Monthly Archives: April 2023

If the Legislature Is Becoming More Professional, How About Better Ethics Rules?

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The Vermont Legislature has a well-established policy of avoidance when it comes to ethical standards. You see it in the weak-ass State Ethics Commission, which has no investigative or enforcement authority. You see it in the House and Senate ethics panels, which conduct their business behind closed doors (when they even bother to meet) and have never, ever taken action against one of their own.

And you see it in the useless financial disclosure rules they set for themselves. This has come to the fore with VTDigger’s multi-part exploration of lawmakers’ disclosures. It finds, no surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention, that the requirements are so minimal as to negate the purpose of disclosure, which is to reveal potential conflicts of interest.

Also, there’s no enforcement mechanism and no penalties for failing to disclose or failing to file at all. It’s amazing what happens when a group of people gets to set their own rules, isn’t it?

One of the excuses floated for this studied laxness is that Vermont Has A Citizen Legislature and lawmakers shouldn’t be expected to consent to fidiuciary proctoscopies in order to serve. They kinda-sorta have a point, although their citizenship doesn’t prevent abuses or change their obligation to serve the public interest.

But now the Legislature is taking a big step toward professionalism — at least when it comes to pay and benefits. Does this merit a revisit of ethics and disclosure rules? You bet it does.

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The Acceptable Cruelty Calculation

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From the rumor front, there’s good news and bad news.

The good news: State Senate budget writers appear to be pondering additional funds for housing the homeless.

The bad news: They may be trying to do it on the cheap.

This week, the Senate Appropriations Committee is hammering out its version of a spending plan for fiscal year 2024. One big pending decision is how to deal with the looming end of the emergency housing program that serves 80% of Vermont’s unhoused through motel vouchers. If the program ends as scheduled in May and June, some 1,800 households could be unsheltered.

The House, after much dithering, added $20 million to its budget for related spending. Half would go toward purchasing vacant mobile homes, and the other half would boost support services for the unhoused. But the voucher program would end on schedule, and how the wise heads of the House failed to see the potentially catastrophic effects of this, politically, financially and morally, I have no idea.

On to Round 2 in the Senate, where two policy committees allowed token testimony from housing advocates. The latter presented a clear plan for extending emergency shelter while implementing a proven strategy to permanently expand available housing options and make a serious dent in the homelessness crisis.

Things looked bleak, but there are hints that the budget-writing Senate Appropriations Committee is looking to fund some version of said strategy.

Great, yes? Well, glass half full, glass half empty.

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Is This the Worst Job in Vermont?

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A fond farewell to Parwinder Grewal, the president of Vermont State University who didn’t even make it to the first day of VSU’s existence.

Grewal has “resigned for personal reasons” without further explanation from himself or anyone affiliated with the nascent university. I can think of two ways this might have gone down, and neither is flattering to the VSU board.

First, Grewal realized he had an impossible job and decided to GTFO. He was tasked with merging three institutions into one while imposing severe spending cuts and somehow making the thing more attractive to students, but couldn’t count on the backing of the board or Vermont’s political class. In fact, he’s the guy who was encouraged to go out on a limb only to turn around and realize all his friends are wielding saws.

Second, the board got cold feet and fired the guy. That would be a spectacular display of gutlessness. It’ll be interesting to see what kind of severance package he’s getting, all at taxpayers’ expense of course.

Look, I was loudly and repeatedly not a fan of Grewal’s plan to close the system’s libraries. In addition to all its flaws, it seemed unlikely to save any money. But the board thought enough of him to hire him in the first place, and then they balked at the first sign of trouble. I wonder what kind of luck they’ll have in their search for a successor. If you were a potential candidate with the kind of administrative chops needed to guide VSU into a successful future, would you want to step into this political briar patch? I don’t think so.

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I’m Sorry, But I’m Not Taking Smart Planning Advice From the People Who Enabled This

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VTDigger has seen a sudden flurry of letters and essays from residents of South Burlington, concerned that S.100, the state Senate’s housing bill, is going to turn their green and pleasant land into some sort of overdeveloped hellscape.

News bulletin: That ship has not only sailed, it long ago vanished over the horizon. Your town’s been an overdeveloped hellscape for years.

When I think “South Burlington,” I think the worst suburban sprawl in Vermont. Shelburne Road comes to mind, as does Williston Road and Dorset Street. As do subdivisions that devote vast amounts of land to high-maintenance lawns. The whole thing is, of course, designed around motor vehicles.

Not well designed, but designed nonetheless.

I know it’s a bit unfair to blame the current crop of SoBurbanites for the planning sins of their forebears. But just because they’ve got religion after a decades-long development bender doesn’t mean they can lecture the rest of us on how to address our housing crisis.

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How Not to Hold a Legislative Hearing

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Hey, remember when I wondered where all the other witnesses were? The ones who should be testifying on behalf of all the groups and institutions sure to be affected by the scheduled end of the emergency motel voucher program?

Turns out it’s just as well they didn’t show up, because the hearing was way too short even for the witnesses who did appear. The whole thing was kind of embarrassing, in fact. (It doesn’t help when lawmakers like Sen. Ann Cummings seem to be ostentatiously not paying attention, but it’s hard to resist the siren song of personal electronics.)

Wednesday morning, two Senate committees — Economic Development and Health & Welfare — held a joint hearing on emergency housing and, just as a bonus, the lack of housing and support services specifically for people with disabilities.

