Monthly Archives: March 2015

Tweetblocked by a Hero Of Journalism™

Funny thing happened sometime in the past 18 hours or so. Burlington Free Press deputy editor (and Chief Assistant Gannett Cheerleader) Adam Silverman (a.k.a. @Wej12) blocked me from his Twitter feed.

I guess it was only a matter of time; I smack around the Freeploid pretty regularly, and he’s apparently the touchiest guy in the building. So, what finally broke the camel’s back?

Judging by the chronology, it was a series of replies I made to SilverTweets from the Newspaper Association of America “mediaXchange” conference in Nashville.

(Note the trendy non-traditional capitalization. That’s a sign of a desperate industry seeking new-century relevance. Kind of like when big corporations fill their Tweets with millennial slang like “bae” and “on fleek.”)

Silverman was liveTweeting from conference workshops. I couldn’t help but respond to some of them. First, a harmless jape:

@Wej12 @jeffsonderman There’s a Venn diagram with no overlap.

— theVPO (@theVPO1) March 16, 2015

After that, Silverman sent a couple Tweets I found darkly humorous. First:

@Wej12 @AmPress Ah, so “emotional impact” is a commodity. Nice.

— theVPO (@theVPO1) March 16, 2015

And second:

@Wej12 Ooh, @paulheintz would get a laugh out of that one.

— theVPO (@theVPO1) March 16, 2015

A little background there. The Free Press is notoriously stingy with crediting other news organizations for original stories. Especially when it comes to Seven Days, which the Free Press likes to pretend doesn’t exist.

Anyway, I guess I stepped on some tender toes. Since then, I haven’t seen any Tweets from Silverman and I just discovered I’ve been blocked. So disappointing; I was learning so much from him about the joyless, soulless state of 21st Century Journalism.

Let’s hope nothing else goes sideways at the Retreat

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Thanks to Governor Shumlin, this is a fact:

The [Brattleboro] Retreat is home to the Tyler 3 unit, the only child and adolescent inpatient psychiatric unit in Vermont.

It was Shumlin who wanted to decentralize inpatient services, despite his own experts’ call for a new improved Vermont State Hospital after Tropical Storm Irene. Now, any time we have a child or teen with severe mental illness, they’re off to Brattleboro.

The place where three teens have attempted suicide — two of whom died as a result — in the past 14 months. This comes to mind today because the family of one of those teens is suing the Retreat for negligence.

The patient in question tried to kill herself on May 5 of last year, by hanging herself over a door with a pair of jeans. The brief remainder of her life?

The teen suffered “serious, painful and permanent injuries” including strangulation, unconsciousness, cardiorespiratory arrest, lack of oxygen to the brain, prolonged coma, physical pain and suffering and eventual death, according to the family’s lawsuit.

These days, inpatient psychiatric facilities are carefully designed to eliminate ways for a patient to harm him/herself or others, which is always a high risk. Furniture is soft and rounded, large items are built-in or bolted down, no sharp edges or blunt implements or long ropey things allowed, doors are angled downward so you can’t, say, hang yourself over one of them. Every possible precaution is taken.

The Retreat has, to put it mildly, a checkered history for diligence in patient care. Not to mention financial and administrative competence. And every time there’s a screwup, we hear the same refrain: We’re making improvements, we’ve got a plan, we’ll make things better.

On behalf of every troubled child or teen in Vermont, I sure as Hell hope so. Every tragedy is another black mark on the Retreat’s record — and on the Governor’s.

Now, I know the old VSH had its own troubled history, but its problems were largely in the past. A new State Hospital could have provided a state-of-the-art facility and an expert staff, almost certainly for a lower cost than the current multi-site system. The Governor wanted a decentralized system and ignored the advice of his own people in the field. Now he, and we, are stuck with the Brattleboro Retreat. Let’s hope they make it work from now on.

The hidden costs of Vermont’s outdated tax system

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There was a bunch of stuff going on at the Statehouse on Friday. The gun bill was moving through the Senate Judiciary Committee; two House committees were mulling possible taxes to pay for an improved health care system; and all committees were rushing to meet the crossover deadline for non-financial legislation.

To me, the most important thing going on — well, the thing with the biggest potential long-term impact — happened before the Senate Finance Committee, which heard testimony about systemic problems with Vermont’s tax system, and how they contribute to our current fiscal mess.

