Monthly Archives: February 2015

Burlington will grow. Burlington must grow.

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The race for mayor of Burlington has a clear and concise theme, at least in the minds of the media: it’s a referendum on development, with incumbent Miro Weinberger favoring growth and his main opponents, Steve Goodkind and Greg Guma, resisting change. It’s an oversimplification, but there’s a lot of truth in it — especially when his critics are typecasting the Mayor as a willing partner of rapacious developers.

There’s a big disconnect at work here. In reality, the question is not, will Burlington get bigger? The question is, how will it grow and how will it manage change? Because like it or not, Burlington is going to grow. In fact, I would argue that Burlington needs to grow, for the sake of Chittenden County and the entire state.

Burlington is a highly desirable place to live. Beautiful setting, great food, a lively cultural scene, close to recreation of all sorts, and full of opportunity for entrepreneurs and garden-variety job-seekers. Its housing market reflects all of that: homes and rental properties are scarce and expensive.

The city itself has seen modest population growth, from 36,000 in 1960 to 42,000 in 2010. The population pressure has been forced outward: in the same 50-year period, while Burlington’s population has increased by roughly 18%, Chittenden County’s population has nearly tripled — from 63,000 in 1960 to 157,000 in 2010.

That outward development pattern carries heavy costs: loss of farmland and open space, traffic density over a wider area, higher costs for building and maintaining infrastructure, and the toll on Lake Champlain from all those impervious surfaces. This trend is only going to continue, and the region would be much better off if more of the development were to take place in Burlington.

Vermont likes to position itself as a technology center. To the extent this is true, its hub is Burlington. That’s where the activity is, that’s where most of the techies want to live, that’s where the successful tech enterprises and startups are located. If our tech economy is to grow, Burlington will grow with it. If we artificially depress growth in Burlington, we will also limit the growth of the tech sector.

The state has a real problem with its aging population. Burlington is the most attractive place in Vermont for young people to live*. But as things stand now, many of them are priced out of a market in which supply fails to meet demand. Burlington is our best hope for attracting a cadre of young people who can build their careers and raise their families in Vermont. We can best do that by boosting available housing and rental stock. This is especially true for the working-class Burlingtonians so cherished by Goodkind and Guma: if housing prices are high and rentals are scarce, how does that enhance the city’s affordability?

*Quick story. When we first moved to New England, we lived in a town of about 4,000 people in New Hampshire. We liked it, although there were some drawbacks. A couple years after our arrival, a younger couple from our old hometown moved to the same NH town. And they moved out within a year, relocating to a city of 50,000, because small town life was just too damn quiet. They were actively unnerved by it. A lot of people are like that. And by most outside standards, Burlington is the only real city in Vermont. 

The tides of history, geography and finance have made Burlington, and Chittenden County, the locus of Vermont’s economy: its population center, its best hope for the future. That’s made Burlington a prosperous and vibrant place to live, which wasn’t the case through most of its existence.  With that success come internal challenges and external responsibilities. You can’t evade that by just saying “No.”

As for the desire to preserve Burlington’s “character,” whatever that means, it’s an impossible dream. Burlington is changing. Burlington is growing. Resisting development is not a wise or tenable strategy. Managing development, so that the future Burlington is a desirable place to live and work, is the right approach. The future Burlington might not look exactly like the present edition, but it can be an even better place — for its residents and for the entire state.

This is not an endorsement of Miro Weinberger’s candidacy. I don’t live in Burlington and I haven’t studied his performance or his opponents’ records enough to make that judgment. I’m writing what I see from a distance, and among many of his opponents I see a futile misperception of reality.

 

The New Hampshire Chimera

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See also previous post, “The Bag Man carries a heavy load.” 

The Monster of Jim Harrison's nightmares.

The Monster of Jim Harrison’s nightmares.

Previously in this space, I examined the various arguments against a proposed tax on sugar-sweetened beverages unleashed, helter-skelter, by Jim Harrison of the Vermont Retail and Grocers Association. But I saved the best for last: his frequent invocation of the great mythical devourer of Vermont businesses, the New Hampshire Chimera.

Yes, every time someone proposes a new tax or tax increase, its opponents summon the spectre of businesses shuttering en masse and countless jobs fleeing to the tax haven on our eastern border. There’s some truth in this dire outlook — just enough to keep the fear alive — but far less than its proponents would have you believe.

