Monthly Archives: February 2023

Ashley Bartley, Badass

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Her political career is little more than a year old, but State Rep. Ashley Bartley (R-Fairfax) has already established herself as a force to be reckoned with. For starters, there’s the fact that she launched her bid for office while giving birth.

It was, I think, eight hours into birth, that I turned to my husband and asked how he would feel if I ran for the Vermont House of Representatives. His response, which pains me to say was the correct one; “let’s get through the next 72 hours before we talk.”

Said husband is Jeff Bartley, former executive director of the Vermont Republican Party, now a member of the band of exiles alienated by the VTGOP’s hard right turn. He probably thought he’d heard it all until that moment.

Anyway, they did have the talk and she ran for office.

And, skipping ahead to the end, shortly after taking office in January, she lost her job for the apparent crime of Being a Legislator.

Bartley told her story Wednesday afternoon to the Senate Government Operations Committee. (Written testimony here, YouTube video here, Bartley’s testimony starts at the 46:40 mark.) The panel is considering S.39, a bill to raise lawmakers’ pay, entitle them to health insurance coverage, and — among other things — give them legal protection against the professional retaliation that befell her.

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Again With Splitting the Baby?

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For the second time in three months, a prominent Democratic officeholder has described the debate over when to end Vermont’s transitional housing program as “splitting the baby.” In mid-November it was outgoing House Human Services Committee chair Rep. Ann Pugh, interrupting a housing advocate to say “I’m looking for your recommendations as to splitting the baby. What are our priorities?”

Yesterday, Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Jane Kitchel cast herself in the role of King Solomon on the same issue: “I feel a bit like Solomon here. How do you split the baby?”

After the jump I’m going to get all exegetical on the Solomon comparison, but first let’s take a look at the product of Kitchel’s wisdom.

The Scott administration’s proposed 2023 budget adjustment would have ended the program on March 31. The House version included $21 million to keep the program going through June 30.

Kitchel? Her version extends the full program through the end of May and trims eligibility in June. The difference between her version and the House’s? About $2 million, per VTDigger.

Two million.

Is that what the administration has come to? It needs some sort of victory so badly that it seems willing to spend $19 million out of the House’s $21 million? (The admin hasn’t officially committed, but I doubt that Kitchel would have approved a plan that the governor wouldn’t sign. She’s the one who wanted to “split the baby,” after all.)

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Triumph of the Shill

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In a way, you’ve got to feel a little bit sorry for the Scott administration functionary who’s obliged to carry water for some sad bit of policy or other. They’re adequately compensated for putting their soul in storage, but they do run the risk of ascending to the gates of Heaven only to confront an angry-looking St. Peter demanding an explanation for their craven shillery. Today’s case in point: Shayla Livingston, policy director for the Agency of Human Services.

Per VTDigger’s indispensable “Final Reading,” Livingston was defending the administration’s desire to end the emergency housing program as quickly as possible, sending thousands of the unhoused off into the night with no plan. And she trotted out a brand-new, never-heard-before rationalization.

It’s not that the money is running out. It’s not that we can’t afford to extend the program into the warmer months, which until now had been the administration’s sotto voce position. No, they’re doing it out of a twisted sense of fairness.

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Fox Offers Rewrite of Henhouse Bill

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There seems to be substantial momentum toward reform of the Vermont Economic Growth Incentive (VEGI) program. Two committee chairs, Democrat Emilie Kornheiser and Republican Michael Marcotte, worked together to craft H.10, which would require much greater transparency in the program among many other things.

That in itself is pretty unusual — leaders of the two major parties cooperating on a big piece of legislation. But what clinches the deal for me is that the Scott administration actually wrote its own version of H.10. It doesn’t usually bother to do that. I take it as a sign that Team Scott thinks some type of reform is inevitable, and they want to influence the process as much as they can. (Both versions of the bill can be accessed via the House Commerce and Economic Development Committee webpage. Archived hearings are on the committee’s YouTube channel.

VEGI is administered by the Vermont Economic Progress Council, a nine-member body including seven gubernatorial appointees. The administration’s version of H.10 was presented by VEPC Executive Director Abbie Sherman, whose interest was clearly in maintaining the current process as much as possible while making pleasant noises about reform. .

Let’s start with the fact that the administration bill would drop the VEGI name and replace it with the decidedly uncatchy Think Vermont Investment Program, or TVIP for short. (Tee-vip? Tuh-vip? Tveep?) When you propose changing the name of an established program, you’re acknowledging that the current name has a bit of stink about it.

Auditor Doug Hoffer, who’s a consistent critic of VEGI because of its lack of transparency and the lack of evidence that it works, is scheduled to testify before House Commerce at 1:00 Wednesday. I’m sure his view will be more comprehensive than mine, but let’s go ahead and take a closer look at VEPC’s version of H.10.

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So Why Is VSCS Really Closing Its Libraries?

