Gotta start using air quotes around that appellation for our chief executive, because he seems to be going out of his way to antagonize the Legislature and prepare the fields for another bushel of his administration’s chief cash crop, gubernatorial vetoes. It’s funny, after all that talk about coming to the table and working across the aisle, he’s back in his comfort zone: confrontational mode.
You know, if Phil Scott was a politician — which he continually insists he is not — I’d say he had absorbed the lessons of the 2024 election and decided the path to victory was in demonizing his opponents. It’s smart politics. But it’s anything but nice.
Exhibit A: VTDigger reports that the Scott administration has finally, belatedly, delivered its full public education reform plan in actual legislative language.
On February 25. Almost two months into a five-month session. Three days before the Legislature adjourns for Town Meeting Week. Little more than three weeks before crossover, when any policy bill must have been passed by one chamber if it’s to have any real chance of passing the other this year. It’s just not possible for lawmakers to give due consideration to such a massive reorganization in such a short window of time.
Especially since the Scott plan is chock full of political poison. It would decimate local control of public schools, dramatically expand school choice, and almost certainly lead to widespread school closures in the rural areas of Vermont that he professes to defend. But really, this bill could be 100% unicorns and rainbows and it wouldn’t get through the Legislature in the current session. Not after starting on February 25.
What the Legislature ought to do is allow this bill to wend its way, as it should, through the normal process and devote its energies to solving the immediate property tax problem. That’s the only part of this whole thing that requires action this year.
Of course, if the Legislature does that, Scott will surely accuse them of ducking the issue and engaging in needless delay. But if he wanted this package to receive serious consideration, he would have introduced it in January. Truth be told, he didn’t want this bill to get anywhere near his desk because he knows it would be political poison. He just wanted another excuse to blast the Democrats.
Exhibit B: Vermont Public’s Peter Hirschfeld reports that Scott may well veto the Budget Adjustment Act, a move I recently described as “utterly ridiculous” and I haven’t changed my mind. The administration’s reported rationale — rationales, really, they haven’t settled on one, it’s more a “throw spaghetti at the wall and hope something sticks” kind of thing — is that it would be fiscally unwise to spend $1.8 million on sheltering Vermont’s most vulnerable in the GA Emergency Housing program.
That’s a tiny fraction of the total spending in the BAA. Which, as it happens, almost entirely echoes the administration’s own proposal for tweaking the FY2024 budget.
Gee, sounds like the Legislature really came to the table on that one.
But the administration is displeased. Chief spaghetti-tosser and Administration Secretary Sarah Clark argued that the GA program “does not provide positive outcomes for the individuals in that program.” I guess she doesn’t view “having a roof over your head” to be a positive outcome.
Clark continued by saying “we see better outcomes in other more shelter-focused alternatives,” which would be a valid point if the administration had ever bothered to offer any alternative at all to the GA program, and I’m not counting its expensive and undersized pair of family shelters, maximum occupancy 17 households. We’d also see better outcomes if we gave every GA client a million dollars and a new car, Ms. Clark.
Just in case none of that pasta stuck to the wall, Clark rolled out the Donald Trump boogeyman: ““Given the uncertainty at the federal level, we believe that we should not be doing any sort of additional spending that is not critical as part of this mid-year adjustment.”
Which would be a valid argument except that the governor himself has been blithely dismissive of the need to plan for the federal mayhem already in progress: “We’ve heard a lot of rhetoric over the last week, we’ve heard a lot of rhetoric over the last few months, but we don’t exactly know what it’s going to mean for us until it actually happens,” Scott said at his January 30 press conference, and later added, “We can’t speculate. We’ll just have to address it when it comes our way.”
Oh, but it’s a matter of grave concern now that the Democrats want to fritter away a tiny portion of the BAA on — horrors! — providing SHELTER for our most vulnerable people.
Yeah, that $1.8 million will make all the difference when the Trump cuts hit home.
I’m not arguing against fiscal prudence in the face of the Trump/Musk maelstrom. I am saying that the governor himself didn’t seem all that concerned about it until the Democrats dared to spend a little extra on keeping roofs over people’s heads. I’m also saying that, in budgetary terms, $1.8 million is a rounding error.
I could go on to Exhibit C, Scott’s slash-and-burn approach to fighting climate change, but we’ve done that before. He is not only contradicting his own commitment to the Paris climate accords, he is refusing to “come to the table” in any real sense of the phrase. He is, again, laying the groundwork for another veto showdown.
Hence the air quotes around “Governor Nice Guy.”
The Vermont Political Observer. 
If you had actually read the Vt Digger article on the education bill you would have seen the following.
“Tuesday’s bill proposes more limits on independent schools than previously revealed. To become one of the proposed “school choice schools,” more than half of the school’s student body would need to already be publicly funded as of this summer. In practice, that means the vast majority of existing private schools would be excluded from public funding in Scott’s system.
Choice is not only being limited, but finally regulated.
You also missed the point on rural schools. Despite the Brigham decision, wealthy areas spend more per pupil than rural areas under the current funding system. The proposed foundation formula increases per pupil spending in rural areas which have been chronically underfunded. I feel the need to point these facts out because several members of the legislature get their misguided information from your blog. (Hello Senator Wrenner!)
All of this is in the 176 page bill. A bill I am sure you read carefully before penning your missive. A modest suggestion… you may want to change the name of your blog from the the VPO to the Vermont Dunning Kruger effect.
The thrust of my post is that this bill came too late to receive proper consideration. So great, the actual bill is a little less politically noxious than the preceding outline. It’s not going anywhere anytime soon, nor should it.
This is incorrect. Most rural schools receive many more dollars per ACTUAL student because of the weights applied to small schools and students in poverty. The dollar per weighted student is sometimes less. That’s not going to matter if this plan goes through because they are going to close most of the small and medium sized rural high schools (under ~650 students) and then send them to the private independent schools thus easily satisfying any public school student required minimums. That’s why they are requiring every district to appoint “at least one” independent school that all students can choose. If the whole thing went through this would effectively be a massive EXPANSION of private high schools and vouchers with the theoretical possibility that every 9-12 student could choose this option.
It’s been my experience that the VPO provides excellent, reliable information from the statehouse. That’s the kind of thing that tends to happen when someone has decades of experience in investigative journalism in a region.
Ivan, that is the entire problem with the current system. In theory rural areas are supposed to be getting more money but this is not what is happening. This has been clearly documented in the AOE’s 147 page Listen and Learn report.
https://education.vermont.gov/sites/aoe/files/documents/edu-listen-and-learn-key-themes-report-2025.pdf
That’s why the system is in crisis. Vermont spends more per pupil than any other state in the nation and has middling test scores that are rapidly declining.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/11/briefing/covid-learning-losses.html
As to the reputation of John Walters, that is another story. You don’t get fired from both the VT Digger AND Seven Days for doing a great job. You get fired because you are sloppy and play fast and loose with the facts. The reason John has a blog is because he doesn’t have to be held accountable to fact checking or the truth. There is a saying in poker; if you’re sitting at the table and you can’t spot the sucker, it’s you. Please accept my invitation to play cards at any time. Bring lots of money.
“solving the immediate property tax problem”
If the wealthy paid their fair share instead of us subsidizing them, this would go a long way toward doing that. Otherwise, there’s always going to be “property tax problem,” which, of course, is the purpose.