Let’s start with population. Fewer than 170,000 Vermonters live in the counties that border New Hampshire. Most of those people live close enough for major shopping excursions, which is why you see relatively few large malls or superstores on the Vermont side. That’s a tangible loss to our economy, but its true value is questionable: most of the jobs are low-quality, and we avoid the environmental costs of large-scale retail development. (Just look at the West Lebanon strip. Bleurgh.)

For more casual shopping, such as picking up a few groceries, filling your gas tank or getting a snack, a much smaller fraction live close enough to the border — say, five miles or so. Any more than that, you’re not going out of your way for a quick stop.

Now there’s the matter of crossing the border. There are long stretches where you’d have to travel five miles or more to access the nearest bridge.

Then you come to shopping availability on the other side. The scaremongers see a New Hampshire border bristling with retailers from Canada to the Massachusetts line. In fact, there are three major retail zones in western New Hampshire: Littleton, West Lebanon, and Keene. Otherwise, there are long stretches of Not Much.

Once again, the greatest impact of higher Vermont taxes is not on the mom-and-pop stores so dear to the rhetorical heart of Jim Harrison; it’s on the supermarkets, megamarts and strip malls that you can find in those three retail hubs. And nowhere else.

In sum, New Hampshire is a major draw for mega-shopping, but it’s a relatively minor threat to other economic activity. And border communities with some creativity, like White River Junction and Brattleboro, find ways to juice their economies even in the shadow of the New Hampshire Chimera.

(Harrison likes to throw in Massachsetts and New York as well, but they are no threat. Their taxes are also pretty darn high; relatively few Vermonters live near those borders; and there’s virtually no destination shopping within easy driving distance in either state.)

Given all of these factors, New Hampshire looks like a much smaller threat than it is in the mind of Jim Harrison. There is no reason for us to be a captive of our neighbor’s policies. We should set our tax policies on their own merits, not out of fear of New Hampshire.

Let’s take an example right out of the Jim Harrison playbook. Here’s one of his vague-on-details anecdotes:

Two years ago, the legislature needed some more money for roads and bridges. They increased Vermont’s gas tax. At that time, the gas tax was 13 cents more per gallon than it was in neighboring NH. Within months, four gas stations on the Vermont side of the Connecticut River Valley closed.

Wow. That’s an oddly specific and limited horror story. It raises a host of questions.

— Where, exactly, were these gas stations?

— Can a direct line be drawn between their closures and the gas tax hike?

— If they closed “within months,” were they marginal businesses before the gas tax took effect? It sure sounds like it.

— Had any of them been planning to close anyway? Small businesses do tend to come and go at a rather alarming rate under any circumstances.

— How many gas stations are there in that zone? I’m guessing several hundred. And while the closure of any business is a sad thing, four is a pretty small number by comparison.

— If the gas tax increase had that great an impact, I’d think the closures would have continued beyond “within months.” Did they, or was the damage limited to four?

And finally…

— Is Harrison saying we shouldn’t have raised the gas tax? If not, then what exactly is he arguing for?

He would probably reply that border convenience stores have already taken a hit, so we shouldn’t hit them again. That’s an arguable point, but how much of a gas station’s business consists of customers buying sugary drinks and nothing else? If the gas tax didn’t chase them across the border, why would a tax on sugary drinks, which represent a smaller slice of their business?

The more likely outcome, it seems to me, is that customers will pay the extra freight or switch to unsweetened beverages — diet sodas, iced tea, flavored waters. There’s quite a variety of drinks with no added sugar. Dairy drinks, even with added sugar, wouldn’t be covered by the tax. Coffee wouldn’t be, no matter how sweet you like it. (Smart retailers will load up on the non-sugary options and feature them in shelving and advertising.)

This is especially true for the typical convenience store stop: filling the tank, using the restroom, buying a drink for the road.  The drink is one small part of the equation. And again, if you’re not going to New Hampshire for the cheaper gas, you’re not going there because your Coke costs an extra quarter.

