That should be “proposed in the Vilaseca Report.” Unless you meant to say that the changes actually proposed the report.

Just little goof-ups, slips of the pen. But c’mon now. A major party passes an official policy statement at a statewide meeting, and can’t be bothered to get the wording right?

And then posts the statement, mistakes and all, on its website for all to see?

On a resolution about education, of all things?

Ladies and gentlemen, your Vermont Republican Party.  

It was learned at tonight's Montpelier Board of Civil Authority meeting that next month's election will be a rarity for Montpelier in recent years: contested up and down the slate.

Not only is there a contest for mayor, every City Council seat is contested and there is evenn a race for Parks Commissioner.

Here's the list of candidates, as posted on the city's web page: Thanks to the efficiency of our Town Clerk, John Odum, for getting this information out so quickly!

 CANDIDATES: 

FOR MAYOR – For a Term of 2 Years (Vote for not more than ONE)

• JOHN H. HOLLAR
• GWENDOLYN HALLSMITH

FOR GREEN MOUNT CEMETERY COMMISSIONER – For a Term of 5 Years (Vote for not more than ONE)

• CHARLES E. WILEY

FOR PARK COMMISSIONER – For a Term of 5 Years (Vote for not more than ONE)

• BRYAN M. PFEIFFER
• BILL JOHNSON

FOR SCHOOL COMMISSIONER – For a Term of 3 Years (Vote for not more than TWO)

• CAROL PAQUETTE
• KENNETH JONES

FOR COUNCIL PERSON, DISTRICT 1 – For a Term of 2 Years (Vote for not more than ONE)

• DONA BATE
• ANDY HOOPER

FOR COUNCIL PERSON, DISTRICT 2 – For a Term of 2 Years (Vote for not more than ONE)

• PAGE S. GUERTIN
• THIERRY GUERLAIN
• IVAN SHADIS

FOR COUNCIL PERSON, DISTRICT 3 – For a Term of 2 Years (Vote for not more than ONE)

• JUSTIN TURCOTTE
• DAN JONES

Welp, I guess we can lay to rest the New, Improved, Inclusive Vermont Republican Party: born November 8, 2013, died February 1, 2014. Ah, VTGOP, we hardly knew ye.

The death blow was struck by the Republican State Committee which, on Saturday, approved a resolution formally opposing single-payer health care and urging “legislative and statewide candidates to publicly oppose single-payer/government run health care.”

This development, reported only (so far) by Neal Goswami of the Mitchell Family Organ (paywall alert), is difficult to interpret as anything other than a slap at Lt. Gov. Phil Scott, who has been publicly skeptical but not opposed to single-payer. But don’t take my word for it; just ask Phil, who did not attend Saturday’s meeting.

“I am surprised that a resolution such as that would be put forth without any notice to people like myself. I look forward to getting to the bottom of it to find out how and why. I think that’s disappointing,” he said.

But don’t take Phil’s word for it; just ask Darcie “Hack” Johnston, anti-health care reform dead-ender and serial Consultant To The Losers. If her grubby fingerprints aren’t all over this thing, she seems awfully damn proud of it. And unafraid to point out the obvious implications.

There could be repercussion for Scott and the party should he not take a stronger position against single-payer health care, according to Johnston.

“I don’t know what the consequences may or may not be. I would expect his fundraising would be more difficult. He could have a primary challenge. He won’t be helpful to other candidates on the stump,” she said.

Nice little Lieutenant Governorship ya got there, Philly. Shame if something were to happen to it.  

The Hack, having somehow lived through the utter debacle of the 2012 election without seeing any need to re-examine her political assumptions, continues to believe that Governor Shumlin and the vast Democratic majority are somehow out of touch with true public sentiment. The anti-single-payer resolution, she claims, puts the VTGOP on the comeback trail.

“I think it’s the ticket to raising money. I think it’s the ticket to recruiting candidates to run,” she said.

Durr hurr hurr. “Raising money” like Randy Brock, who had to loan his own campaign $300,000 just to get his war chest up to HALF the size of Gov. Shumlin’s? “Recruiting candidates” like Wendy Wilton, who lost badly in spite of massive spending on her behalf?

Okay, it’s no surprise that there are plenty of dead-enders in the VTGOP who are happy to take an inflammatory hard-core position — and put their unforgivably moderate Lt. Gov. in a really uncomfortable place. But what about Scott’s slate of party leaders? What about party chair David Sunderland, who won with Scott’s backing over the opposition of the dead-enders?

Sunderland was there on Saturday. He must have known that this was on the agenda, and he ought to have known that Scott was clueless about the knife poised between his shoulder blades. I have to imagine that if he has any control of his own organization, he could have wangled a postponement.

Why didn’t Sunderland have Phil Scott’s back?

