Category Archives: Scott Milne

The biggest winner of the Vermont election

1 Reply

You can probably guess. It’s Lt. Gov. Phil Scott.

Not just because he cruised to an easy victory over Dean Corren. Not just because he leaves the campaign with almost $100K in cash on hand for whatever he wants to do next.

Not just because the decks are clear for him to be a very dangerous candidate for Governor in 2016.

No, on top of all that, there’s this: the results of the election ought to cement his control of the Vermont Republican Party. The true believers ought to be marginalized by the impressive success of Scott Milne as a moderate Republican candidate and the dismal failure of their pet project, Dan Feliciano.

Hey, remember when two of the VTGOP’s top four officers, Brady Toensing and Mark Snelling, openly supported Feliciano in the Republican primary? Brady Toensing and Mark Snelling were the two holdovers from the Jack Lindley era who retained their offices last fall in a patched-together compromise with the Phil Scott people.* At the very least, their views ought to take a back seat. At the very most, Scott and party chair “Super Dave” Sunderland ought to feel free to replace them with more like-minded people.

*Correction: I mischaracterized the VTGOP’s leadership race last fall. Toensing was not a holdover from the previous admin; originally, according to Paul Heintz, the conservatives wanted Toensing as chair and David Sunderland as vice chair, while the Phil Scott camp wanted them switched. In the end, the party unanimously went with Scott’s pairing. 

And, lest we forget, prominent conservatives Wendy Wilton and John McClaughry also jumped into the Feliciano lifeboat, only to see the S.S. Milne sail on blissfully without them.

And if there’s any justice, this ought to be the death knell for Darcie “Hack” Johnston as a serious political voice. She piloted Feliciano’s campaign straight into the Randy Brock Memorial Iceberg. As far as I can tell, she represents nobody but herself. Her true-believer approach to politics is a proven loser, a dead end for the VTGOP. She might keep on being quoted in the media because she’s an easy get, but as a political strategist? Nope.

For all his faults as a campaigner, Scott Milne succeeded where nobody has since Jim Douglas: he convinced a lot of centrists, independents, and even Democrats to abandon their standard bearer. Part of that is circumstance; a lot of it is a loss of faith in Governor Shumlin; but it also had to do with a Republican candidate who was not an ideologue, who even entertained the notion that some Democratic ideas might be acceptable.

Future Republican candidates would do well to learn the art of public speaking better than Milne, but they would also do well to follow the moderate Republican playbook.

And that’s the biggest win of all for Our Lieutenant Governor.

So what happened with the polls?

1 Reply

Ah, the opinion polls, with their oft-trumpeted 4% margins of error.

Well, they missed the Governor’s race by a lot more than that, didn’t they?

The consensus, such as it was, gave Governor Shumlin a 12-point edge. Right now, the Associated Press has him at 46.4% and Scott Milne at 45.4%. Feel free to check my math, but I think that’s a margin of one percent. 

The polls were off by almost 11 percentage points.

The difference? Virtually every undecided voter went for Scott Milne. Which is unheard-of; usually, the undecideds don’t all go stampeding in one direction.

Plus, the Associated Press is reporting that Vermont had a record low turnout. The Democratic GOTV machine just couldn’t overcome the broad disaffection with the current administration, and the widespread belief that this election wasn’t close, which made it easier to stay home.

So, Milne got a larger chunk of a smaller electorate.

Let’s take the most recent Castleton Polling Inistute survey, reported on Oct.12.

gubernatorial-race

From Oct. 12 to last night, what happened? Governor Shumlin lost a sliver of his support while convincing no undecideds. Scott Milne gained a whopping ten percent by nabbing all the undecideds and poaching nearly two-thirds of Dan Feliciano’s supporters.

What does that say? It says that Governor Shumlin lost the middle, in spite of all his triangulating. And he lost ALL of the middle. And, I suspect, a fair bit of support on the left, who either sat out the Governor’s race or made a protest vote for Milne or a write-in. (Doug Racine, anyone?)

