Hang On, Female Inmates, We’ll Get You a New Prison In Maybe Less Than a Decade

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This charming space, with its comfy chairs and natural lighting and complete absence of books, is either a prospective rendering of Vermont State University’s new “library” or a possible concept for a new women’s prison in Vermont.

Spoiler alert: it’s the latter. On Thursday morning, the House Corrections & Institutions Committee took the next small step toward building a new facility to replace the inadequate and unsanitary mess that is the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility, a.k.a. Vermont’s women’s prison.

I say “small step” because, as the hearing revealed, it’s going to take — maybe — five to eight years to complete the process of designing, siting, and building a new facility. Or possibly longer. There could be roadblocks, and everything is dependent on a solid funding commitment. I’m sure the inmates can be patient about this.

The hearing centered on a presentation by HOK, an architectural firm that’s best known for building sports stadiums but has also designed more than $4 billion in what it euphemistically calls “justice facilities.” HOK’s Justice Division, so they say, “focuses on designs for human rights and a more just world as a whole.” By building prisons. (It received $1.5 million from the state for doing the research that led to Thursday’s presentation, which can be downloaded from the committee’s website.)

In the first phase of its study, commissioned in 2020, HOK unreservedly recommended closure of CRCF and replacement with a new facility. The state is committed to do so, but that’s about as far as it’s gotten. Veteran C&I Chair Alice Emmons said this year’s work will focus on finding a location for the new facility. “You don’t do nothin’ without land,” she said. The 2024 session will focus on moving from the concept-idea stage toward an architectural design. After that comes project bidding and selection, construction, and making the transition from CRCF to the new place.

There was no attempt to determine how large the new facility should be, but there was plenty of discussion on the subject that broke down into two camps: We’ve got to build it as big as it might possibly need to be, or we can take a less maximalist approach because we’ll continue on the path of justice reform because incarcerating large numbers of people is fundamentally inhumane and counterproductive.

Sorry, couldn’t resist.

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I Don’t Know What This Is, But It’s Not “Fantastic”

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The political leaders of St. Albans have reacted enthusiastically to a report from the city police department indicating that there were 15 internal investigations of SAPD staff in the year 2022.

That’s 15 investigations in a department with 18 staffers. You do the math.

I have a hard time being “impressed” by that (Alderperson Marie Bessette), or viewing it as “fantastic” (a member of the city’s Police Advisory Board). They are taking the report as a sign the department is unafraid to ride herd on itself. Sure, but I think it’s more like getting a fence around a toxic waste pit and starting the cleanup. I mean, if the SAPD is averaging almost one internal investigation a year per employee (which they did in the previous two years as well), there’s clearly a lot of work left to do.

VTDigger has a lengthy piece giving as much detail on the investigations as the city will release, which isn’t much. It’s still worth reading.

This is one more sign of a big problem with oversight of city and town police agencies. Civic leaders and top cops are often in codependent relationships (See also: Weinberger, Miro). I think it’s safe to say the police chief is the most influential figure in a city or town government. Not necessarily the most powerful, but the most influential. You see it in town after town: Even when a police chief or department alienates the public and stains the community’s reputation, civilian leaders are eager to close ranks with them.

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Stealth Conservatives: Only the Finest in Artisanal Small-Batch Dog Whistles

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You may; have noticed I haven’t posted as many pieces about far-right candidates for office as I did last winter and (especially) last fall. That’s because I haven’t heard about that many of ’em. And I suspect one of the reasons is that those extremists are getting better at hiding their true colors.

Concrete evidence of this comes to us from Fairfax, where two candidates for school board in the Franklin West Supervisory Union are verrrry carefully walking the line between signaling their presence to conservative voters and unmasking themselves to the rest of the electorate. But if you stay quiet for a moment and listen, you can hear the high-pitched whines floating faintly on the breeze.

People like this, it must be said (again), are cowards. They fear that their true beliefs could cost them an election, so they’re hiding — in fact, they’re running a scam on the voters.

