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."

Shummy’s Choice

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Oh, Anne Galloway, stop making me love you.

Shumlin has repeatedly objected to any changes to the state income tax code that could result in wealthy Vermonters paying more in taxes.

Hehehehe. Sounds like something I’d write, but it’s actually a fair summation of the Governor’s stand on taxes throughout his tenure in office. Which continued, big time, last night:

Late Friday night the House and Senate agreed to a tax package that Gov. Peter Shumlin has already said he doesn’t like and may in fact veto.

… The $30 million legislative tax package includes a cap on itemized income tax deductions. Under the plan, taxpayers can claim up to two times the standard deduction, or $25,000 for a household, for itemized deductions. Medical expenses and charitable donations are exempted. The change limits deductions for mortgage interest, property taxes, moving costs and other Schedule A itemized categories.

The plan includes a 3 percent alternative minimum tax for taxpayers who earn $150,000 or more.

Look, this isn’t a radical tax plan. It’d raise about $11 million a year, and it’s in line with what many states do. Vermont has very generous tax laws that provide plenty of breaks for top earners; the Legislature’s plan would take away some of those benefits.

I can almost hear the Governor talking about how this will hurt “hard-working Vermonters.”

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The most important thing that happened this week

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… had nothing to do with the Legislature. Well, it had nothing to do with current legislative debates.

And it went uncovered by the media except for Nancy Remsen of Seven Days.

Four representatives of Optum, the contractor working with the state to fix Vermont Health Connect, told legislative leaders Thursday that they expect to deliver an automated change-of-circumstance function as of the May 31 deadline set by the Shumlin administration.

“We are confident we will make the deadline,” Matt Stearns, vice president of external communications, said in an interview after private sessions with legislators.

This is big, assuming Stearns’ confidence is warranted.

I spend a lot of time on the ins and outs of the legislative and political process. It’s fun, it’s dramatic, and it’s a minefield of slapstickery. But I know that most of it washes out in the end. With the probable exception of the Norm McAllister saga, the world will little note nor long remember what was done here. But Optum making the deadline would be truly impactful.

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Gannett chief preps golden parachute

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Everything is awesome… when you've just made four million smackeroos.

Everything is awesome… when you’ve just made four million smackeroos.

Gracia Martore, CEO of Gannett, last seen disgracing herself in an unbelievably wrong-headed music video, must really believe in the future of her company.

Because she just unloaded more than 80% of her stock holdings in Gannett. American Banking & Market News reports that Martore sold 123,560 shares of stock in the Burlington Free Press’ parent company, leaving a mere 30,034 shares in her portfolio.

Her take? $4,312,244.

How many reporters would that buy?

Her stock dump comes just before the planned split of Gannett’s newspaper and TV/digital divisions. Gannett will retain the troubled publishing businesses, while new entity TEGNA will get all the broadcasting and digital stuff.

The spinoff is expected to take effect by the middle of this year, which is… hmm… checking my calendar… a mere six weeks away.

And where do you think the price of Gannett stock is going to go, after all its goodies are under a new corporate umbrella? I think we know how Gracia Martore would answer that question.

Keurig Kold: If there’s a market for this, my faith in humanity takes another hit

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Been an interesting week for homegrown planet-bespoiler Keurig Green Mountain. First, the maker of costly coffee pods had to do an embarrassing about-face on its decision to DRM-up its new coffee maker. It was a capitalistically noble effort to derail competition for its profitable (and planet-bespoiling) K-cups, but consumers rebelled.

Understandable. It’s kinda like if oil companies made cars, and DRM’d the tank so you could only buy their brand of gas. Consumers would naturally rebel. Or, here’s an even more insane one: it’s as if you could buy a printer dirt cheap, but then had to pay extortionate prices for cartridges.

Oh wait.

Anyway, embarrassing walkback for KGM. But help is on the way, in the form of its new cold-beverage system. Er, “kold.”

Keurig Kold, set to launch this fall, was developed in a partnership with Coca-Cola, Keurig’s largest shareholder, and the Dr. Pepper Snapple Group. Keurig CEO Brian Kelley said the new machine will make a Coke, and other beverages, indistinguishable from the originals.

The magic behind the Keurig Kold: its patented Karbonator system. Ah, the Keurig Kold Karbonator, or “KKK” for short. What could go wrong?

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Slippery, short-tempered and fumbling: just another day for John Campbell

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There are two important takeaways from this afternoon’s kerfuffle outside the office of Senate President Pro Tem John Campbell. Most of the attention, including mine, is on his closed-door meeting with the entire Senate Natural Resources Committee and his confused rationalization for banning the media. Campbell actually blocked the doorway, twice, as Seven Days’ Paul Heintz and WCAX-TV’s Kyle Midura tried to gain entry.

The closed-meeting aspect certainly deserves more scrutiny, maybe even a court challenge; but we shouldn’t lose sight of the equally offensive substance of the meeting. That involved Campbell’s attempt to single-handedly amend — or possibly derail — a major piece of energy legislation known as the RESET bill.

The House had passed the thing. It had gotten through Senate committees with minor changes, and reached the final stage (third reading) on the Senate floor. And then, at the last minute, Campbell bigfoots the whole process. Legislative rules required that the bill pass the Senate today (Thursday) in order to be considered by the House on Saturday, when it’s scheduled to adjourn. If the Senate passes the bill Friday, which seemingly depends on Campbell’s good graces, the House would have to agree by a three-quarters majority to suspend its rules in order to vote on the bill.

So there’s a chance this very important bill won’t pass, and it’s all thanks to your Senate President Pro Tem.

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It’s good to have a staff of tame lawyers on call

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The Legislature continues to careen toward adjournment, the desire to skip town augmented by the looming specter of Norm McAllister, who officially refused to resign today.