Or just stayed home, not feeling motivated to re-elect Shumlin and feeling (falsely) secure in the knowledge that their absence wouldn’t make much difference in what was thought to be a Democratic cakewalk.

Money can’t buy me love

Leave a reply
"I'm not dead yet!" said a soft, muffled voice.

“I’m not dead yet!” said a soft, muffled voice.

The race for Governor of Vermont had all the makings of “Bambi Vs. Godzilla II: The Re-Flattening.” Scott MIlne was a badly underfunded candidate who ran a goofy, error-filled campaign, while Peter Shumlin was the consummate political pro with a huge bankroll and a far stronger party apparatus.

And yet, here we are in the early morning hours of Nov. 5, and the race is technically too close to call. Shumlin’s almost certain to finish first, but with an embarrassingly small margin. This election is a crippling blow to his dream of single-payer health care, and to whatever his hopes were for the rest of his political career. No longer is he the guy who outsmarted a tough Democratic field and Brian Dubie in 2010, romped to re-election two years later, and built a fundraising operation the likes of which had never been seen in Vermont; he is now, and forever will be, the guy who spent nine hundred thousand bucks and almost lost to Scott Freakin’ Milne, who now looks like 2014’s answer to Fred Tuttle. Which would put Shumlin in the role of Jack McMullen, ugh.

The lessons of that Beatles lyric will also have to be learned at Democratic Party headquarters, where much money was spent and a lot of smart people were paid to run a campaign machine capable of overcoming all the obstacles in their path. Myself, I put a lot of stock in that operation, and I was wrong. The Dems have some serious soul-searching to do. How could they have such a strong grassroots organization, and yet be so out of touch with the grass roots?

In terms of issues, my diagnosis is that the Democrats (and the Progressives) misread the electorate, failing to address the issue of the year — property taxes. There was a fatal degree of hubris in the Shumlin Administration’s continually trotting out fresh issues, all of which were worthy of attention — but which diverted the government away from the lunchpail concerns of real folks.

You know, all those people who get to vote.

Property taxes were #1 on that list. And the Democratic majority was seen as unwilling or unable to tackle the issue.

Aside from property taxes, the second biggest problem (in my humble and sometimes dead wrong opinion) is the feeble economic recovery, featuring endless stagnation for the working and middle classes. This is not Governor Shumlin’s fault; it’s the way America’s economy is going. But he gets credit when times are good, and takes the blame when they’re not. Times are still tough for a lot of Vermont voters. I’m not sold that Vermonters favor the Republican prescription of cutting taxes and regulation, but they do have to see some tangible benefits from a Democratic administration.

Finally, if 2012 showcased Peter Shumlin’s good side — the solid helmsman who kept things running after Tropical Storm Irene and steered Vermont on his chosen course — then 2014 showed him at his worst: the all-too-polished politico who says whatever he thinks people want to hear, who can’t be trusted, who’s not nearly as good at day-to-day operation as he is at crisis management, and who is, frankly, seen as arrogant and unwilling to listen to those who disagree with him.

Scott Milne was, literally and figuratively, the anti-Shumlin. He got a lot of votes merely because he was Not Peter Shumlin. But beyond that, his extreme lack of polish — which seemed to be a fatal flaw — actually made him seem authentic, especially in contrast to Shumlin, the political animal. That’s why I compare him to Fred Tuttle.

But the avatar of out-of-touch liberalism was Dean Corren, the spectacularly failed Prog/Dem candidate for Lieutenant Governor. He qualified for public financing, which gave him enough money to run a competitive race. And he failed to come anywhere close to Cass Gekas’ late-starting, underfunded campaign in 2012. Corren had good ideas, but again, they were untethered to the everyday concerns of voters. It was the worst possible year for a rather prickly Progressive policy wonk with blue-sky ideas on energy and health care. And Phil Scott was his worst possible opponent.

