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."

The hidden world of nonprofit advocacy

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Okay, so today I Tweeted this:

It’s something I’ve been thinking for a long time. There are more and more “nonprofit organizations” whose official mission is “educational” or some such, but whose actual purpose is political advocacy, including activity that ought to be classified as lobbying but it’s not.

This is one reason I’m less exercised than some about the proposed cap on itemized deductions: a lot of “charitable contributions” are being spent politically. Many wealthy people set up their own nonprofit foundations for the purpose of spreading their political beliefs. The Koch Empire is the prime example of this, but there are lots of others. In Vermont, their number includes the Vermont Workers’ Center, VPIRG, Campaign for Vermont, Energize Vermont, Vermonters for a Clean Environment, Vermonters for Health Care Freedom, the Ethan Allen Institute, and the late unlamented Vermonters First.

That’s a heavy-hitting list of groups trying to influence our politics, and they range from far left to far right. Nobody’s got a patent on this. Although I will say that the quantity of money on the right is much greater than on the lieft. Although although I will say that Vermont is an exception to this rule; our nonprofits lean leftward.

Some of these groups do report direct lobbying activities, but because they are nonprofits, they are not legally obligated to report the source of their revenue. Some voluntarily report to some extent, but as far as I know, none of them provide full donor disclosure. Which would include name, town and state of residence, and amount of donation. (If any group does so, please let me know and I will amend this post.)

I say “Ive been thinking about this for a long time,” so what made me write about it today? Actually, the inspiration was a mistake I made on Twitter, in replying to a Tweet from the corporate-funded folks at “Stop the Vermont Beverage Tax.”

Which brought a quick response from, well, a ready chorus of right-wingers, but let’s stick with the Ethan Allen Institute, Tweeting as @EAIVT:

They’re right. At least they’re partly right. “SPN” is the State Policy Network, which is part of the Koch nonprofit empire. I didn’t lie, though; I mistakenly believed that EAI is Koch-funded. I picked this up from the Center for Media and Democracy’s “Sourcewatch,” which describes SPN thusly:

The State Policy Network (SPN) has franchised, funded, and fostered a growing number of “mini Heritage Foundations” at the state level since the early 1990s.[1] SPN is a web of right-wing “think tanks” in every state across the country. It is an $83 million right-wing empire as of the 2011 funding documents from SPN itself and each of its state “think tank” members.

Sourcewatch lists the Ethan Allen Institute as the SPN’s Vermont affiliate. There’s where I made my leap of faith. I’ll take EAI’s word for it that they don’t get money from SPN or the Kochs; too bad for them, since a lot of their fellow SPNers are ridin’ that gravy train.

Still, for EAI to pay for the privilege of SPN affilliation… it’s not correct to call them “Koch-funded,” but they’re definitely “Koch-friendly.”

I will freely admit that I sometimes shoot from the hip, as I did in this case. I try to own up when I’m wrong; this isn’t the first time and I’m sure it won’t be the last. But I could have avoided my mistake if we had better disclosure laws; I could have gone to the source instead of poking around for indirect scraps of information.

But the real point isn’t a matter of my convenience. It’s openness and transparency in our politics.

Organized political parties (and the Democrats, haha) will tell you that campaign finance laws are stacked against them. It’s better in a number of ways for donors to go through their own organizations than through parties: there are effectlvely no limits and few disclosure requirements, and they retain control over how their money is spent. That’s why the Kochs and Sheldon Adelson and Foster Friess and all those people don’t give much money to the Republican Party; they funnel their wealth through their own organizations. And when those groups are nonprofits, We, the Taxpayers, are underwriting their political activities. Nice work if you can get it.

The point is, in this modern world of political nonprofits, we need better disclosure rules. We need to know who’s spending money for what political purpose, whether they’re going through the Ethan Allen Institute or the Vermont Workers’ Center.

VEGI: A step in the wrong direction

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Sometime this week, the state senate will take up S.138, an economic development bill that includes a taxpayer-funded incentive for businesses to create crappy jobs.

