Tag Archives: Adam Greshin

In Which Our Betters Finally Realize We Have a Housing Crisis On Our Hands

1 Reply

Note: This is a sequel to my previous post, reflecting the newly-released September figures for the motel voucher program and the official reaction to it all.

Some people could have predicted this as far back as January if not farther. But the Scott administration and the Legislature insisted throughout the winter and spring that everything would be just fine if we ended the emergency housing motel voucher program on schedule at the end of June.

They were wrong, of course, and they had to cobble together a last-minute extension that minimized the scale of the own-goal disaster. Those who were dumped from the program before June 30 were excluded, and new restrictions were imposed on the remaining clientele that seemed designed to encourage slash bully slash force them to leave the motels as quickly as possible.

Well, during today’s meeting of the Joint Legislative Fiscal Committee, it became clear that administration and Legislature alike now know they have a real, sizeable, thorny problem on their hands, and that many a vulnerable Vermonter has paid a stiff price for their earlier choices. Shocker, I know.

Continue reading →

Less “Lean Management” Than “Mean Management”

1 Reply

There have been numerous examples over the years of Phil Scott’s failure to build an effective bureaucracy in spite of his promises to lower the cost of government and improve the delivery of services The latest, and perhaps most outrageous, is the unconscionable handling of the extended emergency motel voucher program. As reported by VTDigger, the Scott administration is now requiring recipients to recertify once a week — and is making it damn difficult to comply by woefully understaffing its call centers and offices.

There are two possible explanations for this. Either the administration is doing its best to torpedo an extension it never wanted in the first place, or it has deliberately resource-starved the Department of Children and Families to the point where DCF can’t properly do its job. Either way, it’s inexcusable. As is the desperate display of blame-shifting put on by DCF functionary Miranda Gray.

It’s not our fault, she told VTDigger. It’s recipients’ fault for not being persistent enough or not answering the phone when DCF gets around to calling them back. It’s a caseworker’s fault for not communicating with DCF (through its terrible call center). Recipients who can’t get through by phone should go to a field office (but at least one recipient was forced to wait for hours and hours at a field office). It’s the Legislature’s fault for setting the rules (yes, they opened the door to weekly check-ins but (a) the admin sets the rules and (b) the mismanagement of the call system is all on YOU).

Meanwhile, recipients are waiting hours upon hours and living constantly in fear of losing their shelter. All because YOU couldn’t fully staff a call center after increasing your own workload by mandating weekly check-ins.

Also meanwhile, no one has received a damn dime from a disaster relief fund for the self-employed and independent contractors. And some of the applications seem to have been bungled. Wow, more management failure. And another administration official busily pointing the finger elsewhere.

Continue reading →

The Efficiency Chimera Strikes Again

Leave a reply
It’s magical!

If you had a time machine and chose, not to kill Young Adolf Hitler or have lunch with Jesus or ride horsies with Alexander the Great, but to go back to 2016 and listen to a speech by gubernatorial candidate Phil Scott, you would hear some familiar phrases. “Cradle to Career,” “Affordability,” “Protect the most vulnerable,” stuff he still says all the time.

You would also hear something you couldn’t hear without a time machine because Scott doesn’t say it anymore: “Lean management.” Here’s his campaign pitch, with a specific target number attached:

I believe we can reduce the operational cost of every agency and department by one cent for every dollar currently spent, in my first year in office. Saving one penny on the dollar generates about $55 million in savings. 

Yeah, well, then he got elected and things became much harder. This is what usually happens when a businessperson enters public office convinced that big savings are ripe for the picking, if only a little common-sense efficiency is applied.

The actual results have been embarrassingly puny. When asked about this back in February, after three years of Scott’s governorship, the administration pointed to $13 million in projected savings in his FY2021 (the year starting 7/1/20) budget. More than one-third of that total was due to the proposed closure of the Woodside juvenile facility, which had nothing to do with lean management.

Actual results: Not $55 million in the first year, but something less than $10 million in year four.

And you have to subtract, from whatever the actual savings were, the costs of training hundreds of state workers in lean management processes. (By the administration’s own accounting, 671 workers and managers in all.)

Continue reading →

A little target practice for Mitzi Johnson

6 Replies

A moment of silence for the advancement hopes of Linda Myers, veteran Republican lawmaker now offered up as her caucus’ sacrificial lamb. House Minority Leader Don Turner promised a challenger to Speaker-in-Waiting Mitzi Johnson; it just isn’t possible that the 76-year-old Myers was the first name on his list.

Nothing against Ms. Myers, a pillar of her community and, by all accounts, a good person. But when I consulted The Google for traces of legislative accomplishment or leadership, I found astonishingly little.