The best he could offer was a lame non-explanation:

State GOP Chairman David Sunderland said the resolution is aimed at the frustration behind the “cloud of mystery” regarding Shumlin’s plan. It is not directed at Scott, he said.

Cough, choke, snort. Yeah, it was not directed at the only prominent Republican who’s held fire on single payer, the most prominent Republican advocating for a more inclusive party ideology, the most prominent Republican telling them that they’re dangerously out of touch, and the only Republican with proven statewide electoral appeal. I can’t even imagine how someone could reach such an obviously errant conclusion.

Sure thing, Dave. But I imagine your ensuing conversation with Scott must have been an uncomfortable one.  

Big story in the Sunday Burlington Free Press (which, once again, was not delivered to my house in spite of the fact that I have a digital-plus-Sunday-paper subscription*) with the tortuous title:

*I’ve stopped trying to get customer service through Gannett’s somewhere-out-there corporate call center.

When I saw that on the Freeploid’s website, honestly, my first thought was, “Gee, I know Archer Mayor’s last novel was set during Tropical Storm Irene, but that can’t be the subject of this article — that book came out several months ago!”

But, once again, I failed to adequately underestimate my Freeploid. It was, indeed, about Archer Mayor’s “latest” novel, officially in bookstores last October 1.

Not that I begrudge Mr. Mayor any publicity he can possibly wangle; he deserves every bit of it. But really now.  

Archer Mayor publishes precisely one book a year. It comes out on October 1 every year. He does an extensive book tour in the fall of every year. Vermont media are full of “new Archer Mayor mystery” stories in the fall of every year.

And now, on February 2, almost at the midway point to Mayor’s next book, the Freeploid gets around to it?

What’s even more embarrassing, the author of this non-story was Terri Hallenbeck, one-half of the Freeploid’s State House bureau.

During a legislative session, when there are stories begging to be told.

Truly, this is small potatoes in the grand scheme of things. And it’s not near the top of the Freeploid’s sins against journalism and its readers. But c’mon, guys: Try to keep up.  

A few days ago, Bruce Lisman’s entirely self-funded “grassroots organization” Campaign for Vermont announced an expanded board of directors. Big snore, right? Well, no; in fact, CFV’s press release included the laugh line of the week.

And it came from a guy not previously noted for a sense of humor: Tom Pelham, CFV majordomo and tireless advocate for the discredited ideas of the Jim Douglas Administration. (Official Health Warning: Do not drink or eat while reading the following paragraph. It may induce choking.)

“Campaign for Vermont is a grassroots organization of outsiders – a coalition of independent Vermonters who want to have a voice for both fiscal responsibility and compassion for those who need a helping hand,” said Tom Pelham, also a co-founder of Campaign for Vermont.

Yes, he actually said “grassroots organization of outsiders.”

In reference to the hideously establishmentarian Campaign for Vermont.

All righty then. Let’s take a closer look at the street cred of this public policy biker gang, shall we? With appropriate nicknames provided by Yours Truly, of course.

Let’s start with Tom “Roughhouse” Pelham himself. In state government pretty much continuously from the Snelling Administration onward, including a lengthy stint as Jim Douglas’ Deputy Secretary of Administration. He’s been an outsider since Peter Shumlin became Governor, but not by choice; if Brian Dubie hadn’t screwed the pooch, Tom Pelham would still be a happy insider.

Now we circle back to the head honcho himself, Bruce “Moneybags” Lisman, lifelong Wall Streeter and former top executive at the late unlamented Bear Stearns. Retired with his fortune to the rough-and-ready outlaw town of Shelburne, from where he has spent over a million dollars building his “grassroots” “outsider” organization.

Hey, this is fun! Let’s continue exploring this colorful cohort of rebels.  

Bill “The Shiv” Sayre, longtime head of the Associated Industries of Vermont, the lobbying group representing our state’s biggest businesses.

Rich “R-Money” Tarrant, wealthy founder of IDX and spectacularly failed candidate for U.S. Senate.

Art “Numbers” Woolf, tenured professor at UVM and Vermont’s Loudest Economist(™).

Jason “Bigmouth” Gibbs, former Douglas Administration lackey turned unsuccessful PR consultant.

Ernie “Bulldozer” Pomerleau, high-powered realtor and developer.

Angelo “The Hammer” Pizzagalli, construction magnate whose family have been major Republican donors for decades. (Two other Pizzagallis are listed among CFV’s “members.”)

George “The Torch” Clain, longtime head of IBEW Local #300, shameless Vermont Yankee whore, now in a comfy gig as “lobbyist for the Vermont Yankee Development Trust, representing the mutual interests of IBEW Local #300 and Entergy.” Yeah, I guess it pays to be a whore.