Tough assessment? I don’t think so. The bill allows employers to pay its workers less and still qualify for state job-creation incentives. Currently, cash awards from the Vermont Employment Growth Incentive program (VEGI) require that employers pay at least $14.64 per hour. S.138 would lower that minimum to $13.00 per hour — the Joint Fiscal Office’s standard for a “livable wage.”

Well, that’s the livable wage with significant caveats. VTDigger’s Erin Mansfield:

The $13 per hour figure assumes two adults living together in a two-bedroom home, who share expenses, have no children, and have employers that pay 80 percent of health insurance costs.

Problem: that description doesn’t apply to an awful lot of working Vermonters. The consequence: those state-funded jobs leave full-time workers poor enough to “qualify for thousands of dollars in annual assistance,” according to economist Tom Kavet in a report to the legislature’s Joint Fiscal Office.

So we’d be paying companies to put workers on public assistance. This is… progress?

The downward expansion of VEGI is “expected to cost the state between $10 million and $25 million.” Your Tax Dollars At Work.

Kavet’s report leaves no doubt about the dubious value of that public investment:

The Shumlin administration’s plans, Kavet said, “serve to diminish the public return on investment from this program by lowering standards, eliminating basic fiscal controls, or allowing public subsidies when they would not previously have been allowed.”

Commerce Secretary Pat Moulton defends the proposal with the kind of language you usually expect to hear in Texas or Mississippi:

Moulton said she would rather employ a Vermonter at $13.50 per hour than let the jobs go elsewhere. Employees can move up from lower-paying jobs, she said.

“We’re competing globally for jobs. We’re competing regionally for jobs,” Moulton said.

I understand the harsh economic realities of our troubled times, but if you ask me, this is a bad idea. I don’t want my tax money being spent to underwrite dead-end jobs. And I’d love to know what kind of corporate lobbying went into this ill-considered proposal.

Shumlin’s promise problem

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On Thursday, Governor Shumlin held one of those feel-good “press conferences” so beloved by politicians everywhere: the activation of a new cell tower that fills a notorious gap in coverage on I-89 in Richmond.

However, the media wasn’t quite as universally fulsome as the Governor hoped. The Burlington Free Press’s headline was just what Scott Coriell wanted:

Cellphone dead spot in Richmond area eliminated

But VPR and WCAX sounded variations on the same mixed message. VPR:

Shumlin Marks Slow Progress On Cell Service Expansion

WCAX: 

Cell service slowly expands across Vermont

Both accounts inconveniently resurrected a decree from Shumlin’s first day as Governor:

“Today I am proud to launch Connect Vermont, an initiative to deliver by 2013 my promise of high speed Internet access and cell service to every corner of our state.”

Which is something he should never have said, but can’t resist saying. Shumlin loves the bold pronouncement, the courageous initiative. And when it works, as with Tropical Storm Irene coverage, it’s tremendous.

And when it doesn’t, it erodes his reputation for honesty and effectiveness.

Getting cell service and high-speed Internet to a place with a tiny population and unfriendly topography is a terribly difficult job. You need lots and lots of expensive infrastructure, and Vermont is short on potential profits to glean from all those lines and towers.

Plus, in every small town there’s tenacious opposition to any technological intrusion, no matter how temporary or thoughtfully sited.

Given all of that, there’s no way in hell that any governor could have made cell service and high-speed Internet universally available in three years’ time. The administration has actually done a decent job; Public Service Commissioner Chris Recchia says wireless coverage now reaches 92% of Vermont homes, up from 85% when Shumlin took office. The low-hanging fruit had long ago been plucked; every bit of that 7% improvement was a challenge.

With all our isolated houses down all our long winding dirt roads, we may never reach 100%. And that’s okay; nobody who lives way out in the boonies should expect all the comforts of civilization.

The only problem, really, was Shumlin’s audacious promise.