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The president of the soon-to-be Vermont State University, Parwinder Grewal, ruffled some feathers and rattled some bones last week when he announced, with no advance warning, that the system’s libraries would close by July 1. That’s bad enough. What makes it worse is that I can’t figure out why he’s doing this. His public pronouncements don’t add up.

You might think this is a cost-saving move. After all, the VSU merger is being driven largely by costs. The member institutions have been underfunded by the state for decades, to the point where then-Vermont State Colleges chancellor Jeb Spaulding felt compelled in 2020 to suddenly announce the closure of three VSCS campuses. Predictably, the plan was killed. Predictably, he lost his job.

And less than a year later, his successor went before the Legislature and testified that preserving the colleges and campuses would require $203 million over five years — on top of the system’s base appropriation, which at the time was $30.5 million.

So it’d be understandable if Grewal engaged in a little belt-tightening. Or a lot.

But he has not even suggested that closing the libraries will save any money.

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How Serious Are the Democrats About Our Homelessness Crisis?

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The current debate about the emergency shelter program has very narrow parameters. The Senate Appropriations Committee is pondering the House’s addition of $21 million to the Budget Adjustment Act, that would extend the motel program from March 31 to June 30. The Scott administration, staring down the barrel of a losing battle which would (rightly) paint Governor Nice Guy as a heartless Scrooge, has proposed $11 million to shelter some people during those three months.

$21 million versus $11 million. That’s the debate.

Well, it shouldn’t be.

This week, to absolutely no notice from Our Political Press, a coalition of housing advocacy groups presented a plan that would actually provide a bridge for the unhoused instead of a cliff. It is, in fact, called “Bridges to Housing.” The plan isn’t meant as gospel; the groups decided to lay out one idea of what a solid plan would look like, just to show that it can be done.

Because, you know, the current debate still involves a cliff. It’s a matter of when we let recipients fall off the edge — March 31, June 30, or a mish-mosh in between.

This plan ought to spark some serious discussion, not to mention soul-searching, in the corridors of power. Will it? The fact that it got zero press attention would suggest that it will not.

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Our Best and Our Brightest

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One of our precious Boys in Blue, a Vermont State Trooper, is responsible for the above mess. Allegedly responsible.

This is a screenshot from a rousing game of Mad Verse City that involved several troopers. (Allegedly.) MVC is a cheap-looking online game that tests your rap skills. And I think it’s safe to say that not only did the participants freely engage in racist, ableist and misogynistic language, they’re monumentally shitty rappers to boot. (The black band obscures a variant of the N-word, which you can guess from context.)

Another (alleged) blue-shirted rapper closed his rhyme with “If being racist is right, then I’ll never be wrong.” A third used the word “retarded” in a rap that included his (alleged) real name.

Pack of geniuses we’ve got here.

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Return of Dregs of the Ballot: The Flamethrowing Farmer

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Attention voters in the South Hero school district! If you’re looking for a school board candidate who believes there are two and ONLY two legitimate genders, the 2020 election was fatally tainted by fraud, Vermont is a totalitarian state and its media “actively censor” conservative viewpoints, and higher education has been taken over by “Marxist (i.e., Centralized Control) professors,” then cast your vote for Robert Fireovid!

On the other hand, if you think he’s a dangerous extremist, please vote for someone else. Anyone else.

Fireovid considers himself a victim of our socialist culture, and believes the schools are leading our children down the primrose path of gender fluidity. He has written that he would seek to bar teachers from teaching about “alternatives to heterosexual practices” or asking students to declare their preferred pronouns. He would examine school libraries for any materials that “contain sexual content or discuss gender fluidity.” He would also prevent the district from punishing school staff who insist on using “pronouns consistent with a student’s actual physical sex,’ which I assume means whatever they’ve got in their pants.

You want that on your school board?

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Vermont, Home of the Homeless

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Here’s something I didn’t know about our Brave Little State: Vermont has the second highest rate of homelessness in the country. Only California is worse.

That little tidbit appeared in a story posted by The Guardian on Friday, February 3. But it wasn’t new; it came from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s 2022 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report. Which also noted that between 2007 and 2022, Vermont experienced the highest increase in homelessness of any state.

Did I miss the widespread outrage? Did I miss our media’s in-depth coverage of this? Did I miss the hastily-called meetings and press conferences where Our Leaders expressed dismay and promised immediate action to make it better?

No?

May I take a moment to be retroactively appalled?

This is not the kind of ranking I expect from our green and pleasant land. Quite the opposite, in fact.

There was one significant piece of good news in the HUD report, but that news may get quite a bit worse in the very near future.

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Let’s Check In On Downtown Burling — Oh, Dear

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There’s a lot of politically-motivated bemoaning of the Queen City’s fallen state these days. Crime, vandalism, fear, lawlessness, tsunamis, earthquakes, alien invasions… but now somebody’s brazen enough to label it an “apocalypse.”

Granted, it’s only Guy Page of the Vermont Daily Chronicle, but still. He really outdid himself with this one:

Fact check, please!

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