Category Archives: Government

We can now put a price tag on John Campbell’s incompetence

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…thanks to Terri Hallenbeck, pinch-hitting for Paul Heintz in the Freyne Memorial Chair:

In the last two years, [Senate President Pro Tem John Campbell has] quietly increased his office’s staffing and more than doubled his payroll.

He’s done so — without any explicit policy change, nor anyone else’s approval — even as lawmakers consider cutting other state jobs to close yet another budget gap. Some say the situation reveals a disturbing lack of oversight. Others consider the money well spent, given that his enhanced staff has helped restore order under the oft-distracted and perpetually disorganized Campbell.

Aww, that’s nice. We’re spending a bunch of extra money because John Campbell can’t keep his shit together. And yet the Democratic caucus keeps re-electing him out of classic Vermonty loyalty to “my grandfather’s lightbulb.” 

Now, the amount of money isn’t that much in state budget terms — somewhere in the $50,000 to $70,000 range. The Pro Tem staff historically consists of one person paid roughly $50K per year. When Campbell hired Rebecca Ramos to pull his fat out of the fire after a disastrous 2012 Senate session, her starting salary was $70K. But in her last year on the job, she took home $103,000 thanks to a whole lot of overtime and unused comp time.

Campbell has replaced her — with not one, but two staffers, with total compensation of $111,000. By comparison, Hallenbeck reports that House Speaker Shap Smith’s sole staffer makes $55,000, and Lt. Gov. Phil Scott’s staffing cost is roughly the same.

I think we’re safe in concluding that the taxpayers of Vermont are shelling out an extra $60,000 or so to keep John Campbell in a job he can’t handle.

But he’s such a nice guy!

Postscript. As commenter Seth Hopkins pointed out, my $60,000 estimate is almost certainly low. Now that Campbell has hired two staffers, they’re presumably drawing the state benefits package — health care, pension, etc. So the real price of Campbell’s incompetence is more than 60K. 

A new day in an old way

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Vermont lawmakers, in their infinite wisdom, have decided to make a change in the hidebound office of Sergeant-at-Arms. Formerly a sinecure for beloved dodderers, the post is now apparently being filled on merit. Who knew?

In a rather shockingly one-sided vote, Francis Brooks — who was SaA for eight years after serving for 25 as a state representative — was dumped in favor of Janet Miller, deputy director of the Legislative Council. The final tally was 128 Miller, 47 Brooks.

I take it as a sign of a new attitude toward the management of the Statehouse. Gone are the days when an 87-year-old Statehouse fixture (Dwight Dwinell) could hang onto the job as long as he could get up the steps of the building. Now, wewant an actual manager.

Is this a harbinger of tighter security at the people’s house? Perhaps. There’s talk of fire drills and active-shooter drills for lawmakers. (If they’re serious about evacuation procedures, they might want to cut another couple of doors in the House and Senate chambers. The House chamber is a huge room with three exits from the main floor, two of them tiny; the Senate is a smaller room with one main-floor exit plus a small side door that leads to a room right next to the main exit. Hope the desk nearest the door doesn’t catch fire.)

So, a new day, but carried out in old-Vermont fashion. There had been complaints about Brooks, some quantifiable, some passive-aggressively vague, and many of them anonymous: he didn’t run a tight enough ship, security wasn’t up to snuff, he didn’t recruit enough legislative pages from other parts of the state, there was “a general level of discontent,” he was too “grumpy.”

Of course — and this is the “Vermont fashion” part of it — nobody told Brooks about any of this. On the eve of today’s vote, Brooks told VTDigger that “no one came to me… No individuals or group have come up and said it to me that, ‘You were wrong,’ or ‘You should have handled it this way.'”

As a flatlander who’s lived in Vermont for less than a decade, I can tell you this happens A LOT in Vermont. Direct confrontation is avoided; grievances are allowed to accumulate until the situation reaches the breaking point.

To Vermonters, this probably seems like a positive: what’s wrong with politeness?

Well, when it’s used to paper over issues instead of dealing with them, it’s counterproductive. By all accounts, Brooks didn’t see this coming until it was too late. And that’s a shame. My sense is that he operated under the old-timey conception of the job: a low-impact sinecure for a man (cough) of a certain age.

