Monthly Archives: September 2023

Kurn Hattin Would Very Much Like You to Take Kurn Hattin’s Word For It About Kurn Hattin’s Sordid Past

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Sometime in late August, very quietly, the Kurn Hattin Homes for Children released an astonishingly vague statement about allegations of child abuse within its walls. Repeatedly referring to itself in the third person, Kurn Hattin announced that some number of allegations about Kurn Hattin turned out to be true, while some other accusations about Kurn Hattin were not. Yep, that’s about it.

VTDigger reported the statement on September 8, but it was posted on Kurn Hattin’s website at least two weeks earlier without notice. I’m sure that Kurn Hattin would very much like us to accept this statement at face value and turn our attention elsewhere. Any elsewhere will do. HEY, LOOK! SQUIRREL!

But I’ll tell you, this had better not be the last word on the subject. Kurn Hattin needs to be held accountable. Department of Education? Agency of Human Services? Attorney General’s office? Legislature? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

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Congratulations to Team Scott for Scoring a Cheap Political Point Against the Democrats

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Legislative leadership has a somewhat (but only somewhat) overblown reputation for shooting themselves in the foot. They have often made Gov. Phil Scott’s job easier by giving him pain-free victories or allowing his minions to run rings around them.

The latest installment of this depressing melodrama features the complaint from House Speaker Jill Krowinski and Senate President Pro Tem Phil Baruth about the “Vermont Strong II: Electric Boogaloo” license plates first suggested [checks notes] almost two months ago by Gov. Phil Scott.

Now, I’m no fan of the plate. It’s an obvious play on Vermonters’ partially earned self-regard, and there’s something ironic about flogging vehicle license plates to help recover from a climate change-related disaster.

Also, Baruth and Krowinski have a strong argument that the governor overstepped his constitutional authority by advancing the program without Legislative approval. Team Scott argues that he is simply extending a program authorized by the Legislature in 2012, after Tropical Storm Irene.

That seems pretty thin to me, but politically speaking it doesn’t matter. There is no way that this doesn’t end up being a strong net positive for Scott. Assuming he runs for re-election, this thing would be potent fodder for the TV ads he probably won’t have to bother airing: “Legislative leaders are so petty and obstructionist, they didn’t even want me to raise disaster recovery money with a positive, feel-good message.”

Team Scott fully realizes this. And when you look at the sequence of events, it’s pretty clear that his people leaked this story and that Baruth and Krowinski didn’t intend for this to become public.

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Canaan Launches Purification Drive

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Oh Canaan, my Canaan. What are you up to now?

The Northeast Kingdom town, best known in these parts as (1) the home of the only public school district that never adopted a mask mandate during the Covid epidemic, (2) the home turf of former education secretary Dan French, and (3) the place where a parent threatened to “kill somebody” if his child encountered a transgender person at school, has just enacted a broad, sweeping ban on loitering — or doing just about anything else not specifically authorized by the town — on public property.

It’s obviously aimed at unhoused people, and it’s almost certainly unconstitutional. The Selectboard itself gave that game away when it inserted a “separability” clause, which anticipates a losing battle in court.

The Vermont ACLU, which has previously reminded other Vermont communities that anti-panhandling ordinances are unconstitutional, seems likely to fulfill the Selectboard’s anticipation. “[The ordinance] does appear to raise a number of constitutional concerns,” wrote ACLU Communications Director Stephanie Gomory in an email.

But wait, there’s more! The Canaan Selectboard has also embarked on a drive to clean up “junky yards,” a concept that’s clearly in the eye of the beholder.

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Pointless Brattleboro Petition Sparks Rage, Fear, Prejudice

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Things are dire enough down Brattleboro way that someone named “Buck Russell” has launched a petition drive to prohibit panhandling. Gee, what do you know, you take a historic housing shortage, add a mass unhousing by state policymakers, toss in an opioid crisis we have yet to address, and hey presto, you get desperate people begging for money. Our unspoken pleas for the unhoused to simply, conveniently disappear seem to be falling on deaf ears.

The petition seeks to drive Brattleboro down a dead-end road. In 2018, the Vermont ACLU convinced six communities to deep-six their anti-panhandling ordinances. The nonprofit pointed to clear and consistent court rulings against such laws.

The 2015 Supreme Court case Reed v. Town of Gilbert made clear that it is unconstitutional for municipal ordinances to regulate only certain types of speech, including panhandling. Similarly, of the more than 25 laws attempting to ban panhandling reviewed by courts across the nation, all have been found unconstitutional.

I suppose that memories fade when communities are under stress. I doubt that the town Selectboard will give much credence to the petition, considering that Brattleboro was itself one of those communities that killed its anti-panhandling ordinance in 2018.

The petition itself is sort of a work of art in its own dystopian way. Russell does his level best to hide the wolf of contempt in the sheep’s clothing of compassion. He claims, in fact, that enacting a ban would actually be “encouraging [the unhoused] towards more sustainable solutions,” as if the unhoused could build housing and create a social safety net by themselves.

But if the petition tries to come across as Sincerely Having the Best Interests of Our Unfortunate Neighbors In Mind, the commenters employ no such restraints. Nay, rather, they are absolutely unhinged.

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Less “Lean Management” Than “Mean Management”

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There have been numerous examples over the years of Phil Scott’s failure to build an effective bureaucracy in spite of his promises to lower the cost of government and improve the delivery of services The latest, and perhaps most outrageous, is the unconscionable handling of the extended emergency motel voucher program. As reported by VTDigger, the Scott administration is now requiring recipients to recertify once a week — and is making it damn difficult to comply by woefully understaffing its call centers and offices.

There are two possible explanations for this. Either the administration is doing its best to torpedo an extension it never wanted in the first place, or it has deliberately resource-starved the Department of Children and Families to the point where DCF can’t properly do its job. Either way, it’s inexcusable. As is the desperate display of blame-shifting put on by DCF functionary Miranda Gray.

It’s not our fault, she told VTDigger. It’s recipients’ fault for not being persistent enough or not answering the phone when DCF gets around to calling them back. It’s a caseworker’s fault for not communicating with DCF (through its terrible call center). Recipients who can’t get through by phone should go to a field office (but at least one recipient was forced to wait for hours and hours at a field office). It’s the Legislature’s fault for setting the rules (yes, they opened the door to weekly check-ins but (a) the admin sets the rules and (b) the mismanagement of the call system is all on YOU).

Meanwhile, recipients are waiting hours upon hours and living constantly in fear of losing their shelter. All because YOU couldn’t fully staff a call center after increasing your own workload by mandating weekly check-ins.

Also meanwhile, no one has received a damn dime from a disaster relief fund for the self-employed and independent contractors. And some of the applications seem to have been bungled. Wow, more management failure. And another administration official busily pointing the finger elsewhere.

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