Author Archives: John S. Walters

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About John S. Walters

Writer, editor, sometime radio personality, author of "Roads Less Traveled: Visionary New England Lives."

Tell Me Again Why a Wealth Tax Is a Terrible Idea

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From the Public Assets Institute’s “State of Working Vermoint 2020”

An income tax surcharge — permanent or temporary — is a political nonstarter in Vermont. It was one of Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman’s major proposals in his bid for governor, and look what it got him. I am fully confident that a wealth tax would fail to draw anywhere near a majority in either the House or Senate Dem/Prog caucuses, let alone escape Gov. Phil Scott’s ever-ready veto pen.

But it’s a really good idea, and it’s a real shame we’re not taking it seriously.

First of all, Vermont needs new revenue. We’re threatened with huge budget cuts unless the federal government comes to our rescue. And even if it does, we need major public-sector investment on climate issues, broadband, housing, and higher education. Among many others. Even Scott acknowledges the need for these investments, but then he shrugs his shoulders and says we just can’t do it.

Second, the wealthiest Vermonters, just like the wealthiest Americans, have benefited tremendously from federal and state tax policies that cater to their interests. Zuckerman based his call for a temporary wealth tax on the fact that top earners really cashed in on Trump’s 2017 tax cuts. The lite-guv simply asked them to pay a share of that bounty for the greater good of the state.

But even before Trump, the system was rigged on behalf of the wealthiest. Ronald Reagan started this ball rolling, and it’s just gotten worse and worse since then. The above chart, taken from the Public Assets Institute’s “State of Working Vermont 2020” report, shows the result of these decades of an unbalanced economy and tax system. From the report:

Over the last four decades, there has been a dramatic upward redistribution of income in Vermont and across the country. In 2019, the top 20 percent of Vermont households received almost half (48.4 percenty) of the income earned in the state. The top 5 percent of households got 20.7 percent. Average income for the top 20 percent of households had increased more than 8 percent since 2007, after adjusting for inflation. For the bottom 20 percent, average income was down more than 7 percent.

And that’s just the income part of this equation. It doesn’t address taxation, which is generally very regressive at the federal level and in the vast majority of states.

After the jump: More mythbusting.

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Are VT’s “Approved Independent Schools” Too Independent?

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Scrappy little independent, there.

As is his wont, State Auditor Doug Hoffer is questioning conventional wisdom. And it’ll probably win him as many popularity points as it usually does.

This week, Hoffer released a performance audit of Vermont’s “approved independent schools,” as they like to call themselves. (Heaven forbid you should call them “private schools,” which is what they are.) What he found, in the words of his report’s title, is that these schools “are not subject to most of the statutes and rules that govern public schools.”

These are private schools that have been approved by the state Board of Education to receive public tuition dollars. They are located in rural areas where it might not be practical for each district to serve its entire K-12 population. That may be enough of a public service to compensate for the fact that they are taking students and dollars away from the public school system.

But perhaps, if they’re accepting tens of millions in public funding every year, they should be held to the same standards as public schools.

And as Hoffer points out, they are decidedly not. This allows them to cut corners in ways that public schools cannot, and shields them from the kind of rigorous oversight that public schools are subject to from state officials and district voters.

After the jump: Details and conclusions.

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Send a Judge to Jail

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C’mon in, Your Honor. Plenty of room!

At least one of Vermont’s Superior Court judges could benefit from a stint in the hoosegow — purely as an educational experience. But maybe a couple days behind bars should be a requirement for the job. After all, they send plenty of people to prison; shouldn’t they have first-hand experience of the “correctional” experience?

The judge in question is Samuel Hoar, who just dismissed a lawsuit by inmate Mandy Conte over unsanitary conditions in Vermont’s women’s prison. Hoar’s opinion could have been delivered by the unghosted version of Ebenezer Scrooge. In it, he acknowledged the disgusting conditions in the prison’s shower facilities, but decided to do nothing about it.

Sounds like he needs a long rinse in the showers that, according to the inmate who filed suit, “reeked of human waste and were infested with sewer flies, maggots and mold.”

Before we go on, I should mention that Hoar is the same judge who almost lost his seat in 2019 over allegations of “sexist, degrading and condescending behavior toward women.” The charges put an extra twist in what’s usually a pro forma reappointment process, but in the end Hoar was given another six years on the bench.

And this is the dude who rejected very valid complaints from a female inmate. I smell a pig.

After the jump: A deeper dive into Hoar’s terrible ruling.

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Look What I Found in the Ol’ Mailbox

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I must infer that the Ethan Allen Institute is hurting for money. How else to explain the fact that an EAI fundraising plea ended up in my mailbox? And yes, it was addressed to me personally, not to “Occupant.”

The hardy-har-har political “cartoon” above was part of the solicitation. It poses the ludicrous proposition that the Black Lives Matter movement, Extinction Rebellion, Antifa and the 1619 Project all spring from the poisoned well of Marxism.