One event worth noting from today’s action: the Senate Natural Resources Committee held a closed-door meeting in the office of Senate President Pro Tem John Campbell. Reporters were refused admittance. Later, the Legislative Council duly produced a memo validating the unusual move:

It is the opinion of the Office of Legislative Council that the General Assembly is not subject to the requirements of the Open Meetings Law.

If true, this is quite shameful, and ought to be rectified by… ahem… the General Assembly ASAP. But I have a feeling it’s a convenient fiction. For one thing, if Legislative committees could go into closed-door session whenever they wanted to, they’d do it all the damn time.

For another, this is a substantially broader claim than was made last year, when Seven Days’ Paul Heintz was denied access to a meeting of the Committee on Committees.

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Shumlin amps up the rhetoric

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This is the kind of thing that inspires Harlan Sylvester conspiracy theories.

The narrative goes like this: Sometime back in 2009, Peter Shumlin tells “the most powerful man in Vermont politics” (h/t Shay Totten) he’ll keep a lid on taxes if Harlan paves his path to the corner office.

I can tell you lies, you can't get enough.

I can tell you lies, you can’t get enough.

It’s one explanation for the volume and desperation of Shumlin’s anti-tax rhetoric — aimed, need I remind you, at fellow Democrats.

Yesterday, the Governor slammed a House-passed plan to cap itemized deductions. And to put it plainly, he lied about it.

Ell. Eye. Eee. Dee. Lied.

“Removing charitable deductions, the ability of Vermonters to deduct home interest from their mortgages, which promotes home buying, and removing the health care deduction when you’ve had catastrophic health care costs is a big mistake,” Shumlin says.

Now, that’s bullshit. Ain’t nobody “removing” nothing, and the Governor knows it.

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How can I miss you when you won’t go away?

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(h/t to Dan Hicks & His Hot Licks)

Please allow me a brief gloat, a hearty chuckle, a moment of schadenfreude. Because this is just too f’n funny.

Sen. Norm McAllister (R-Franklin) is reconsidering his decision to resign from the Vermont Senate, according to a close ally.

“I don’t know what made him rethink it, but he has decided — he’s rethinking it is all I can say,” Sen. Peg Flory (R-Rutland) said Wednesday afternoon.

Heh, heh, heh, heh.

Here’s my message to Good Ol’ Norm: hang on for dear life. Make ’em drag you out kicking and screaming. Not because you deserve to keep your seat, hell no; but because your fellow Republicans (and really, the Dems as well) so desperately want to be rid of this entire affair.

I say, let ’em stew. They don’t deserve to get off this easy. Not when there are numerous second-hand stories about how ol’ Norm was a horndog at best, and maybe worse, to his female colleagues. Not when there are still serious questions to answer about what leadership knew, when they knew it, and what they did about it. (And if they really didn’t know, how loudly were they singing LALALALALA with their fingers in their ears?)

Not when there remains a distinct odor of clubby sexism around the Statehouse that needs to be dissipated once and for all.

Indeed, here’s my plea to the women of the Statehouse, past and present. If you had unpleasant encounters with McAllister, now is the time to step forward. So far, the only woman to do so is an ex-lawmaker. If some misbegotten sense of loyalty to the institution is keeping you silent, please speak up. You owe it to the truth, and to the women who will follow your footsteps.

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How the philosophical exemption was lost

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A few weeks ago, the state legislature had apparently decided not to open the Pandora’s box of vaccination policy. The general feeling was, let’s let the 2012 law play out a while longer and see where it goes.

And then, for reasons still unexplained, a couple of key state Senators (Kevin Mullin and John Campbell) grabbed that box and threw it open. They amended a barely-related Health Department housekeeping bill, H.98, to include an end to the philosophical exemption on childhood immunizations. The Senate Health Care Committee gave it a mere two hours of hearings, one for and one against; it sailed through the committee and the full Senate.

Even so, it seemed likely that the House would let the amended bill lie. Leadership decided to have the House Health Care Committee hold hearings on H.98, even though the bill was never officially given to that committee. Those hearings were quickly scheduled, and they were quite extensive. At the time, it seemed like a ploy to run out the clock. Even more so as the hearings continued through the penultimate week of the session.

Funny thing, though: the more time passed, the more things seemed to shift entirely. By the end of last week, the momentum was clearly on H.98’s side. A House vote seemed certain and passage seemed likely, if not a sure thing. Monday’s public hearing was a chance for all parties to sound off, without actually affecting the process.

Which brings us to Tuesday, covered in my previous post. The Donahue amendment lost by the narrowest of margins, and then H.98 passed the House with ease.

This time, I’m here to explain why this happened. Not how it happened; you’d have to get John Campbell and Shap Smith into a rubber room and fill ’em full of truth serum to find that out. As for the why, here’s my two cents. Or three, if you prefer.

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Missed it by that much

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Anne Donahue had a clever plan.

Notice I say “clever,” not “smart.” The Donahue amendment was a last-ditch attempt to derail H.98, the bill that would end the philosophical exemption for childhood vaccinations.

The amendment would have combined the philosophical and religious exemptions, and put more obstacles in the way of those seeking an exemption: reading educational materials, watching a video, having an in-person consultation with a health care practitioner. Donahue argued that these obstacles would achieve the goal of raising immunization rates without sacrificing parental choice.

It was clever because it played on lawmakers’ fears of taking a definitive stand, fears that are always amplified when there’s a loud and focused opposition.

It wasn’t smart because it would have done nothing to raise immunization rates.

I can say that with confidence because if the House had adopted the amendment, it would have been at odds with the Senate. With the Legislature careening toward adjournment and many pressing issues still unresolved, it’s a virtual certainty that H.98 would have been quietly shelved.

Of course, Donahue had to know that.

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