The Fairfax duo are Jennifer Cole Patterson and Daniel Mincica. Their Facebook pages are nothing more than collections of family photos. Their campaign announcements on the Fairfax community Facebook page emphasize the customary conservative talking points: Transparency, emphasis on core academics, and fiscal responsibility.

Who can argue with any of that? I can’t. But the devil is in the details.

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Return of the Guy Who’s Definitely Not Racist, Not Even a Little Tiny Bit, How Dare You Suggest Otherwise

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This is kinda-sorta another installment of “Dregs of the Ballot” except, well, this one’s an incumbent. But what an incumbent he is.

Chris Viens is running for another term on the Waterbury Selectboard, where he currently serves as vice chair — having resigned as chair in November 2020 after suggesting, at a public event, that maybe we should segregate the police so we could, you know, have Black cops police Black people and white cops watch over The Rest Of Us.

I mean, that’d take care of the whole Black Lives Matter problem, wouldn’t it?

(Pay no attention to Memphis.)

All right, you might be thinking, he made one gaffe and took responsibility. That’s settled.

Well, except for two things. First, it’s not the only questionable thing he’s said. And two, his resignation announcement was an absolute disasterpiece of self-pity and blame shifting that, to my ears, was far worse than his original segregate-the-police remark. And although it’s more than two years old, it warrants a trip down Memory Lane.

Now the good people of Waterbury can make up their own minds on Town Meeting Day, but I’ll just note that there are three candidates on the ballot for two selectboard seats and Viens is the only one I know of who’s said some truly ignorant things in public spaces.

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Hey Wallingford, Your Trustee Is an Absentee

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Back in March 2021, Bruce Moreton was elected to a three-year term on the Mill River Unified Union School Board (MRUUSD, pronounced exactly as spelled) as a representative of the town of Wallingford. Six months later, by all appearances, he moved to Rutland.

He has, again by all appearances, lived there ever since.

Ya like that, Wallingford?

This story comes to us by way of the Rutland Herald, which reported on February 16 that the Wallingford Board of Civil Authority had removed Moreton from the town’s voter checklist.

He’s ineligible to vote in Wallingford. Will he have to give up his seat on the school board?

The MRUUSD includes Clarendon, Shrewsbury, Tinmouth, and Wallingford. Each town gets to elect its own Board members. Clarendon and Wallingford have four seats apiece, Shrewsbury and Tinmouth each have one. Rutland is conspicuous by its absence.

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Dregs of the Ballot: This Guy Again

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In case you haven’t had the pleasure, allow me to introduce you to Tim Boltin, candidate for Barre City Council in Ward 1. Boltin owns Delicate Decadence, a downtown bakery, and this isn’t his first run for office.

Back in 2021, Boltin was one of two hardcore Trumpers who ran for City Council. The other was the infamous Brian Judd, who lost his race and refused to accept the result. His fruitless legal challenges took more than a year to resolve, and the only result was a waste of the city’s time and resources. Boltin also lost, by a 57% to 43% margin. He did not take the city to court.

Judd isn’t running this year but Boltin is, challenging Emel Cambel, the person who beat him in 2021. This time, Boltin is trying to conceal his extremism behind a bunch of bland, content-free statements and noises that, ahem, never mention city policy or city government. He also scrubbed his Facebook page of the offensive content that branded him a far-righter in 2021. Unfortunately for him, I harvested some of those posts back then, and you can find them here.

I’ll just briefly recap if you choose not to click on the link. Boltin posted a meme showing an incredibly stereotypical Mexican guy (big sombrero, mustache, etc.) with the caption “Mexican Word of the Day: BODYWASH. Biden was on TV but no BODYWASH him.” Hardy har har. Then there was a photo of President Biden with the caption “My Head is So Far Up China’s Ass, I Shit Fortune Cookes.” Another image made fun of Biden’s alleged senility. A fourth was the inevitable attack on Nancy Pelosi.

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Grewal’s Revised Plan: Puppies and Rainbows For All

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Earlier this week, Vermont State University President Parwinder Grewal appeared before a legislative committee for the first time since he stunned many by announcing the elimination of physical libraries on the system’s five campuses. The backlash was swift and strong, including a piece on this very website.