In a nutshell, a major part of our budget trouble has to do with a narrow tax base for our income and sales taxes, and sales tax revenue lost to the rising tide of Internet retail. And we’re not talking a jot and a tittle; we’re talking tens of millions in foregone revenue.

In other words, if our tax system were up to date, our budget would only need a little tweak instead of major surgery. And the Democratic majority wouldn’t be constantly scouring for ways to scare up some additional money; it’d be flowing in just like always, enough to cover our expenses.

You can see why I wanted to be there.

Senate Finance chair Tim Ashe (D/P-The Big City) called the hearing because of his concerns over our creaky tax system.

“This discussion is about realignment of our tax structure in line with how our economy works today. …We need to be thinking about the future. It’s not about taxing Vermonters out of the state or any of that; it’s saying, how do we avoid an annual crisis management approach? It’s not about taxing this or that person more or less; it’s, are we taxing the right things? Once you determine that, then you determine the rates that are fair and reasonable.”

As part of this work, the committee is taking a fresh look at the fabled 2011 Blue Ribbon Tax Commission’s report, which I’d thought had been relegated to the Dustbin Of Perpetual Ignorage. The commission had some pretty sound ideas for a better tax structure — but ideas that promised to raise many a hackle in the Statehouse.

Among many other things, the Commission called for imposing the sales tax on most services as well as goods, and repealing many sales tax exemptions. This would allow for a 1.5 cent cut in the sales tax rate. On the income tax, it recommended moving to Adjusted Gross Income as the definition of taxable income, plus the elimination of pretty much all tax deductions. Tax rates would have been adjusted downward to make the changes revenue-neutral; but it would have made for a much simpler and fairer income tax system. If Senate Finance is resurrecting the report under Ashe’s leadership, then that’s a good thing as far as I’m concerned.

Teachout’s teach-in.

Sara Teachout of the Joint Fiscal Office presented a series of charts highlighting portions of the tax system; all are available online here.

On the sales tax, she showed that American consumption patterns have reversed in the past six decades. In 1952, 60% of our consumption was in goods and 40% in services. Today, goods consumption has fallen to roughly 35%, with services up to 65%.

You can see how that would create a problem, when your state’s sales tax is applied only to goods.

And then there’s Internet retail. It was about 0.5% of total retail purchasing in the year 2000; it’s up to 8% now, $80 billion annually nationwide, and seems certain to continue its inexorable rise.

You can see how that would create a problem when there’s no structure to enforce state sales tax on Internet retail. And the Internet is a double whammy for Vermont’s economy and tax collections; not only is there the direct impact of lost sales tax revenue, but there’s the broader impact from lost retail sales at local brick-and-mortar stores. That means less economic activity, plus fewer jobs and lower incomes in the retail sector.

Ashe estimates the loss in sales tax revenue at about $50 million per year. Please note: this is not new revenue; this is revenue we used to take in but we’ve now lost. As the Senator puts it:

We get blamed for overspending, but $50 million would have just been coming in. Instead, we have to fill the gap. That’s the part where we keep raising revenue and people say, ‘Why are you doing that?’ It’s not a desire to raise taxes; it’s a replacement strategy.

Now let’s look at the income tax. Vermont has one of the narrowest income tax bases in the country because of the way we calculate taxable income and our generous rules on tax deductions. As I’ve noted earlier, the average million-dollar earner in Vermont claims more than $500,000 in deductions. Nice work if you can get it.

A proposal now before a House committee would cap itemized deductions at 2.5 times the standard deduction. This would substantially increase taxable income for top earners, and generate more modest tax hikes for the upper middle class. Total revenue is estimated at ~~$35 million per year~~*.

*Correction: I misread the source for this figure. It’s actually about $15 million per year. It’s part of a proposed House tax package that would raise $35 million.

I may be more of a policy geek than the vast majority of Vermonters, but perhaps you see why I’m so interested in this work.

Sen. Ashe is not necessarily in favor of the itemized deduction cap; he would prefer a broader, deeper consideration of Vermont’s tax structure.