I’m sure somebody will accuse me of lipsticking the pig here, but this could turn out to be a very good thing for the Democrats. It ought to kick the complacency out of them, and the hubris out of the governor’s office. They’ll have to take a serious look at how it all went wrong and try to fix it. If they do, they can reform and refocus themselves without the usual necessary step of actually losing power.

On the other hand, we could be in for a period of infighting, mutual recrimination, and descent into actual defeat in two years’ time. One thing’s for sure: a lot of potentially good Republican candidates sat this one out because they thought there was no chance.

They won’t make that mistake again.

Yep, I was wrong.

2 Replies

dunce-cap-599x320Yesterday’s elections turned out to be a lot more favorable for Vermont Republicans — or, to put it more accurately, unfavorable for Vermont Democrats — than I thought.

My fearless, not to mention feckless, predictions were:

— Governor Shumlin would easily clear the 50% barrier.

WRONG! As of early Wednesday morning, he still has a mathematical chance of losing to Scott Milne, and there’s no way he’ll get 50%.

— Dean Corren would come closer to unseating Lt. Gov. Phil Scott than Cass Gekas did two years ago, finishing in the mid-40s.

WRONG! Scott cruised, with better than 62% of the vote. Corren was depantsed AND wedgied, finishing with a mere 36%.

— Republicans would have to be satisfied with a bare minimum of legislative gains.

WRONG! They took two Senate seats and at least seven in the House. A couple of races are still hanging, and they might even reach Phil Scott’s seemingly rose-colored projection of double-digit gains.

I wasn’t completely shut out. The Republicans failed to mount serious challenges in the Washington and Orange County senate contests, and Dan Feliciano stumbled to a very poor finish. He couldn’t even gain automatic ballot status for the Libertarian Party.

But those are mere bagatelles. On the big races, I was as thoroughly depantsed as Dean Corren.

And now I learn from my mistakes, or try to. Explanations in my next post. But first, where’s that crow pie? I’ve got a hankering’ for some crow pie!

Drivin’ down the highway, throwin’ money out the windows

Leave a reply

That would appear to be Governor Shumlin’s campaign strategy in the final two weeks of the campaign. Faced with less-than-daunting opposition from the likes of Mr. Blandy and Mr. Fringey, not to mention Ms. Hempy, Hat Lady and The Beard, the Governor has been spending money like he’s running against a Koch brother.

The final pre-election campaign finance deadline was today, and Shumlin’s money machine was in overdrive, raising another $179,000* since mid-October and spending an incredible $342,000, more than half of it on TV advertising.

*Including $96,000 in cash, and $83,000 in “in-kind” donations. The latter were services performed by the state Democratic Party: robocalls and mailers. I guess his campaign was too strapped for cash to foot the bills himself, sheesh. 

That’s $342,000 spent in two and a half weeks. 

That brings his total spending on the campaign to $890,000, which is almost three times as much as he spent two years ago to defeat Randy Brock. Unless he’s really scared of Scott Milne, I’d say he’s going all out to boost his vote total. A finish under 50% would be embarrassing and make a serious dent in his political clout for his third term; anything less than 53% or so would be a significant deflation of his 2012 total, and weaken him going into the fight for single-payer health care.

Scott Milne, meanwhile, did well by his low standards, but mainly because he injected a bunch of his own money into his own campaign. He took in $91,000 since Oct. 15, but that includes a $50,000 loan to his campaign and $25K in “in-kind” contributions; the lion’s share of that was in the form of mass mailings done by the Vermont Republican State Committee on Milne’s behalf.

For the entire campaign, he’s raised $238,000. But that includes almost $90,000 from himself and his family. Plus another $20K or so from the famous Boieses.

He spent $98,000 since Oct. 15, mainly on TV ads, bringing his total spending for the campaign to $211,000. Which would be a nice total if he were running for Lieutenant Governor, but it’s simply not enough to be competitive, especially against Governor Moneybags.