So it’s not too surprising that when he testified before the Senate Education Committee on Valentine’s Day, he seemed to have thoroughly revised his plan. (His testimony can be viewed here.)

We’re not closing any libraries, perish the thought. We aren’t getting rid of all our books, what nonsense. In fact, the libraries will still be called “libraries” or maybe “libraries and learning centers,” but they’ll be better in every way. The gates to the universe of digital information will be flung open. There will be more computers, printers, and other technical resources. There will be more spaces for individual and group study. Librarians will be available in all five libraries for student and faculty consultation.

Libraries aren’t going away, far from it. They’ll be transformed to better fit the learning needs of students and the teaching needs of faculty.

Wow. Either he radically rewrote his plan, or he did a piss-poor job of explaining it initially.

Spoiler alert: It’s the former.

We know this because VSU posted an explainer about the changes on its website. The headline refers, in all caps, to a NEW ALL-DIGITAL LIBRARY, EFFECTIVE JULY 1, 2023. 

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Ashley Bartley, Badass

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Her political career is little more than a year old, but State Rep. Ashley Bartley (R-Fairfax) has already established herself as a force to be reckoned with. For starters, there’s the fact that she launched her bid for office while giving birth.

It was, I think, eight hours into birth, that I turned to my husband and asked how he would feel if I ran for the Vermont House of Representatives. His response, which pains me to say was the correct one; “let’s get through the next 72 hours before we talk.”

Said husband is Jeff Bartley, former executive director of the Vermont Republican Party, now a member of the band of exiles alienated by the VTGOP’s hard right turn. He probably thought he’d heard it all until that moment.

Anyway, they did have the talk and she ran for office.

And, skipping ahead to the end, shortly after taking office in January, she lost her job for the apparent crime of Being a Legislator.

Bartley told her story Wednesday afternoon to the Senate Government Operations Committee. (Written testimony here, YouTube video here, Bartley’s testimony starts at the 46:40 mark.) The panel is considering S.39, a bill to raise lawmakers’ pay, entitle them to health insurance coverage, and — among other things — give them legal protection against the professional retaliation that befell her.

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Again With Splitting the Baby?

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For the second time in three months, a prominent Democratic officeholder has described the debate over when to end Vermont’s transitional housing program as “splitting the baby.” In mid-November it was outgoing House Human Services Committee chair Rep. Ann Pugh, interrupting a housing advocate to say “I’m looking for your recommendations as to splitting the baby. What are our priorities?”

Yesterday, Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Jane Kitchel cast herself in the role of King Solomon on the same issue: “I feel a bit like Solomon here. How do you split the baby?”

After the jump I’m going to get all exegetical on the Solomon comparison, but first let’s take a look at the product of Kitchel’s wisdom.

The Scott administration’s proposed 2023 budget adjustment would have ended the program on March 31. The House version included $21 million to keep the program going through June 30.

Kitchel? Her version extends the full program through the end of May and trims eligibility in June. The difference between her version and the House’s? About $2 million, per VTDigger.

Two million.

Is that what the administration has come to? It needs some sort of victory so badly that it seems willing to spend $19 million out of the House’s $21 million? (The admin hasn’t officially committed, but I doubt that Kitchel would have approved a plan that the governor wouldn’t sign. She’s the one who wanted to “split the baby,” after all.)

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Triumph of the Shill

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In a way, you’ve got to feel a little bit sorry for the Scott administration functionary who’s obliged to carry water for some sad bit of policy or other. They’re adequately compensated for putting their soul in storage, but they do run the risk of ascending to the gates of Heaven only to confront an angry-looking St. Peter demanding an explanation for their craven shillery. Today’s case in point: Shayla Livingston, policy director for the Agency of Human Services.

Per VTDigger’s indispensable “Final Reading,” Livingston was defending the administration’s desire to end the emergency housing program as quickly as possible, sending thousands of the unhoused off into the night with no plan. And she trotted out a brand-new, never-heard-before rationalization.

It’s not that the money is running out. It’s not that we can’t afford to extend the program into the warmer months, which until now had been the administration’s sotto voce position. No, they’re doing it out of a twisted sense of fairness.

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