Similar story with Vermont Health Connect. It was behind the eight-ball from day one for reasons that had nothing to do with Shumlin’s competence; the complexity of the job and the long delay caused by the court challenge to the Affordable Care Act meant that the national exchange and Vermont’s faced incredibly short timelines and monstrous programming challenges. Delays and bumps in the road were inevitable.

But Shumlin’s promises made him appear untrustworthy, and his administration incompetent.

It’s doubtful that Shumlin can fundamentally change his style at this point. Nor should he; his ambition and decisiveness have often served him well.

They are his strengths. They are also his weaknesses.

Your First Amendment right to be a complete weenie

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A moment of Statehouse drama from Thursday, as captured in a series of Tweets.

First, to introduce the players. Shap Smith, Speaker of the House; Darcie Johnston, political consultant to lost conservative causes; and Shayne Spence, lesser functionary in the Ethan Allen Institute, available for parties and bar mitzvahs whenever Rob Roper has a schedule conflict.

And now, let’s go to the Tweets!

Screen Shot 2015-04-04 at 2.08.44 PM

 

Let’s briefly note the self-aggrandizing Tweet from Spence. Ooh! Threatened by the Speaker! What a rush!

That brings us to Shap’s reply, which may be a bit unclear because of Twitter’s unforgiving character limit. What he’s saying is that Spence wasn’t just filming the House chambers — he was doing so from the Senate seats, the row of ornately carved chairs with bright red cushions along the front wall of the House.

Of course, filming from there is “not typically allowed.” The video cameras are typically posted at one end of the balcony, far from the House floor and the podium. Bringing a video camera to the Senate seats is a brazen violation of protocol. But that’s what I’d expect from a self-important James O’Keefe wannabe who thinks he’s the living embodiment of everyone’s Constitutional rights.

And if you think that assessment is a little harsh, here is Spence’s rejoinder to Smith.

Yes indeed, Shayne, keeping the People’s House open is very important. But that has nothing to do with a narcissistic operative taking his camera wherever he damn well pleases.

Every legislative body has rules, procedures, and mores. Partly they help things run smoothly; partly they’re antiquated remainders of tradition. But they do nothing to prevent access, and they should be observed out of respect to the institution.

Let’s just hope he tries the same thing in the Senate, which has tighter rules than the House. He’ll be tossed without a moment’s hesitation.

The Curious Case of House Bill 76

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The 2015 legislative session has its share of contentious issues and extended wrangles (partisan and otherwise), but its single biggest mystery may be H. 76, a.k.a. the bill that would ban teacher strikes.

The latest turn came Friday, when the House General, Housing and Military Affairs Committee voted against the bill, three votes to five. All three Republicans voted in favor; the four Democrats and lone Progressive voted no. The bill had earlier passed the House Education Committee, but the Catchall Committee thought otherwise.

The bill goes on to the House floor in any case, but as committee vice-chair Tom Stevens says, his panel’s vote “raises flags, and people will want to listen to why one committee supported it and one committee didn’t.”

But to explore the full dimension of The Curious Case of House Bill 76, we must go back to its origin. It arose in a burst of deep concern over the putative plague of teacher strikes, which Vermont doesn’t have. We have very occasional teacher strikes. People with long memories, or who are looking for excuses to ban strikes, harken back to the Great Hinesburg Debacle of 1985, a truly disputatious strike with long ramifications.

But why did that suddenly provoke a torrent of urgency thirty years later? I haven’t heard a good explanation, especially considering the very full plate in front of the legislature already. When you’ve got Lake Champlain and health care and school funding and a huge budget gap to deal with, why put a stick into a hornet’s nest that isn’t bothering anyone?

Oh well. As originally outlined, the bill would have banned teacher strikes and the imposition of contract terms by school boards, and it would have sent unresolved disputes to binding arbitration. That was acceptable to the Vermont-NEA, and it’s a rare thing for a union to accept disarmament. Even bilateral disarmament. (Correction/redirect: The Vermont-NEA didn’t like the original bill much, but was willing to accept binding arbitration as part of the right deal. Last weekend its position hardened to complete opposition.)

