Monthly Archives: January 2022

Democrats Like Phil Scott, But Not His Covid Policies

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Would it surprise you to hear that Gov. Phil Scott remains overwhelmingly popular among Vermont Democrats? Our Bernie-inspired reputation for red-raggery notwithstanding, the Duke’s Mayo VPR/Vermont PBS 2022 Poll once again shows that Democrats have a strong preference for Scott’s brand of plausibly moderate Republicanism. This, despite the fact that they strongly support the tougher pandemic measures that Scott has resisted.

WTF, Democrats? Is it just the NICE GUY Effect?

Numbers! According to the Famous Idaho Potato VPR/Vermont PBS 2022 Poll, Democrats approve of Scott’s Covid performance by a whopping 77-14 margin. At the same time, 82% of Democrats support a statewide mask mandate, 76% would be fine with a state of emergency, 84% favor a vaccine requirement for eligible schoolkids, and 68% favor a vaccine requirement for indoor public spaces.

Here’s another oddity. Democrats like Scott’s Covid policy more than they like his overall job performance. It’s 77% on Covid and 71% overall, per the VPR/Vermont PBS 2022 Poll Presented By TaxAct.

There is not a rational explanation for those results. Well, maybe it’s that Scott’s recent performance hasn’t sunk in yet. His policies worked before the Delta variant, but he’s stumbled badly since then. Maybe the public simply hasn’t caught up yet.

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Molly Gray Cares Not for Your Stupid “Rules”

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Lt. Gov and wannabe U.S. Representative Molly Gray proudly tweeted out the above photo, writing that she was meeting “with the Central VT Chamber of Commerce on this moment of tremendous opportunity and how we can work in partnership to recover stronger from COVID-19.”

Lovely. Leadership and collaboration in action to tackle a tough issue.

See anything wrong with that photo?

Well, it’s an indoor space, and nobody seems to be wearing masks. Maybe they’re skating by on the technicality that it’s a lunch meeting, but I don’t see anybody eating or drinking. Gray certainly isn’t.

This isn’t the end of the world or anything, and I wasn’t going to write about it until I realized that this meeting was in the Capitol Plaza Hotel in Montpelier.

That would be the city with the mask mandate for indoor public spaces.

Such as this conference room.

I believe this is the same Molly Gray who’s called for indoor masking. Oh wait, here it is, from an interview with WAMC Radio: “…we need to continue to encourage Vermonters and Americans to get vaccinated, to get their boosters, and to wear a mask when they’re inside.”

Except when you’re talking to important people, I guess? Potential campaign donors, hmm? Is it harder to make your pitch if they can’t see the anodyne expression on your face?

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Dear Workforce Member: The Definition of “Acceptable Damage” Has Been Escalated

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The news that the University of Vermont Health Network will force workers to use up their vacation and sick days if they get Covid is bad enough. What’s worse is the implicit message about the future of the disease.

“While the UVM Health Network understands that this is a change, as we enter the third year of the pandemic with a realization that COVID-19 will become endemic, UVMHN needed a policy that could be sustainable and offered for the long term,” UVM Health Network spokesperson Annie Mackin wrote in an email.

Worth noting that “this is a change” is a totally vanilla way of saying “we’re sticking it to all of you.” Beyond that, the message is that after pandemic transitions to endemic, the ravages of Covid-19 will be impactful enough to warrant a permanent change in workplace policy. Even when “pandemic” is nothing but a memory, a lot of workers will still get sick enough to use up their paid time off.

For those who believed that we were going to come out of this unscathed — that “endemic” meant our lives could return to normal — this is a chilling concept. Kinda provides a bit of unpleasant context for Gov. Phil Scott’s sweet-talk about the endemic phase. We might be wearing N95s and thinking twice about entering public spaces for a long, long time. Like, indefinitely.

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Phil Scott Enjoys a Swim in the Covid Cashpile

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As expected, Gov. Phil Scott’s budget address (video/text) was a rollicking affair full of new and expanded programs and tax relief that he touts as providing “transformational” change for Vermont. Yep, these budgets are a lot easier when they’re floating on a sea of federal Covid funds, plus vastly inflated state tax revenues thanks to the purchasing power injected by the feds into Vermont.

To his credit, Scott cautioned that we can’t spend willy-nilly. He said this is a once-in-a-lifetime windfall, and thus a once-in-a-lifetime chance to reset and strengthen Vermont’s economy. “The economic future of our state will be defined by what we do today,” he said at the end of his address. And he warned against spending one-time money for ongoing expenses. “These are one-time funds for one-time challenges.”

Do his proposals match his sweeping rhetoric? In part, but not in full.

