Monthly Archives: January 2024

Further Adventures in Performative Budgeting

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Following his boffo turn unveiling the Scott administration’s short-term plan for dealing with homelessness, Commissioner Chris Winters was back before the House Human Services Committee today to go over the FY2025 budget for his Department of Children and Families. The biggest area of concern: the administration’s plan for dealing with Vermont’s homelessness crisis.

Which, as usual, was a sad exercise in prioritizing cost over humanity. And after Winters was done, committee chair Theresa Wood let him have it. “I’m trying to figure out how to be polite,” she began. “We recognize that money is not unlimited, but we think it’s not responsible for us to consider implementing what you proposed. I think that’s exactly what you expected to hear form us.”

Wow. By budget hearing standards, that’s a big ol’ slap in the puss. And I’m pretty much certain that Winters was, indeed, expecting to get exactly that sort of response. By extension it seems likely that Winters himself doesn’t think much of this budget, but he’s a member of the Scott administration and he has to act within its parameters. “I know you receive instructions from the fifth floor,” Wood told Winters, using the customary shorthand for Scott’s office on the top floor of the Pavilion Building.

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Here She Comes Again, Again

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The good people of Milton, whether they want it or not, are getting a third chance to snap back at the extremism of Allison Duquette, who seems intent on entering the fabled territory of such luminaries as H. Brooke Paige, Cris Ericson, and Emily Peyton — fringe candidates who simply won’t take “Hell, No” for an answer.

Duquette, last seen in early 2023 running for school board in MIlton, and before that in 2022 running for State House, has tossed her battered fedora into the ring once again, making her second consecutive bid for school board. She announced her third candidacy with one heck of a letter to the editor of the MIlton Independent in which she tried to paint herself as a down-the-middle, “listening to all sides” sort of person who just wants good schools at a reasonable cost. Nothing to see here, folks, keep moving along.

Too bad there are people like me to fill in the details.

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Blows Against the Umpire

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It’s been a bad month for “print” media between the abrupt shutdown of Sports Illustrated, the purchase of the Baltimore Sun by a right-wing rich guy, mass layoffs at the Los Angeles Times, and the assimilation of music review site Pitchfork by GQ. There are signs that the already parlous state of journalism in America is about to get a whole lot worse.

Here in Vermont, we are relatively blessed on that front. We have robust nonprofits like VTDigger and Vermont Public and a reduced but still energetic Seven Days, plus a number of daily and weekly newspapers that are battling to produce meaningful reportage on a shoestring. A lot of energetic, smart people are doing their best to keep us informed.

But over the past couple of weeks, our media have repeatedly failed us. I feel compelled to point this out because the worse they do, the less informed we are. In the words of Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben, “With great power comes great responsibility.”

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A Bit of Tobacco Skulduggery is Afoot in House Human Services

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Don’t look now, but S.18, the bill to ban flavored tobacco and tobacco substitutes is in line for a substantial haircut in the House Human Services Committee.

The bill passed the Senate last spring and was sent to House Human Services, which has heard from numerous witnesses this month on the subject — including, as noted in this space, a batch of out-of-state lobbyists presenting an array of, shall we say, creative arguments against the ban.

It didn’t seem like their testimony would have much effect — but clearly, something has gotten to the committee, because it is now considering an amendment, posted publicly today/Wednesday (downloadable here), that would remove menthol cigarettes from the ban on what seem to be specious equity grounds. The rest of the ban would remain intact, but the subject of menthol smokes would be referred for, Lord help us all, a study to be submitted by next January.

The amendment cites the fact that that use of menthol cigarettes is more common among smokers of color than white smokers and more common among LGBTQ+ smokers than their straight counterparts, and that “there are differing views” on whether a ban “would be racist or would discriminate against persons of color and members of other marginalized communities.”

I don’t know where this thing comes from. The committee has heard from multiple persons of color plus a leading LGBTQ+ organization in favor of S.18, and absolutely none from those marginalized communities who raised equity issues or opposed the ban.

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Vermont Republicans Seem to be Just Fine with a Mass Unsheltering

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The House Human Services Committee tried its best to devise a solution for our looming, self-induced homelessness crisis. The committee consulted with Scott administration officials to put together a plan that would extend the motel voucher program through June 30 with some major changes. Eligibility would be expanded to include those in the General Assistance program plus the “adverse weather” program that kicks in when temperatures get low, but it would set a questionably realistic $75 per night cap on motel reimbursements. (Motels are currently getting an average of $132 per night.) I don’t think much of the plan, but it was an honest effort to reach consensus and keep people sheltered at least through June 30.

But now the Republicans are saying “No, thanks. We prefer the mass unsheltering.”

Human Services’ plan went to the House Appropriations Committee on Friday. At the end of the day, the committee took a straw poll in its revised version of the FY2024 Budget Adjustment Act, which included the Human Services plan. The informal, nonbinding vote was 12-0.

Fast forward to Monday afternoon, when Approps took its actual vote on the Act. And whaddyaknow, the committee’s four Republicans changed their votes. The BAA still passed by an 8-4 margin, but the Republican switcheroo meant the Act passed on a party line vote with no GOP support. And according to a report by Vermont Public, administration officials are throwing cold water on the Human Services plan.

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Welp, We’ve Got Another “Fix” for the Motel Voucher Program

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And good Lord, I hope it works, but I’m not optimistic.

