There’s Only One Good Thing About Vermont’s Homelessness Situation, and That Thing Is About to Get a Lot Worse

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Vermont ranks at the extreme end of the 50 states in two measures of homelessness. We rank #2 in the nation in per capita homelessness. That’s, need I say, not a good thing. What is a good thing is that we rank #2 in the nation in the lowest percentage of unhoused people who are unsheltered.

In short, we have a lot of unhoused people thanks in large part to our critical housing shortage, but we’ve been doing a pretty good job of keeping roofs over their heads.

Sadly, this is in the process of changing. We have been steadily ratcheting down the General Assistance housing program that’s been keeping thousands of Vermonters in state-paid motel rooms. And we are tightening the screws even more in the fiscal year beginning July 1. The result will almost certainly be a sharp rise in our unsheltered population starting in mid-September.

It’ll be a while before the official statistics reflect this, but it’s a virtual inevitability. As a result of deliberate policy choices by the Scott administration and the Legislature, we will soon be “exiting” (such a nice bureaucratic word) a lot of homeless people to fates unknown.

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The Governor Has No Clothes

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For the second time in two years, Gov. Phil Scott suffered a historic-level smackdown on Monday. It only took the Legislature one single day to override six of his vetoes. He was upheld only on H.121, the data privacy bill. Otherwise it was a complete wipeout for The Most Popular Governor in AmericaTM.

Who is also, far and away, the most overridden governor in Vermont history. I knew he was the rootin’est, tootin’est, vetoin’est governor we’ve ever had, but I hadn’t realized that he’s even more of an outlier on the override front.

I’ve cited the Vermont State Archives’ list of veto messages as my source for veto counts (inclluding my count of 52 vetoes for Governor Nice Guy), but I failed to notice that the list also indicates which vetoes were overridden — with an asterisk.

Are you ready for some truly stunning figures? I know you are.

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Phil Scott Presents: Stupid Map Tricks!

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What you see above is a portion of Gov. Phil Scott’s latest masterstroke: A map of Vermont showing all the land that would get enhanced protections under H.687, the housing/Act 250 reform bill he vetoed last week. He thinks the map proves his point, that the bill goes way too far on conservation and not nearly far enough on encouraging development. Just look at all those yellow and brown areas! The Legislature is out of control!

However… I do not think his map means what he thinks it means.

This map reminds me of the Republican electoral maps showing who won each county. They show that the vast majority of the country’s physical space voted Republican, and help fuel stolen-election conspiracy theories. Truth is, Republicans win the big empty parts of the country while Democratic strength is mainly in population centers. And since our system involves one person, one vote — not one acre, one vote — well, the map is deeply misleading and proves nothing.

Same with Phil Scott’s H.687 map. It proves nothing.

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The Joys of Willful Ignorance

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Phil Scott’s veto pen must be hotter than ol’ No. 14’s engine block at the finish line of Thunder Road because he’s racked up a fresh batch of vetoes this week, bringing his lifetime total over the half-century mark. Yep, he’s now vetoed 52 bills (according to the State Archives’ list of veto messages) including eight this year alone. Reminder that the previous record-holder was Howard Dean with a measly 21. And Dean served 12 years as governor while Scott’s been in the corner office for a mere seven and a half.

(Gubernatorial Trivia Time: Dean first Wielded His Veto PenTM to strike down a bill that would have legalized the sale of sparklers. Yes, really. His letter is a marvel of fearmongering; Dean wrote that sparklers may “appear innocuous,” but are, in fact, “quite dangerous,” burning at temperatures of “between 1600 and 2000 degrees,” and they “caused more than 1,000 emergency room visits” in 1989 alone. Which sounds like a lot, but 300 times as many people go to the ER with dog bites, and I don’t see anyone trying to ban dogs.)

We eagerly await the Legislature’s override session on Monday, where seven bills could be on the table. (An override of the eighth, a ban on flavored tobacco and vapes, failed in the Senate in April.) I’ll give you my back-of-the-envelope rundown of likely overrides in a tick, but first I’d like to point out three vetoes where the governor happily displayed his ignorance of the subject matter and of the process that went into the bills.

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Phil Phones It In

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For weeks, Gov. Phil Scott has been asking legislative leadership to “come to the table” and reach common ground on the school funding situation. On Wednesday, they came to the table — and the governor was nowhere to be found. He stiffed ’em.

He stiffed ’em physically by not showing up, and he stiffed ’em intellectually by presenting yet another half-baked, fiscally irresponsible “plan” for buying down property tax rates.

To me, his no-show proves that he didn’t want a deal that might be politically difficult. He’d prefer that the Legislature override his veto of the Yield Bill so he can use it as a campaign issue in hopes of eroding the Dem/Prog supermajorities.

Look, if he wanted a deal, he would have been there. If there was going to be a serious effort at compromise, he would have had to be there. His officials couldn’t have conducted meaningful negotiations in his absence.

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The Carroll-Morrissey Emotional Intelligence Test (Updated)

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It’s been interesting… rather inadvertently revelatory… to witness the fallout from one of the oddest political scandals in Vermont history — Rep. Mary Morrissey getting caught wet-handed*, repeatedly dumping water into a tote bag belonging to fellow Bennington Rep. Jim Carroll.

