Category Archives: human services

Bureaucracy to the rescue

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It’s a story languishing in the shade of Governor Shumlin’s single-payer surrender, but on Thursday the Department for Children and Families released a third report on its effectiveness. This report pretty much echoed the first two, as VTDigger’s Laura Krantz reports:

The new report grouped its findings into five categories. The key items include better training, more social workers, more transparency and a stronger focus on opiate addiction’s impact on family dynamics.

DCF head Ken Schatz said the similar conclusions of the three reports was an affirmation that “We have a good road map now to go forward.”

Well, that’s nice, but is that sufficient justification for three separate reports plus a legislative review that’s still pending? How much money did we spend on all this investigation? Why didn’t we just commission one really good and thorough report instead of a bunch? Were DCF investigations on sale at Costco?

Beyond that, two things in Krantz’ account jumped out at me. First was the fact that the DCF news conference was “attended by only three reporters.”

That’s sad, and bad. DCF was one of the year’s highest-profile issues in state government. And, to be callous about it, the story was more clickbaity than most because it involved the deaths of two toddlers. Also, the presser was held not in Montpelier, but in Williston — a hop and a skip away for Burlington-based media outlets. Like the Free Press, which I’ve been told was not in attendance. (So far, its website does not provide any coverage of the event.)

If true, that’s pretty shameful, especially for a media outlet that has beaten the drum for greater transparency at DCF. They want transparency, but they’re not going to advance the cause by, oh, sending a reporter to a significant event. Nice.

The other thing that jumped out at me was this. The “road map” that Schatz referred to included a call for “more front-line workers [and] lower case loads.”

In response, Schatz and his boss, interim Human Services Secretary Harry Chen announced that DCF would hire ten more staffers.

Social workers, right? New troops to bring down the case loads, yes?

Er, no.

They include five management positions in the economic services division, two assistant attorneys general to help district offices with child protection cases and the family services division: an assistant district director in St. Albans, a assistant for the centralized call intake unit and a policy specialist.

By my count, that’s six middle management types, two prosecutors to help with cases that have gotten so far out of hand they’re headed for the courts, and two other functionaries, neither of which are on the front lines.

Bureaucracy to the rescue! Our troops are having trouble in the trenches, but never fear — we’re beefing up the staff at headquarters.

Maybe there are excellent reasons for these particular hires, but at a time when AHS is under heavy pressure to make deep cuts, it kinda leaves me scratching my head a little.

Speaking of tight budgets, you might wonder where they’re getting the money for these positions. The not entirely convincing answer is “through anticipated savings from the state’s Reach Up program, which helps poor families.”

Hmm. At the presser, DCF officials released some downright scary numbers on how their case loads have increased over the past year. And we’ve all been told over and over again that the sluggish economic recovery, with almost all its bounty going to the top one percent, is putting the squeeze on working Vermonters. But they’re confident they can save money on Reach Up?

They’re certainly more knowledgeable than me, but I have trouble seeing it.

Now that I have their attention

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Funny thing happened Thursday, unprecedented in my three-plus years of political blogging.

My sources. Not exactly as illustrated.

My sources. Not exactly as illustrated.

I got calls from not one, not two, but three different top Democrats seeking to gently upbraid me for stuff I’d written this week, and offer some guidance toward alternative views. Their own views, of course.

Which is nice for the ego. They read, and they care.

Also, their messages were valuable. They did offer some good information. But I’m not completely convinced.

The callers offered some pushback on the subject of newsdumps. They insisted that what appear to be newsdumps — the offloading of bad news when people are least likely to see it — were not newsdumps at all, but simply cases of the calendar conspiring against them.

There was a second message: the upcoming round of budget rescissions do not single out Human Services. They don’t deny that AHS is going to feel the pain, but the problem, as they explain it, is that vast areas of the budget are off-limits for rescissions, which makes AHS the only real target of substantial size.

They made some good points. The problem is this: the Shumlin administration has a well-earned reputation for (1) deviousness, (2) political gamesmanship, (3) newsdumps, and (4) targeting Human Services. Their own track record colors my views of recent events. In other words, if I was overly cynical, I put much of the blame on their doorstep.

I’m sure those inside the administration don’t see it that way. For the most part, they honestly believe they’re trying their best to move the state forward through tough times. But the 2014 election should have been a wake-up call: their view of things is often at odds with others’ views. Say, the voters’ views.

Let’s take their points, shall we?