The bigger burden of a beverage tax would fall on — say it with me, children — Big Retail. Places you go when you want a 12-pack or a case or some two-liters at the lowest price. You wouldn’t drive an extra ten miles to save a quarter on a Mountain Dew, but you would to save a few bucks on a case as part of a big trip to the supermarket.

Which is the point I made in my previous post: the tax poses the biggest threat to Big Retail and Big Beverage, and they’re the ones providing the big money behind the opposition to the beverage tax. The mom and pops are the poster children, but their actual victimhood is significantly limited.

And if you’re worried about the loss of Big Retail in Vermont’s economy, bear in mind that the border regions are largely empty of Big Retail. They’ve already departed for the low-cost option.

In sum, there is a cost to the beverage tax. It should be considered as part of the equation. But the effect is nowhere near the monster that inhabits Jim Harrison’s dreams. And it should not be a decisive consideration in the coming legislative debate.

The Bag Man carries a heavy load

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Listening to Jim Harrison on VPR’s Vermont Edition last Friday led me to one inescapable conclusion: as a public debater, he makes a mighty fine bagman.

Harrison, for those with a bliss-inducing level of ignorance about Statehouse matters, is one of the most effective lobbyists in Montpelier. Harrison heads the Vermont Retail & Grocers Association, and his current bête noire is the proposed two-cents-per-ounce tax on sugar-sweetened beverages.

The recommended daily allotment of sugar is 8 teaspoons for a male adult, 6 for a female adult, and 2-3 for a child.

The recommended daily allotment of sugar is 8 teaspoons for a male adult, 6 for a female adult, and 2-3 for a child. So go ahead, kids: Enjoy your daily two ounces of Coke!

Harrison appeared on VPR with the chief pro-tax lobbyist, Anthony Iarrapino of the Alliance for a Healthier Vermont. Harrison’s presentation was pretty much all over the place: he’d shift from one prehashed talking point to another with not even an attempt at segue, he pulled trusty (and rusty) anecdotes out of his back pocket; he’d throw multiple talking points into a single answer, making it impossible to examine them closely. His overall approach could be summarized as, “Throw everything at the wall and hope something sticks.”

If you summed up all his various statements, it’d go something like this:

— The tax will do nothing to change behavior.

— The tax would be the death knell for countless independent businesses.

— Soda consumption is already trending downward, so we don’t need a tax.

— The tax won’t work because people will just shop where the beverages are cheaper (i.e. New Hampshire).

— There is “no comparison” between tobacco and sugary drinks. So the success of the tobacco tax at reducing smoking says nothing about the potential impact of a beverage tax.

Is your head swimming from all the contradictions? It should be. But I feel for Harrison, because he’s basically defending the indefensible: the right to sell grossly unhealthy drinks at the lowest possible price. When, in reality, sugary beverages are artificially low in price because the corn and sugar industries benefit vastly from federal handouts and favorable tax policy.

Harrison’s favorite argument boils down to “We’ve got to compete with New Hampshire.” There’s so much to say about that old canard, I’m going to tackle it in a separate post. For now, let’s focus on Harrison’s other recurring theme: It Won’t Work.

“This is a social experiment. No other state has done anything like this.” True enough, but we do happen to have a wonderful example of a sugary-beverage tax at work. On January 1, 2014, Mexico imposed a one-peso-per-liter tax (about 7 cents) on sugary drinks. The move came in response to rapidly climbing rates of obesity and diabetes. The results? A University of North Carolina researcher is working with Mexican officials on that question, and here’s what they found:

… preliminary results show that during the first three months of 2014, purchases of sodas and other taxed beverages declined by 10 percent compared to the same time period last year.

Meanwhile purchases of untaxed drinks, like 100 percent fruit juice and milk, went up 7 percent, and purchases of bottled water went up 13 percent.

If that’s not enough, the Wall Street Journal reports that a survey of Mexicans found that they are drinking fewer soft drinks, and are more aware of the link between sugary beverages and health problems since the tax was imposed. Another survey indicated that more than half of all Mexicans had cut back on sugary drinks.

Also, Coca-Cola’s biggest Mexican bottler reported a 6.4% sales drop in the first half of 2014 compared to the same period in 2013.

Those are impressive results for the early days of a relatively small tax. Vermont’s would be eight times as large. Imagine the impact it would have on sales of sugary drinks. (Again, I’ll deal with the cross-border argument in a later post.)