What I would not want to do is have the House and Senate entertain that, and then have that not be satisfactory to put us on a sustainable path, and have to do something else very substantial a year or two later. So the question is, can you configure our revenues in a way where we won’t have to come back for a while? Can we buy 20 years of revenue structure with what we do next? That’s the thing that’s important to me.

Philosophically, I don’t like the radio-dial approach that most legislatures take, which is ‘This year we go up a little, next year we go down.’ Predictably is worth something.

Indeed, Ashe predicts that the preponderance of this year’s budget-balancing will come in spending cuts, not revenue hikes. That’s mainly because of a timing issue built into the system: spending cuts take effect right away, while changes to the tax code take months — up to a full year, in fact — to take effect and start generating new money. But in spite of this year’s very crowded legislative agenda, he is hoping to clear the groundwork for a full consideration of tax issues in the near future:

I would like the [Finance] Committee to do what it can to choose a path this session. That path may be articulating what the future ought to look like, as the Blue Ribbon panel did. Maybe not in the same way, but to say, ‘This is what we intend to do, the broad outline of a tax structure for the future,’ take it on the road, let it get beat up a little bit, have it evaluated by others, and come back next year.

Go big, or go home. I wish him the best in his endeavor, which does seem awfully optimistic and (dare I say it) progressive. On the other hand, I wouldn’t want his best to become the enemy of the good; if there are positive steps to be taken this year, and I see the deduction cap as an obvious positive step, then I don’t want to put it off in hopes of getting pie in the sky next year.

For health care expansion and SSBT, a long road ahead

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Last week brought some relatively cheery news for fans of better access to health care and of the sugar-sweetened beverage tax. The House Health Care Committee passed a fairly wide-ranging bill that would help close the Medicaid gap, provide more assistance to working-class Vermonters seeking health insurance and encourage more primary care providers, among other things. To pay for all that, the Committee opted for a two-pronged approach: the revised 0.3% payroll tax proposed by Gov. Shumlin, plus the two-cents-per-ounce tax on sugar-sweetened beverages.

A good package, a nice bill. But is it a meaningful step, or simply a McGuffin? When you read between the lines of Committee chair Bill Lippert’s statement, and see the slightly shopworn look on his face, well, you start thinking the latter.

I have no illusions that what we propose will be a final product at the end of the session, but it was our responsibility… to identify and articulate priorities that could make a difference now and could be investments for the future, even in a time of tight budgetary constraints.

Glass half full, or glass half empty? I hear a guy resigning himself to the inevitable disembowelment of his bill.

Enough inference. The next stop is the Ways and Means Committee, where opinion is split on the SSBT and there’s widespread opposition to the payroll tax. After that, well, there’s a lot of room for pessimism.

There’s little appetite for raising taxes in Montpelier — or should I say “raising more taxes,” since tax increases will almost certainly be part of a budget-balancing deal. (Front runner: Ways and Means chair Janet Ancel’s plan to cap itemized deductions at 2.5 times the standard deduction.) There’s also the EPA-mandated Lake Champlain cleanup that needs funding. In this climate, it’ll be hard to justify funding the health care package as well.

Regarding the SSBT specifically, Governor Shumlin and House Speaker Shap Smith don’t like it. Really, there aren’t many real fans; some just see it as the least bad option. Most lawmakers seem allergic to the payroll tax, even in reduced form. But let’s say, just for the heck of it, that the Health Care Committee’s bill passes the House. What awaits in the Senate, that notorious den of centrism where liberal House bills go to die?

“I wouldn’t predict what a vote today would be,” says Senate Finance Committee chair Tim Ashe (more D and less P with each passing day). “I’d say they both start in difficult places in terms of a Senate vote. Individual committees may be more or less favorable, but in the whole Senate, both would struggle to pass at this time.”

Gulp. Well, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. So I guess that leaves us with no money for enhancing our partially-fixed health care system?

“That’s an open question,” says Ashe. “There are the resources to pay for new initiatives or increased support for existing initiatives can come from existing sources or new revenues.”

Oh really? You’ve found a pot of money somewhere?

“I’ll mention just one resource. …This year, Vermonters without insurance are going to ship about six million bucks to the federal government in a penalty. Next year that money goes up to 12 to 14 because the penalty basically doubles.