Libertarian Dan Feliciano, meanwhile, limped to the finish line with a few thousand bucks in outside donations plus another $10,000 in self-funding. Most of his recent spending was on airing his awful TV ad. But again, Feliciano showed no sign of attracting broad support as expressed in campaign donations. He got damn little, in fact. In the marketplace of ideas, nobody was buying Dan the Libertarian Man.

In the race for Lieutenant Governor, incumbent Phil Scott eased back the pace. He raised less than $10,000 and spent about $10,000 since the last report. For the entire campaign, he’s raised $289,000 and spent $233,000.

The big news there is that Scott will head into the next campaign with a good-sized warchest by the standards of anyone other than Peter Shumlin, Pat Leahy, Peter Welch, and Bernie Sanders. He reports cash-on-hand totaling $98,000, which is a nice head start on 2016.

His opponent Dean Corren, as reported in this space, went on a spending binge in the last two weeks. He spent $92,000 since Oct. 15, including an intensive (by Lt. Gov. standards) TV ad campaign. And he planned out his expenditures intelligently; his campaign to date has spent $188,000, leaving only $12,000 left of his (mainly publicly financed) $200,000 kitty.

And now, ’tis the night before Election, and all through the state, not a candidate was stirring. Not even… hmm… does anybody’s name rhyme with “state”?

A hundred thousand interrupted dinners

Leave a reply

Scott Milne is ready to unleash his master stroke — the Hail Mary pass that will seal his epic come-from-behind, David-beats-Goliath victory on November 4.

It’s a Tele-Town Hall Meeting on the evening of November 3.

Our Man Mahatma hosted one of these events just before the August primary. And hey, it obviously worked: he beat Dan Feliciano and Emily Peyton. So why not try it again?

A Tele-Town Hall, for those just joining us, is a kinda-sorta town hall meeting by phone. This one will feature an intro by Lt. Gov. Phil Scott, which I believe is his first official appearance on Milne’s behalf. Awfully nice of him to finally make time for his less well-known, less popular ticket-mate. Then, MIlne will make a few remarks. And finally, he will answer questions submitted by listeners and filtered through campaign staffers and the event’s moderators — his two children, Elise and Keith Milne.

Somehow I doubt that any inconvenient or embarrassing questions will get through.

But the most notable aspect of this grand event will happen before the 7:00 pm launch. Robo-calls will go out to “the homes of over 100,000 registered voters inviting them to stay on the line as the event begins.”

Peachy keen. A hundred thousand Vermonters will get cold-called at, what, 6:50, and told to hold on the line for an hour of one-sided, sanitized political chatter.

Better ger dinner ready early, Mom and Dad, so you and the kids can gather ’round the phone for this historic moment in democracy.

Seriously, how many people are going to get an unexpected call during the dinner hour and voluntarily stick around for more than an hour?

Well, to look at it the other way, if Milne gets one-half of one percent to stick around, he’ll have an audience of 500. Which is probably more than he’s drawn to any campaign event before now.

Besides, as Milne points out, “Vermonters deserve transparent leaders willing to listen to their concerns…”

Yes, wiling to listen to carefully selected concerns filtered through Milne’s campaign apparatus.

There’s a special phone number, by the way, for members of the media who want to listen in. They can’t ask questions, mind you; Milne isn’t that transparent. But he’s happy to provide us with a toll-free number in exchange for whatever free publicity he can muster on the last night of the election.

Scott Milne borrowed a bucket, and he’s going to clean up Lake Champlain

Leave a reply

The ever-constipated Campaign of Ideas has pooped out another rock-hard nugget… this time, by way of emailed press release without any live contact with reporters.

And no wonder. Even Mahatma has to realize this one’s a clunker.

It’s a two-part plan to clean up Lake Champlain.

I repeat: “two-part.”

And part one is:

Catalyze the cleanup of Lake Champlain without raising new revenue.

Yes, part one is nothing more than a restatement of the overall idea.