*Rimshot

On the official front, all parties are continuing their lengthy effort to sweep as much of this mess under the nearest rug as thoroughly as possible. On the media front, the coverage has been a mixed bag. On the personal front, both Carroll and Morrissey are flailing in the aftermath. And pretty much everyone is clearly uncomfortable with the situation.

It makes sense, really. This thing is, as Rep. Angela Arsenault told Seven Days’ Kevin McCallum “both juvenile and unconscionable.” To Carroll, already suffering through a difficult session thanks to his February DUI citation in a Statehouse parking lot, it must have caused significant emotional trauma. Arsenault:

“This is the type of thing that is designed to make someone feel like they are going nuts, to make someone question themselves, which to me is straight up cruel.”

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The Free Press Isn’t Even a Newspaper Anymore

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I moved to Vermont just in time to catch the tail end of the Burlington Free Press‘ long reign as the state’s leading newspaper. It was a full-sized daily with a deep and wide-ranging pool of journalists including three experienced reporters covering state politics and policy, which made the Freeps an indispensable resource for anyone interested in such things.

That institution is long gone, and things have just gotten worse and worse, sadder and sadder. The latest nail in the Free Press’ coffin is its coverage of the Burlington Police Department’s “roll-playing scenario” in which a bunch of high school students were terrified by someone pretending to be a masked gunman.

Or should I say the paper’s disgraceful non-coverage. Because so far, the Free Press’ only mention of the incident, which has been the talk of the town ever since, was a story written by a USA TODAY reporter phoning it in from some other part of the country.

That’s it. The Burlington Free Press is dead.

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Beware of Redpilled Zealots in Democratic Clothing

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I have to admit, I missed it at first glace. I was scanning the Secretary of State’s list of candidates for the Legislature, and my eyes just glossed right over a familiar name. To be fair, I was focused on Republican candidates and this guy has qualified for the August Democratic primary in the Windham-1 district.

Fair warning: He is not a Democrat. Not anywhere close.

This is Jason Herron, previously noted in this space as a stealth conservative — at the time, he was a candidate for Guilford Selectboard touting himself as a humble maple farmer who merely wanted more transparency in local government.

In reality, he is (as you see in the screenshot above) the Vermont state director for Convention of States Action, a far-right fantasy camp that wants to selectively rewrite the U.S. Constitution. The object of its desire: a Constitutional convention “restricted to proposing amendments that will impose fiscal restraints on the federal government, limit its power and jurisdiction, and impose term limits on its officials and members of Congress.”

Yeah, none of that pesky reproductive rights stuff or clarifying the Second Amendment or eliminating the Electoral College or clarifying the separation of church and state. Only approved topics will be allowed in this arena of free speech.

In an appearance on a COSA YouTube video, Herron said a Constitutional convention held on COSA terms is “the only way we’re going to save our country without shedding blood.”

Good to know he’s keeping a level head about all this.

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This Is Too Stupid to Merit the Term “Scandal,” But It Cannot Go Unpunished

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Pictured above is state Rep. Mary Morrissey, a longtime (but not at all influential) member of the House who has suddenly been thrust into the spotlight for the most bizarre of reasons.

Per Kevin McCallum of Seven Days, the Bennington Republican has repeatedly dumped cups of water into a tote bag owned by Rep. Jim Carroll, a Bennington Democrat. Well, she allegedly did so, but Carroll has the goods. After finding his stuff thoroughly soaked on several occasions, he set up a small camera across the hall from his bag. And, as McCallum reports, he’s got video that “clearly shows Morrissey leave her Statehouse committee room, walk over to a bag outside Carroll’s committee room and dump a cup of water into it.” And he caught it on camera more than once.

Also, House leadership has already taken at least one action that indicates Morrissey is, in fact, guilty.

No matter what your attitude toward casual profanity might be, the phrase “What the fuck?” cannot help but escape your lips. This is so petty, so pointlessly mean-spirited, that it boggles the mind. Morrissey has served in the Legislature since 1997. Her Legislative bio lists an incredible number of community honors and appointments in Bennington. She is a devout Catholic.

By her biography, you’d think she’d be the last person on Earth to do something like this. But it’s right there on tape.

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It Was Supposed to Be an Emergency Drill for Students, But Now It’s the Adults Who Are Ducking and Covering

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Far be it for me to imply that the Burlington Police Department doesn’t know what the hell it’s doing, but in this case they clearly didn’t.

The BPD is in hot water, possibly to be joined in the pot by the Burlington Public Schools and Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak, whose recent reappointment of Police Chief Jon Murad, over the objections of her fellow Progressives, now seems like maybe not such a great idea.

On Wednesday, a group of 20 Burlington High School students were on a field trip to One North Avenue when screams rang out and two women ran into the room, pursued by a masked gunman. Who opened fire.

It was a drill staged by the BPD with the apparent goal of scaring the shit out of the kids and maybe giving them PTSD. “I’m shaking and crying because I’m like, Oh my god, I’m gonna get shot,” one student told Seven Days. “It felt so real.”

In an utterly inadequate press release blandly (misleadingly) entitled “BHS Scenario Response,” the BPD called this a “roll- playing scenario” (sic) that “was not directed at any students or faculty.”

Pardon me, but what the actual fuck? The masked gunman was in the room with the school group and gunshots rang out. How in hell were they supposed to know that it “was not directed” at them?

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