But the school boards didn’t like binding arbitration as the endpoint. They wanted something softer. And the bill came before the House Education Committee with a suspiciously drawn-out process for resolving impasses — a process that could last as long as 18 months.

According to Stevens, the Education Committee took only three hours of testimony and made no amendments whatsoever before passing the bill on a very curious 8-3 vote. Some Democrats joined minority Republicans in the majority. Three Dems, including committee chair Dave Sharpe, voted no.

It’s not that often a bill passes a committee despite the opposition of its chair. It’s also not often that a bill passes with full support of the minority and only partial support from the majority.

The House General Etc. Committee then requested a whack at H. 76, and got it. This panel, which handles labor issues among other things, was looking to put binding arbitration back into the bill, making it equally punitive on both sides. That changed last weekend when the Vermont-NEA withdrew its support for a bill including binding arbitration. “The idea of trying to amend the bill ended right there,” Stevens says. He adds that the curious trajectory of H. 76 turned the union against the original idea:

[The Education Commitee bill] was not written with their input, and because you had no input, the comments that people would make like ‘This will make things better for school boards and unions’ don’t carry any weight because the unions didn’t participate in the conversation.

The union withdrawal also turned H. 76 from a bipartisan measure into a partisan one — and a partisan one with the backing of the minority party. It’s hard to see the full House adopting H. 76 over the Vermont-NEA’s objection, although stranger things have happened.

Which brings me to the central mysteries of H. 76:

— Why was there such a furor about teacher strikes in the first place?

— Why was H. 76 rewritten in haste and hustled through the Education Committee?

Here’s my two cents, and it’s nothing but a semi-informed guess. Legislative leadership knew they were going to pass a school funding and governance bill likely to displease the school boards. Ending teacher strikes was a convenient sop to the boards. But as the education bill evolved to include a fairly tight cap on school spending, the school boards could not have been pleased. Pehaps they wanted more.

This is where the H. 76 rewrite came in, according to me. The Education Committee giveth, and it taketh away. Or in this case, the take thing came first. I can envision backstage negotiations between the school boards and Democratic leaders: If we accept a spending cap, we get a strike ban without binding arbitration.

It’s purely speculative, but it explains a lot. It explains this year’s sudden angst over teacher strikes. It explains why Dave Sharpe allowed a rapidly rewritten bill to sail through his committee despite likely union opposition.

If true, it wasn’t much of a deal for the school boards. Union opposition almost certainly dooms the bill. Although, if you want to spin forward the conspiracy theory, maybe the boards traded away H. 76 in exchange for the substantially toothless spending cap that passed the full House this week.

Have I solved the mystery? I don’t know. A simpler explanation is that the bill just got tossed about in the turbulent seas of the current session, with leadership taking little notice and Sharpe too preoccupied with the big Education Bill to worry much about H. 76.

But my rococo version is a lot more fun.

Is there going to be a health care bill? Like, at all?

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The clock is ticking on the 2015 legislative session. We’re less than a month away from the usual adjournment, and a passel of “big bills” is just now crossing from the House to the Senate. These include the tax and budget bills, school reform legislation, the water cleanup bill, and the RESET  renewable energy package.

Conspicuous by its absence from this roll call of heavy lifting: the health care bill. It’s been dramatically downsized, and is still being batted around among three House committees. This week, the Ways and Means Committee barely managed to achieve a majority on a financing package after a lot of hand-wringing and internal disagreement. The Health Care Committee produced a scaled-down version of reforms costing about $20 million per year. But the Appropriations Committee, which has to approve the reform spending, has yet to weigh in. Approps chair Mitzi Johnson says her panel will hear testimony on the bill next week.

If that committee takes any route besides endorsement of Health Care’s bill, there may be a fresh round of back-and-forth between those two panels, just as there was between Health Care and Ways and Means on the revenue package.

And then, sometime next week at the absolute soonest, the health care bill will make its way, bloodied, bruised and limping, to the House floor.