Step two is even worse: he wants to raid an existing fund to pay for a tiny fraction of cleanup costs:

Amend the “Vermont Housing and Conservation Trust Fund Act” to allocate the part of the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board’s funds used for conservation to cleaning up Lake Champlain.

(Bold type is Milne’s.)

I've got just the idea for you! Low mileage, runs good, new battery & tires. Don't mind the rust.

I’ve got just the plan for you! Low mileage, runs good, new battery & tires. Don’t mind the rust.

The appendix to part two is renaming VHCB as the “Vermont Housing and Lake Champlain Cleanup Trust.”

And that’s it. That’s his entire Lake Champlain cleanup “plan.”

Okay, a couple of small problems right off the bat.

— This would strip VHCB of its ability to do any other conservation work: conserving farmland through the purchase of development rights; helping preserve natural areas, historic properties, wildlife habitat; purchasing land for new parks and wildlife areas; and helping provide public access to conserved land.

— It would provide, by Milne’s own estimate, a measly $7.4 million per year for a cleanup that’s estimated to cost $150 million. In the absence of a comprehensive plan, that money won’t have much impact.

Milne isn’t bothered by robbing VHCB to pay for the lake; indeed, he says there’s no need for VHCB to do any conservation:

Milne said more than half of Vermont’s land is either owned by the state or federal government, or under some sort of easement that prohibits development today.

“I say half of our state being set aside is good enough for the next five years,” according to Milne. “Let’s have this board and these dollars go towards affordable housing and cleaning up the Lake.

Hmm. He thinks there’s more than enough conserved land in Vermont. And this is the same guy who wants to suburbanize a chunk of land off I-89 in Hartford. And who has said he’d like Vermont to take a more New Hampshire-style approach to conservation and development.

Which makes me suspect that Milne wouldn’t like to see any new regulations on farmland or developed areas or wastewater treatment.

Oh, I forgot another small problem with the plan: There’s no way in Hell the feds would buy it. And we’re under pressure from the EPA to do some real substantive stuff. This ain’t it.

I think I see why he slipped this one over the transom and avoided interacting with the media. Even by Milne’s standards, this idea is a real clunker.

(Note: As of this writing, Milne hadn’t posted the plan on his website. I’m sure he’ll think of it sometime.)

 

Dear Mr. Feliciano: You are cordially invited to bug the hell out.

Leave a reply

Nice little scoop hauled in by Paul Heintz in his “Fair Game” column this week. No, not the lead story about the IBM reverse-sale to GlobalFoundries; but the second item, about a Sooper Secret Meeting (that managed to stay secret for less than a week) at which Dan the Libertarian Man was asked by State Sen. Joe Benning to exit the race and endorse Republican Scott Milne.

According to Heintz, “participants pledged to keep the confab confidential,” which ha ha ha. I think we can assume that Benning didn’t send Paul a press release; the more likely scenario is that somebody else in the meeting, or who knew about the meeting, leaked a few details to Heintz, who then gave Benning a call.

At which point, Benning could have issued a denial. But, in this scenario, he apparently thought to himself “What the heck,” and acknowledged the whole “confidential” thing:

The Fixer. )Image pilfered from VTDigger.)

The Fixer. (Image pilfered from VTDigger.)

“I went through the pros and cons of [Feliciano’s] being in the race,” Benning recalled. “I suggested to him that the poll numbers were not in his favor and that if he stayed in the race, the only thing for sure that would happen is Peter Shumlin would walk back in without any kind of contest.”

… “I said that even if he left the race at this stage, it’s still an uphill battle for Scott Milne,” Benning continued. “But in the event that he had any interest in a future in Republican politics, I would imagine folks on our side of the aisle would be a lot happier if there was no split in the ticket in this race.”

Well, if he had dropped out, he’d have had no choice but to pursue “a future in Republican politics,” because he’d be dead to the Libertarian Party, who would have been justifiably outraged to lose their candidate to a GOP power play.

