How Not to Do Crisis Communications: A Case Study. Or Maybe a 12-Pack Study.

Desperately Seeking Scandal

Our two most prominent #vtpoli news outlets, VTDigger and Seven Days, are always eager to pounce on any sign of scandal regarding money in politics. They seem especially set on tagging a “For Sale” sign on the reputation of U.S. Rep. Becca Balint.

And now the trial of Sam Bankman-Fried has produced new documentation about his efforts to connect with the Balint campaign, so we have articles recounting the lurid details of his internal communiqués and Raising Questions about Balint’s integrity — and even the legitimacy of her resounding victory in the 2022 Democratic primary.

Well, color me unimpressed. There is no scandal. I’ve never thought so, and these latest stories don’t change my view at all.

Sure, Balint’s team dallied with SBF — who, lest we forget, was considered a financial savant at the time. No one knew he was — allegedly — a fraudster of the highest order. They met with him, they accepted donations from his associates, and they benefited from a huge contribution made to a national PAC that spent the money for ads touting Balint’s candidacy.

But there is no hint that Balint changed her positions to suit SBF and his friends. And there is abundant evidence that his largesse had no meaningful effect on the outcome of the primary campaign. If the new revelations show anything, they show that SBF is one cynical bastard.

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Well, That Was a Lot Harder than It Needed to Be

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Barre’s got problems.

At last week’s gubernatorial press conference, flood recovery czar Doug Farnham threw out a shocking statistic: Barre suffered two and a half times as much damage in the July flood than any other community in Vermont. That’s on top of its perpetually troubled Main Street and its usual struggles with drugs and crime.

Even so, a handful of conservative troublemakers forced the city council to spend way too much time deciding the fate of the Wheelock Building, pictured above. The matter was finally settled this week, as council approved the building’s sale to the operators of East Montpelier’s Fox Market, which plans to open a second location in the building.

The Fox, for those unfamiliar, is a remarkable success story. Co-owners Doni Cain and Liv Dunton took a severely rundown building near the corner of US-2 and Route 14, where no one had managed to sustain a business for years, and turned it into a specialty food store and gathering place for the LGBTQ+ community and its allies.

And there’s the rub, I suspect. That handful of conservatives tried to hide their prejudice behind ludicrous procedural objections, but c’mon. It was obvious that they would rather have let the building go empty than risk seeing a rainbow flag on Main Street.

When, in fact, they ought to be throwing a damn parade for any entrepreneur willing to invest in Barre’s downtown.

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Counting the Costs of Leadership Failure

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In one of his novels, Vermont’s own crime novelist Archer Mayor chose the well-kept, comfortable town of Middlebury as the scene of a Hollywood-style gun battle with the goodies and baddies firing away at each other as they drove through the center of town. Many years ago I interviewed him about the book, and he confessed to a certain sly pleasure at foisting his fictional violence on that tony, tweedy community.

Well, now the good folk of Middlebury are suddenly experiencing, if not volleys of hot lead, an uncharacteristic feeling of insecurity. And we can lay this directly at the feet of state leaders, executive and legislative, who have failed to come to grips with our crises of homelessness, substance use, and mental health.

Remember last winter when housing advocates predicted dire consequences if the state were to end its emergency motel voucher program, and warned that the short-term savings from killing the program would be far outweighed by the costs of dealing with the fallout?

Welcome to Middlebury, where unhoused folk are camping on public land. There have been incidents of vandalism. People feel unsafe. Merchants are installing cameras and exterior lights and worrying about lost business. Police are overextended. Helping agencies are struggling with too many cases and too few resources.

It all came to a head at the October 10 meeting of the town selectboard, viewable on YouTube and recounted quite skillfully by John Flowers of the Addison Independent in a story entitled “Local Merchants Rail Against Uptick in Downtown Crime.” And rail they surely did.

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Scott to Burlington: Eh

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Gov. Phil Scott’s Thursday press conference was meant to deflect attention from his administration’s painfully slow approach to emissions reductions. The governor opted for his favorite diversionary tactic: Finding a straw man to punch. But the bigger takeaway from the event is his steadfast refusal to consider new policies — or even a drive up I-89 — in response to Vermont’s opioids crisis.

Let’s tackle climate first. Scott and Natural Resources Secretary Julie Moore (she of the excessively deliberate “progress” toward meeting our legally mandated 2025 emissions targets) asserted that an emissions-focused policy was wrongheaded. Instead, they said, there needs to be a balance between cutting greenhouse gases and making Vermont more resilient in the face of future climate disasters.

Scott backhanded “those who didn’t want us to focus on resiliency work” in the Legislature and claimed that “there’s been some pushback” on resiliency in the Vermont Climate Council.

I’d like some names, please.

There might be different opinions on the balance, but there is no one in the Legislature “who didn’t want us to focus on resiliency work.” As for the Climate Council, it was created by the Global Warming Solutions Act to further its statutory emissions targets. Resiliency isn’t the Council’s job. It’s like accusing FEMA of failing to enact permitting reform.