If not “the absolute soonest”? We’re getting awfully close to mid-April.

Frankly, it’d take an uncommon outbreak of consensus in the House and between House and Senate for a health care bill of any kind to achieve passage in this session.

There’s a flood-stage ice jam of legislation forming in the Senate. This morning I watched one committee chair working with his staffer to find time to accommodate long and growing lists of potential witnesses. Can we assemble early some days? Can we schedule Monday meetings, an unusual and undesirable step, especially for lawmakers from distant parts of the state? The thought in my mind was, how can they possibly get all this done?

Breaking that jam and moving major bills will depend on the Senate running uncharacteristically smoothly, with unusually effective leadership (cough*John Campbell*cough) and widespread voluntary ego-suppression in Vermont’s Most Self-Important Deliberative Body.

The health care bill, if it gets to the Senate in some form, will take its place in line behind the other Big Bills. Most importantly, it will be the last of the big revenue bills to hit the Senate, and who knows how much appetite they have for tax increases. There’s a significant cohort of moderate-to-conservative Senate Democrats that can diminish or kill any tax measures, and they may be out for blood after pretty much having to approve new money for Lake Champlain and to fill part of the budget gap.

From what I’ve heard, the Senate’s outlook is even more of a mystery this year than usual, and that’s saying something. Big picture, the odds appear to be against any meaningful health care reform getting through the legislature this year.

Which would be a bad thing in three important ways:

— The bill would reduce the sinfully large Medicaid gap. The Shumlin plan would substantially reduce it; the House Health Care plan would make a series dent, at least for primary care providers.

— The bill, in either form, includes more money for proven cost-saving strategies in Blueprint for Health and the Green Mountain Care Board. Continuing to bend the cost curve is crucial to the long-term success of the reform project.

— And third, for those who insist on the humanitarian angle, is that either bill would ease access for thousands of working poor Vermonters.

Lawmakers and legislative leadership know all this. If they didn’t, the bill wouldn’t have gotten as far as it has in a difficult year. Improving health care is a serious priority — but so are a lot of other things. It’d be a shame if health care fell victim to the legislature’s time crunch, but it wouldn’t exactly be a surprise.

The Statehouse Stare

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When I first began to spend time under the golden dome, I noticed a disconcerting phenomenon: conversations, both casual and purposeful, involve little or no eye contact. People tend to stare over your shoulder, or even let their eyes roam around, while talking to you. Or listening.

At least I was pretty sure they were listening.

Well, having begun to spend considerable time myself in those hallowed halls of democracy, dealmaking, and self-regard, I have to confess that I do it too.

It’s the Statehouse Stare: the constant scanning of one’s surroundings to see who else is in sight and who they’re talking to. You get used to it. They’re paying attention to your words, they’re just not looking at you.

This is especially true in the communal watering hole of our savannah, the Statehouse cafeteria. It’s the place where people tend to go when they’re hoping to be seen or to find somebody. Earlier this week, I had a perfectly pleasant chat with another reporter, and all the while both of us were constantly scanning the room.

Well, for reporters there’s a professional necessity involved. At any given time, there are usually three or four lawmakers/advocates we’re hoping to snag. Those people are usually so busy that your best shot at grabbing a few minutes of their time is via casual encounter. Phone calls or text messages are hit-or-miss.

On that particular occasion, our placement paid off: House Speaker Shap Smith, whose office conveniently abuts the cafeteria, wandered across the room, sat down at our table, and proceeded to share his perspectives on the action of the day. Nothing scandalous, merely useful.

I guess it’s part of my adaptation to a new environment. There are times I worry about turning into a different species, but it’s part of the deal. People accustomed to the Statehouse Stare don’t even notice, let alone take offense.

And so far, it hasn’t infected my behavior outside the Statehouse. Lord willing, it never will.

Bill Sorrell: worse than I thought?

