We’re a few days into our latest mass unsheltering, and the devastation wrought by Our Political Betters’ mishandling of the situation is fully as bad as expected, if not worse. People on the front lines, trying to help vulnerable Vermonters no longer eligible for state-paid motel rooms, are working their asses off and trying to hold back the tears as they do it. Problem is, they are so committed and dedicated, that they can’t help but push themselves to the brink.

The city of Burlington is reduced to seeking donations of tents and camping gear because THE STATE CAN’T EVEN BRING ITSELF TO DO THAT SIMPLE INADEQUATE THING. Municipalities around the state are begging the state to lift a goddamn finger, and gotten nothing from Gov. Phil Scott in response. Helping agencies are seeking donations* to enable them to conduct the vital work they’re doing because, again, THE STATE IS SHOWING THE BACK OF ITS HAND TO THE UNSHELTERED.

*Organizations worthy of support include End Homelessness Vermont and, in my neck of the woods, Good Samaritan Haven.

The governor, I must remind you, is the guy who has insisted since Day One of his administration that he has three strategic priorities: Grow the economy, make Vermont more affordable, and protect the must vulnerable.

I guess we can cross off that last one, because clearly he isn’t committed to it anymore. Hundreds of our most vulnerable have been kicked to the curb under his watch, and hundreds more will follow in the coming weeks.

Scott’s initial response to the municipalities’ call to action was pretty much a hard, fast “No.” He brushed aside a plea to open state land as campsites for the unsheltered. He used the failure of the state’s terrible temporary shelters last spring as an excuse to not even try that again. And he repeated his mantra that the state must “wean ourselves off” the motel voucher system.

Look, no one would argue with that. As Rutland Mayor Mike Doenges said last week, the voucher program “was never intended to be a program.” The problem is, the Scott administration has been trying to kill the program for years and has never, ever proposed a plan to “wean ourselves off” the vouchers.

It’s like telling a baby it needs to “wean itself off” its mother’s milk. Yeah, kiddo, just lift yourself up by your bootie-straps.

I’m sure the governor furrowed his brow and perhaps even sighed with regret as he insisted that we can’t afford to protect our most vulnerable. Well, with all due respect (placing thumb and forefinger thisfarapart), maybe if the Department of Children and Families weren’t spending so much on designing a program full of burdensome paperwork and obstacles to overcome and administering it terribly, they’d have more money to actually help the people who need it most.

You may recall that I said “Our Political Betters’ mishandling” of the situation. So let’s turn our attention from the governor and take a look at what the Democratic supermajorities have done.

[crickets]

Sure, the Legislature can’t actually do anything because it’s adjourned until January — unless the governor calls lawmakers to an emergency sessHA HA HA HA HA HA sorry I couldn’t get that out with a straight face. But have you seen even a single, solitary word of protest from any top Democrat?

Some comments may have escaped my view*, but the closest I’ve seen came from someone who’s not in office anymore: former Burlington mayor Miro Weinberger, who wrote the following on Twitter.

The State of Vermont has had three years to prepare since the end of COVID emergency, yet the plan it settled on puts young children with federal housing vouchers on the street to sleep in tents as winter approaches. Surely we can do better than this.

*Here’s one I missed: Democratic Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun wrote a good opinion piece posted on VTDigger last week. Her main point was the myth that out-of-staters are the cause of our homelessness crisis, but she also points out that she was one of 17 House Dems and Progs who voted against the House budget “because it provided an inadequate safety net and transition time“ for voucher recipients, and the House plan was a hell of a lot more generous than the Senate version, which was ultimately adopted by the Legislature.

To which I’d like to think Phil Scott replied, “No we can’t, and stop calling me Shirley.”

So where are all the other Democrats? I mean, this is an election season and the mass unsheltering is, if nothing else, a big fat political gift dropped in their laps.

Oh wait I forgot, the Democratic Legislature approved the voucher cutbacks that led directly, foreseeably, to our current humanitarian crisis. If top Dems criticized the cuts, they’d be tacitly throwing their own under the bus.

Oh wait I forgot Part Deux, a lot of Democrats are Phil Scott supporters and they’ll never utter a word against him. This includes our Congressional delegation, who ought to be red-faced with embarrassment at what their home state is doing to its most vulnerable. And jumping at the chance to criticize a Republican officeholder’s misstep.

The only political organization that’s speaking out on this horrific situation is the Progressive Party. This is one more indication that the Progs play a vital role in our politics, a role the Democrats could very easily take away from the Progs if they weren’t so directly complicit in creating this crisis.

Last Friday, I got an ACTION ALERT email from the Progs urging recipients to contact the governor’s office and their lawmakers and demand they take action. Cool, great. That same day, Progressive/Democratic Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman issued his own press release slamming “the lack of foresight from the Governor’s administration” that has put vulnerable Vermonters, “many of whom are disabled or suffer from serious health conditions, at extreme risk.”

Good for him. Dead silence, it seems, from any Democratic officeholder or any Democrat who proudly claims to be a Democrat/Progressive. Like, for instance, Senate President Pro Tem Phil Baruth or Washington County Sen. Anne Watson, just to name two.

It’s a disgrace, especially for a state that claims to be small-P progressive and aspires to be a welcoming, inclusive, open-hearted place. We sure aren’t acting like it.

Well, some of us are. But Our Political Betters? Not so much.