As for the comparison with the tobacco tax, Harrison really didn’t have an answer. The tobacco tax has, indeed, helped to drive down smoking rates. He didn’t try to argue that point; he simply bristled at the notion that tobacco and sugary drinks are in the same category.

Well, obviously, they’re not. They’re closer than Harrison would like to admit, but tobacco is clearly a bigger health threat. However, the real comparison isn’t “how bad is it for you?” It’s “Will a tax reduce demand?” On that question, the success of the tobacco tax is strong evidence that a beverage tax will work. Just in case Mexico isn’t enough for you.

Whenever Harrison is fighting a fee, tax, or regulation, he brings out the mom-and-pop types who are, as he puts it, constantly teetering on the brink of oblivion. “Most of our members are smaller, independent stores,” he says. That’s true if you count every store as one. But if you count total sales, the supermarket and megamart chains far outweigh the small independents.

And it’s not the moms and pops who put up the $600,000-plus spent on defeating a sugary-beverage tax in 2013, and are spending hundreds of thousands more this year. No, that money comes from Big Retail and Big Beverage. The moms and pops are politically convenient props.

Harrison also cited some statistics showing that soda sales have trended downward in recent years, and used that fact to question the link between sugary drinks and rising rates of obesity and diabetes. The problem there is, not all sodas are sugary (DIet Coke, et al.) and not all sugary drinks are sodas. And while it’s true that soda sales are dropping, sales of non-carbonated sugary drinks are through the roof: energy drinks, sports drinks, “juice” drinks containing very little juice, sweetened iced tea, etc.  It’s not just soda that represents a public-health threat; it’s the vast cornucopia of sugar-laden beverages on the market.

There were many more points in Harrison’s presentation. Each of them sound plausible when presented in a rapid blur of talking points, but all are full of holes when inspected more closely.

Coming soon to this space: “The New Hampshire Chimera.”

No, we are not moving our primary

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It’s the best kind of legislative story for the media: easy to encapsulate, kicks up some dust, and isn’t going anywhere. Makes a great filler story, and lends the appearance of serious journalism without the difficulty.

In this case, I’m talking about Sen. Anthony Pollina’s proposal to move Vermont’s presidential primary to the same day as New Hampshire’s.

Lots of states have tried to do this, and it never amounts to a hill of beans. And it won’t here either, even if the idea had broad support in our legislature. Which it doesn’t.

Beyond the virtual certainty that this bill will die a quick death in committee, there are two massive obstacles in the way of an early primary.

— New Hampshire state law allows the Secretary of State to move the primary ahead of any other state. If Pollina’s bill became law, all we’d do is start a vicious circle with New Hampshire.

— Primary calendars are subject to approval by the two major parties, and neither is amenable to a change in the traditional opening — Iowa caucuses, then New Hampshire primary.

Doesn’t matter if it makes any sense or not. Iowa and New Hampshire are clearly unrepresentative of the nation as a whole, and their results have been making less and less of a difference in recent campaigns. But their status is cemented in tradition, and nothing’s gonna change. Certainly not on Vermont’s say-so.

Pollina’s bill is a bit of a sideshow, that’s all.

No place for gun images in political advertising

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Update: A recut version of the ad has been posted on YouTube. See below. 

I am, frankly, amazed that someone as media-experienced as Greg Guma would produce a political ad showing his opponent with a target on his face followed by the sound of a gunshot. That’s just a complete WTF in my book.

Guma posted the ad, which attacks Mayor Miro Weinberger for being too pro-development, on YouTube a few days ago. The “target” is actually the logo of the Target chain, and it’s an unspoken reference to the possibility that a Target department store might become a tenant in the renovated Burlington Town Center mall.

It’d take a singularly savvy viewer to catch that reference. In real time, it’s a target over Weinberger’s face followed by a gunshot.

This is not okay. And Guma should know better.

Apparently he doesn’t. He’s defending the ad as “humorous.” Yeah, ha ha ha, politician, target, gunshot. Fun-nee.

We can’t judge the alleged humorousness because Guma has pulled the ad from YouTube. But he did so, not because it’s tasteless, but because the Weinberger photo was taken by the Burlington Free Press, which jealously guards its copyrights. He told the Free Press that he might repost the ad with a different photo, complete with target and gunshot.