“So 23,000 Vermonters will be shipping all that money to Washington, and they will get nothing for it. Question is, is there a way to help them NOT send the money to Washington and get nothing for it, but to keep the dollars here and give them something for it? I don’t know what the answer to that is, [but] it makes you scratch your head and say, ‘Well, jeez, wouldn’t it be easier if they just had insurance here?'”

Nice to see the Senator thinking outside the box, BUT… he himself admits he doesn’t know the answer to that. And even if we could somehow funnel the penalty money into health insurance, we’re talking “about six million bucks” this year and 12 mill the year after that. That’s a far cry from the Health Care Committee’s $70 million a year.

Six million, or even 12, isn’t going to buy you a whole lot of improvement. The Medicaid gap would remain painfully wide, and good-quality insurance would remain out of reach for many working Vermonters.

But that’s the kind of year we’ve got. Best to ratchet down expectations.

Of course, we’re now looking at budget gaps in the $50 million range for each of the following two years. Substantial health care reform keeps receding further over the horizon. And universal access? Rapidly approaching pipe dream territory.

Okay, who replaced John Campbell with a pod person?

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The Political Reporter is a flocking creature. It tends to congregate in large numbers where there’s a commotion or a generous food supply — or, sometimes, for no apparent reason.

On Friday, the flock gathered at the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing on the gun bill — the reduced version of ~~S. 31~~, Now Expanded Background-Check Free! (Correction: it’s now S.141 for those keeping score at home.)

It wasn’t the most important thing going on that day. I’d be hard-pressed to put it in the top five, actually; supporters and opponents are all het up about the bill, but I’m not. As a gun control measure it’s a teeny tiny baby step. As a potential threat to Second Amendment rights, it’s… well, it’s not. The Domino Theory was discredited way back in Vietnam.

So I was elsewhere on Friday afternoon. More on that later.

The only thing that was interesting about it, to me, was captured by the Vermont Press Bureau’s Neal Goswami:

Senate President Pro Tem John Campbell, D-Windsor, an original sponsor of S.31, pushed [Committee chair Dick] Sears hard to advance a bill. He spent considerable time in the Judiciary Committee, often seated near Sears, monitoring its progress.

“I think his behavior has been fascinating,” Sears said.

His attention was bothersome to Sears, and prompted the veteran lawmaker, who is known to express his displeasure at times, to offer Campbell total control earlier this week.

“There was one point where I asked him if he really wanted to chair the committee,” Sears said.

John Campbell, recently seen taking a restful nap. (Not exactly as illustrated.)

This is highly unusual, to put it mildly. I haven’t checked the record in detail, but I’d say this is unprecedented in Campbell’s frequently undercooked tenure as Pro Tem.

First, I don’t recall him ever being inspired about a piece of legislation. Serene detachment has been the order of the day. (I recall a time when I was watching Senate debate from the balcony. Campbell sat at his desk leafing through a woodworking catalog, paying no attention to the debate. It was inspiring.) It’s rare, like a snow day in Hell, for Campbell to show real passion for an issue.

Second, this is rather a blatant violation of Senate comity. I daresay it’s not unusual for a Pro Tem to pull the levers behind the scenes (it’s pretty unusual for Campbell, but not for your average Pro Tem), but it’s downright bizarre for a Pro Tem to publicly show up a committee chair. Sears’s reaction was actually rather diplomatic. Well, diplomatic for Sears, who guards his turf like the alpha male he thinks he is. Although there’s no truth, as far as I know, to the rumor that he tinkles a little on the Judiciary Committee doorjambs every morning.

Third, Campbell’s even making noise about openly opposing Gov. Shumlin.

“The governor made it very clear how he feels about this bill. He doesn’t support it,” Campbell said. “The governor is very powerful and the administration is very powerful. As such, I guess I had to step up my involvement.”

Superman: “As such, I guess, I had to stop the runaway train.”

So it’s weird doings on the gun bill. Campbell’s normal posture, when an issue gets divisive, is to stay the hell out of the way. There have been many occasions during his tenure when a bit of leadership — or arm-twisting — would have broken a logjam and avoided unnecessary strife. In moments like these, John Campbell usually stays out of the way.

I don’t get the sudden onslaught of passion for a bill that simply doesn’t do that much. Makes me wonder if that’s the Real John Campbell or an alien-crafted facsimile.

