The headline might seem outrageous, and I’m sure it won’t make anyone on the Fifth Floor happy, but it’s the plain truth.

Vermont’s judiciary system is grossly underfunded and understaffed. The result is a huge backlog of pending cases measured, not in weeks or months, but in years. Gov. Phil Scott’s solution? Cut a few more positions from the courts.

This is the same governor who said, in his State of the State address, that public safety was one of his top priorities. The House decided to boost the Judiciary instead of strangling it, and approved a bill that would pay for more positions in the court system by increasing corporate taxes and fees by a skosh or two. This appears to be a no-go for Scott, who would rather kill any kind of tax or fee increase than, I don’t know, fully fund the judicial system at a time when he claims that we face a public safety crisis.

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