Not any more. And the fact that Brooks got a standing ovation after his unceremonious ouster is a very Vermont thing to do: it was a nice tribute to a senior figure, but coming right after the lopsided vote against him, there was something curiously hollow about the gesture. Yeah, let’s have a nice round of applause for the guy we just kicked in the teeth.

Ethics, shmethics: Legislative edition

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Maybe it’s my inner flatlander, accustomed to the sometimes shady dealings in other states’ politics, but I get even more cynical than usual on the subject of ethics in the legislature.

The subject comes to mind today because of Paul Heintz’ excellent column in this week’s Seven Days, which chronicles the fitful, woefully inadequate first steps of the newly minted House Ethics Panel.

Until now, as Heintz reports, “Vermont was one of just 10 states without any sort of internal legislative ethics committee empowered to investigate potential wrongdoing… [and] remains one of just eight states without an external ethics commission.” (Emphasis his.)

The House panel barely qualifies as an overseer of ethics. Its chair, David Deen, hopes to keep investigations secret “to protect from public embarrassment those who are wrongly accused.”

Oh, that’s nice. We wouldn’t want one of our public servants to suffer embarrassment. What say we apply the same standard to court cases? If a lawmaker needs to be shielded from “public embarrassment” over an ethical matter, how much worse is the potential embarrassment of, say, a charge of murder?

I’d also remind the good Representative of something that often gets lost under the Golden Dome of Silence: these people work for us, and should be answerable to us. If that includes the occasional “public embarrassment,” well, tough.

The purest form of insular Statehouse sentiment comes from the Senate, which remains blissfully unencumbered by any sort of ethics committee. President Pro Tem John Campbell assures us that “Vermont is one of the cleanest states.”

No way to prove that, of course.  Not without an ethics panel. Which we don’t need, because John Campbell says so.

I really don’t know if Vermont is a particularly clean state. We certainly have our share of public corruption, especially in situations where no one is on guard — such as the numerous cases of embezzlement by small-town officials or the odd drug addict overseeing a police evidence storage room.

Most of our public servants do have good intentions and work hard for very little reward, but there’s a whole lot of potential for ethical violations baked into our system. Lawmakers routinely cast votes that have an effect on their non-legislative work. They spend a substantial amount of time with lobbyists, and many friendships result. (Campbell is, I’ve been told, best buds with one of the top Black Hats in town.) They depend heavily on those lobbyists for political contributions and for policy advice, since all but the top leaders have no staff support.

To some extent, Vermont has some measure of protection from serious scandal because it’s such a small place. But in other ways, our smallness makes us more vulnerable. Example: the Colchester Police Department brusquely dismissed initial complaints about Tyler Kinney because, well, he was One Of Us and couldn’t possibly have been a thief and addict who compromised countless criminal investigations.

Except he was.

There may be no big undiscovered scandals at the Statehouse, but there is a faintly rancid smell about the clubbiness of the place. It could use the occasional blast of fresh air. And we could use an ethics panel with independence, transparency, and a good sharp set of teeth.

…et puer parvulus minabit eos.

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(If you have any issues with the Latin above, take it up with Google Translate.) 

At the risk of losing my street cred, I have to admit being edified and inspired by an event at the Statehouse today.

The occasion: The Senate Government Operations Committee taking up a bill to establish Stella Quarta Decima Fulgeat as an alternate motto for the state of Vermont.

This proposal has famously been the target of unedifying and uninspiring commentary, mistakenly conflating Latin with Latino, criticizing it as a waste of time, and wrongly complaining that the new motto would supplant “Freedom and Unity.”

Angela Kubicke and the motto bill's sponsor Sen. Joe Benning, with the broad shoulders and flowing mane of Seven Days' Paul "Party in the Back" Heintz in the middle.

Angela Kubicke and the motto bill’s sponsor Sen. Joe Benning, with the broad shoulders and flowing mane of Seven Days’ Paul “Party in the Back” Heintz in the middle.

The hearing was attended by roughly five dozen middle- and high-school students of Latin, along with teachers, parents, and three Classicists from the University of Vermont. The hearing’s central figure was 15-year-old Angela Kubicke, who had the original idea for the Latin motto and, with her teacher and others, came up with the exact wording. The first three words, translated as “The Fourteenth Star,” appeared on the first coin minted in the 1780s by the then-independent Vermont. “Fulgeat,” the verb, completes the sentence “May the fourteenth star shine brightly.” Kubicke and her teacher, Ray Starling, gave a thorough account of the historical rationale for their proposal.

