A couple of notes before we begin. First, the person most responsible for our education-reform brinkmanship is Gov. Phil Scott, who has insisted on creating a crisis atmosphere when what we really have is a situation that requires a carefully considered response. I don’t want this narrowly-conceived blogpost to divert attention from that fact.

Second, I like Phil Baruth, the Senate President Pro Tem. I really do.

However… I’ve been Observing Vermont Politics for 12-plus years, and I have never seen a blunder by a legislative leader as consequential as Baruth’s handling of education reform. We have yet to see how this issue will be resolved, but the question here is: Will this mark the end of his Senate leadership?

The thing that might save him, seriously, is the lack of alternatives in this most junior-ish of senior chambers. Well, that and Senate Democrats’ distaste for intra-caucus defenestrations. But it says here that while Baruth might remain Pro Tem for the rest of the biennium, I wonder if he’ll be leading the Senate beyond that.

Baruth tried to pull a galaxy-brain maneuver at the beginning of the session. The Committee on Committees did an extremely unusual, perhaps unprecedented, thing when it appointed a Senate Education Committee with three Democrats and three Republicans. Baruth’s explanation was that he wanted a committee that “would put out bipartisan bills.”

Noble sentiment, and practical to boot, considering that any education reform bill would need to pass muster with the VetoMaster in the corner office. The problem is, Baruth’s first priority as leader of Senate Democrats was to produce a bill that his own caucus would support.

I once had a conversation with a former legislative leader, who told me that the first rule of being House Speaker or a Pro Tem is to never take a vote you don’t know the outcome of. Get your ducks in a row and keep ’em there. Make sure you can win the battle before you take the field.

Baruth didn’t do that. The Education Committee produced a bipartisan bill, yessir by golly it did — and the Democratic caucus turned it down flat. Technically, Baruth didn’t allow the thing to come to a vote, but the failure was obvious for all to see.

Instead, the Senate cooked up a last-ditch bill that was closer to the version passed by the House. Which set the stage for everybody’s favorite closing-days parlor game, the committee of conference.

And that’s when Baruth doubled down on his already-failed strategery with his appointments to the committee. I suppose he couldn’t avoid naming Education Committee chair Seth Bongartz, but he probably should have found a way. Bongartz was, after all, the primary author of the bill that crashed and burned on the Senate floor. The other two conferees: Senate Finance chair Ann Cummings and Senate Minority Leader Scott Beck.

That’s two of three Senate conferees who looked more favorably on the Bongartz bill than on the House version.

Update 1. It’s also two of the three Senate conferees who have strong ties to approved independent schools: Bongartz as a longtime trustee of Burr and Burton Academy, and Beck as a longtime staffer at St. Johnsbury Academy.All the more curious that Baruth, allegedly a Democrat who supports public education, stacked the conference committee deck with these two.

Cummings, by the way, might take home the prize for Quote of the Session. On Friday afternoon, the Senate conferees came in with a radically overhauled bill full of language that, according to VTDigger’s Ethan Weinstein, “was not in the chamber’s original bill, the House’s version or the governor’s recommendations.”

Now there’s a trifecta for you. The committee quickly recessed. Weinstein again: “When the group reconvened at 5 p.m., the Senators first appeared to pull their large changes off the table, before clarifying that most of it was still in play.”

Bongartz and Beck seemed to support the instant overhaul. (Which, by the way, is one HELL of a way to perform a total remake of a vital government system.) Cummings, not so much. “I don’t know if that is the right answer,” she said, according to Weinstein. “That was 15-minute at lunch’s attempt to come up with an answer.”

What a scorcher. I bet Bongartz’ eyebrows were burned clean off.

Cummings, by the way, looks like she’d rather be anywhere else on Earth but in this accursed chamber:

Update 2. We have another contender for Quote of the Year. Vermont Public quotes House Majority Leader Lori Houghton as saying the House has had a better relationship with the Scott administration than with the Senate: “I think the conversation with the governor and the House has been very good… I think, personally, the issue is between the House and the Senate more than the House and the governor.”

Ouch. Double ouch with nuts.

House conferees were completely unconvinced. House Education Committee chair Peter Conlon noted that the brand-spankin’-new Senate bill hadn’t been vetted and no experts had been consulted.

The conference committee recessed at about 5:30. The video of that session cuts off inconclusively, before it officially ended. They have since conducted two brief sessions where the two parties were fumbling for a path forward acceptable to both sides. Not necessarily a reform plan, just a way to get the hell out of the Statehouse and go home with some semblance of honor. Also, to add to the chaos, both the Vermont National Education Association and the Vermont School Boards Association have called for the Bongartz Blue Plate Special to be killed.

But whether or not the conference committee reaches agreement, the process was a real clusterfuck — and that’s mostly because of Baruth. An Education Committee with a Democratic majority would have produced a bill acceptable to the majority. Which would probably have led to a gubernatorial veto, but at least the Legislature would have been unified behind a reform plan that had received some review and consideration instead of something cooked up in 15 minutes at lunch.

And if Baruth’s half of the conference committee had actually represented his caucus, they almost certainly could have reached agreement with House conferees without pullin’ a rabbit out of a hat (and instead producing, á la Bullwinkle, an angry lion).

It didn’t have to be this way. The Democrats have solid majorities in the House and Senate. They could have — should have — presented a united front against the governor and in support of the public education system. This unnecessarily divides the Democrats and weakens their power in a potential showdown with the governor. This is Phil Baruth’s doing. He will own the consequences.