Monthly Archives: July 2023

Will the EB-5 Settlement Be an Open Window or an Escape Hatch?

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Congrats to former governor Peter Shumlin, who will be spared the indignity — and potential legal peril — of testifying under oath about the EB-5 scandal, thanks to the state’s universal settlement of lawsuits by investors in the fraudulent scheme.

Regrets for the rest of us, who’ve been wondering for years what he knew and when he knew it

At the same time, hopes arise for the fullest possible disclosure of documents hitherto barred from public disclosure because of the state’s legal exposure. Well, that threat has been removed, right? So now we can expect a big press conference any day now where state officials will pull a curtain away from a mountain of documents and eliminate all the suspicions.

Right?

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The Loneliest Overwhelmingly Popular Governor in Town

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At last week’s press conference, Governor Nice Guy spent much of the time wearing his Frowny Phil mask. Lots of unpleasant subjects: The still unsettled emergency housing program, all the veto overrides, plus Auditor Doug Hoffer’s scathing report on his pet administrative project, the Agency of Digital Services, which gave him the opportunity to unfurl an obviously scripted and vigorous defense of ADS. (Outgoing ADS Secretary Shawn Nailor was in on the presser for no reason at all, just in case some reporter asked about the agency. When the question did arise, Scott and Nailor just couldn’t stop trumpeting the former’s vision and the latter’s execution.)

On top of all that, he had the opportunity to wallow in his profound political isolation. Not a lot of fun for a politician with an approval rating of, what was it, 163 percent or something?

Gov. Scott was clueless about how we’ve arrived at the point where an historically popular leader is on the short end of historically lopsided legislative supermajorities, and had no idea what he might be able to do about it. Plus he made it clear that his divorce from the Vermont Republican Party is complete and irrevocable.

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Sure, Hundreds Have Been Unsheltered, But Let’s Not Forget the Real Tragedy: Important People Have Had Their Feelings Hurt

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There’s a great deal of desperate history-rewriting going on after the disheartening political debate over emergency housing. Everybody is shifting blame. No wonder; the outcome was not a solution to the crisis, but a patchwork of compromises intended to carefully balance the suffering of the unhoused against the comfort level of Our Political Betters. It’s nothing that anybody can take pride in.

The Scott administration is blaming the Legislature for, I don’t know, failing to defy the governor’s insistence on ending the program as scheduled. Legislative leaders who were happy to kill the program until it got too embarrassing are now blaming the administration for failing to plan a transition, which is true enough but doesn’t absolve Statehouse leadership from their failure to heed the warnings coming from housing advocates and, well, people like me.

There’s one thing both sides can agree on: The real villain is Brenda Siegel.

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If a Seldom-Read Conservative “News” Site Falls in the Forest…

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It seems the megadonor with more dollars than sense, Lenore Broughton, has experienced a rare flash of insight. Late this afternoon, Broughton suddenly announced the end of True North Reports, the right-wing “news” website.

Broughton, who must be described as a “reclusive heiress” per the sacred rules of journalism, had been single-handedly bankrolling TNR for years. Did she get tired of handing our her money and getting bupkis in return? Is she moving into a new realm of estate planning? Could she — horrors! — be taking my advice and investing her fortune in projects that might promote the conservative movement in Vermont?

Who knows. She certainly won’t tell us. She never talks to the press, and reacts with anger when a photographer tries to take her picture. She ran TNR as a closed book; no contact information was listed on the site. TNR’s (expired) entry in the Secretary of State’s corporate registry cited Broughton as Registered Agent, included no other names, and listed her Burlington home as TNR’s address of record.

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