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."

A Few Questions for Zoie Saunders

Tuesday is the big day. Zoie Saunders, Gov. Phil Scott’s pick for education secretary, goes before the Senate Education Committee in the first step toward Senate confirmation of her selection. In advance of the occasion, here are some questions I would ask if I were, saints preserve us, a member of that committee.

In preparation for this post, I listened to Saunders’ interview last week on “Vermont Edition,” and I have some questions about that program as well. But first, let’s put Saunders in my entirely imaginary witness chair.

There are some obvious questions I wouldn’t bother to ask because others will. Questions about charter schools and school choice, for instance. Saunders is well practiced in answering those with a flurry of multisyllabic educationese. I’m assuming someone will ask her about her lack of experience in public schools and why she chose to spend her career almost entirely outside of public education.

I would ask Saunders about her unusual job search last year. She was the chief education officer for the city of Fort Lauderdale at the time. She applied for the Vermont position last fall and, at around the same time, she applied for an opening with the Broward County Public Schools. On November 15, the Vermont Board of Education forwarded three names to the governor; we now know that Saunders was one of the three. About a month later, she started work at BCPS as head of a consolidation process meant to address declining enrollment in the system.

And then, three months into a complicated, controversial process, she accepted the position in Vermont and left Florida on very short notice. (She was introduced by the governor on March 22 and started work in Vermont on April 15.) This raises a number of concerns.

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A Big Fat Final Reading FAIL

The Friday edition of VTDigger’s “Final Reading” was a dereliction of journalistic duty. It was a failure by reporter Sarah Mearhoff and whoever edited and approved this piece.

Why? Well, the subject was the Senate Appropriations Committee’s all-afternoon discussion of the FY2025 budget. At the end of the day, the panel voted out a budget and sent it on to the full Senate.

That much we know. What we don’t get a shred of information about is… what was in the budget? We read about benumbed butts and Senatorial wisecracks and staffers rushing around with revision after revision of the budget and late-afternoon hunger pangs. We hear about Our Fearless Scribe discovering, to her relief, “a protein bar squished at the bottom of her bag.”

It’s not that I mind a bit of fluff. It can add some color and a sense of humanity to the proceedings. But for Pete’s sake, leave some space for the substance.

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Scott Asks Legislature to Fix His Terrible, Terrible “Plan”

Gov. Phil Scott intended for his weekly press conference to be another rant against what the Legislature might do on housing reform. His basic message: Give me the bill that I want.

Which isn’t how things work when you have divided government, and the Dem/Prog supermajority has just as much claim to a mandate as the Republican governor. There’s give and take. There’s compromise. It’s called governance.

Eventually, the subject of Tax Commissioner Craig Bolio’s ill-fated trial balloon came up. You know, the one where he wanted to defer an unidentified bunch of school expenses for an unspecified number of years in order to artificially reduce property taxes this year? Yeah, the one that was shot down right quick by Treasurer Mike Pieciak due to concerns about what that kind of borrowing to pay for ongoing expenses, not any kind of capital investment would do to the state’s credit rating.

Scott, a fiscal conservative all his political life, seemed rather blasé at the prospect of triggering a credit downgrade that might hurt state finances for years if it bought him some short-term tax relief.

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The Word “Cockamamie” Springs to Mind

Sometimes when you’re a political appointee, you have to say stuff in public that you’ve been told to say. I’d like to think that’s what Tax Commissioner Craig Bolio was doing on Friday when he had the stones to approach the House Ways & Means Committee with a scheme that should never have seen the light of day.

Giving him the benefit of the doubt, Bolio was sent by his superiors to propose a painfully belated, half-baked plan (to call it a “plan” is being generous) that amounted to what Ways & Means chair Rep. Emilie Kornheiser later called a “payday loan.” Without the benefit of the doubt, I’d have to conclude that Bolio is unfit to hold a fiscally responsible position.

The idea, in short, was to reduce this year’s high property tax increases by deferring expenses over the next several years. Hey, let’s put our public schools on the layaway plan! What could possibly go wrong?

I wonder how Gov. Phil Scott would react if a Democratic or Progressive legislator made such a suggestion. Somewhere between “conniption” and “aneurysm,” I’m guessing.

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…On the Other Hand…

It has been suggested to me that I’m dead wrong about Zoie Saunders’ prospects in the Senate. I would like nothing better, and I can see the argument although I’m not entirely convinced because, well, I have so little faith in Our Solons to do the right thing.

My take was that the Senate was likely to rubber-stamp Saunders’ nomination as education secretary after a brief, polite interrogatory. The latest piece of evidence: a press release from the Agency of Education touting Saunders’ first day on the job and blithely ignoring the Senate’s duty to ratify her selection.

I interpreted the press release as an expression of confidence. But it could also be seen as whistling past the graveyard. Like, maybe the administration is worried about the Senate process and trying to pretend it isn’t a real thing.

This would be of a piece with the Saunders rollout from the very beginning. She was introduced at a hastily-convened press conference on a Newsdump Day. Her nomination was announced a bit more than three weeks before her first day on the job, which is a very short time frame for an executive who has to exit an important position elsewhere and make a 1,500-mile relocation. The administration snapped back, perhaps too aggressively, at initial skepticism of the pick with overblown accusations of misogyny and anti-Florida prejudice. And then the administration asked the Senate Education Committee to hold off on a Saunders hearing until next week, giving her a faint aura of incumbency in advance of the Senate vote. Every step seems to line up.

