Daily Archives: September 5, 2024

Well, Here’s Another Thing — Or a Bunch of Things — Phil Scott Isn’t Doing

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If he didn’t have a decade-plus track record of ignoring the political implications of his work, I’d think Auditor Doug Hoffer pulled a nice little election-year fast one on Gov. Phil Scott. Yesterday, just in time for the beginning of campaign season, Hoffer issued a devastating report (downloadable here) on the state’s failure to implement its 2018 State Hazard Mitigation Plan.

Which can now be added to my extensive list of Stuff Phil Scott Hasn’t Done. Too bad the Democrats aren’t putting up an effective challenge to the governor’s bid for a fifth term. The Hoffer audit would make an effective cudgel.

The Mitigation Plan included 96 discrete actions to reduce the impacts of natural disasters. Hoffer found that only about one-third had been implemented. Even high-priority items were “frequently” unfinished. And this was a five-year plan that expired in 2023, so it’s not like the administration didn’t have all the time it should have needed. Meanwhile, we’ve been beset by disaster after disaster including major flooding in each of the last two summers. Hoffer told VTDigger that full implementation of the Plan “would have made a difference in the last two years.”

The audit was released a few hours after Scott’s weekly press conference, so reporters didn’t get the chance to quiz him about it. But it did lend a touch of retrospective irony to the presser, which began with Scott bragging about once again relaunching his tired old “Capital for a Day’ concept. Nice way to stage high-profile, media-friendly events in all 14 counties while On Official Business, eh?

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The Business Elites Expand Their Portfolio, and Other Notes from the 9/1 Campaign Finance Filings

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Well, those Burlington-area business types have slightly expanded their playing field as they try to weaken the Legislature’s ability to override gubernatorial vetoes. They’d backed a handful of centrist Democratic challengers to Dem/Prog incumbents (most notably Stewart Ledbetter and Elizabeth Brown*, only to see them all go down to defeat. (A similar effort was made by Brattleboro businessfolk in support of an unsuccessful challenge to Rep. Emilie Kornheiser.) They also backed some Republican hopefuls with a chance to knock off Democratic incumbents in November including LG candidate John Rodgers, two state reps running for Senate, Pat Brennan and Scott Beck, and the uncle-and-nephew tag team of Leland and Rep. Michael Morgan, running in a two-seat House district currently split between the two parties.

*We’d previously noted that Brown spent an appalling $35 per vote. It was actually $35.42, for those keeping score at home.

And now that same bunch of Vermont-scale plutocrats is throwing their weight, in the form of four-figure donations, behind Rep. Chris Mattos, running for Senate in the Chittenden North district currently repped by Sen. Irene Wrenner, and Steven Heffernan, Republican Senate candidate in Addison County. (A district that, according to Matthew Vigneau, solid Twitter follow and bigger election nerd than I, hasn’t elected a Republican to the Senate since the year 2000. Which was the year of the great civil-unions backlash that saw Republicans win in multiple unexpected locations, so grain of salt required.)

I haven’t come across any similarly blessed Republican candidates for House, but I didn’t do an exhaustive search. Then again, perhaps these low-grade plutocrats have decided (as have I) that the House is a lost cause for the Republicans.

So who’s giving how much to whom?

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