As far as I can tell, she’s never held a position in the Republican caucus leadership, which tells you a lot about how she’s perceived by her colleagues. She’s been “parked for years” (in the words of one Statehouse observer) as vice chair of the House Committee on Corrections and Institutions, her service not terribly memorable but not malign enough to prompt her removal.

Well, I hope she enjoyed her vice chairship; after she loses the race for Speaker, she might very well lose the position. (A desirable post, since the committee oversees capital expenditures.) More often than not, there are consequences for such a challenge.

Continue reading →

Senate May Do Absolute Minimum on Ethics

Leave a reply

That wacky Senate Rules Committee, under the steady hand of First Mate Gilligan President Pro Tem John Campbell, is considering a bold move.

Well, “bold” by their frame of reference. The committee met yesterday and discussed setting up an Ethics Panel along the lines of the weaksauce House version. Mind you, they didn’t decide anything; they’re just considering it.

And, well, if they do actually set up an Ethics Panel, I might file the inaugural complaint (just as I did, fruitlessly, with the House Ethics Panel last year). My complaint would be, ahem, against the Senate Rules Committee. The intrepid Paul Heintz:

The Senate Rules Committee, which has a long history of meeting secretly, held Thursday’s discussion behind closed doors in the Senate Cloakroom. Seven Days has repeatedly asked to be informed of such meetings and was told about it in advance by a member. [Senate Secretary John] Bloomer posted public notice of the meeting Thursday morning on the legislature’s website, just hours before it took place. One other reporter, from the Burlington Free Press, attended.

Is it just me, or is there something fundamentally ironic about a “Rules” Committee repeatedly failing to abide by open-meetings requirements? Nothing says “transparency” like having “a history of meeting secretly.” And in a frickin’ closet, no less.

Continue reading →

Win Smith’s 47% Moment

2 Replies

What’s this in my inbox? Why, it’s a heart-rending tale from the desk of Win Smith, co-owner of the Sugarbush ski resort and president of the Vermont Business Roundtable. And former Merrill Lynch executive. And reportedly a member of a secret Wall Street society described as “‘”a sort of one-percenter’s Friars Club’ whose annual dinners are filled with elitist, sexist and homophobic humor.”

(Bruce Lisman’s also a member, but I digress.)

Smith’s business partner in Sugarbush is, of course, State Rep. Adam Greshin, who wrote and lobbied for an amendment that forestalls a significant increase in Sugarbush’s sizable utility bills. And was, dubiously and privately, cleared by the House Ethics Panel.

Smith’s essay is being distributed to Vermont news outlets; I’m sure it will shortly be cluttering up your local paper’s content-hungry Op-Ed page. It’s a pretty amazing piece of work, managing to be both politically and literarily obnoxious. It’s a subtle retelling of stale conservative myths about poverty and government. You know the stuff: welfare mothers with Cadillacs, poor folks lulled into dependency by public-sector largesse, and the myth that “47% of Americans pay no taxes” and therefore have no stake in responsible government.

Smith begins with the sad story of “a childhood friend of mine” whose mother expressed her love by serving “large portions of tasty food.”

Unfortunately, Mom’s generosity had deadly results.

Continue reading →

Greshin cleared; ethical lines remain vague and permissive

1 Reply

Well, the House Ethics Panel quickly disposed of my complaint against Rep. Adam Greshin. I can’t say I’m surprised that he was given a clean bill of ethical health, but I am disappointed.

Reminder: Greshin proposed, and actively lobbied for, an amendment to H.40 that would eliminate a planned increase in funding for Efficiency Vermont, which gets its money from a fee on utility bills. As co-owner of the energy-gobbling Sugarbush ski resort, Greshin stood to profit significantly if his amendment passed.

In my previous post, I covered the questionable process. The panel did its business behind closed doors, which seems an odd move for an ethics panel.

Now it’s time to consider the panel’s decision and reasoning, which leave a lot of room for dubious behavior.

Continue reading →

Another closed door in the People’s House

4 Replies

Constant readers of this blog (Hi, Mom!) will recall that earlier this month, I wrote a letter to the House Ethics Panel asking for a review of Rep. Adam Greshin’s actions regarding H.40, the RESET bill. For less constant readers, my complaint centered on this: Greshin authored an amendment to H.40 stripping away an increase in funding for Efficiency Vermont. (EV had already gotten Public Service Board approval; until this year, legislative review was a mere formality.) He also aggressively lobbied the House and Senate for his amendment.

EV gets its money through a surcharge on utility bills. As co-owner of the Sugarbush Resort, a voracious consumer of electricity ($2 million/year), Greshin stood to gain considerably if his amendment passed.

Well, the Ethics Panel has responded. And as expected, it was a whitewash. Greshin, so they say, did nothing wrong.

I’ll get to the substance of its decision in my next post. First, though, I need to address the process.

