Note: This post is deeply flawed and hurtful in ways I did not intend. In making a case against state policy, I used the Menards as symbols — or props, if you prefer — in ways that dishonor their memory and affect their family and friends. I apologize. I’m keeping this post as is, but I have written a follow-up with an apology and further reflections.

Lucas and Tammy Menard may have been the first to die because the State of Vermont didn’t care, but they will not be the last. There are roughly 1,500 people, all of whom were officially classed as “vulnerable” due to age, disability, or other factors, who have been unsheltered by state policy since mid-September. Our leaders put all of them in the most horribly uncertain of circumstances because we could not muster the political will or managerial smarts to provide for these people.

Instead, we were satisfied with a policy that amounts to “culling the herd,” weeding out those too compromised to survive the onset of winter living in a goddamn tent. The Menards’ deaths could be seen as a policy success in that regard. The long, long list of the unsheltered has just been reduced by two, so hey, congratulations?

It’s a situation that would seem to warrant charges of negligent manslaughter against certain politicians and bureaucrats — except for that pesky immunity standard they enjoy for official acts. And if you think accusing Our Betters of willfully committing two felonies is a bridge too far, well, let us turn to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary definition of “manslaughter” as

…resulting from the failure to perform a legal duty expressly required to safeguard human life, from the commission of an unlawful act not amounting to a felony, or from the commission of a lawful act involving a risk of injury or death that is done in an unlawful, reckless, or grossly negligent manner.

Did state officials fail to perform a legal duty expressly required to safeguard human life? I suppose they could argue that providing shelter to vulnerable people is not “expressly required to safeguard human life,” but that kind of heartless green-eyshading ought to earn the claimant a place of dishonor on the third panel of Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights.

They might also cling, like Jack and Rose in Titanic, to the floating debris of “well, it might have been grossly negligent but it wasn’t unlawful” because the cuts in the GA emergency housing program were enacted by the Legislature and signed by the governor, and I guess that makes them “lawful” by definition. But when you read VTDigger’s account of the Menards’ life, it’s difficult to view Our Betters living their comfortable lives with anything other than contempt.

The Menards had their struggles, but they were valued members of their community. They had advocated for others in their situation. Tammy was a frequent volunteer at Good Samaritan Haven. Read this quote from Kathryn Nunnelley of Montpelier’s Capital Community Church and tell me the Menards deserved to die.

I can’t believe that I’ll never see them or talk to them again and they won’t be there in the pews with us. Tammy made her stuffing for our meal last week, and, you know, she’ll never do that again for us.

Now, you tell me the Menards had no purpose on Earth, that they were a waste of space and resources, that their lives weren’t worthy of our protection.

The state of Vermont determined that that protection had too high a price tag. The Menards would still be with us at a cost of $80 per night. Too rich for Our Betters’ taste. And so they died, cold and vulnerable, in a tent in Wolcott.

The dishonor roll of the Officially Complicit is long and, by customary standards, distinguished. Start with Gov. Phil Scott, whose oft-repeated vow to “protect the most vulnerable” turned out to be so much political bafflegab. Continue with his officials in the executive office, the Agency of Human Services, and the Department of Children and Families, who have failed over and over again to devise a glidepath away from the voucher program that would, um, “protect the most vulnerable” or find ways to stretch available resources and make our policy a bit less inhumane.

And let’s not leave out the Democratic supermajority in the Legislature, which mustered the political gumption to override a history-making six of Scott’s vetoes but couldn’t be bothered to avoid life-threatening cuts in GA housing. Special mention must go to the respected and distinguished outgoing Sen. Jane Kitchel, who ramrodded the cuts through her Senate Appropriations Committee; to fellow Approps member Bobby Starr, who festooned the proceedings with deeply bigoted remarks about the homeless; and to the other members of the committee, who studiously avoided making any comment about Starr’s remarks and who voted in favor of Kitchel’s cuts.

Let’s remind everyone of Kitchel’s desperate attempt to justify the cuts:

At one point, committee chair Sen. Jane Kitchel was seeking assurance that nothing bad would happen under the administration’s plan. She lobbed [DCF Commissioner Chris] Winters a softball: “Will you be putting somebody in a wheelchair out on the street?”

And Winters replied, “Hopefully not.”

I don’t know if either Menard was technically in a wheelchair, but they both faced medical challenges that warranted our protection. We withheld it, because $80 a night was too rich for our blood.

Oh, I almost forgot the Vermont electorate, who were perfectly happy to re-elect Scott by an historic margin and return many of the complicit to comfortable perches in the Statehouse. If there was any sign of collective outrage, if there was any sign that any elected official paid a price for slashing the voucher program, if protecting the vulnerable was even raised as an issue in the campaign, I must have missed it. Just another chapter in the ongoing saga of Vermont exceptionalism.