One of the other witnesses almost stole the show. If you were casting the part of a tenured professor of classical languages, you might just see Robert Rodgers as a gift of the gods. Slightly tousled gray hair, well-trimmed gray beard, glasses, precise in speech to the point of pedantry, his testimony was perched delicately on the border between entertaining and aggravating. As committee chair Jeanette White admitted afterward, “I forgot that professors are used to talking in 45-minute increments.” Professor Rodgers went nowhere near that long, but with the chair’s forbearance he blithely ignored the two-minute time limit per speaker. It was a rare opportunity for a Classicist to speak to a lay audience on a subject dear to his heart, and he was (in his own reserved way) happy as a pig in slop.

Still, he was an effective if nerdy (and wordy) witness, praising “Fulgeat” as “a felicitous choice for a verb,” parsing its contextual meanings and citing its use by the Roman poet Virgil.

Three students from Lamoille Union High School also spoke to the committee, defending Latin as a foundation of modern science, architecture, music, and Western languages. At the end, committee member Chris Bray commended Kubicke and her fellow speakers for the “depth of thought” behind the motto.

And then came the vote: FIve in favor, zero opposed. The bill goes on to the full Senate on Friday.

For the many who complained about the bill being a “waste of time,” you should have been there. Everyone — Senators, professors, teachers, and students — were fully engaged in the process and the issue. It took less than an hour all told, and it was a great learning experience for all. I’ve got nothing cynical to say about it in the least.

The drift

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The legislature is about a quarter of the way through its four-month session, and Governor Shumlin’s proposals are falling like tin ducks in a shooting gallery. Lake Champlain tax plan? Dead. Education plan? “A place to start the conversation.” Payroll tax to close the Medicaid gap? Flatlining.

Not that this is terribly surprising; the governor exited the 2014 election with significantly diminished political capital. So much so that when Shumlin unveiled his proposals last month, the question wasn’t so much whether they would pass or not, as whether he meant them seriously in the first place or knew from the start that they were doomed.

(Evidence for the latter: an education plan that did nothing to provide near-term property tax relief. That, at least, was a non-starter.)

Not sure what else he could have done after his near-defeat. He could have taken the George W. Bush approach, pressing on regardless of his mandate-free victory, but that’s not who he is. Shumlin likes to talk bold and act incrementally.

Now he’s added deference to incrementalism, and it’s up to the Legislature to generate some vision. The consensus-seeking, conflict-avoidant Legislature. I’m not holding my breath.

I do expect our lawmakers to do some good work; I just don’t expect them to produce anything truly impactful. And we face a bunch of issues that call for some strong, progressive action.

Take, for example, the House Fish, Wildlife and Water Resources Committee, chaired by one of the good people of the Statehouse, David Deen. The committee has already ditched Shumlin’s proposed tax hikes to help pay for Lake Champlain cleanup. The fertilizer fee’s down the tubes because the farmers didn’t like it; the fee for stormwater runoff from developed sites is as good as dead because it would be “difficult to implement.”

Instead, Deen’s panel is looking at a smorgasbord of tax and fee hikes — more numerous than Shumlin’s plan, and less directly tied to the sources of Champlain pollution. The governor’s plan was simpler and made more sense. The committee’s approach will open the door to Republican charges that the Dems are just raising taxes wherever they can. Deen is considering at least four separate tax or fee increases instead of Shumlin’s two.

More important than the specifics of the Champlain plan, though, is the strong signal it sends: Lawmakers — even those who are solid on policy — are loath to take risks. Or, as Deen himself put it:

“There are some very strong voices in the hall opposed to it. And we are reacting to political reality around here,” the Westminster Democrat said Friday.

This session is looking like a big fat lost opportunity given that this is an off-year, and new programs or reforms would have a year and a half to take root before lawmakers have to run for re-election. Ya think next year’s gonna be any better?

This is a typical duck-and-cover reaction, but it plays right into the Republicans’ hands. Let’s say Phil Scott runs for Governor, as everybody believes he’s going to do. He’s strongly positioned as a centrist willing to consider all ideas. And he’s a nice guy to boot.