Please don’t.

It may already be too late for this, but what Guma needs to do is issue a profound apology for the ad. And not one of those weaselly “I’m sorry to anyone who was offended…” Just a plain old “I was wrong, I apologize to Mayor Weinberger and the voters of Burlington, and I won’t do it again.”

Also, anyone in the liberal/progressive community who’s supporting Guma for Mayor: please don’t try to make excuses for this. There is no excuse. Remember when Sarah Palin’s PAC produced an ad that put gun sights on a map of the United States, each representing a Democrat she was hoping to defeat? Guma’s ad is the same thing.

Actually, it’s worse. At least Palin’s ad didn’t have any pictures of politicians.

Postscript. It looks like Guma has posted a new version of the ad, minus Weinberger’s photo and the gunshot sound. Still waiting for the apology. Note that this ad was posted today, February 13. 

I think they call this “inexpedient to legislate”

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In the words of Charlie Pierce, Here’s Some Stupid For Lunch. VTDigger: 

The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday tabled a bill that would increase the scope of the state’s criminal DNA collection because of a backlog in processing existing samples.

The decision came after Dr. Trisha Conti, director of the Vermont Forensics Laboratory, told lawmakers that the lab has approximately 2,500 samples waiting to be processed and added to the state database.

Yeah, well, hmm. It begs the question, why didn’t anyone check with the Lab before proposing the expansion?

It doesn’t speak well of our government’s internal communication skills, does it?

A law passed in 2008 mandates DNA testing for every convicted felon in Vermont; the proposed bill would have included anyone convicted of a misdemeanor that could have led to jail time. That would have generated several thousand more DNA samples to the workload.

The backlog came about because the state lab has only one analyst doing the work, and she’s been on maternity leave. And if you think that’s funny, get a load of this:

At the time the [2008] law passed, funding was designated for two chemist positions. A chemist already employed by the lab, whose federally funded position was set to expire, filled one position. The other position was not filled.

Hahahaha. So the legislature expanded DNA testing and budgeted money for the necessary staff, and the administration never spent it. Well, two administrations: Douglas and Shumlin. Yeah, funny.

Paco Aumand, deputy commissioner of the Department of Public Safety, added that they’ve had a hard time “finding qualified people to take these scientific jobs at compensation that the state of Vermont is paying.”

So we pass a law to protect ourselves from repeat offenders, and then we don’t come up with the money to actually follow through. Wonderful.

Oh, and in case you even had to ask: Governor Shumlin’s 2016 budget doesn’t include funding for a second lab tech. Of course it doesn’t.

Peter Shumlin, Tough Guy

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One of my least favorite things about our incumbent Governor* is his tendency to adopt Republican talking points, thus giving them a validation they don’t deserve. It’s sometimes called “kicking the hippies” — talking tough about Them Damn Liberals, in an attempt to self-position as a reasonable centrist.

*Same is true of many Democratic politicians, including Barack Obama and the Clintons, which is why Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren can seem so refreshing.

"If one more person says 'G'day, Mate' to me, I swear, they're gonna get such a punch."

“If one more person says ‘G’day, Mate’ to me, I swear I’m gonna ball ’em up.”

So here he comes, by way of Administration Secretary and Hatchet Man WIth An Adorable Accent Justin Johnson, doing a little light sparring with the public-sector union punching bag.

Secretary of Administration Justin Johnson issued an edict to agency and department heads Tuesday that all new hires within the executive branch must be approved by his office.

The move, according to a memo Johnson sent to agency and department heads, is the result of signals from the Vermont State Employees Association that it is not willing to work with the administration on finding $5 million in personnel savings called for in Gov. Peter Shumlin’s budget proposal.

Yeah, really. How dare the VSEA react exactly how you’d expect them to react?

100 times out of 100, a union is going to balk at reopening a signed contract and acceding to personnel cuts. That’s What They Do. It’s the first round in the dance: management takes hard line, union takes hard line, they get together and work things out.

Johnson knows this. But he very publicly reacted to VSEA’s predictable “Fight Back” petition with a summary judgment: “The petition indicated that the union will not deal with the administration on labor savings.”

