Author Archives: John S. Walters

Unknown's avatar

About John S. Walters

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

The Last of His Kind

2 Replies

A fond farewell to Ken Squier, member of the NASCAR Hall of Fame, owner of Thunder Road, and the last vestige of a lost species: the locally-oriented broadcaster. His passing made national headlines in broadcasting circles because of his place in the history of NASCAR broadcasting. Around these parts, Squier is best known for single-handedly keeping Waterbury-based WDEV Radio going for decades as an independent voice after the vast majority of his peers had sold their stations to big national corporations.

Squier was a solid Phil Scott Republican, but he did his best to keep his station open to all viewpoints because he firmly believed he was the steward of a public trust. I have nothing but respect for him and his life’s work.

There used to be WDEV equivalents in every community in America big enough to warrant an FCC license. Those stations were basically the public commons of the airwaves, virtual gathering places for their communities. It’s impossible to imagine the impact these stations had. We’ve got nothing like them anymore. And we have no idea what we’re missing.

Continue reading →

So Why Is the Scott Administration Encouraging Short-Term Rentals?

2 Replies

Lately there’s been a big jump in the number of housing units being used as short-term rentals. You know, VRBO, AirBnB, those fine folks. According to a story co-produced by Vermont Public and VTDigger, “the number of homes listed on platforms like Airbnb and VRBO has grown rapidly over the last several years, following a brief pandemic downturn.”

September, in fact, saw an all-time high in units listed on short-term rental sites: 11,747, which is a 16% increase over September 2022.

Short-term rentals are not the sole cause of our dire housing shortage. If we totally eliminated the industry, we’d still have a housing crisis on our hands.

But it sure doesn’t help. And at a time when the Scott administration has committed itself to addressing the issue, why in holy Hell did they use public dollars to help underwrite a short-term rental conference this past weekend?

Continue reading →

Let’s Pump the Brakes on This Talk of “Chaos”

2 Replies

We seem to be approaching yellow journalism territory in press coverage of crime in Burlington. Exhibit A is a headline from the usually reliable Seven Days positing a “Chaotic Night of Crime” in the Queen City.

“Chaotic Night of Crime”? Two men fatally shot in a house in the Old North End. A man robbed of drugs and shot in the foot. A pathetic arson attempt at police headquarters. Three incidents.

It was a bad night. But it was not a “Chaotic Night of Crime.”

In that article, Police Chief (and veteran of the New York Police Department) Jon Murad asserts that he couldn’t “remember a night like this” during his time in the Bronx and Manhattan North.

I’m sorry, that’s not credible. Burlington has problems, but it ain’t the Bronx. Exaggerating the state of things is not helping. It’s just pouring fuel on the fire, if you’ll pardon the analogy.

Continue reading →

It’s a Lot Easier When You’re 5,000 Miles Away

15 Replies

This is gonna make some people mad, but…

There’s something facile, something simplistic, about antiwar protests like the one at U.S. Rep. Becca Balint’s fundraiser last week. Because given the current situation, calls for a cease-fire or a unilateral Israeli cessation of hostilities are unrealistic. It’s just not gonna happen.

It can’t happen, at least not right now. The single goal of Hamas is the destruction of Israel. Hamas impoverished its own people in order to build an infrastructure of war and terror. It launched an attack on Israel knowing it couldn’t win, knowing it would trigger a destructive counterattack on combatant and non-combatant Palestinians alike.

And Israel is supposed to do what now? Stand down? Give peace a chance?

Continue reading →

Time for Another Great Idea to Be Quietly Smothered

7 Replies

It’s a good thing that Vermont’s left-leaning advocacy organizations are so inured to disappointment, because it’s about to happen again.

On Thursday, a coalition of groups announced they are banding together to promote a surtax on the wealthiest Vermonters. The Public Assets Institute estimates that a 3% surcharge on incomes over $500,000 would raise about $100 million to help meet Vermont’s needs, a substantial boost to the bottom line at a moment when we need serious public investment across a number of fronts.

Nice thought, but it ain’t gonna happen.

Gov. Phil Scott is against it. The Democratic Legislature has a long and storied history of aversion to broad-based tax increases for one or more of the following reasons: They’re afraid of being labeled as tax-and-spenders, which is a laugh because Republicans beat that drum constantly anyway; the fat cats who’d usually support Republicans are open to the Democrats because the VTGOP is so batshit; and/or their bloated caucuses include a substantial number of centrists who wouldn’t back a wealth tax.

This proposal might get a polite hearing in 2024, but that’s about all.

Continue reading →

The Progressives Have a Retention Problem

1 Reply

Latest from the developing 2024 campaign in Burlington: Not one, but two Progressive city councilors will not seek re-election. The departures of Zoraya Hightower and Joe Magee will leave only two incumbent Progressives: Gene Bergman, elected in 2022*, and Melo Grant, elected last March.