Either issue warranted a good bit of time. Instead, both were crammed into a single hour. Seven witnesses were on the schedule which [whips out abacus] means each of them were allotted less than ten minutes to make their case and answer questions.

Before I go on, lI should say that in the long run, this hearing will be a footnote. What matters are the discussions and negotiations around the FY2024 budget, and whether provision will be made for adequate housing and shelter for the 1,800 households who face eviction when the motel program is allowed to expire.

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Is Jon Murad Really Worth All of This?

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I can’t say for sure what happened in the University of Vermont Medical Center’s emergency department last August. But I can say two things: It stinks, and it makes me wonder why Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger is so bound and determined to elevate acting Police Chief Jon Murad to permanent chief.

I mean, he’s been trying since January of 2022. And the city hasn’t had a non-interim chief since December of 2019. That’s not a healthy state of affairs.

And the ER incident, in which Murad reportedly threatened to arrest a trauma surgeon who was treating a critically wounded gunshot victim, raises legitimate questions about Murad’s temperament and respect for the law.

But even worse is how Weinberger and Murad have handled the matter since. They’ve done everything they could to cover it up and minimize the consequences. That doesn’t speak to the soundness of their position.

We wouldn’t even know about the incident were it not for Seven Days‘ dogged pursuit of the story. As it is, Weinberger managed to keep it out of sight until after the defeat of a ballot measure to create an independent police oversight board.

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Where Are All the Other Witnesses?

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Should be an interesting, perhaps pivotal, hearing Wednesday morning. Two Senate committees will hear from a series of housing advocates about the looming end of Vermont’s emergency housing program. Will their voices be heard, or will they get a polite brush-off as they did in the House?

Tomorrow’s witnesses include former gubernatorial candidates Brenda Siegel and Sue Minter (the latter now head of Capstone Community Action), Anne Sosin of the Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition, Christine Hazzard of the Brattleboro Housing Coaltion, and Susan Aronoff of the Vermont Developmental Disabilities Council. It’s kind of an all-star cast for housing insecurity.

But my question is: Where is everybody else?

Given the potentially wide-ranging consequences of ending the motel voucher program, there ought to be a line down the hallway, out the door, and around the building of people wanting to give Senate decision-makers a piece of their minds. The fact that there isn’t is a measure of the cluelessness of institutional Vermont about what might happen this summer.

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We Aren’t Going to Solve the Housing Shortage This Way

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This is the site plan for Stonewall Meadows, a proposed new neighborhood in Montpelier. Need I say that this is a prime example of how to waste a whole lot of acreage and squander an opportunity to build smart on one of the city’s handful of available building sites?

This plan, of course, got a green light from the Development Review Board, so it’s full steam ahead for some nice, expansive backyards where there could have been more housing. This is especially galling since the developer originally proposed a “cottage cluster” type of neighborhood that would have provided twice as much housing as the approved plan. Here’s the original layout.

According to the Montpelier Bridge, the developer “switched tacks after a neighborhood meeting and sketch review with the city’s Development Review Board last fall.” The neighbors complained about the loss of an undeveloped area and expressed concern about increased traffic. In other words, NIMBY.

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Meet the New Health Care Provider, Same As the Old Health Care Provider

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Let there be rejoicing in the streets, for lo, the Vermont prison system has a new health care contractor!

Even better, they already know their way around the place. The new provider is Wellpath, a private equity-owned firm whose name just screams “Corporation Pretending to Care.” Under its former monicker Correct Care Solutions, it held Vermont’s prison health care contract from 2010 to 2015.

None of this is heartening, not the private equity ownership, not the trying-too-hard name, not the return engagement, not the recent rebranding, not the fact that it was one of only two bidders for the contract.

But let us not rush to judgment. Maybe Wellpath is different from all the others. Maybe it does business honorably and with the best of intentions. Wait, I know, let’s DuckDuckGo “Wellpath scandal” and see if we get any — oh dear.

Wellpath Founder and CEO Pleads Guilty to Federal Bribery Charges

Yep, that’s the first hit. It’s from March 2022, when former CorrectCare CEO Gerald “jerry” Boyle faced up to five years in the slammer for bribing a Virginia sheriff over a period of 12 years in exchange for the county’s jail health care contract. (Shortly after htat article was posted, Boyle was sentenced to three years in prison, a substantial penalty for a purely white-collar crime by a top corporate executive.)

But hey, after Boyle was indicted his former company thoroughly distanced itself from him, so it’s all good, right?

Boyle’s case may be an outlier, but this is an industry rife with incentives for abuse. Wellpath is one of its biggest and most experienced players. I’m not sure which I have less confidence in: Wellpath’s dedication to its duties, or the Vermont Department of Corrections’ ability to perform effective oversight of the deal.

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Sometimes, the Lobbyists Don’t Win

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This column regularly bemoans the influence of lobbyists in our Statehouse. It’s less about overt corruption and more about relationships and the difficulty faced by unstaffed part-time lawmakers in assessing complicated issues.

But this week has brought us a couple of cases in which the Legislature — so far — has resisted the blandishments of the Folks In Smart Suits. First, the state Senate has unanimously approved a bill to ban PFAS and other toxic chemicals from a range of products. Second, a bill to establish a Right to Repair for agricultural and forestry equipment has made it through a House committee. Both bills represent modest but measurable victories for consumers over industry.

(And let me note that we may not have heard about either action if not for VTDigger’s Final Reading, which provides a valuable space for coverage of legislative happenings that might not warrant standalone treatment.)

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