Ethically speaking (ha ha ha), this was an iffy move. It takes guts, or gall, to call another party’s candidate into a meeting and urge him to bug out.

Politically speaking, however, Benning was right.

Remember when Feliciano looked like he was going to steal the right wing away from Milne? When his write-in bid for the Republican nomination was taken seriously, was endorsed by two of the VTGOP’s four statewide officers, and Milne actually bought TV ads to fend off the “threat”?

When there was open speculation about Milne withdrawing in favor of Feliciano?

Believed to be Dan Feliciano at his campaign headquarters.

Believed to be Dan Feliciano at his campaign headquarters.

Well, that ship sailed long ago. Feliciano has done nothing to show he’s captured anything more than a single-digit sliver of the right wing: he’s way down in the poll that actually included him, and more importantly, his fundraising performance makes Scott Milne look like George W. Bush.

Which leaves us with this. If Milne exited the race and endorsed Feliciano, the latter would get the dead-ender vote but Milne would still be on the ballot, in the Republican slot, and would still garner a whole lot of votes from loyal Republicans. Feliciano’s best case: he’d be this year’s Tony Pollina, managing to outpoll a very weak major party candidate (Gaye Symington) but getting nowhere close to the winner. His worst case: he’d get into the low double digits, pulling Milne down to about 30% and making Governor Shumlin look like a landslide winner.

There’s no way Feliciano could pull very many centrist, “sick of Shumlin” votes; his views are too far from the middle.

Milne, on the other hand, has the inherent — and substantial — advantage of carrying the Republican standard. Even though he’s run an awful campaign, he still gets a solid 35% in the polls. He hasn’t convinced very many undecideds, but he’s retained virtually all of the Republican base.

So here’s how it looks to This Political Observer: Shumlin gets in the low-to-mid 50s either way. If Milne is the active opponent, he gets into the low 40s, with Feliciano retaining most of his meager support even if he stops campaigning. (He’s still on the ballot.)

But if Feliciano is Shumlin’s active challenger, then Milne gets about 30% and Feliciano maybe 15. Or Milne 25 and Feliciano 20. Whatever. And the difference is mainly a matter of style points — of how your party will look in the history books.

Of course, this whole kerfuffle is not really about November 4. It’s about what comes after: a potential relitigation of last fall’s intra-party battle for control of the VTGOP. Last year, Phil Scott’s Moderator faction won a narrow victory. Clearly, there are those within the party who’d like a second bite of that wormy, bruised apple.

In this context, Benning’s acknowledgment makes sense. In the short run, he’s trying to further establish Feliciano as a fringer. But beyond the election, it’s a message to the True Believer faction of the VTGOP: backing Feliciano was a mistake, and we’re still in charge.

As usual, this is all speculation on my part. I certainly haven’t gotten any leaks from Benning or any other Republicans. But it makes sense to me. And this is my damn blog.

Wow! Scott Milne puts an ad on TV!

Leave a reply

He must have thoroughly scoured the sofa cushions, because he’s finally taken to the airwaves with a paid 30-second ad. Either that, or he spent some time on Ancestry.com searching for more Milnes and Boieses to fund his (very) late-blooming media effort. This is his first ad buy since the August primary, when he put out a single ad to help him fend off the “challenge” of Emily Peyton and Dan Feliciano.

Anyway, he managed to pay whatever it cost to produce the thing, plus $78,825 on ad time. And shockingly, he didn’t spend most of his money on WCAX:

Screen Shot 2014-10-21 at 5.44.30 PM

As for the ad itself, well, it’s exactly what you’d expect. It’s a rehash of Milne’s attacks on Governor Shumlin delivered in a downcast voice by a female narrator — how many days he’s been out of state, slow economy, high taxes, Vermont Health Connect — with creepy music in the background.

Then, as it always does, the music shifts to a happy, mellow tune and the camera focuses on Our Hero, Scott Milne, standing outside somewhere on a sunny day, promising to cap property taxes, enact new incentives for education, and end “Peter Shumlin’s failed health care experiment.”