Yep, the most tenured Progressive councilor will have been in office for only two years.

Not that they’ll lose a whole lot of seniority. Hightower is currently the senior Prog, and she’s only been in office since 2020. And that’s the thing: the Vermont Progressive Party has a severe retention issue — not only in Burlington, but in the Statehouse as well. The result is a party spinning its wheels and having to work very hard just to not lose any ground.

*Note: Bergman may have been elected fairly recently, but he’s been around Burlington politics for a long time and, in fact, served on what was then the Board of Aldermen in the late 80s to early 90s.

Continue reading →

A Thoroughly Grim Outlook on Vermont’s Housing Crisis

3 Replies

If the above image looks a little fuzzy, thank the limitations of the Legislature’s system for recording and livestreaming its hearings. But it reflects the situation we face on housing: Our public leaders seem small and indistinct when discussing the enormity of Vermont’s housing shortage, and their explication of the crisis was long on broad pronouncements and short on specifics.

The Scott administration’s A-team, pictured above, appeared before the Legislature’s Joint Fiscal Committee and delivered a gloomy overview that has to rank as one of the most depressing events I’ve experienced in my 12-ish years following #vtpoli. Doesn’t quite top Peter Shumlin’s surrender on health care reform or his near defeat at the hands of Scott Milne, but it’s not far behind.

The big takeaway: The housing crisis is even worse than we thought. From top to bottom, end to end, from the most basic of living spaces to the most extravagant, we don’t have nearly enough. Oh, and the epidemic of unsheltered homelessness that Our Leaders assured us was all taken care of last winter? That’s going to get even worse before it has a hope of getting better. And the “getting better” is going to take years.

And the interim solution, if they can manage to pull it off, is a massive increase in emergency shelters, most likely of the congregate variety. That, for a population ill-suited for such arrangements.

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?

Continue reading →

We Still Can’t Wind Down the Motel Voucher Program

1 Reply

The Scott administration has published its monthly report on the GA emergency housing program (as mandated by the Legislature), and it’s nothing but bad news.

The report is downloadable (look for “Pandemic-Era Housing Reporting – October”) from the website of the Legislature’s Joint Fiscal Committee, which will take up the report at its meeting on Tuesday, November 7. I suspect we’ll be in for more earnest expressions of concern, sad head-shaking, and fresh statements of determination to find answers.

The numbers tell a story of stasis. Barely any discernible progress in creating new housing or shelter, only the slightest dent in the number of people staying in state-paid motel rooms, and only a relative handful who managed to find alternative housing in October. This, despite an evident push by administration officials to move people out of the prgram, as reflected in the continuing efforts by former gubernatorial candidate and housing advocate Brenda Siegel, who just received the ACLU of Vermont’s David W. Curtis Civil Liberties Award. Her Twitter feed continues to feature stories of people who are obviously and painfully needy, but who are nonetheless losing their eligibility for motel vouchers.

Continue reading →

Responsibilities and Obligations in the Bristol Shooting Case

1 Reply

There must have been some serious conversations in Vermont newsrooms on Tuesday. Good God, I surely hope so. Because the results were split, unusually: Our three commercial television news outlets and Seven Days chose to reveal the name and face of the 14-year-old accused in the fatal shooting of a fellow teen, while VTDigger and Vermont Public opted to keep his identity out of it.

There is no hard and fast rule in journalism, or in the law. But identifying a juvenile offender is generally approached with great care and deliberation. The Associated Press’ policy is to not identify juvenile suspects, but there are exceptions: “It may depend on the severity of the alleged crime; whether police have formally released the juvenile’s name; and whether the juvenile has been formally charged as an adult.”

At first, this case seemed to fit the AP’s criteria. The suspect was charged as an adult, a conviction could bring a life sentence, and authorities did nothing to guard his identity. In court on Tuesday, he was wearing shackles and a bright red prison jumpsuit.

Problem is, the circumstances may change in a way that would have argued for concealing his identity. The prosecutor, Addison County State’s Attorney Eva Vekos, seems to be struggling to explain her rationale for bringing a murder charge and treating the suspect as an adult.

Continue reading →

This Is Fear Country

5 Replies

Since October 5, there have been seven eight suspicious deaths in rural Vermont. Yes, that’s a lot. But it’s not so far out of character as we’d like to believe for our oft-celebrated countryside. Which in our mind’s eye looks less like the above and more like the below:

There is, in truth, plenty of both in rural Vermont. On balance, though, probably more of the former than the latter. Rural Vermont, like rural America, can be beautiful and ghastly, peaceful and dangerous, prosperous and abandoned.

It would behoove us to hold both pictures in mind. It might help break down the imaginary barriers between our suspect cities, full of drugs, crime, and recent arrivals, and our countryside, a paradise of scenic beauty and hardworking people. You know, the “real Vermonters” living in the “real Vermont.”

What bullshit.

Continue reading →