Mary “Molotov” Evslin, co-founder of NG Advantage, a company that trucks compressed natural gas to businesses; her partner is, of course, Tom Evslin, former Douglas Administration technology czar responsible for some of Vermont’s notoriously disastrous IT contracts.

John “Digger” Powell, real estate developer and Chairman of the Board at Fletcher Allen Hospital.

Steve “Wrecking Ball” Wilk, owner of Wilk Paving, Inc. (Gee, there sure are a lot of construction/real estate types in this gang.)

Louise “Spike” McCarren, former chair of the Vermont Public Service Board and former Commissioner of Public Service, former executive at Verizon, etc., etc.

Edward “Capo” Zuccarro, former state representative and senior partner in a St. Johnsbury law firm, and former chair of the UVM Board of Trustees.

Mary Alice “The Blade” McKenzie, former president of McKenzie of Vermont, famed meat processor; also former General Counsel for Vermont State Colleges. She is now head of the Boys & Girls Club of Greater Burlington; her arms must be getting awfully tired from carrying the “compassion” load for CFV.

I could go on, and on, and on. But that’s enough to prove my point, and prove the knee-slapping irony of Tom Pelham’s “outsider” claim. Campaign for Vermont is, if it’s anything at all, an organization of insiders: the well-connected, the wealthy, the influential.

And it’s a “grassroots” organization 100% bought and paid for by the Outsider-In-Chief, “Moneybags” Lisman.  

This is a blog post by Allen Gilbert, executive director of the Vermont chapter of the ACLU and posted at his request. It can also be found here: 

http://www.acluvt.org/blog/2014/01/29/your-medical-records-are-already-out-there/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

With no fanfare and public notice, many Vermonters’ personal medical records have already been put into electronic databases controlled by the state and soon to be accessible to physicians and others working in hospitals and medical offices. While your consent is necessary for your records to be viewed legally, there is no electronic “lock” preventing unauthorized access — just the threat of what have, in the past, often been weak sanctions meekly administered.

The possibility of unauthorized access to Vermonters’ personal medical records will assume much larger dimensions if a proposal coming before the Green Mountain Care Board Feb. 13 is approved. The proposal would change the current system of a patient controlling which providers may access her records. Instead, there’d be a “global opt-in” system, in which a patient must agree to let all providers see her records, or no providers see anything (other than your own doctor and others in the same practice).

Further, if you give “global” consent, only those doctors and workers treating you are supposed to access your records. However, the state’s complex medical records system allows any provider to call up someone’s record and view it. If a doctor or lab technician views the record of someone they’re not treating, the unauthorized access is called a “breach.” That means someone who’s not supposed to see your medical records has taken a peak.

Only if an audit of the records were done, however, would the breach be found. If the breach were found and the violator identified, penalties could be imposed by the federal Office of Civil Rights, the state Attorney General’s Office, the person’s employer, the licensing agency overseeing the profession in which the violator works, or the agency credentialing the institution, if a hospital.

Supporters of e-medical records systems point to the possible penalties these agencies can impose as effective deterrents to breaches and as strong protection of your privacy.

In reality, the system of sanctions doesn’t always work the way it’s supposed to, raising the question of how secure patients’ records are in big electronic databases when access to the records is ubiquitous.

An example of weak sanctions: The federal Office of Civil Rights didn’t issue its first monetary penalty for a medical records privacy violation until 2012, 16 years after federal privacy protections were put in place through HIPAA, the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. And now, the go-get-‘em enforcer (Leon Rodriguez) brought on the scene in 2011 to improve this track record has just been nominated for another position within the Obama administration.

There are Vermont stories to illustrate the problem of weak sanctions. Take, for example, the story of a Bennington woman who had her e-medical records viewed more than 100 times, over a period of 12 years, by someone with no authorization to do so (her sons’ records, additionally, were viewed 200 times).

The woman contacted the Office of Civil Rights and filed a HIPAA complaint; the OCR substantiated that the breaches had indeed occurred at Southwestern Vermont Medical Center. The woman also contacted state agencies; the Licensing and Protection Division of the Vermont Agency of Human Services found that the hospital had failed to meet three key standards for medical records privacy and security. The woman also contacted the FBI, her local legislators, and the Bennington Police Department.

After months of reviews and investigations, in November 2012 the violator plead guilty to four misdemeanor counts of unauthorized access of computer records. She was given a suspended sentence, fined $2,000, and made to perform 160 hours of community service. She continued to work in a hospital – although not the one where she had spied on others’ records. The hospital where the breaches occurred faced no reported sanction; it was only told it had to take corrective action so patients’ medical information was better protected.