Last week, while the Statehouse press corps was doing God knows what, state lawmakers and Scott administration officials were hashing out another baling-wire-and-duct-tape extension of the General Assistance emergency housing program, which is scheduled to expire on April 1. The scheme was devised in the House Human Services Committee downloadable here) and forwarded on Friday to the House Appropriations Committee as a recommended amendment to the FY2024 Budget Adjustment Act. On Monday, Approps voted 8-4 along party lines to approve the amended BAA, including the emergency housing plan. It will go before the full House later this week.

Reminder: Hundreds of Vermonters are due to lose their vouchers on March 15 when the “adverse weather” program shuts down for the season. Over a thousand more are due to be unhoused on April 1 when the GA voucher program will expire.

The Human Services amendment, now approved by Appropriations, would roll all recipients into a single class and mandate that they all be housed, one way or another, through the end of the fiscal year on June 30. (The program’s future after that will be decided in the FY2025 budget.)

Sounds like great news. Human Services deserves credit for working very hard to try to avoid a mass unsheltering event. But the devil is in the details. And I’ll be pleasantly surprised if this thing actually works.

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Phil Scott Sacrifices a Pinch of His Credibility at the Tomb of Republicanism

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So, our putatively moderate governor went and endorsed the very conservative Nikki Haley for president.

Well, kinda, but not really.

VTDigger reported it as an endorsement; Seven Days cast it as a rebuke of Donald Trump. I have to say Seven Days got it right here. He didn’t say he’d vote for Haley. All he said was that New Hampshire primary voters should choose Haley as the only viable alternative to Trump, in hopes that the November election would offer two candidates “with character and integrity, who respect the rule of law, the rights of all people, and the Constitution.”

That’s a depressingly low bar, but Trump’s dominance of the Republican Party has left Scott in the position of endorsing an ardent anti-choicer, an advocate of building the border wall, cutting taxes for the rich, increasing the age for receiving Social Security, and imposing something stronger than Ron DeSantis’ “don’t say gay” bill, among other things. Not to mention that whole playing footsie with the cause of the Civil War thing.

In short, Haley may be more presentable and less aggressively anti-democratic than Trump, but policy-wise there’s not much distance between her and her former boss. She’s no Phil Scott, that’s for sure.

But Scott, who clings to his partisan identity like a toddler with its favorite plushie, desperately wants the Republican Party to offer something, anything, of value to the American electorate.

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Phil Scott Loses His Binky

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For months and months, Gov. Phil Scott has been setting the stage for a Big Austerity Year where he could issue a rousing call to Live Within Our Means Like a Family Around the Kitchen Table, and slam the Democratic Legislature as mouth-foamin’ tax-and-spenders. After all, the federal Covid relief money has been spent, so the state will have to rely more heavily on its own coffers. And as the federal tide recedes, the knock-on effect will be a slowdown in Vermont’s economy. Of course. It all made perfect sense.

And then state economists Jeffrey Carr and Tom Kavet came along yesterday and pissed in the punchbowl. Take it away, VTDigger:

Despite last year’s hand-wringing over an anticipated downturn of Vermont’s economy, one year later, state economists on Thursday were notably optimistic about where the state’s finances stand.

Vermont’s favorite stats ‘n charts duo delivered the surprising good news to the Emergency Board, which consists of the governor and the four legislative “money committee” chairs. The Carr and Kavet economic forecast (downloadable here) will provide the basis for budget deliberations for the fiscal year beginning July 1.

And Scott just lost a fair bit of leverage in those deliberations. I’m sure that as a person, he’s glad to see Vermont doing so well. But c’mon, despite his protestations to the contrary, Phil Scott is a politician. He’s been in politics for more than 20 years. This, speaking purely in political terms, is a setback for his planned austerity offensive.

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Representation or Tokenism? We Shall Soon Find Out

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Today is, for those who celebrate, Homelessness Awareness Day at the Statehouse. Among the scheduled festivities: A joint hearing of the House General/Housing and House Human Services Committees, with a roster of witnesses that included not one, not two, but three people with what the agenda terms the “lived experience” of being unhoused. (One of the three, Bryan Plant, is seen above after he testified before a legislative hearing last fall.)

With these kinds of events, the proof is in the pudding. It’s what happens after The Special Day that counts. If this is an opportunity to get lawmakers in their feelings by briefly opening the door to Real People, then it’s worthless. If they actually listen to the testimony and do something about it, then it’s all good.

And we’re gonna find out in a hurry, as House Human Services is about to issue its memo to House Appropriations about what to do with emergency housing in the rest of the fiscal year. Human Services was supposed to release its memo last week. It did not. On Tuesday, it approved a memo that excluded emergency housing from its consideration of the Agency of Human Services’ budget request for the remainder of FY24. As of this moment, we’re still waiting to see what the committee will do about housing.

They seem intent on extending the motel voucher program through June instead of approving the Scott administration’s shambolic request for $4 million to provide shelter for a fraction of those currently getting vouchers. But given the repeated delays, I’m guessing they’re having trouble putting together a solid plan and providing the necessary funding. If they fall short, today’s testimony will unfortunately fall into the “tokenism” category.

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Blowin’ Smoke at the Statehouse

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The tailored-suit crowd is gracing us all with their (virtual) presence under the Golden Dome this week. Not one, not two, but three astroturf lobbyists have weighed in with specious arguments against S.18, a bill to ban flavored tobacco products and e-liquids that passed the Senate last year and now awaits action in the House Human Services Committee.

I have to give them credit for creative thinking. It’s long past the day when they could come right out and advocate for products that are proven harmful to people’s health. Instead, they argue that S.18 would lead to organized crime and poorer mental health, and actually promote tobacco consumption. It’s a feat of logical acrobatics worthy of Cirque du Soleil. One has to hope that our lawmakers are smart enough to see through the smoke.

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