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We Have Another Contender for Worst School Board Member in Vermont

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Ladies and germs, allow me to introduce you to Stephanie Stoodley, very angry member of the Rutland City School Board. The image quality is horrible thanks to the worst streaming of a public meeting I’ve ever seen. But it fits her to a tee: Lacking focus, out of control, and kinda scary.

Thanks to her performance at a January 11 school board meeting, Stoodley has become a top contender for Worst School Board Member in Vermont. Essex-Westford’s Liz Cady remains the front-runner followed by Mill River’s Todd Fillmore, but Stoodley has the potential to out-yammer them all.

Stoodley was one of six trustees to vote in favor of restoring the high school’s old nickname “Raiders,” but she was the most obnoxious of them all. She repeatedly interrupted trustees on the other side, she had trouble getting out coherent sentences, she said the same buzzwords over and over, and she made it clear that she didn’t give a tinker’s damn for anyone’s opinion but her own.

Background: The previous board adopted “Ravens” after a lengthy process, on the grounds that “Raiders” and the arrowhead were offensive to Native Americans. In last March’s school board election, enough pro-Raider trustees were elected to create a one-vote majority in favor of racism. Stoodley is one of those new trustees.

The board’s action also clearly violated Robert’s Rules of Order, which the board had voted to follow in their meetings. The Rules only allow reconsideration of a past measure under certain circumstances (which didn’t apply here) and they don’t allow a measure that contradicts a previously adopted one. But pro-Raiders board chair Hurley Cavacas refused to consult Robert’s, and trustee Charlene Steward asserted that “semantics about Robert’s Rules have been suppressing our vote.” Yeah, they were not about to let “semantics” get in the way of bringing back the Raider name and arrowhead logo.

But let’s get back to Stoodley’s performance, which was miles beyond anyone else’s.

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Dan French Wants You to Know He’s Smarter Than You

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Gov. Phil Scott is the master of leavening otherwise innocuous statements with little passive-aggressive cracks, such as his couching any opposition to his Wise PoliciesTM as “playing politics.” Well, Education Secretary Dan French, the Inspector Clouseau of the Scott cabinet, has listened and learned at the feet of his master.

You see, French buried a lovely nugget of condescension in his second consecutive Friday newsdump of fresh guidance for the public schools. Not only has he shifted state policy away from in-school testing and contact tracing; now he’s actively dissuading school officials from pursuing more stringent measures.

In his Friday email to the schools, French told them “to avoid the temptation to build additional processes.”

Temptation?

Excuse me?

What he’s saying, I guess, is that school officials have to be cautioned away from the shiny bauble of additional work. Yes, the sirens of contact tracing and Test to Stay may be singing prettily from the rocky shore, but local officials need to tie themselves to the mast and sail on by the opportunity to take on a workload that was killing them throughout the fall semester.

Does he know how condescending this sounds? Probably not, given his customary level of obtuseness.

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Vermont’s Most Closely Contested (and Unpredictable) Primary Since 2010

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The field is set. Maybe. The third of the expected candidates, state Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale, launched her bid Thursday morning.

Who knows, there might be other people who want to succeed senator-in-waiting Peter Welch in the U.S. House. There might even be candidates credible enough to face up to the three very talented women already in the race.

But even without any further entries, this is already promising to be the toughest primary campaign in Vermont since 2010, when Republican Jim Douglas’ retirement prompted five Democrats to run for their party’s gubernatorial nomination. Peter Shumlin won that election by a mere 176 votes. This one could be as close. It’ll likely be far more expensive.

Lt. Gov. Molly Gray. Senate President Pro Tem Becca Balint. Senator Ram Hinsdale. It seems certain that one of these three will become the first woman to ever represent Vermont in Congress. (The Republicans have no shot.) And right now, I have no earthly idea which one it will be. When it was a two-person contest I gave Gray the edge simply because of statewide campaign experience and name recognition. The three-person faceoff is far less predictable. Maybe Gray is the early fave, but the margin is so small as to be effectively meaningless.

As for That Poll… “it’s far too early” doesn’t even need to be said, does it? The “VPR – Vermont PBS 2022 Poll,” as we are obligated to refer to it at every opportunity, not unlike the Tony the Tiger Sun Bowl, shows Gray in the “lead” with 21 percent support, Balint at 7, and Ram not showing because she hadn’t declared her candidacy when the poll was conducted. Actually, the lead spot went to “Not Sure” at 32% followed by “Unlikely to Vote in the Democratic Primary” at 30%.