If voters have a choice between the Democrats’ fear-based centrist incrementalism with a bias toward inaction and Phil Scott’s natural centrist incrementalism with a bias toward inaction, which one do you think they’re going to choose?

I hope I’m wrong about this. It’s still early in the session, and there’s more than enough time to come up with at least one piece of solid small-p progressivism. But I’m not holding my breath.

More on the motto: true to Vermont’s heritage

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(Note: See also this follow-up post on the motto’s approval by a Senate committee.)

Of all the stuff I’ve written about Vermont politics and policy on this blog and earlier on Green Mountain Daily, the single-most-read piece I’ve ever posted was last week’s post about the proposed addition of a Latin state motto. So I thought I’d add some historical information for those still skeptical about the idea.

For those just joining us, Sen. Joe Benning has sponsored a bill designating a new Latin motto — not to displace “Freedom and Unity,” but to exist side-by-side. He did so at the behest of Angela Kubicke, a ninth-grade student at The Riverside School in Lyndonville*, who is apparently way smarter than I was in the ninth grade. Or certainly more dedicated and focused.

*Correction: Kubicke was an eighth-grader at Riverside when she first approached Sen. Benning; she is now a first-year student at St. Johnsbury Academy, and is also a member of the Latin Club at the Lyndon Institute. Credit where credit’s due. 

The motto, Stella Quarta Decima Fulgeat, is translated as “May the Fourteenth Star Shine Bright.” It’s a nod to Vermont’s status as the 14th state to join the Union — hence, the 14th star on the flag. My original post had to do with ignorant Facebook commenters who confused Latin with Latin America — basically telling Joe and Angela to take their motto and go back to Mexico.

There were also plenty of comments accusing the Senator of wasting time on such nonsense — when, in fact, bills like this take up very little of anyone’s time. In the opening weeks of the session, most of the work takes place in committees; and while other committees are debating taxes, budget, education, environment, etc., one single committee will spend probably a few minutes on this issue. The entire Senate does not grind to a halt over stuff like this.

There was also a third class of ignorant comments, saying we should stick with our heritage and not drag in some newfangled foreign motto.

StellaQuartaDecimaBut in fact, Stella Quarta Decima Fulgeat is a direct tribute to Vermont’s early status as an independent republic. During that time, it was pretty clear that Vermont would eventually join the United States, and the monicker “14th Star” was commonly used. In 1786, the government authorized the minting of Vermont coins; the phrase Stella Quarta Decima was included on the “tails” side of Vermont’s first coin.

So the motto is not new at all; it’s a reflection of Vermont’s early history. As is the use of Latin.

The next step in the odyssey of Stella Quarta Decima Fulgeat will take place at 2 pm on Wednesday, February 11, when Angela Kubicke will testify before the Senate Government Operations Committee.  “I suspect she will make a very good impression,” said Sen. Benning in a comment to my previous posting. “I am also willing to lay odds that the tripartisan membership of that committee will vote unanimously in support of the bill, if for no other reason than to demonstrate that legislators still care about the Classics and Vermont’s heritage.”

What started out as a small civics lesson for a single student may well become a big lesson in history — and open-mindedness — for all of us.

Dan Feliciano, man of ideas. Well, three ideas.

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Saturday’s gubernatorial debate was a big moment for Dan Feliciano, Libertarian candidate for Governor and presumptive usurper of Scott Milne’s mantle as the real conservative challenger to Governor Shumlin.

Dan the Libertarian Man. Photo by VTDigger.

Dan the Libertarian Man. Photo by VTDigger.

So, how’d Dan the Libertarian Man do? About as well as he could have done. Which is, as you might imagine, a two-edged sword.

Feliciano presented himself as the conservative candidate with ideas. And yes, he has ideas. But to judge from his debate performance, he has precisely three of them: Cut taxes and spending, cut regulation, and institute school choice.

That’s it.

He repeated them over and over during the debate because, well, that’s about all he has to say. It was a good performance but, at the same time, it defined his limit as a gubernatorial candidate. His ideas are simply out of the mainstream.

And, worse still, lacking on specifics.

Let’s take, first, his call for lower spending. What’s his big idea on how to cut the cost of state government?

Challenges for Change.

Stop laughing. I’m serious.