First, on Human Services having to make almost two-thirds of the cuts in the upcoming rescissions. It’s true, but the reason is that AHS takes the lion’s share of general fund money. And only general-fund programs are open to rescission. Schools and transportation don’t get much money from the general fund, for instance.

According to outgoing Administration Secretary Jeb Spaulding, appearing on VPR’s Vermont Edition Friday, AHS accounts for 40% of the total budget — but 75% of General Fund spending.

Which sounds reasonable to me. But…

1. This wouldn’t be the first time the administration targeted AHS. The most notorious case is Shumlin’s ill-fated effort to slash the Earned Income Tax Credit, one of our best bulwarks against the rising tide of income inequality.

2. The rescissions list was released on the Thursday before Thanksgiving. This may or may not have been a newsdump (see below), but it gave little or no opportunity for journalists and bloggers to seek clarification of the raw numbers. When I saw the raw numbers, they looked really, really bad for AHS.

And now, on to newsdumps. I had identified three: the rescissions release, the deadline for submitting rescissions, and the Governor’s release of his single-payer financing plan at the end of this month.

The rescissions release on Thanksgiving Eve wasn’t a newsdump, my callers insist. They had put together the list and informed agency officials earlier that week. Many agencies wanted to tackle the budget-cutting immediately — over the holiday weekend. That meant releasing the list on Wednesday, so the process could begin.

The deadline, Friday Dec. 5, they say, wasn’t a newsdump because they hadn’t planned to release anything on Friday. It was an internal deadline only.

I can accept that. But once again, history informed my cynicism. When I see something bad happening on a Friday or a holiday eve, my Weaselometer begins to howl.

Finally, the long-awaited and catastrophically overdue reveal of the single-payer funding plan (which VTDigger’s Morgan True appears to have uncovered the substance of already) on either Monday December 29 or Tuesday December 30. Many voters will be out of town or otherwise occupied during that time; media outlets will have bare-bones staffing. So of course it looked like a newsdump. 

Not so, insist my callers. They blame the calendar, mostly. You see, the 29th and 30th are on Monday and Tuesday. They couldn’t release it on Friday the 26th, and New Year’s Eve would be universally viewed as a newsdump.

The week before is problematic as well. The 24th, 25th, and 26th are out. Monday the 22nd or Tuesday the 23rd would hardly be any better than the 29th or 30th. And the week before that is too early; the plan may not be completely done by then.

Okay, spin it ahead. New Year’s Day is a Thursday; Jan. 2 is not only the day after a holiday, it’s a Friday, so that’s no good.

Which brings us to Monday the 5th — only two days before the Legislature convenes. That week is likely to be a circus, what with Scott Milne’s Dance of the Seven Veils, various ceremonial activities, and other hard news. (Such as the RAND Corp. report on marijuana legalization.)

The fear, so I’m told, is that a single-payer unveil on Jan. 5 could get lost in a blizzard of news. It would also give lawmakers less time to look it over. And, I’m told, lawmakers wanted to get their hands on it as quickly as possible. Hence, a pre-New Year’s release.

Again, it all makes sense. And again, given the administration’s iffy history, you can understand why an outsider would look at a late-December release and scream “Newsdump!”

This all illustrates how much the administration will have to do, to repair its tattered and battered public image. Much of those batterings were self-inflicted, as the administration acted out of unwarranted hubris and, sometimes, arrogance.

They may not believe they acted badly in the past. But a lot of Vermonters, including a whole lot of liberals, are convinced that they did. That’s why Shumlin’s pre-election approval numbers were so dismal, and why his very expensive campaign hardly moved the numbers at all.

And that’s why I’ve said the Governor should avoid newsdumps or anything that looks like a newsdump, or anything that looks like a political maneuver or a transparently bogus explanation. He’d be better served by standing up in broad daylight and owning the bad news, instead of reinforcing his reputation.

Of course, he’d be far better off by having an administration that didn’t produce so much bad news. But that’s another matter.

Callers, thanks for reading theVPO and taking it seriously. And thanks for calling.

With all due respect to Hal Cohen…

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So yesterday Governor Shumlin filled two vacancies in his cabinet. Justin Johnston was announced, in a brief flurry of bad Aussie jokes, as Jeb Spaulding’s replacement in the role of Shumlin’s Rasputin Secretary of Administration.

And Hal Cohen will become Human Services Secretary.

Justin Johnson, Gov. Shumlin, and -- barely visible in back - -Hal Cohen.

Justin Johnson, Gov. Shumlin, and — barely visible in back — Hal Cohen.