Between sending my letter and receiving the Panel’s reply, I didn’t hear anything about it. During the roughly one week between receiving my letter and drafting its ruling, the Panel conducted a review with help from Legislative Counsel. It also met with the House Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and with Greshin himself. (Correction: The panel met with counsel to the House Energy and Natural Resources Committee, but not with the Committee itself.)

None of those meetings were noticed publicly. I was not informed. I was not given the opportunity to be a party to the proceedings.

It seems that the House Ethics Panel has a closed-door policy.

Continue reading →

I wrote a letter

1 Reply

On Sunday, I wrote a letter to Rep. David Deen, chair of the House Ethics Panel. I requested a review of Rep. Adam Greshin’s activities surrounding H.40, the RESET renewable energy bill. Greshin had proposed an amendment to freeze funding for Efficiency Vermont, and has vigorously campaigned for its adoption in both the House and Senate.

Greshin is co-owner of the Sugarbush ski resort. As I previously noted in this space:

The ski industry is a voracious consumer of electricity.

Efficiency Vermont is funded by ratepayers, with rates approved by the Public Service Board.

Do I need to connect those dots?

If the Greshin amendment is adopted, his ski resort stands to save a pretty penny on its utility bills. It’s already passed the House; it’s now pending before the Senate.

Potential conflicts abound in a citizen Legislature, and there’s a sizable gray area. The single act of voting for a bill, in my mind, is not in itself grounds for a conflict investigation.

But Greshin’s case is a whole different kettle of fish for two reasons.

Continue reading →

Peter Shumlin, Defender of Liberalism

Leave a reply

So this is what we’ve come down to: as the House continues to slash away at health care reform, Governor Shumlin has become its stoutest defender.

Isn’t it ironic, don’tcha think. A little sad, too.

Here’s the situation: the House Health Care Committee originally came up with a $52 million package that would have greatly reduced the Medicaid gap, made health care more accessible to our growing cohort of working poor*, expanded proven measures to enhance delivery while holding down costs, and boosted incentives for badly-needed primary care providers.

*Thanks to our top-heavy economic recovery, which has produced stagnant wages and lots of jobs with unlivable wages while fattening the pockets of the wealthy and corporate.  

The Ways and Means Committee couldn’t agree on any tax scheme to pay for the $52 million — or even part of it. So the ball got bounced back to Health Care with a new diktat: devise a bill that will only cost $20 million a year.

The two committees remain at loggerheads, with each other and within their own ranks. Health Care can’t decide how to downsize its deftly-woven tapestry without the whole thing unraveling, and Ways and Means can’t reach consensus on a tax plan to produce $20 million.

Which almost certainly means the package will be further reduced before it even gets to the full House.

This is where Peter Shumlin, Defender of Liberalism comes in.

“I think that it’s really important that we make real progress here, and you’re not going to make real progress with $10 or $20 million,” the governor said in an interview Friday.

That interview was with the Vermont Press Bureau’s Neal Goswami, who wrote a front-page story in today’s Times Argus about the developing tussle between cautious lawmakers and a determined governor. (The story is paywalled, but you can listen to the interview for free.)

Shumlin rightly points out that a modest health care package would leave “$100 million of federal [matching] money on the table,” and would reduce private insurance rates by closing the Medicaid gap. Penny wise and pound foolish, you might say.

Problem is, the legislature is in penny-pinching mode after approving a tax bill that will raise $33 million in new revenue. Well, that’s the next problem. The first problem is Ways and Means, which has just enough centrist votes to effectively roadblock any of the tax plans outlined by Shumlin or the Health Care Committee.

Hmmm. And who, pray tell, appointed the committee? Oh yeah: Mr. Speaker.

Ways and Means has eleven members. A bill needs at least six votes to pass. But wait, you might be saying, there are seven Democrats on the committee and only three Republicans.

Well yeah, but two of the Democrats are definitely in the party’s centrist wing. Jim Condon is one of the most conservative Dems in the legislature, and Sam Young is definitely a taxation skeptic. The lone independent, ski resort mogul Adam Greshin, might as well be a Republican.

That leaves five relatively liberal votes, and a tough task for committee chair Janet Ancel to find a majority for any tax proposal.

Problem is, the Governor is right: spending more up front would make the system more robust and effective, and bring down costs for private payers. It’d also bring in the aforementioned truckload of federal matching funds.

And oh yes, if you’re interested in the “humanity” angle, it’d make health care accessible to thousands more Vermonters.

Goswami reports that Shumlin “may have to turn his attention to the Senate if he is to rescue his own plans.”

Oh boy. The disorganized, testosterone-and-ego-fueled Senate, with the centrist Cerebus of John Campbell, Dick Mazza and Phil Scott guarding the portal.

Good luck with that, Governor.