Enough of that. Now back to Burlington.

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A Meh Candidate for a Meh Campaign

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Well, okay then. VTDigger has confirmed what was originally reported eleven days ago by Guy Page of the Vermont Daily Chronicle: Miro Weinberger, the outgoing mayor of Burlington, is thinking about a run for an unspecified (but almost certainly gubernatorial) statewide office.

Digger might have had the decency to credit Page for being first, but the standards for crediting rival news outlets around here are, shall we say, highly elastic. The first and last rule seems to be, “Avoid giving credit at all times if at all possible.”

Anyway, so what about a Miro run for governor? You won’t be surprised, given my view of his tenure as mayor, that I’m not doing any cartwheels, metaphorical or otherwise.

But sure, what the hell, why not? Assuming Gov. Phil Scott seeks a fifth term, and why wouldn’t he, then the Democratic nomination will be about as valuable as an expired pet food coupon. Might as well be Miro as anybody else. Any Democrat with serious statewide aspirations is going to sit this one out, just as they did in 2018, 2020, and 2022. But in Miro’s political condition, taking that coupon to the checkout could be a gamble worth taking. He’s got nothing else going on.

I will offer a word of warning, though.

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Adventures in Serial Journalism, Dirt Cheap Job Search Edition

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This post is about three very different attempts to cover the same story. But before we pick over the bones, let’s address the meat of the matter. For whatever reason, the Scott administration is not only rushing its search for a new education secretary, it’s spent a shockingly small amount of money on the task.

Seven Days’ Alison Novak got the goods, revealing that the administration has spent a measly $495 on a search now scheduled to close, um, tomorrow. By comparison, she noted, school districts routinely invest 20 times that much on a basic search for a superintendent, and often spend far more.

The only flaw in Novak’s story was the headline, written in the form of a question: Is Vermont Doing Enough to Find the Right Leader for Its Education Agency? Remarkably timid header for a story that clearly identifies the answer as “Fuck, no!”

I mean, they posted the opening on professional job sites and that’s about it. Maybe they also taped a photocopied listing to the agency’s front door (complete with little “Contact Us” tabs at the bottom), but whatever, it’s simply pathetic.

Okay, there’s the substance. Now let’s take a somewhat speculative walk down the Memory Lane of journalism.

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Sending Inmates to an Out-of-State, For-Profit Prison Is a Choice, Not a Necessity

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Last month, the Vermont Department of Corrections signed a two-year contract to continue sending inmates to a for-profit prison conveniently located in Mississippi (a mere 21-hour, 1,400-mile drive from Montpelier. Great for family visitation, no?

The news filled my head with numbers and questions. The biggest is revealed in the above chart, provided by the Corrections Department: Vermont’s inmate population has plunged by nearly half since 2009, from a high around 2,400 to 1,331 (population average since January 2019 per DOC).

So if the prison census has dropped so dramatically, why can’t we keep all our inmates right here in Vermont?

Well, the short answer is, we probably could. Especially if we enacted some basic criminal justice reforms. But the Scott administration doesn’t take kindly to such ideas, and our Democratic Legislature tends to be extremely skittish about them. So, contract extension with everyone’s favorite prison profiteer, CoreCivic. Yay?

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Shocker: The Scott Administration Is In No Hurry on Climate Action

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There was a brief exchange during the September 25 meeting of the Vermont Climate Council that went unnoticed at the time. But it seemed a clear signal that the Scott administration isn’t all that concerned about meeting the emission reduction targets for the year 2025 as established in state law by the Global Warming Solutions Act.

“Established in state law” as in “legally mandated.” But hey, what’s the rush?

The upshot, since it’ll take me a while to get there: The administration is, at best, slow-waking the process even though time is running painfully short to achieve our 2025 targets. If you check your calendar, I think you’ll find that 2025 is coming our way right quick.

Of course, Gov. Phil Scott and Natural Resources Secretary Julie Moore have previously opined that the 2025 and 2030 targets are no big deal, so maybe this shouldn’t be a surprise. But still, we’re talking about an eyes-wide-open flouting of state law. And that’s kind of a big deal.

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The Vermont Political Observer.

a.k.a. theVPO: Analysis and observation of Vermont politics from a liberal viewpoint

How Not to Do Crisis Communications: A Case Study. Or Maybe a 12-Pack Study.

Desperately Seeking Scandal

Well, That Was a Lot Harder than It Needed to Be

Counting the Costs of Leadership Failure

Scott to Burlington: Eh

A Meh Candidate for a Meh Campaign

Adventures in Serial Journalism, Dirt Cheap Job Search Edition

Sending Inmates to an Out-of-State, For-Profit Prison Is a Choice, Not a Necessity

Shocker: The Scott Administration Is In No Hurry on Climate Action