Dan Feliciano wants to reintroduce Challenges for Change, the discredited Douglas Administration plan. This… is our Libertarian’s call to arms? A years-old, formerly bipartisan initiative that was abandoned in 2010 because both parties agreed it just wasn’t working?

Until now, I thought that Tom Pelham was the only True Believer left. But no: it’s him and Dan Feliciano. Sheesh.

I suspect that this is one of Feliciano’s attempts to make himself look less scary to mainstream voters. Don’t start with Libertarian ideas for privatizing schools, prisons, police, fire, and snowplowing; start with a mainstream reform plan. A failed plan, but a mainstream one.

On health care reform, he’s dead against single-payer. His “idea,” though, is weak: cut health insurance regulation to foster competition. We’ve already seen how that works: the competition turns into a race to the bottom, with affordable insurance available only to the healthiest, all kinds of exclusions to minimize claims, and a maze of complicated legalese designed to frustrate consumers.

And Feliciano tried to have it both ways when it comes to community rating, Vermont’s rule that prevents price discrimination against the elderly, the sick, and others with high risk factors.  He claimed to support community rating, but he also called for Vermont to scrap its own exchange and adopt the federal one, as New Hampshire has done. Well, Dan, New Hampshire and other states operating in the federal system don’t have community rating. Which is it?

On schools, he wants spending cuts but doesn’t provide any examples. His Big Idea is school choice, which is going to reduce costs in a way he doesn’t explain. I wonder why. Could it be because the savings are based entirely on free-market dogma? Could it be that, in a system already short of students, spreading them around to more institutions will make the situation worse, not better?

When asked about problems in the Agency for Human Services, he said “We need a wholistic approach to families and children.” Without explaining what in the world he means by that. And when asked about supporting agriculture, his one idea was — you guessed it — cutting EPA regulations.

In spite of rampant pollution in Lake Champlain, to which agriculture is the single biggest contributor.

This is Feliciano’s unique position, and his glass ceiling. He is a man of ideas, certainly. But it’s a small handful of endlessly repeated dogmatic ideas that don’t work in the real world. Much as he tries to water it down, he is stuck with Libertarian dogma. It gives him a clear outline, unlike the endlessly foggy Mahatma Milne. But it also consigns him to fringe status in any race with a credible Republican candidate.

If Milne keeps on soiling the sheets, Dan Feliciano might get into the double digits on November 4. But he’ll never be anything more than that. And whenever the Republicans run a viable candidate, he’ll be back down to Emily Peyton territory.

The limits of messaging

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Just finished listening to a Reporter’s Roundtable on VPR*, with three of the better reporters around — VTDigger’s Anne Galloway, VPR’s Peter Hirschfeld, and the Freeploid’s Terri Hallenbeck– examining the entrails of last week’s primary election and the prospects for November. 

*Audio not yet available online, but it should appear here later today. 

Thin gruel, to be sure; the key races are essentially over, with the possible exception of Phil Scott vs. Dean Corren for Lieutenant Governor. But when the race for a mainly ceremonial position is your biggest source of intrigue, well, that tells you all you need to know. 

There was a lot of dancing around the fact that November is in the bag for the Democrats, with the noble exception of Galloway coming right out and saying that Governor Shumlin was going to win. The dancing is understandable, considering that (1) journalists want to appear objective, and (2) as political journalists, they’ve gotta cover this puppy for two more months, and what fun is it when there’s no intrigue? 

Much of the dancing centered on the idea that good “messaging” could carry a Republican candidate into a competitive position. The Dems aren’t invulnerable, the reasoning goes, it’s just that neither Scott Milne nor Dan Feliciano seems capable of delivering a solid, appealing message. 

That’s true, insofar as it goes. But there are three much more powerful factors operating against the Republicans: most voters pay little or no attention to messaging, the electorate is solidly center-left, and today’s Republican Party has little to offer on the key issues in Vermont. 

First, reporters and insiders overestimate the impact of tactics and strategy and messaging. The vast majority of voters have their minds made up before the campaigning starts. The only thing that could change their minds is some sort of shocking revelation or catastrophic event. Some voters do actually watch debates and bring an open mind to campaign coverage, but they only matter when an election is otherwise close. 