The Good Ship Two-Tax leaves the harbor

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“Yes.”

That’s the one-word answer I got from House Health Care Committee chair Bill Lippert (D-’Burbs). The question? Did he consult with Speaker Shap Smith and Governor Shumlin before proposing a two-tax approach to funding health care?

As you may have heard, Lippert’s committee yesterday passed a health care bill including a .3% payroll tax and a two-cents-per-ounce sugar-sweetened beverage tax. Thus confounding the predictions of low-budget Vermont Political Observers (ahem) who thought the introduction of the lower payroll tax might be the death knell for the beverage tax.

Asked to elaborate on his one-word revelation, Lippert unsurprisingly didn’t offer much:

“…there are different points of view on different parts of the bill. That’s all I can say, really. The Governor’s made clear that he’s a fan of the payroll tax and not a fan of the sugar sweetened beverage tax.”

Of course, in this budgetary environment, the governor’s going to wind up accepting some items he’s “not a fan of.”

On the other hand, the Health Care Committee is a relatively safe harbor for the beverage tax; it approved the tax last time around, only to see it run aground in Ways and Means. So, will it be smooth sailing for the committee’s bill this year?

Nah.

“Sail through? No, it will not sail through. There are waves and shoals and whatever metaphor you want to use. I’m looking forward to it not being a shipwreck.”

At that point, we abandoned the metaphor. Point being, Lippert has no illusions about the permanence of the vessel — oops — he’s built.

He makes a good case for it, from a liberal point of view. Since the Governor reduced his payroll tax plan, the combo tax was an alternative way to fund an array of health care reforms aimed at broadening access, reducing the uninsured, encouraging expansion of primary care offerings, and further bending the cost curve.

The bill would improve available subsidies in the health care exchange for those making between 133% and 300% of the federal poverty level. Even with current subsidies, many of the working poor can’t afford health insurance. Or their coverage has such high out-of-pocket costs that they can’t afford to use it. Kind of defeats the purpose of health insurance, no?

The sugar-sweetened beverage tax, Lippertays, makes sense as a funding source for health care because it “raises revenue, but is also a way to invest in longer-term behavioral changes and better health.”

Of course, he acknowledges diverse opinions about the beverage tax, even on his own committee, and expects more of the same going forward:

I have no illusions that what we propose will be a final product at the end of the session, but it was our responsibility, and I was given the direction, to work with the committee to identify and articulate priorities that could make a difference now and could be investments for the future, even in a time of tight budgetary constraints. We may have exceeded that, but we did our best.

A number of us came into this session saying, we’re not going to be able to move forward on the universal access through single payer, but there is still reason for us to move forward in a significant way in health care.

Moving forward “in a significant way” required more revenue than the Governor’s reduced payroll tax would provide. Problem is, there’s pretty broad disagreement on the relative merits of the payroll tax and the beverage tax — across party lines. At this point, there’s no consensus on how to pay for health care reforms, or how much to pay. The likeliest outcome: a lot of the reform provisions will wind up on the cutting-room floor as legislative compromises eat away at the Health Care Committee’s revenue proposals.

The vultures descend

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Here’s a little item that I find amusing. Maybe you will, too.

At yesterday’s meeting of the House Health Care Committee, Rep. Avram Patt (D-Shap’s District) brought up the subject of those long, confusing Explanation Of Benefits forms (EOBs) we get in the mail every time we see a doctor or have a covered service or procedure done. You know, the ones nobody ever reads?

Well, Avram Patt reads ’em. And he had some questions, mainly centered on the lavish “prices” for services beyond the basics. How are those prices arrived at? Do they reflect the cost of the services rendered? Does anyone — covered or not — ever actually pay that?

He had inquired about some of this with his insurer, and been told that if an uninsured person gets a whopping bill and complains, “it’s immediately negotiated down.” And the original fee? That’s an “algorithm” — a calculated starting point for negotiations.

Short answer, in other words: Nobody ever actually pays that price, and it seems to have nothing to do with cost.

The committee wanted more information on these questions and some others, and decided to seek testimony — mainly from Shumlin administration functionaries.

But lo and behold, I look at the revised committee schedule this morning, and at 11:00 a.m. I see a lobbyist clusterf**k. Lobbyists for MVP Healthcare, CIGNA, and Blue Cross Blue Shield will be lined up, one after the other, to explain those EOBs. Presumably in an industry-friendly, “No no, it really makes sense, please don’t ask us to change” sort of way.