Plus, I have a new piece of evidence that the administration isn’t feeling too secure right about now.

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A Few Words for Anyone Expecting Full Scrutiny of the Zoie Saunders Nomination

Welp, the Scott administration has put out a press release trumpeting Zoie Saunders’ first day on the job as Vermont’s education secretary. Nowhere does it mention that her appointment is pending approval by the state Senate, which won’t even begin considering the matter until sometime next week.

Quite the opposite, in fact. The press release says that “Saunders will travel around the state in the coming weeks” and “In the months ahead, Secretary Saunders will kick off a formal listen and learn tour.”

Yeah, the fix is in. The Senate will put on a show of performing due diligence, but honestly, there’s no way in Hell they’re going to send her back to Florida.

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“Will You Be Putting Somebody in a Wheelchair Out on the Street?” “Hopefully Not.”

It appears that the Senate Appropriations Committee is ready to kill a House-passed proposal to extend the motel voucher program that shelters thousands of homeless Vermonters. So says the chatter in the hallways, which I would not take as gospel — except that the committee made its intentions more than clear in a recent hearing.

On April 2, the committee heard from Commissioner Chris Winters of the Department of Children and Families and some of his top deputies. The panel had asked him to prepare a presentation on the challenges of implementing H.883, the House-passed FY2025 budget bill that includes a broader version of the voucher program than the administration has proposed.

Mind you, the panel made no effort to hear from anyone in the House to tell their side of the story. The committee took no testimony from housing advocates or clients of the program. They sought counsel only from the very administration officials who have been responsible for repeatedly fumbling the program and trying to kill it. Committee members rarely pushed Winters or challenged his testimony. They pretty much took his word on every issue. You might think the committee was on a fishing expedition looking for reasons to kill the House plan.

Because that’s exactly what they were doing.

At one point, committee chair Sen. Jane Kitchel was seeking assurance that nothing bad would happen under the administration’s plan. She lobbed Winters a softball: “Will you be putting somebody in a wheelchair out on the street?”

And Winters replied, “Hopefully not.”

How reassuring.

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Phil Scott Prioritizes Corporate Profits Over Public Safety

The headline might seem outrageous, and I’m sure it won’t make anyone on the Fifth Floor happy, but it’s the plain truth.

Vermont’s judiciary system is grossly underfunded and understaffed. The result is a huge backlog of pending cases measured, not in weeks or months, but in years. Gov. Phil Scott’s solution? Cut a few more positions from the courts.

This is the same governor who said, in his State of the State address, that public safety was one of his top priorities. The House decided to boost the Judiciary instead of strangling it, and approved a bill that would pay for more positions in the court system by increasing corporate taxes and fees by a skosh or two. This appears to be a no-go for Scott, who would rather kill any kind of tax or fee increase than, I don’t know, fully fund the judicial system at a time when he claims that we face a public safety crisis.

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Here’s a Funny Way to Express Confidence in a Cabinet Nominee

Rather devastating piece has been posted in an unlikely spot, Forbes Magazine, about Zoie Saunders, Gov. Phil Scott’s pick for education secretary. It’s written by Peter Greene, a longtime schoolteacher turned education commentator. We’ll go through some specifics, including a lengthy quote from an unidentified writer at something called The Vermont Political Observer*, but this must be addressed right off the top.

*Hey Peter, next time check the “About” page.

Governor Scott’s office, which did not yet respond to a request for
comment for this article, has said that Saunders will not be doing any
more interviews until she’s in office.

Hoo boy. Batten down the ramparts, boys. Pull up the drawbridge. Sound red alert. Someone go below decks and look for a hull breach, because I think we’re taking on water.

The administration’s refusal to make Saunders available for interviews can only be taken one of two ways: They don’t trust her to speak contemporaneously, or they’re very, very nervous about her prospects for Senate approval. Neither is what you’d call a good look.

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On Monday’s Other Eclipse

We began the new week with all eyes turned toward the sky, waiting for the sun to briefly disappear. But at the same time, an earthly, political-type sun also vanished — and this one isn’t coming back.

Sen. Dick Mazza, who served nearly 40 years in the state Senate and 30 seconds as a TV spokesman for a riding lawn mower, has announced his immediate retirement for health reasons.

On a personal level, Mazza was a tremendous guy. He was a joy to talk with. If he ever had a bad word for anyone, I didn’t hear it — and if anyone would have merited a bad word or two from Mazza, it was me, the guy who has posted images of mummies and skeletons atop essays about Our Sclerotic Senate. He was unfailingly polite to me, and seemed to earnestly mean it.

Mazza also had a deep knowledge of state government and a love for the Senate. As much as anyone, he was the human embodiment of a load-bearing beam in the Statehouse. I wish him all the best as he wages a long-odds battle against pancreatic cancer. Best wishes for a full recovery and many more years behind the counter at Mazza’s Store.

But I have to say his departure from the Statehouse is one more step towards a Senate that might be less hidebound, more open to new ideas and more reflective of the entirety of Vermont. Can I regret the loss of Dick Mazza while also feeling a bit optimistic about a future Senate that doesn’t include him? Whether you think I can or not, that’s where I find myself.

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