Second, it’s obvious from the results of the last decade or so that most voters prefer Democrats. The Legislature has been solidly Democratic for years. Among statewide Republicans, only Jim Douglas and Phil Scott have been able to buck the trend. Both have done so because of their unique personal appeal and by projecting an image of moderation and willingness to compromise. 

And third, Shumlin and the Dems are potentially vulnerable on issues like health care reform, the Department of Children and Families, the economy, taxation (especially school taxes), and the environment (Lake Champlain, the natural gas pipeline). 

On all those issues, the most appealing solutions involve more government, not less. Shumlin is more vulnerable to his left than to his right. 

In spite of Vermont Health Connect’s troubles, health care reform remains popular. Republicans have no answer aside from letting the market do its magic. Fixing DCF would require more resources, or at the very least more effective management. Have the Republicans given anyone reason to believe they care more than the Dems about poor people? Hell, no. Do the Republicans have a track record of good management? Only in the minds of Jim Douglas and Tom Pelham. 

Would the Republicans be better stewards of the environment than Dems? Ha ha. Can they plausibly portray themselves as defenders of public education, which remains extremely popular in Vermont? No; their only solutions are competition and union-busting. Can they convince voters that they’d preserve local control? Not if you could saw money by centralizing. 

On the economy, the Republicans have little to offer aside from the tired, discredited supply-side nonsense. Which took another bullet yesterday with the news (from the Federal Reserve Bank) that our post-Great Recession “recovery” has benefited the wealthy while middle- and working-class wealth has actually declined. One-percenters and corporations have a larger share of our wealth than ever, and all the Republicans can offer is policies that will further enrich the rich. 

And as for taxation, Vermonters may be dissatisfied with rising school taxes and worried about the cost of single-payer health care, but they also favor a robust government that can tackle problems effectively. Most voters don’t want a mindless “cut, cut, cut” approach, and that’s the standard Republican line. 

Here’s what a Republican would have to do, to be competitive on a statewide level: Bring an established reputation for effective governance, or at least an open-minded attitude toward the notion that government can actually solve problems. Express skepticism about political dogma, especially the cherished beliefs of the right. And do that without, somehow, losing too much support among the Republican base. And, finally, regain the support of the business community, which has largely abandoned the VTGOP in favor of a cooperative relationship with the Democrats. 

Now. If a Republican can identify and execute a strategy that accomplishes those things, s/he can win. Otherwise, no amount of good messaging will carry the day. It’s not impossible; there’s at least one potential Republican candidate who could manage it. But he ain’t running this year. 

So it was a push, not a jump

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Media reports posted after my initial VPO piece on Doug Racine’s departure make it clear that Racine was fired as Human Services Secretary; he did not resign. And he was fired in a sudden and coldblooded way. The best reporting comes from Paul “The Huntsman” Heintz, who got the skinny from the firee himself.

In a phone interview, he said he was summoned to the 5th floor of the Pavilion State Office building at 4 p.m. Monday for a meeting with Shumlin chief of staff Liz Miller and Secretary of Administration Jeb Spaulding.

“I went in and sat down. They said, ‘The governor wants to make a change at your agency.’ I said, ‘Who would that be?’ Jeb looked at me and said, ‘You,’” Racine recalled. “We talked about it for a few minutes and then I went to the office and cleaned out my desk.”

So now we know who wields the hatchet in the corner office. Shumlin did give Racine a call about an hour after the meeting, and it was relatively cordial; but hell, couldn’t he do the actual deed himself? Especially since Racine had handled the hardest and most thankless job in state government for three and a half years?

There was also a Profiles In Courage moment Tuesday afternoon, when Shumlin went kinda wishy-washy on the nature of Racine’s departure, i.e. voluntary or not:

Asked what, specifically, prompted Racine’s exit, Shumlin said, “Specifically answering your question is exactly what I’m not going to do.”

Well, at least it was a head-on refusal to answer instead of the usual “bury ’em in bullshit” routine.

When I call AHS Secretary the “hardest and most thankless job,” here’s what I mean. It handles a whole lot of disparate programs aimed at helping our most unfortunate. It’s a huge agency by Vermont standards. As I noted earlier, it was hit hard by the Douglas Administration’s ill-fated Challenges for Change initiative, not to mention its misadventures with technology contracts (which were at least as bad as Shumlin’s). And it was ground zero for the health care reform effort and all the attendant troubles.