That’s all. I just found it amusing that healthcare industry lobbyists were so quickly available on less than 24 hours’ notice, and all at the same time.

Greshin redux: it gets worse

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Earlier this week, State Rep. Adam Greshin spearheaded an effort to cut a planned funding increase for Efficiency Vermont. I noted the rather obvious conflict of interest: Greshin is co-owner of the Sugarbush ski resort, and higher EV funding would have meant higher utility rates.

Since then, two further developments. First, as multiple correspondents have pointed out, ski resorts got a massive handout from Efficiency Vermont last year:

A $5-million rebate program from Efficiency Vermont helped initiate a $15-million investment in high-efficiency snow guns at resorts around the state. The resorts say that the new snowmaking guns can create a lot more snow in less time, and can deliver piles of snow earlier in the season than the old-school snowguns.

The majority of resorts’ electricity use is in air compression for snowmaking. EV’s program was a smart way to target a significant energy sinkhole. But it took a lot of flack for a “giveaway” to a big business. Did that contribute to lawmakers’ willingness to give the agency a substantial trim? I can’t say, but it’s a fair inference.

Adam Greshin’s business got a huge boost from EV, and now that he’s gotten his benefit, he wants to minimize his outlay for the program. Isn’t that convenient?

Second development. In my previous post I asked if Campaign for Vermont would go after Rep. Greshin. After all, CFV issued a formal complaint last year about then-Democratic State Rep. Mike McCarthy’s alleged conflict of interest. All McCarthy did was vote for a measure that would have benefited his employer, SunCommon; Greshin led the charge for a bill that would dramatically cut his business expenses, which seems more egregious to me.

Initially, CFV director Cyrus Patten was on my side:

@theVPO1 I agree. He should have declared his conflict. Our statement should be out in the morning.

— Cyrus Patten (@CyrusinVermont) March 11, 2015

Well, the morning came, and…

@theVPO1 We’ve decided not to get involved afterall,since the piece Greshin fought would have impacted all VT ratepayers, not just Sugarbush

— Cyrus Patten (@CyrusinVermont) March 11, 2015

Sorry, but that doesn’t hold water. By its own account, Sugarbush spends about $2 million a year on energy. That’s not exactly your typical ratepayer. Methinks the grizzled heads at CFV thought better of slamming Greshin, who’s not formally connected to CFV but as a business-friendly centrist, his political agenda matches theirs. Unlike, say, Mike McCarthy.

I’m sure Patten will write this off as more CFV-bashing by me, but I smell a double standard.

Look, I realize there’s a huge gray area when it comes to conflict of interest, especially in a state with a nonprofessional legislature. Most of these people have other jobs. You can’t ask Dr. George Till to recuse himself from anything to do with health care. You can’t ask Sen. Bill Doyle, a faculty member at Johnson State College, to abstain from higher eduction funding bills. You can’t ask Don Turner, fire chief of Milton, to not vote for public safety appropriations.

But Greshin’s case is different in two regards: (1) paying utility bills is a huge expense for his resort, so there’s a greater order of magnitude involved; and (2) he didn’t just vote on a bill — he championed the cause. If not for Adam Greshin, the Efficiency Vermont funding would have sailed through the House.

I think that’s a pretty clear case, and I believe the House Ethics Committee should look into it.

Big Beverage’s Hired Guns pt. 2: Mountain Dew wishes and Twinkie dreams

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“When you work in this building long enough, you notice things like thread count.” — Anonymous Statehouse scribe

The House Ways and Means Committee heard a full morning’s worth of testimony today on the proposed sugar-sweetened beverage tax. The most interesting witness, not in a good way, was one Kevin Dietly of Massachusetts-based Northbridge Environmental Management Consultants, speaking on behalf of the beverage industry. He definitely had the fineest suit in the room, not to mention bright pearly-white teeth. (Oh, and a Google search indicates that he’s a member of the Chautauqua Yacht Club. Must be nice.)

And he acknowledged, in answer to a question from the committee, that he has represented the food and beverage industries since 1986.

That’s a long time serving the same paymasters.