Uh-huh.

BLM and Extinction Rebellion are nonviolent protest movements. “Antifa” is basically a right-wing boogeyman; it’s decidedly not an organization, let alone one capable of overthrowing the global political order. And for God’s sake, the 1619 Project was conducted by the New York Times. Which is, need I remind you, a for-profit corporation.

No Marxists there, except in the fevered imagination of EAI President Rob Roper, who signed this thing.

So let’s take a look at the rest of the thing. The letter begins with a dire warning:

The nation and Vermont are at a tipping point. We have to decide if we are going to maintain the Constitutional freedoms set in place by our founders — the ideas and principles that made us the greatest country in the world — or abandon them for a path toward socialism, speech codes, and McCarthyite blacklisting of citizens who expreess anything other trhan obedience to a single-party agenda.

Referring to the Democratic Party, presumably. Which is hogwash. The party, nationally and in Vermont, is a broad coalition that can barely agree on a common agenda, let alone threaten the overthrow of the American way of life. Nothing the Democrats espouse would pave the way for socialism. Nothing would impose speech codes or a “McCarthyite blacklist.”

Which, need I remind you, was a Republican invention.

I realize you have to grab the reader’s attention with fiery rhetoric, but this is deliberate pandering to the Trump/tea party/Proud Boys wing of the conservative movement.

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The Stupidest Scandal

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The latest twist in the story of Brandon del Pozo’s Twitter trolling has got to be one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen in politics. Not the most impactful, not the most scandalous, not the most significant — just the stupidest.

For those just joining us, del Pozo resignedas Burlington’s police chief last December after it was revealed that he used a burner Twitter account to criticize pesky police critic Charles WInkleman. At the time, Mayor Miro Weinberger denied all knowledge of del Pozo’s astoundingly petty tweets.

And now, Seven Days has discovered that, well, actually, Weinberger did know about the account after all.

Sheesh. And if you read the entire article, you’ll realize that this isn’t the first time Weinberger has kicked this particular ball into his own goal. Quite the contrary; he’s had, to put it charitably, a tangential relationship with the truth.

It’s just sooooooo stupid. And it might just end Weinberger’s political career.

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If Doug Hoffer Issues an Audit in the Forest, Does Anybody Hear?

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State Auditor Doug Hoffer, whose work is more honored in the breach than in the observance, has released a report that’s critical of the Vermont Economic Growth Initiative.

(Before he sends me a correction, please note that this report is not a formal “audit,” my whimsical headline notwithstanding.)

The report came out one week ago today. You might well have missed it, because it was pretty much ignored by the Vermont media. As far as I can tell, it wasn’t covered by Seven Days or VTDigger or any of our sadly diminished dailies. (The Vermont Business Journal did post Hoffer’s press release on its website without any actual reportage, but that’s about it.)

Which is kind of sad. Hoffer is the chief watchdog of state government, after all. His reports ought to be newsworthy. But the media ecosystem is so diminished that a lot of stuff falls through the cracks.

I also suspect that Hoffer has gotten a reputation as The Auditor Who Cries Wolf, especially when it comes to economic incentive programs. His skepticism runs counter to the conventional wisdom, which is that these incentives are a valuable tool in the box. And that if the state doesn’t offer incentives, it might lose out to all the other jurisdictions that offer incentives.

That conventional wisdom is treated as gospel by the executive branch and the Legislature. Hoffer always gets a polite hearing before the appropriate House and Senate committees, who then proceed to ignore whatever he has to say. And that’s a shame, because Hoffer is a smart fellow with a real dedication to making government run as efficiently as possible. His work should be taken seriously.

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Barre’s Flag Fiasco

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Oh no, I’m sorry, that’s way too controversial.

The Barre City Council deliberated for months on a proposal to fly the “Black Lives Matter” flag in City Hall Park, a measure first proposed last spring. They finally resolved the matter in a way that only an all-white group of desperate politicians could devise. They decided the BLM flag would fly through the end of December, and that for January it would be replaced by the “Thin Blue Line” banner, a bastardized version of the American flag that’s favored by the pro-police crowd.

Talk about both-sidesing an issue.

The only thing stupider than the final resolution was its original version, which would have seen 22 different flags displayed for one month apiece. That roster included the flags of England, Italy and France, as well as the Star of David, an Autism Acceptance banner and the flag of the Green Mountain Boys.

Talk about 22-sidesing an issue.

That idea was floated by Councilor John Steinman, a very conservative dentist who once ran unsuccessfully for the House. I couldn’t hazard a guess as to why he chose England, Italy and France (white people white people WHITE PEOPLE WHITE PEOPLE!!!!), or why he cast his net so widely, but somehow that proposal was actually adopted by Council at its November 17 meeting — only to be replaced by the two-flag plan the following week, presumably after an outpouring of laughter and derision.

I shouldn’t have to explain why it’s such an affront to tie those two flags together, but let’s give it a shot, shall we?