Now, I’m sure Hal Cohen is a nice guy and he’s clearly dedicated to the field of social services, having served as head of Capstone Community Action for 18 years. You don’t keep that job for that long unless you’re committed to the mission.

But is he really the best guy for the biggest agency in state government? And even worse, an agency facing an immediate mandate to cut its current-year budget by ten million bucks?

I know virtually nothing about Hal Cohen. But here are a few numbers that portray his challenge in very stark terms.

AHS: 3,500 staff. Annual budget, from general fund: nearly $600,000,000.

Capstone: 180 staff. Annual budget, $16,000,000.

In short, Hal Cohen is making a quantum leap as a manager. At a time when he will face a massive management challenge from Day One.

Cohen does bring some positive qualities to the job. He is deeply involved in delivering services to those in need, which is a very good thing. He has managed a nonprofit social services agency for a long time, and that’s a very good thing.

But he has never managed an organization anywhere near the size and complexity of AHS. When you manage a staff of 180, you do a lot of hands-on, day-to-day management. You have a personal relationship with a sizeable chunk of your employees, and you probably know them all by name.

When you manage a staff of 3,500, you’re delegating almost all of the work. You’re managing the managers — or, more likely, managing the managers’ managers. And if you spend time building personal relationships with your staff, you’re probably not doing your job.

That’s the basic challenge in making this quantum leap.

And then you add the fact that, between this year’s budget and the next, he may well be asked to make spending cuts equivalent to the entire annual budget of Capstone.  

I’m sure that if Shumlin had pulled someone out of the business world, or out of some other state agency, we’d all be howling about hiring a bean-counter who cares more about the bottom line than helping people. (For example: Johnston saying that the primary goal of the budget is “affordability.” Meaning no new taxes.) But I have to wonder if Cohen is the right person for this job at this time. And I also have to wonder, with all due respect to Hal Cohen, how many other people might have said “no” to the idea of becoming the head of an overstretched agency facing major budget cuts. It’s hard to imagine that Cohen was the first name on the list.

I hope, for the sake of Vermont’s poor, that my misgivings are proven to be groundless.

A moment of sanity in the corner office

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Apparently the Governor realized it wasn’t a good idea to begin a new biennium with an inter-branch standoff over budget cuts.

The Shumlin administration has decided not to unilaterally cut $6.7 million from the current fiscal year’s budget. The rescissions instead will be included in the executive branch’s budget adjustment proposal to the Legislature in January.

Can we hear a brief rendition of Fanfare For A Single Kazoo?

[Administration Secretary Jeb] Spaulding said the administration agreed to wait on rescissions, but will “slow down” spending in the meantime.

“(G)etting into a fight with the Legislature on this would be counterproductive,” he said in an email.

In the words of some great philosopher somewhere, “Well, DUHHHHH.”

The Administration, for those just joining us, had claimed the authority to cut current-year spending by up to one percent without legislative approval. And, as reported in this space (and, regrettably, nowhere else), the outlined cuts were very heavy on Human Services. Which probably would have caused even more conflict with the Legislature, as it has done on previous occasions when the Administration sought to balance the budget on the backs of the working poor.

Lawmakers weren’t convinced by the Administration’s legal rationale for unilateral action, even though Attorney General Bill Sorrell rubber-stamped it. Legislative Council had a different view:

In a draft memo drafted Nov. 24, Legislative Council attorney Rebecca Wasserman said the rescissions already approved by the Joint Fiscal Committee in August preclude the administration from making unilateral cuts now.

I hate to say it, but I’ll take Wasserman’s word over Sorrell’s. Finance Commissioner Jim Reardon somehow managed to make a big concession sound like a veiled threat:

“We do believe we have the authority based on the consultation with the AG’s office,” Reardon said. “But for the sake of working with the Legislature, we decided we will propose all of the budget adjustments in January.”

“For the sake of working with the Legislature,” meaning, “We let ’em have this one, so they’d better play ball come January.”

Perhaps I read too much into this. And perhaps, in a more cooperative atmosphere, the massive Human Services cuts will be mitigated. We can but hope.

About those rescissions, pt. 2: The poor will always be with you

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It seems as though the Shumlin Administration’s cowardly pre-Thanksgiving newsdump was successful: our political media dutifully reported the topline — $17 million in cuts, including $6.7 million to be implemented without legislative approval.

But nobody, at least not yet, has reported any of the details. And there are some noteworthy details. Some entire agencies seem to be getting off scot-free, while others are taking it in the shorts.