Dietly managed to actually travel to Montpelier, unlike his fellow soulless industry flack Lisa Katic, discussed previously. I don’t imagine it was a sacrifice for ol’ Kev, since he presumably drew full expenses and a fat hourly rate for his visit to Montpelier. (He stuck around for the full morning, billable to “Stop The Vermont Beverage Tax.”)

(This wasn’t his first trip to the Statehouse; in 2013 he testified for the beverage industry against a proposed expansion of Vermont’s Bottle Bill. Surprise, surprise.)

His testimony was a carefully-crafted web of industry-friendly statistics and studies, plus back-handed dismissals of the academic experts who’d preceded him in the witness chair. You know, the economists, doctors, public health experts and nutritionists who have consistently found that…

— Sugar-sweetened beverages are a scourge of the American diet, leading to high rates of obesity, diabetes, and other severe illnesses.

— Taxing a specific commodity invariably leads to lower consumption.

— Lowering consumption of sugary drinks will have a beneficial impact on public health and public-sector healthcare spending.

— There’s no evidence of a significant “border effect”; in fact, there’s quite a bit of evidence that any “border effect” would be minimal or nonexistent.

— The impact on employment is neutral to mildly positive. Consumption of sugary drinks goes down, but people buy other stuff instead. The equation balances out. Plus, the tax revenue funds jobs in government or the healthcare sector.

Pish-tosh, said Dietly, slamming “academics” who live in “a different world,” a “theoretical world.” When they retreat to their “ivory towers, things get a little wacky.”

Welp, so much for scientific research. Can’t trust anything they say.

As for Mr. Dietly, when you Google his name you get a massive quantity of testimony before various legislative bodies around the country on behalf of the food and beverage industries. Here’s a sampling of The Expensive Wisdom of Kevin Dietly:

He spoke to a New York Senate committee in 2010 in opposition to a proposed beverage tax. His arguments were essentially the same, then and now: a beverage tax would have disastrous economic consequences (but he entirely leaves out the fact that consumers will substitute other items for taxed beverages, thus mitigating the dreaded financial and employment impact), and it wouldn’t have any effect on public health (carefully selected statistics cited, inconvenient ones waved away).

In 2012, California voters faced a ballot measure to require labeling of foods that contain GMOs. (The measure was defeated after a very costly “No” campaign bankrolled by Big Food.) And oh looky here: Kevin Dietly was a hireling of the “No” campaign, and offered a very high estimate of the cost of GMO labeling — as much as $400 per year for each California household. His estimate was based on the assumption that producers would universally switch to costlier ingredients in order to avoid the GMO label (a dubious assumption at best), although he admitted that “We certainly don’t know what will happen.”

Speaking to Nevada lawmakers in 2011 on the subject of recycling and bottle deposits, Dietly positioned the beverage industry as having been “among the leading packaging innovators of the past 100 years,” and touted the industry as supporting a range of programs “to promote recycling.” And then he makes forceful arguments against deposit laws. If you read through his testimony, there are striking parallels in method, style, and type of argument with today’s testimony against the beverage tax.

In 2014 he addressed Connecticut lawmakers about a proposal to expand the state’s bottle bill. He asserts that it would impose unbearable costs on manufacturers and retailers, and had the audacity to depict the deposit/refund system as “counter to the goals of sustainable recycling and materials management.”

In 2002 he spoke before a U.S. Senate committee (chaired by Jim Jeffords) which was considering a “Beverage Producer Responsibility Act.” The concept of “producer responsiblity” has been a mainstay of advancement in environmental law; in Germany, for instance, producers have cradle-to-grave responsibility for their products — from bottles to automobiles. Its economy seems to be getting along just fine, no?

But according to Dietly, such an act would have been costly to consumers and businesses, and had little or no environmental benefit. Hmm, if he thinks there’s a disconnect between the Ivory Tower and reality, I sense a greater disconnect between industry-funded experts and reality.

I could go on, but you get the idea. Kevin Dietly is a well-traveled, amply-compensated spokesflack for the beverage industry, fighting for its interests in legislative halls around the country. His testimony should be judged accordingly.

Beverage tax pipped at the post?

The Vermont Political Observer.

a.k.a. theVPO: Analysis and observation of Vermont politics from a liberal viewpoint