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Miro’s Opening Salvo

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The Mayor, preparing to launch his attack

One has to assume that Miro Weinberger knew exactly what he was doing when he spent a goodly chunk of his Sunday speech attacking the Progressive Party. I mean, he spent most of his time building a case for his party and his re-election, but he had to know that the attack would dominate the news coverage — and would outrage the Progs.

His address was delivered to the city Democratic Party’s online caucus, which unsurprisingly gave him the party nomination in his bid for a fourth term. In the speech, Weinberger custom-crafted a concept of the Democratic Party writ large, a concept I find unconvincing.

Over and over again, he talked of data, science, and expertise as the foundations of his mayoralty. He recalled the ardent baseball fandom of his youth, which was sharpened by the sabermetric revolution launched by Bill James in the 1980s. It convinced him, he said, that “good analysis and the right experts can have a tremendous impact… and generate life-improving results.” Such as four Red Sox championships, presumably.

So, when he became mayor in 2009, he was “determined to make decisions based on evidence, not conventional wisdom.” He outlined a couple examples of evidence-based policymaking, and then tied it to the city’s response to the coronavirus, for which he claimed “one of the best records of any American city.”

Okay, well, he also governs one of America’s smallest cities in a sparsely populated state largely spared in the first wave, but whatever.

And this led directly into Weinberger’s attack on the Progressive Party.

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A Failure With Many Fathers

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Timing, Mr. President.

Things have pretty much gone to shit at the University of Vermont. The latest installment features the announcement of a plan to take a meataxe to humanities instruction. A total of 24 academic programs are to be cut, totaling roughly one-fifth of the College of Arts and Sciences’ course offerings. The administration thoughtfully unveiled the plan via mass email because that’s the way Ebenezer Scrooge would have done it if he’d had email, right?

That very same day, after metaphorically turning out the lights in many a campus precinct, UVM President Suresh Garimella posted the cheery tweet reproduced above. Tone-deaf much?

The plan has not been received well, to say the least. The UVM-related Twitterverse has been ablaze with recriminations. Nearly 2,000 people have signed an online petition to reverse the cuts. Campus reaction has been muted because, well, the students have been sent home and teaching is being done online.

Hard to put together a protest under those conditions.

UVM administration has often seemed out of touch and, shall we say, uncollaboriative in management style. Garimella, an engineer by trade, has been in office for less than two years, and his hiring was seen by many as signaling a turn away from the humanities. This year has seen contract talks with the faculty union go nowhere. The administration was forced to rescind planned cuts in lecturers and adjunct faculty after it was met with an uproar.

So, you’re expecting me to slag the top brass and brand Garimella as an enemy of the humanities, right?

You’d be wrong. There’s plenty of blame to go around.

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Adventures in Inadequate Governance, part 2

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Just tryin’ to keep up…

In part 1, I brought your attention to some appalling facts about Vermont’s lack of oversight for rental housing. Today we turn to three separate articles concerning nursing homes and the coronavirus that reveal further inadequacy in governance. The first is about an apparently toothless settlement with a for-profit senior facility. The second and third detail the toll Covid-19 is taking on some of our most vulnerable Vermonters.

The Intercept, where Glenn Greenwald used to hang his hat before he went batshit, has shone a fresh light on last spring’s worst outbreak in Vermont — at Burlington Health and Rehab, owned and operated by the troubled Genesis HealthCare chain.

Turns out that only weeks before the pandemic struck, Attorney General TJ Donovan had reached a settlement with Genesis over “allegations of neglect” that led to three injuries and one death. That settlement did little or nothing to improve the situation, and within months, 12 BH&R residents had died of Covid-19.

Under terms of the settlement, proudly announced in the customary AGO press release, three Vermont-located Genesis facilities were to pay a fine and hire a Patient Care Coordinator for the three locations plus an independent monitor to oversee quality of care. Was it enough?

“It’s really baffling that the settlement did not include some type of staffing requirements,” said Brian Lee, the executive director of Families for Better Care, a nonprofit advocating for tighter regulation of nursing homes. “Has [Donovan] arrested anybody? Has he prosecuted anybody? Has anybody gone to jail? No. The settlement should have included a requirement for RN staffing. They were short-staffed prior to the incidents and short-staffed after. It’s pretty negligent on the AG’s office to not include that,” said Lee. “The quality of nursing homes is dependent on staffing.”

You can probably guess the next bit. According to federal regulatory records, Genesis failed to increase staffing to recommended levels. Donovan agreed to let Genesis do the hiring, and there was apparently no follow-through by the state to ensure full compliance. This is a problem with Donovan’s negotiating tactics, and also an issue for state regulators. When a facility is enough of a bad actor to trigger enforcement action, shouldn’t the Human Services Agency perhaps provide some extra scrutiny?

I guess not. Well, I can’t say for sure. But what I can say is that whatever Donovan and AHS did, it wasn’t enough. Let’s remember that, the next time Donovan puts out a self-congratulatory press release.

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