The ACLU is not opposed to the digitization of patient medical records and the building of patient record databases. We understand access to a patient’s medical records can improve medical care, avoid duplication of services, and save money. But adequate safeguards protecting privacy must be in place. And we do not believe Vermont’s safeguards are adequate for the kind of system being built.

We are urging the state not to approve a “global opt-in” system before four things are done:

• Patients must have a right to request and receive an audit at least once a year showing who has accessed their medical records.
• Law enforcement must be prohibited access to medical records without a warrant.
• Stiff civil and criminal statutory penalties must be put in place that can be imposed on any person or institution accessing a patient’s records without authorization or need to do so.
• A private right of action for patients to sue for damages for unauthorized access to records must be created.
• 
  

The Green Mountain Care Board is expected to take up the proposal to change the patient consent policy on Thursday, Feb. 13, at 1 p.m.

• Before then, comments on the proposal can be submitted by 9 a.m. on Feb. 3 to the office of the Secretary of Administration, who will make a recommendation to the Green Mountain Care Board on whether the proposal should be approved, modified, or rejected.
• After the Green Mountain Care Board’s Feb. 13 hearing, comments will also be accepted by the board, which is expected to make its decision by Feb. 27. Information on submitting comments should be available on the board’s Web site following the Feb. 13 hearing; the deadline for submitting comments will likely be very tight.

Background materials:

• Proposal from Vermont Information Technology Leaders (VITL) to change the Vermont Health Information Exchange patient consent policy.
• Current patient consent policy, with proposed changes noted.
• Comments by ACLU-VT on the proposed changes.
• Read the Rutland Herald story on the sentencing of Kathy Tatro in Superior Court in Bennington in November 2012 for unauthorized access of a patient’s medical records.

Pity poor T. Michael Twomey, high-ranking executive at Entergy Nuclear, forced to make a dreary midwinter trudge from sunny Louisiana to snowy Montpelier and face questioning from the flannel-and-fleece-clad rubes collectively known as the Vermont Public Service Board. As reported by Susan Smallheer of the (unfortunately paywalled) Mitchell Family Organ/South, he was met by a show of impertinence:

“You’re asking us to trust you again,” said outgoing PSB member David Coen. “Why should we?”

We’ll get to Twomey’s response in a moment, but let us first assess the emotional and psychological repercussions of such harsh treatment.

Twomey said he had been personally insulted by the Department of Public Service’s filing in October 2014 attacking Entergy’s credibility and business track record in the state. But even with those insults, he said, he sat down with “those people,” he said, pointing across the room in the direction of the state’s Boston law firm, and negotiated an agreement.

Oooh, “personally insulted.” “Those people.” I do hope the PSB will deliver an apology forthwith, so as to ease the pain of Mr. Twomey’s butthurt. (“Tucks” would help, too.) Cue the tiny violins, and let us have a soothing serenade. Because it’s not as if Twomey and Entergy ever meant to do us any harm.

Twomey… said the company had “made mistakes along the way,” but the company “has been a good partner” to the state in its 11 years of ownership of Vermont Yankee.

“Mistakes.” (Cough.) “Mistakes,” you say. Let’s take a look at just a few of those “mistakes,” in hopes of gaining insight into the PSB’s lack of faith in Our Corporate Partner. In no particular order…  

— Entergy’s consistent failure to adequately build a decommissioning fund, with the result that we’ll be waiting as long as 60 years for the process to complete.

— The attempted spinoff of VY to an undercapitalized shell corporation that would have assumed legal liability for plant operation and shutdown, without the resources to carry out either task.

— Those nonexistent underground pipes that turned out to, well, exist, and in fact, contained radioactive water.

— The persistent and mysterious leaks of radioactive tritium into nearby groundwater and the Connecticut River.

— Above all else, VY’s 30-year history of inadequate maintenance and ensuing trouble. This is usually framed in terms of recent incidents, but way back in the 1980s its track record was already poor enough that Vermont cartoonist Tim Newcomb started depicting the reactor as a bruised, bloodied and bandaged reactor tower.

— Then there are the notorious recent incidents, including a 2004 fire and the 2007 collapse of a cooling tower.

As The Atlantic summed it up in 2011:

…strings of jarring failures are what many… have come to expect from Yankee.

If that’s what Mr. Twomey thinks of as a “good partner,” I’m glad I’m not married to the guy.

And in case you doubt the goodwill of Our Partner, Twomey also delivered something of a threat to the PSB, which is considering an agreement between the state and Entergy over the closure of Vermont Yankee. An agreement widely panned as inadequate, and weakly defended by state officials as the best they could do under the circumstances. (“The circumstances” being defined as “the deck is stacked in favor of Entergy.”)

Entergy has said it needs an answer from the board by the end of March, after that it will withdraw its offer. Twomey said any significant or “material” changes to the agreement would also nix the deal.

“Good partner,” my ass.