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One of my least favorite people in state government is Eternal General Bill Sorrell. According to those who were around at the time, the only reason he’s AG is that (1) he was Howard Dean’s favorite fartcatcher, (2) Dean wanted to appoint Billy to the Vermont Supreme Court but soon realized he was just about the only Vermonter who thought Sorrell was qualified, (3) Dean then appointed the incumbent Attorney General to the Supreme Court, and (4) Dean slid his acolyte into the convenient vacancy. Since then, Sorrell has enjoyed the perks of incumbency in an office few voters pay much attention to. He’s basically a guy born on third base who thinks he hit a triple. And one of my biggest peeves is politicians with unacceptably high ratios of self-image to accomplishment.

Sorrell’s most recent offense against logic is his balls-to-the-wall prosecution of Dean Corren for the unforgivable crime of accepting an in-kind donation worth $255 from the Democratic Party. This, per Sorrell, is a violation of the public financing law worthy of $70,000 in fines and restitution.

Well, a few days after I ranted about this, Seven Days’ Paul Heintz did what he does best: a journalistic take on Sorrell’s sudden Inspector Javert impersonation. In his “Fair Game” column, Heintz presented abundant evidence that Sorrell isn’t just the relatively harmless doofus I thought he was; rather, he may well be a fundamentally corrupt hack who has based his reputation on lucrative backroom deals between state Attorneys General and some of the nation’s biggest law firms.

"I'm a great guy. Just ask me."

“I’m a great guy. Just ask me.”

There’s plenty of damning stuff in the column, but I want to zero in on something deep down in the piece. It’s about a New York Times expose of “routine lobbying and deal-making” between Attorneys General and law firms trying to gin up multistate lawsuits.

You know, the very lawsuits that Sorrell endlessly trumpets.

I’d never read about this until I saw it in Heintz’ column, but boy does it stink.

These lawsuits are often over consumer-protection issues; the granddaddy of them all, and Sorrell’s favorite touchstone, was the multistate suit against the tobacco industry that resulted in a huge settlement finalized shortly after Governor Dean parachuted Young Billy into the AG’s office. Sorrell endlessly brags about the millions he brought into the treasury on that deal, even though virtually all the negotiations took place before he became AG.

I’d always just assumed that these big lawsuits were the result of cooperation among state AGs. But the Times reported that ideas for multistate lawsuits generally arise from big law firms, who then go trolling for AGs willing to sign on. These firms are nothing more than white-gloved ambulance-chasers, looking for cases they can cash in on. And share the proceeds with the states that play along.

That throws an entirely different light on these allegedly high-minded battles for our rights and pocketbooks.

Worse, Heintz recounts multiple occasions, as reported in the Times, when Sorrell accepted big campaign donations from law firms that were soliciting Vermont’s participation in one of these multistate suits. And I am shocked, shocked to report that Sorrell greenlighted the suits after accepting those donations.

Sorrell insists he is above reproach. And we’ll just have to take his word for it because he’s the one who decides whether to launch an investigation of himself. And I am shocked, shocked to report that Bill Sorrell believes there’s nothing to investigate about Bill Sorrell because Bill Sorrell has done nothing wrong.

Nice work if you can get it.

The Don Turner Guide to Fiscal Responsibility

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House Minority Leader Don Turner was the last soldier at the rhetorical Alamo of opposition to the water bill. Even at the last, he was pushing for no new taxes. His idea for a funding source was to divert small amounts of money from various other places and use it to leverage a bond issue.

We’ve been over this before, but I think it’s time to point out exactly how stupid and fiscally irresponsible that idea was.

First of all, his own estimate for his own plan was about $4.2 million, about half the money in the Democrats’ plan. Since the Dems’ plan is designed to be as cheap as possible while still passing muster with the EPA, it’s hard to imagine Turner’s plan gaining its approval.

And as a reminder, if we don’t adopt an acceptable plan, the EPA will come down like a ton of bricks on the only pollution source under its jurisdiction: municipal water treatment. That would be a far more expensive, and less impactful, solution, but it’s the only tool in the EPA’s box.