The petition indicates no such thing. VSEA is simply staking out a strong opening position for the inevitable deal-making. The administration did the very same thing by incorporating cuts in pay and staffing into its budget.

So why is Johnson going straight from the opening salvo to the dreaded Declaration Of Impasse? Because it makes the administration look serious about cutting spending.

Most of the conversation around the Statehouse these days is about tax and fee increases. Shumlin’s budget called for a mix of new revenue and spending cuts. The last thing he wants is for the public debate to center on the former and ignore the latter. So he sent out his H.M.W.A.A.A.* to stomp on the other end of the seesaw.

*pronounced “HIM-wah.”

He could just as easily, and more productively, said something like “We understand the VSEA’s interest in protecting its members. We do not welcome making cuts, but we believe that Vermont’s budget situation requires it. We look forward to working with the union to find ways to save money while preserving a strong, vibrant state workforce.”

But that wouldn’t have accomplished the mission, which was to make the administration look tough.

This would be nothing more than a harmless bit of political theater, except that it provides tacit support for a Republican talking point: that public sector unions are the enemy of the taxpayer. Shumlin does the same thing when he insists that Vermonters are Taxed Enough Already, or when he tries to cut social service programs, or when he frames health care reform not as a social justice issue, but as an economic growth initiative.

In doing so, he cedes the rhetorical ground to the Republicans. It gets him a bit of short-term shine as a Tough Guy and an Unconventional Democrat, but it hurts the liberal cause in the long run.

Plus, it makes me grind my teeth, and my dentist says I should stop that.

Postscript. Just in case there’s any confusion, I made up the quote under Mr. Johnson’s picture.  

…et puer parvulus minabit eos.

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(If you have any issues with the Latin above, take it up with Google Translate.) 

At the risk of losing my street cred, I have to admit being edified and inspired by an event at the Statehouse today.

The occasion: The Senate Government Operations Committee taking up a bill to establish Stella Quarta Decima Fulgeat as an alternate motto for the state of Vermont.

This proposal has famously been the target of unedifying and uninspiring commentary, mistakenly conflating Latin with Latino, criticizing it as a waste of time, and wrongly complaining that the new motto would supplant “Freedom and Unity.”

Angela Kubicke and the motto bill's sponsor Sen. Joe Benning, with the broad shoulders and flowing mane of Seven Days' Paul "Party in the Back" Heintz in the middle.

Angela Kubicke and the motto bill’s sponsor Sen. Joe Benning, with the broad shoulders and flowing mane of Seven Days’ Paul “Party in the Back” Heintz in the middle.

The hearing was attended by roughly five dozen middle- and high-school students of Latin, along with teachers, parents, and three Classicists from the University of Vermont. The hearing’s central figure was 15-year-old Angela Kubicke, who had the original idea for the Latin motto and, with her teacher and others, came up with the exact wording. The first three words, translated as “The Fourteenth Star,” appeared on the first coin minted in the 1780s by the then-independent Vermont. “Fulgeat,” the verb, completes the sentence “May the fourteenth star shine brightly.” Kubicke and her teacher, Ray Starling, gave a thorough account of the historical rationale for their proposal.

One of the other witnesses almost stole the show. If you were casting the part of a tenured professor of classical languages, you might just see Robert Rodgers as a gift of the gods. Slightly tousled gray hair, well-trimmed gray beard, glasses, precise in speech to the point of pedantry, his testimony was perched delicately on the border between entertaining and aggravating. As committee chair Jeanette White admitted afterward, “I forgot that professors are used to talking in 45-minute increments.” Professor Rodgers went nowhere near that long, but with the chair’s forbearance he blithely ignored the two-minute time limit per speaker. It was a rare opportunity for a Classicist to speak to a lay audience on a subject dear to his heart, and he was (in his own reserved way) happy as a pig in slop.

Still, he was an effective if nerdy (and wordy) witness, praising “Fulgeat” as “a felicitous choice for a verb,” parsing its contextual meanings and citing its use by the Roman poet Virgil.

Three students from Lamoille Union High School also spoke to the committee, defending Latin as a foundation of modern science, architecture, music, and Western languages. At the end, committee member Chris Bray commended Kubicke and her fellow speakers for the “depth of thought” behind the motto.

And then came the vote: FIve in favor, zero opposed. The bill goes on to the full Senate on Friday.