In addition, AHS’ challenges were compounded by Tropical Storm Irene, which left a whole lot of people in need of help — and which scattered the agency’s personnel to rented spaces in multiple communities because of the flooding in Waterbury. And they are still scattered today. Not to mention the flooding and forced closure of the Vermont State Hospital and the ensuing years of chaos in the mental health care system. 

Doug Racine handled all of that with grace and dignity. He kept his nose to the grindstone and almost never uttered a discouraging word in public. I’d think that was a good thing, but apparently he was too quiet for Shumlin’s taste:

According to Racine, the governor wanted a secretary more willing to engage with the news media and interest groups.

“If anything, it was perhaps not being out there enough,” Racine said.

I always thought Racine’s quiet style was perhaps exactly what Shumlin wanted from his longtime political rival. Either that, or Racine himself opted for the low-profile approach because he didn’t want to come across as bitter or as a potential political threat.

As I said in my previous post, I understand the need for a sacrificial lamb. And between the problems with health care and DCYF, I can see why Racine got the axe. But the way it was done? I think Racine deserved better.

Metapost: Old Hundredth

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Hello, and thanks for visiting The Vermont Political Observer. This is the 100th post in The VPO’s brief history. And the last two days have been two of the biggest days ever for pageviews and unique visitors. I appreciate that very much; the only inducement I can offer is the quality of my writing and insights, and it means a lot to me that so many people have found The VPO worthy of their time.

I am aware, from some of the comments received, that many readers are discovering my work for the first time, and are a bit puzzled by some aspects of it. So let me reintroduce myself and explain what’s going on around here.

I’ve worked in the media most of my life, primarily radio with some professional writing. I’ve won awards for my work in both fields, and I’ve published a book that’s entirely nonpolitical, Roads Less Traveled: Visionary New England Lives. Should be available at bookstores in VT and NH, and through my own website. (The radio work was almost entirely in other states.)

I started writing political commentary in late 2011 as a member of the Green Mountain Daily team. GMD is a group blog with a liberal/Democratic bent. I’m still on the team; my posts are under the pen name “jvwalt.” But after much consideration, I launched The VPO as an outlet of my own. At times, I was overwhelming GMD with my stuff, which I thought was unfair to the group nature of the enterprise.

My writing in both places is a mix of my journalistic experience and my political viewpoint, which is decidedly liberal but not dogmatically so. I often disappoint fellow liberals by taking a contrary position on an issue or openly criticizing Democrats and Progressives when I think they deserve it. And there’s a deliberately iconoclastic edge; if journalism is described as comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable, then my role is to afflict politicos who have an exaggerated sense of self-importance or self-worth.

Put another way, I’ve described my function like this: 60% commentator and analyst, 30% liberal firebrand, and 10% poo-flinging monkey. So if you see some brown stuff flying around here, don’t be surprised. One aspect of that 10% is my occasional habit of giving nicknames to people. One of these days, I should list their origins and meanings. (Example from GMD days: I dubbed conservative activist Tayt Brooks “International Man of Mystery” because when he was busy spending Lenore Broughton’s fortune at Vermonters First, he rebuffed virtually all inquiries from reporters.)

That said, I do welcome contrary views. The VPO’s Comments section is moderated, which means I must approve a comment before it’s posted; but that’s just to keep out the trolls. I have yet to reject a comment because of its content.

Regarding the picture at the top of the page: It is Warren G. Harding, our 29th President (but #1 in your hearts, or at least in the hearts of his numerous lady friends). The photo was taken late in his life, while he was President, and seems to hearken back to his pre-political days as a newspaper editor. It’s clearly staged; there’s no paper in the typewriter, and I bet he had secretaries slash lady friends to do his typing for him. But the image of a hard-bitten old-fashioned ink-stained wretch was appealing to me. (My Twitter avatar (@thevpo1) is a picture of George Reeves as Clark Kent, yet another fake reporter. Hmm.)

My hope is that you will continue to find The VPO worth your time. And if you think this site is worthwhile or a particular post deserves attention, I hope you’ll mention it to friends and colleagues. The only reward I get for this work is the knowledge that people appreciate my writing, and aren’t we all searching for validation of our existences?

Stay tuned. At least, I hope you will.