Well, one in particular. And if you guessed “Agency of Human Services,” you’d be a cynical observer of Vermont politics.

And you’d be correct.

Human Services is expected to provide almost two-thirds of the total rescissions — more than $10 million.

It must be noted that Human Services is the single biggest agency, so it could be expected to take a hit. But it’s not anywhere near that big. This seems to be a rerun of past Administration efforts to cut human-services spending; I’m reminded in particular of its ill-fated effort to slash the Earned Income Tax Credit. This time, instead of calling for specific (and politically unpopular) cuts, the Administration is dumping the mess into AHS Interim Secretary Harry Chen’s lap.

Gee. Supposedly Shumlin thinks Chen is doing a bang-up job, and would love to have him stay in the post. This is a damn funny way of showing his appreciation.

Most other state agencies come in for some cuts, but nothing close to AHS scale. And there are a couple of agencies that seem to have avoided the budget ax altogether.

Number-one on that list is the Agency of Transportation. It’s one of the bigger state agencies, and it won’t be getting any smaller; it’s being held harmless.

At the same time, the Governor’s hit list gets awfully picayune in spots. The Vermont Humanities Council is being docked $9,000. The Lieutenant Governor’s office is getting nicked by $2,900. And the Vermont Symphony Orchestra is in line to lose $2,000.

I find it hard to believe that Human Services can slash $10 million but Transportation can’t spare a dime. I also find it hard to believe that a process so fine-grained that it could find two grand in savings from classical music couldn’t identify any cuts at all in concrete and asphalt.

My own budgetary chops are pretty limited, so I can’t assess each and every cut. These are a few highlights, obvious even to the untrained eye. It is to be hoped that someone in the media is taking a closer look at the rescission list. There’s definitely some funny stuff going on.

One final note. It’s been widely reported that there’s a potential conflict between Administration and Legislature over the former’s claim that it can cut $6.7 million without lawmakers’ approval. What hasn’t been reported is that the Administration wants the other cuts — the ones requiring legislative approval — to go into effect before the new session begins.

This seems like a pretty devious way to undermine the legislature’s budget-writing authority. It’s yet another potential flashpoint between the two branches of government. And yet another sign that the Governor has already stopped his post-election “listening and learning.” He’s back to taking pre-emptive action and trying to box the legislature into a corner.

 

Two ships that pass in the night

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Today, via Neal Goswami of the Mitchell Family Organ:

A report released Wednesday based on an internal review of the Department for Children and Families does not recommend restructuring the agency, but does seek immediate boosts to staffing, additional staff training and better collaboration between the department and its partners.

Yesterday, via them damn commies at the Public Assets Institute:

A month after announcing a 2 percent cut to the current year’s budget, the Shumlin Administration is signaling its intention to make additional cuts of as much as 5 percent and possibly more next year (fiscal 2016).

Well, that looks like a conundrum in the making.

Human Services Secretary Harry Chen, the presumably more loyal and/or pliable replacement for the cashiered Doug Racine, now has a report that says his agency needs more resources. Which probably induces a rueful chuckle from Mr. Racine.

And now this report will duke it out with the Administration’s budget instructions reportedly given to its top managers:

The administration laid out two scenarios for fiscal 2016:

— Level funding—the same amount appropriated for this fiscal year after the cuts adopted in August.

— Five percent cut from fiscal 2015 levels—again after the August cuts.

As PAI notes, the best-case scenario — level funding — would mean cutbacks, since there are built-in cost increases: “cost of living increases for state employees, caseload increases, contractual increases, loss of federal funding, inflation, and other new demands…”

The AHS/DCF review was initiated by then-Secretary Racine. Will Dr. Chen back up the report’s conclusions? Or will he bend to the apparent belt-tightening mandate from above? According to the PAI report, he’s got about two weeks to turn in his budget recommendations.

Mr. Empty Suit steps to the mic

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“I’ve got plenty of great ideas.”

So said Republican Scott Milne during Saturday’s gubernatorial debate. His comment came after Governor Shumlin repeatedly slammed his failure to give “us one single plan” on a variety of issues.

And then Milne, predictably, failed to name any ideas.

Well, he did have one: a two-year cap on property taxes, which would put public school into a dire budget situation because many of their costs will continue to rise. It’d force spending cuts from the top down, the very opposite of his claim to be in favor of local decision-making. But hey, at least it was an idea.