Gray’s showing reflects her head start in name recognition and nothing more. That doesn’t make her the “unquestioned frontrunner” as one out-of-state political operative claimed. It’s like if the Red Sox scored a run in the top of the first and the announcer called them “the unquestioned favorite to win the game.”

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State Economists: Smooth Sailing for Now, Storm Clouds on the Distant Horizon

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All smiles for another 12-18 months

Thursday marked the semiannual Festival of Numbers that is the consensus economic forecast, prepared as always by Vermont state economists Tom Kavet and Jeffrey Carr. The topline: Happy times will continue for another year and a half or so, but after that there’s tremendous uncertainty and huge downside risk.

Or, to put it in purely political terms, Phil Scott will enjoy smooth financial sailing through fiscal year 2024 (assuming he wins another term, and there’s no reason to think he won’t), but whoever is governor in 2025-26 may have a real mess on their hands.

The very short-term forecast is for even more money to flow into Vermont’s coffers. Carr and Kavet upgraded their revenue forecast for the rest of FY2022 (ends June 30) by $44 million.

The reason: Vermont’s economy and state revenues continue to be buoyed by the flood of federal Covid relief dollars — more than $10 billion in all. “We had a [fiscal] hole and we’re filling it five times over with federal stimulus,” said Kavet. Those dollars will continue to flow for 12-18 more months. Then comes a return to Earth, and a landing that might be soft, or… a splat on the landscape.

“There is no playbook from the last time the feds dropped $10 billion on our economy,” said Carr, meaning that it’s never happened before. When the money dries up, Carr said, “the amount of risk, especially on the downside, escalates… The economy will transition into something new and different.”

And while the short-term outlook is rosy in the aggregate, that doesn’t mean everyone is doing well. “One hand’s in boiling water, one’s in ice water,” said Carr. “On average, you’re okay.”

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The Empire Strikes Back on Qualified Immunity

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It appears that there will be a push in the state Legislature to end qualified immunity for police officers. Qualified immunity makes it almost impossible to sue officers for use of excessive force; it’s become a target for reformers in the post-George Floyd era of, well, at least talking about police accountability.

It has the support of Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Sears, the single most influential gatekeeper on justice-related legislation. Senate President Pro Tem Becca Balint is also signed on, another big positive.

Michael Schirling, on the other hand, is here to tell you it’ll happen over his dead body.

At the Tuesday Covid briefing, Gov. Phil Scott fielded a question about ending QI by immediately tossing it to Schirling, his public safety commissioner and former chief of police in Burlington.

Schirling, speaking on behalf of the administration, made his position quite clear.

“We are gravely concerned about the impact of that potential legislation, and we’re working with a variety of partners and stakeholders to craft a cogent and comprehensive assessment for the Legislature of the potential impacts and downsides of proceeding in that fashion.”

You don’t usually get an administration official cranking it all the way up to “gravely concerned” at this point in the session. It’s usually something milder, like “we have concerns, but we’ll see where it goes.” In this case, Darth Schirling has been sent forth by Emperor Philpatine to make sure the bill never sees the light of day.

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Phil Scott Really Hates to Admit He Might Be Wrong

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This was the facial expression Gov. Phil Scott pulled when he was asked if his administration got “caught with your pants down” by the Omicron variant. Yeah, he doesn’t like admitting he may have been wrong and he hates it when someone calls him on it. Maybe we can stop with the “nice guy” stuff, please?

Backing up for a sec. In a Friday newsdump at the end of last week, Education Secretary Dan French announced a complete change in Covid-19 policy for the public schools. At the time, I wrote: “There’s only one good thing about this fiasco. It’s the first time anyone in the Scott administration has admitted that their policies weren’t working.”

Well, at his Tuesday Covid briefing, the governor came out swinging against the idea that his now-inoperative school policies didn’t work.

“The process we’ve been using with school nurses acting as contact tracers was effective before Omicron,” he said in his opening statement, “but it no longer is as effective as it once was.”

I’d like to hear him say that to the face of any school nurse in Vermont. They, and other school staff, were overwhelmed by the workload involved in contact tracing and Test to Stay*. It was unsustainable, and the administration did nothing to help. That’s why the Agency of Education struggled throughout the fall semester to get school districts to sign up for Test to Stay. It was more effective than, say, doing nothing at all, but it never came close to being effective.

*Speaking of which, Scott announced that child care facilities will now be able to sign up for Test to Stay. Did anyone else notice the contradiction? “Test to Stay” is now ineffective in the schools, but it’s the latest thing for child care? Huh.

Hell, he couldn’t even bring himself to admit that the policy failed to meet the test of the Omicron variant. All he said was the policy was “no longer as effective as it once was.”

Which brings us to the pants question.

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