And then, just before the video cuts away, this strange lopsided smirk spreads across his face:

Screen Shot 2014-10-21 at 5.40.05 PM

Eeeesh. Looks like a bad used car salesman.

Shoulda tightened up the edit just a bit, boys.

The ad ends with a slo-mo video of Milne in profile with the suddenly-upbeat female narrator saying, “Scott Milne for Governor. Focused on solutions… full-time.”

Just a touch of snide in her voice on the “full-time.”

So yeah, typical stuff. Probably came out of some Generic Political Ad Generator from some Generic Political Production Company.

Nothing wrong with it. It’s just utterly predictable.

Well, except for the smirk.

Is it just me, or does Scott Milne owe a lot of money?

2 Replies

Kudos to Scott Milne, who voluntarily released two years’ worth of tax returns and other personal financial information. That’s more than Governor Shumlin released, and it’s the level of disclosure required of members of Congress.

His financials did raise a niggling question in my mind, though.

Milne lists several assets, the largest of which are the $2,000,000 value of Milne Travel and $1,699,750 representing a 50% share in B&M Realty, the firm he co-owns with David Boies III.

Then there are the liabilities: $1.642 million. The largest is a $950,000 “promissory note,” otherwise not described. Who holds the note? What’s it for? What are the terms of repayment?

There are also three mortgages totaling $1.38 million; Milne is responsible for half of those, or $680,000. Since he “owns” 50% of those mortgages, and he owns 50% of B&M Realty, I’m going out on a limb and guessing that the mortgages arise from B&M investments.

Let us pray.

Let us pray.

It boils down to a healthy net worth of $2.641 million, but still. We’re talking about a guy whose primary income is his $118,000 salary from Milne Travel. Now, I don’t play in these financial leagues, but it seems to me that Milne is carrying a lot of debt.

And his positive net worth depends almost entirely on the valuation of his two corporate interests — Milne Travel and B&M Realty. Is the family business really worth $2,000,000? Is B&M really worth $3.4 million? I don’t know, but I’d have to guess that corporate valuations are somewhat fluid.

Which brings me to my underlying question. How much of Milne’s finances — the black ink and the red — are tied up in the proposed Quechee Highlands mixed-use development planned for a 168-acre parcel just off I-89 at Exit 1 in Hartford?

I assume that Milne’s 50% mortgage obligations, totaling $680,000, are for Highlands-related land purchases. This is currently undeveloped land; if the B&M project is built, it could lead to a West Lebanon, New Hampshire style building boom in that area — making Milne’s stake a whole lot more valuable.

On the other hand, if it doesn’t get built, Boies and Milne will be stuck with the debt load on those 168 acres.

And the project is in serious trouble, having been denied an Act 250 permit by the regional environmental commission, and being noncompliant with the town of Hartford’s current development plan for the area. B&M has appealed the environmental commission’s ruling, and Milne has spoken loudly about what he sees as the anti-business bias and excessive regulatory power of the regional commissions.

Which makes me wonder how he’d handle Act 250 if elected Governor, but that’s another issue. The question raised by Milne’s financials is, how much risk has he taken on here?

In the past, he has semi-jokingly said that B&M is basically Boies’ money and Milne’s shoe leather. Well, to judge by his personal assets and liabilities, Scott Milne has a lot more riding on Quechee Highlands than his footwear. If he takes office and B&M’s appeal is still in process — which it almost certainly will be — then how would he separate policy from personal interest? Especially with the level of financial exposure he seems to have?

In releasing his financials, Milne criticized Governor Shumlin for offering too little information. And clearly, we have more numbers from Milne. But do we know what those numbers mean?

It may be perfectly obvious to someone who operates on that level, and it may be completely innocuous. But to a humble blogger, this looks like high stakes. And it’s all riding on a regulatory decision from the state of Vermont.