Okay, beyond the questionable prospects for the Turner plan, the big problem is its dependence on bonds for ongoing expenditures. This is a huge no-no according to the financial whizzes in the state treasurer’s office. Earlier this week, Deputy Treasurer Stephen Wisloski told the House Ways and Means Committee that using bond funds for current expenses is unwise, and a good way to ruin your debt rating. As he put it, “You should make sure the useful life of the asset is at least as long as the life of the bond.”

In simple English: bonding for roads, bridges or buildings GOOD. Bonding for current expenditures BAAAAAAAD. Taking notes, Donnie boy?

And here I thought Republicans were the guardians of fiscal responsibility. In fact, the notion of bonding is a band-aid solution that harms our bond rating in the immediate term and stretches our future finances ever more thinly.

And for what? To avoid a 0.2% tax on property transfers? Yeesh.

I shudder to think how our finances would look if Don Turner or a likeminded Republican was in charge. I certainly wouldn’t look to him for responsible governance.

A pretty darn good day at the Statehouse

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Wednesday was a big day for the legislature’s battle to get through a long and tough agenda. The House passed two huge bills, and the Senate approved a positive step in voter access.

Senate first. After Sen. Dustin Degree lost his repeated efforts to derail, slow down, or cripple the bill, the full Senate approved same-day voter registration on a voice vote.

Degree was pushing a mild form of the Republican “voter fraud” canard. The Bush Administration tried very hard for eight years to find and prosecute cases of vote fraud, and produced an average of less than one case per year. But there was Degree, acknowledging that “Fraud may be minuscule,” but insisting we ought to take steps to prevent this mythical plague upon our land.

If the bill passes the House, it wouldn’t take effect until 2017 because Vermont’s town clerks are creatures of habit who are loath to accept change or take on new responsibilities. They insisted on a two-year delay, and still want to fight for tougher rules. Our Public Servants, first and foremost guarding their own turf.

On to the House, which approved two bills that can be fairly described as “landmark.” Neither bill is perfect, but both represent substantial accomplishments.

The “water bill,” H.35, passed on a 126-10 vote, with only a handful of Republicans saying no. It establishes a Clean Water Fund and provides for $8 million a year in funding. This accomplishment is diminished by the fact that the state HAD to do something, or face the regulatory wrath of the feds. Because Vermont is, and has been for a long time, in violation of the Clean Water Act.

Still, getting almost 95% of lawmakers to support a bill that impinges on large segments of the economy and raises new revenue wasn’t a simple task. After a confirmatory vote Thursday, the bill moves to the Senate.

The education bill passed by a narrow margin, but still substantial: 88-59. This one was a tougher sell because education is near and dear to the hearts of every student, parent, grandparent, and community in the state. And near to the wallets of every taxpayer.

This was vividly on display in Wednesday’s Democratic caucus meeting. After an overview of the water bill drew only a couple of questions, the presentation of the ed bill had Dem lawmakers popping up all over the room. Many were specifically concerned about schools and districts in their own communities.

Any kind of education reform bill is a tough haul. This makes substantial reforms in funding and governance. Generally speaking, it’s a decent effort. I think we do have to do something significant to bend the cost curve, and some form of consolidation is almost inevitable. Student populations are declining, especially in rural areas; tiny schools are in no one’s best interest. Not students, not taxpayers, and not other government initiatives that might benefit if the public-school burden wasn’t so heavy.

Both bills will head for the Senate, which makes me cringe. Based on past experience, you never know what the hell they’re going to do. But maybe they’ll surprise me. There are some good folks in the Senate — definitely two more (Becca Balint, Brian Campion) than there were in years past. The atmosphere and legislative product will greatly benefit from the addition by subtraction of Peter Galbraith, whose voluntary retirement from the Senate was a blessing for us all. We should see a lot less capricious obstructionism, if nothing else.

Hard times still to come, many long days and debates — some dramatic, some tedious. But April First was a good day. No foollin’.