Once upon a time, there was a retired Wall Street executive named Bruce Lisman*. After his investment firm cratered in the Collapse of 2008, he moved to Vermont and turned his attention to politics. (He should have checked with Rich Tarrant or Jack McMullen on how that tends to work out.) First, he launched a putatively nonpartisan advocacy group called Campaign for Vermont Prosperity. It was usually referred to as “Campaign for Vermont” in an apparent effort to camouflage Lisman’s pro-business agenda.
*Who may or may not have been thoroughly skewered in the movie “The Big Short.”
CFV accomplished little besides spending a goodly portion of Lisman’s fortune. It put out the occasional paper, held sparsely-attended policy forums, did a bit of lobbying, and paid some college students to show the CFV flag at public events. (I dubbed them “Lisketeers.”) There was precious little grass in CFV’s roots.
A few years later, Lisman made the seemingly inevitable run for governor. He spent heavily on his campaign but ran into a buzzsaw named Lt. Gov. Phil Scott, who beat him in the Republican primary by 21 percentage points.
That was the end of Lisman’s political aspirations. He stopped bankrolling CFV, which somehow continued to exist as a center-right, pro-business advocacy group. Some well-meaning people are involved in CFV, but honestly, itbarely makes a ripple in Vermont politics. Whenever CFV does something, I find myself asking “Oh, are you still here?”
CFV’s website is laden with position papers and press releases dated from 2014 and 2015. It does occasionally burp out some new content, as it did last week with a “New Report on Pension Issues.” And though I run the risk of killing a gnat with an elephant gun, I feel compelled to expose this piece of half-assed propaganda. You know, just in case someone takes it seriously.
The “report” is an attempt to influence the current debate on public sector pensions. But it’s nothing more than an exercise in straw-man punching.
It begins with the thesis that state employees and teachers have good retirement plans in order to counterbalance the lower salaries in public sector jobs. Its “research” consists of comparing private and public sector pay and discovering, with shock and horror, that public sector salaries are a bit higher than in the private sector.
CFV’s implicit argument — it isn’t spelled out because it would put the lie to CFV’s supposed moderation — is that we can get away with slashing pensions for teachers and state and local employees because they earn a decent wage.
Well, you know why public sector pay has passed the private sector. It’s because labor unions are still common in the public sector while they’ve been eviscerated in the private sector. Those unions do a good job at negotiating pay and bennies. If unions were as common across the economy as they were 50 years ago, private sector pay would be a lot healthier. It’s well documented that worker pay has barely kept up with inflation and lagged far behind productivity gains in the economy. Workers in general are badly underpaid; public sector workers get decent pay, nothing excessive.
By CFV’s own figures, which I trust as far as I can throw the Statehouse, those workers aren’t exactly Scrooge McDucking into roomfuls of gold. The average salary for teachers and state workers is a bit more than $60,000. That’s a good wage, but nothing excessive. And no reason to short them on pensions.
In truth, public sector pay has nothing to do with benefits and pensions. It’s all negotiated between unions and management. Teachers and state employees were promised their pensions, and it’s not their fault that Our Leaders shorted state contributions to the pension funds for a decade and a half.
Meanwhile, our country faces a potential poverty crisis among our elderly because private companies have cut and cut and cut benefits or even straight-up raided pension funds. This is NOT a reason to put public sector employees in the same straits. The real answer is to fairly compensate private sector workers with pay and benefits that will provide financial security for them.
But you won’t hear that from Campaign for Vermont Prosperity.
The Vermont Political Observer. 
Lisman once stated at a UVM Library staff meeting featuring himself and new president Judith Ramaley that he thought Vermont’s sunshine laws allowed too much sunshine. The answer was a response to a question about UVM Trustees meetings that were closed. I wrote about it in an issue of the defunct Old North End Rag
I thought you were going to say he was going to run for the open Senate seat. I was all ready to get my popcorn popping.
No, that’d be a full resurrection.
“But you won’t hear that from Campaign for Vermont Prosperity.”
You also won’t hear how tens of thousands of working people in Vermont do not even have pensions to begin with. I wouldn’t be surprised if it were a quarter of the working people in the state. Most of us are not considered worthy enough; they call us “temporary workers,” for example, as though we don’t even belong in this society. The only thing we’re getting for pensions is the pittance allotted by social security. After the Medicare Parts eat that up, there’s little left. You won’t hear CFV or the state talking about that one. The state will have a huge crisis on its hands of impoverished seniors without pensions. Most of us will retire and just keep on working until we can’t move anymore.