Things Are Getting a Bit Tetchy In and Around the Saunders Nomination

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Sparks are flying in what is essentially a proxy battle over Zoie Saunders’ nomination as education secretary. Hours before she was approved on a 3-2 vote in the Senate Education Committee, former state board or education chair Krista Huling appeared before the House Education Committee dishing some dirt on the process that led to the hiring of Dan French in 2018 and asserting that Gov. Phil Scott “does not have a public vision for education,” and in fact, wants the public school “system to collapse.” The timing of her testimony, while Saunders’ fate lies in the balance, cannot possibly be a coincidence.

I wrote about that yesterday, but there have been developments. First of all, Gov. Phil Scott’s chief of staff Jason Gibbs apparently hightailed it to House Education as Huling was wrapping up, to complain to committee chair Rep. Peter Conlon about her testimony. This was reported, based on anonymous eyewitness accounts, by Seven Days’ Alison Novak*, and today I confirmed it with Conlon. He would not go into specifics; “It was a private conversation,” he told me, “but [admin spokesman] Jason Maulucci’s comments to Seven Days pretty much summed up the conversation.”

*But not, curiously, by the diligent Diggers at “Final Reading.“ To be fair, they had to save room in the column for the red-hot news about House Speaker Jill Krowinski’s new betta fish.

It must have been a hot little confab, considering that Maulucci characterized Huling’s testimony as “unsubstantiated lies from an individual with a demonstrated political agenda.” (Huling left the board in order to serve as campaign manager treasurer for former education secretary Rebecca Holcombe’s run for governor.) Which raises the question, why in Hell does Gibbs think he can barge into a legislative committee and upbraid the chair for calling a witness? He may run the executive branch, but committee chairs can call whatever witnesses they want. Even ones that might possibly have a bias. Which is, as near as I can tell, every last one of ’em.

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While Senate Education is Fluffing Pillows, House Education is Tossing Bombs

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I’m sure it was merely a coincidence. But one day after the Senate Education Committee went all Patty Hearst Syndrome in its confirmation hearing for education secretary nominee Zoie Saunders, and on the same day the Senate panel voted 3-2 in favor of her, the House Education Committee scheduled a witness who excoriated the politicization of the Education Agency, questioned Gov. Phil Scott’s commitment to public schools, and revealed some backstage maneuverings around the selection of the last secretary, Dan French.

The witness was Krista Huling, former chair of the state board of education. Why was she called, seemingly out of nowhere, on Wednesday, April 24? Committee chair Rep. Peter Conlon invited her to testify in response to “a lot of discussion around the building” about how the education system has changed since Act 98 was passed in 2012. Act 98 made the state Board of Education much less powerful and gave the governor significantly more control over education policy.

And if you think that has nothing to do with Zoie Saunders, well, God bless.

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Senate Committee Conducts Pillowy Soft Job Interview

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Yeah, well, that was depressing.

The Senate Education Committee held its confirmation hearing this afternoon for Zoie Saunders, Gov. Phil Scott’s choice for education secretary. She was smiling broadly as the hearing commenced, and she had every reason to smile at the end. The committee failed to raise some very pertinent issues. When they did pose tough questions, they often carefully blunted the sharp edge. (Commitee chair Sen. Brian Campion led the league in “tell me a little bit about” questions, which is an open invitation for the interviewee to wander off in whatever direction they want.) They often asked about what she would do as education secretary or what policies she would pursue, which Saunders easily sidestepped in the familiar manner of Supreme Court nominees batting away hypotheticals.

The bulk of the hearing was a comfortable exchange of educational jargon, the wrapping of empty thought into multisyllabic cloth that obscures the emptiness of the dialogue. It’s familiar ground for Saunders, who’s been a professional educator for the better part of two decades, and it’s equally familiar for members of the Education Committee, who exist in the rarefied air of the profession’s bafflegab. It makes them feel smart, don’t you know.

What the committee failed to do is treat the hearing like a job interview with an applicant with questionable qualifications. The point should have been to explore Saunders’ background and clarify her rightness for the position. The committee accomplished little in that regard. At the end of the affair, there was no hint of any continuing opposition to her nomination. I will be stunned if the committee doesn’t recommend approval by the full Senate. Hell, they’ve set aside an entire… 15 minutes… for committee discussion of her nomination Wednesday afternoon.

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A Few Questions for Zoie Saunders

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

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

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

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

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

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A Big Fat Final Reading FAIL

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The Word “Cockamamie” Springs to Mind

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

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

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

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

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…On the Other Hand…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Because that’s exactly what they were doing.

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

And Winters replied, “Hopefully not.”

How reassuring.

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