For the many who complained about the bill being a “waste of time,” you should have been there. Everyone — Senators, professors, teachers, and students — were fully engaged in the process and the issue. It took less than an hour all told, and it was a great learning experience for all. I’ve got nothing cynical to say about it in the least.

Will the last one off the seventh floor please turn out the lights?

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The institutional memory at the Burlington Free Press, Vermont’s Shrinkingest Newspaper, has taken another big hit. 28-year veteran reporter Molly Walsh is leaving the Freeploid for the friendlier confines of Seven Days.

It’s a body blow to the Free Press’ diminishing ability to cover the news. And the timing couldn’t be worse, since Walsh has been reporting the Burlington mayoral race. Not quite as bad as Terri Hallenbeck and Nancy Remsen leaving on Election Day, but not helpful. It’s also one more indication of Seven Days’ growing dominance in the Chittenden County news market, and its seriousness about positioning itself as a vital news source.

Better days…

Better days…

Walsh was diplomatic about the lifeboat she’s swimming away from:

There’s been a lot of change. I think some of the changes are for the better and some are questionable.

But her actions speak louder than her words. Can you imagine, at any earlier point in history, an established reporter voluntarily leaving an established daily newspaper for an alt-weekly?

Strange but true: Seven Days is a better place to work than the Freeploid, with its reporters expected to write clickbait-friendly articles, produce endlessly, create and market their “brand,” provide video and photography as well as copy, work with the sales department and key advertisers, and live on the high-wire of editing their own stories.

About the last point. One of the Freeploid’s sister Gannett papers, the Cincinnati Enquirer, was inundated by reader complaints about the quantity of mistakes in the Sunday paper. Most of the errors were minor, but every one undercuts a newspaper’s credibility. The Enquirer, like the Freeploid, is an example of Gannett’s Newsroom of the Future, which includes little or no copyediting.

The Sunday foofaraw was so bad, it prompted chief editor Carolyn Washburn to write a memo to news staff emphasizing the need for them to “take full ownership of your own clean copy.” Meaning, “don’t expect the editors — pardon me, Producers and Coaches — to be your backstop.”

Now, you’d think an average reporter would be capable of producing literate copy, but it’s not nearly as simple as you’d think. This former copyeditor can tell you that mistakes are like cockroaches in a New York City apartment: no matter how hard you try, it’s almost impossible to stamp ’em out. And it gets harder with every re-reading of a story: after two or three scans, your eyes inevitably start to glaze over. That’s why media outlets have traditionally had copyeditors: the more eyes you have on a story, the more likely you are to weed out the errors.

In sum, the Free Press has got to be a really hard place to work these days, and it’s only going to get worse. Walsh’s departure is one more signpost on the Free Press’ road to irrelevance.

The other Gun Show

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Last night’s Statehouse hearing on gun registration didn’t interest me much; the fate of the bill is a foregone conclusion (it’s dead), and the hearing was just a bit of political theater. But there were some entertaining moments on Twitter that I’ve plucked from the everflowing Tweetstream.

The Ethan Allen Institute, for example, got all poetical.

Aww. They’re right, you know. An inanimate object can’t initiate violence. But a gun is one hell of an expediter.

There was this bit of reportage from the Vermont Press Bureau’s Josh O’Gorman, revealing which side of the debate cornered the market on boorishness.

My favorite, though, was a brief dominance display by two of the lesser players in the 2014 election season. First, consistently losing political consultant Darcie Johnston, chief flag-waver for Dan Feliciano’s doomed campaign; and second, Brent Burns, who briefly helmed the Scott Milne effort.

Ooh, scorch! The “4%” is, of course, a reference to Feliciano’s underwhelming share of the vote. Ball’s in your court, Ms. Johnston.

“#navysniper”? A bit of resume inflation, perhaps? Feliciano did serve in the Navy, but according to one source, he “spent six years as a sonar technician.” Yeah, well, sonar/sniper, same diff. Mr. Burns begs to differ.

After this, the two parties adjourned the contest. Burns resisted the temptation to add “[mic drop],” which he would have been absolutely justified in doing. Johnston returned to her lair to, presumably, plot strategery for Feliciano’s 2016 campaign.

Next time, six percent!