Otherwise, nothing much. At another point he said “I’ve got two ideas.” The first was that the Governor had spent too much time out of state. Which is not an idea; it’s an attack.. The second was the property tax cap.

Sigh.

As I said in an earlier comment, Milne managed to exceed the minimal standard of competence, e.g. he didn’t poop his pants. Shows you how dismal his campaign has been, that keeping his shorts clean seems like an accomplishment.

As for actually putting forward an inspiring message, nope. Not at all. He hammered repeatedly on the same old attack lines he’s used since launching his campaign: Shumlin is “the most progressive, radical Governor” who insists on pursing single-payer health care. Milne’s idea for health care reform?

“I will be working very hard with people to get something figured out.”

That is, word for word, what Scott Milne actually said.

On trying to keep young people in Vermont, his only contribution was to assert that the Shumlin Administration “has not been business friendly,” and Vermont needs “a new tone” in its dealings with business. F-sharp, perhaps?

When asked about problems at the Agency for Human Services, he pivoted back to his attack on the troubled rollout of Vermont Health Connect, and cited it as an example of poor management. When he actually addressed AHS, he said we need an agency that “puts the family first.” How imaginative.

When asked about cutting state spending, he gave a halfhearted shoutout to the discredited Challenges for Change initiative, then said “I’m not into cutting,” and then said property taxes are too high.

Confused?

In his closing statement, Milne referenced his late mother Marion’s run for State House in 1994 when, as Milne tells it, a local politico gave her no chance to win. But she ran anyway and won. And so can Scott Milne, if people only believe. And he closed with a bombshell: “Vermont needs a different path. I believe it needs a more moderate path.”

Having, once again, failed to give any real hint of his preferred path for Vermont. It’s been defined almost entirely in the negative: He wouldn’t repeat the alleged mistakes of Governor Shumlin.

And, as I reported earlier, he’s postponed a meeting with VTDigger’s editorial board because his platform isn’t ready yet.

Scott MIlne’s campaign is very close to flat broke. Its campaign manager just resigned. The best you can say about Milne’s debate performance is that he didn’t flame out. But he did nothing to advance his campaign, to provide a substantive option to Shumlin. Or to Dan Feliciano, for that matter.

He did okay by his standards, but that’s not nearly good enough.

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. 

Dave Yacovone’s astoundingly well-timed job opportunity

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In a hastily-scheduled news conference, on the second working day after Governor Shumlin’s return from vacation, Dave Yacovone announced today he is resigning as head of the Department for Children and Families. He’s taking, as Paul “The Huntsman” Heintz puts it, “an undisclosed job outside state government.” He and the Governor both insisted Yacovone’s departure was “unexpected and entirely voluntary.” 

So why is my bullshit detector pinging nonstop? 

Perhaps because the timing is awfully convenient for an Admininstration wishing to put a controversy behind it. 

I have absolutely no inside information on this, but here’s what it looks like to me. DCF’s well-publicized troubles led to the forced ouster of Human Services Secretary Doug Racine on August 11. Three weeks later, Yacovone suddenly finds a new job. Which he won’t disclose. And which requires his immediate resignation. 

That last item is a big one. Usually, top administrative jobs are filled in the course of months, not days or weeks. Yacovone had to have been looking around for a while now. And transitions are built in to the timing, so an executive has time to ease out of the old job. Not Yacovone; he’s out the door right now. 

Doug Racine was fired, not for job performance, but for “style,” for failing to be a cheerleader for the Administration’s policies. Yacovone was a vocal defender of the agency’s work, so when it came time for him to go, he was allowed to pull the ripcord himself. 

Perhaps a nice job opening was even arranged on his behalf. 

The unspecified job is in Lamoille County, and involves human services in some form. Professionally, this has to be a significant step downward. There may be other factors in Yacovone’s case; he lives in Morrisville and he might want a job closer to home. He’s old enough that he might be looking to wind down rather than climb the ladder. 

This is all speculation. What isn’t is the timing: three weeks after Racine’s departure, and a few days before Shumlin formally begins his re-election bid. Time to shove a skeleton back in the closet. 

Personally, I don’t believe that DCF’s troubles warranted anyone’s departure, voluntary or otherwise. The Department has been chronically underfunded and understaffed, and the most capable administrator in the world can’t fully compensate for that. But political considerations are apparently more pressing at DCF than at Vermont Health Connect, whose problems, IMHO, are more serious and politically damaging. I’ll be interested to see if there are any conveniently-timed, face-saving departures at VHC in the near future.