Tag Archives: Ben Traverse

Scott (and Burlington Democrats) to City: Drop Dead

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It’s no surprise that Gov. Phil Scott is turning a deaf ear and a jaundiced eye toward the Queen City, rejecting any idea that his do-nothing administration has contributed to downtown Burlington’s troubles. It’s somewhat more surprising that Democrats on City Council are effectively taking the governor’s side in the argument. Well, perhaps more ill-timed than actually surprising. Because talking like Republicans is what Council Democrats do best.

Let’s take this from the beginning. On August 13, VTDigger published an opinion piece by Burlington’s Progressive Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak, in which she slammed the Scott administration for dramatically increasing the number of unsheltered people and failing to offer Vermont’s cities any help in dealing with the ensuing humanitarian crisis.

The governor’s response, delivered at a press conference last week, was akin to then-president Gerald Ford’s response to the financial troubles of New York City in the mid-1970s, as reflected in the greatest tabloid headline ever written. LIke Ford, Scott didn’t actually say that Burlington should Drop Dead, but he did argue that the city needed to step up and address its own problems before it could expect any outside help.

Even worse were comments made by Jennifer Morrison, Scott’s commissioner of public safety and former interim police chief of Burlington. According to VTDigger’s Shawn Robinson, Morrison described the city as “terrifying” without explaining what she meant by that, and sounded like someone carrying a grudge from her brief tenure as chief:

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The Burlington Democrats Are Taking an Awful Lot of Republican Money (and Leaving Quite a Bit of It Unspent)

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The second and final round of pre-Town Meeting Day financial disclosures is in, not that anyone in the media paid the slightest attention. The deadline was February 22, so I’m in the “belated” category. Apologies. Had other stuff to get to. Plus, honestly, I felt fairly confident that I could leave it for a few days because campaign finance reportage has practically disappeared from our Incredible Shrinking Media Landscape.

Headline: The two Democratic candidates in competitive races for City Council are raking in the cash, as is the Burlington Democratic Committee. (Reminder: If the Dems win both, they retain a working Council majority. If not, the Progressives would assume the majority.) The Dems’ fundraising far outpaces their Progressive counterparts and any other Council candidate in recent history. And a lot of it is from the upper classes of the greater Burlington area, people who’d be donating to Republicans if the Burlington Republican Committee wasn’t such a disaster. (These donors include many of the Barons of Burlington and others who did, in fact, donate to Republicans in the 2024 general election.)

Subhead: The Dems had left a lot of money unspent as of February 22, which probably means they didn’t expect to raise this much cash. The Town Meeting season is so tightly compressed that there’s no time to redo your strategy because you can suddenly afford more mailers or yard signs or advertisements or balloon clowns or whatever. The upshot: The Barons aren’t getting nearly the full bang for their bucks.

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Burlington Democrats are Spending Big to Defend Their Council Majority With a Lot of Help from the Leunig’s Frequent Diners Club

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On Town Meeting Day in Burlington, the Progressive Party has an opportunity to do what (according to Seven Days) it has never done before: Hold the mayor’s office and a majority on City Council at the same time. City Democrats are doing their best to ensure that doesn’t happen. And a lot of “their best” came straight from the city’s biggest name in real estate, the Pomerleau family.

We just found this out because the Burlington Democratic Committee has just filed its first campaign finance report for this year’s Town Meeting campaign season. The filing was 17 days late by my count. City party chair Andy Vota, in an email exchange, blamed the delay on difficulties with the Secretary of State’s new filing system which took multiple consultations to work out. Understandable. But as it worked out, the filing came immediately after Seven Days published its big pre-election article on the campaign, so the story makes no mention of the BDC’s fundraising or its highfalutin’ sources.

By state law, candidates and committees involved in Town Meeting Day elections must file financial reports 30 days and 10 days before election day. The BDC will have to turn around quickly to meet the second deadline. Missing the February 2 deadline is not nearly as egregious as the BDC’s 2020 violation, which resulted in a $2,500 fine for failing to file any disclosures until months after Town Meeting Day. (It’s quite unusual for campaign finance law violations to draw any penalty at all; normally, they can get off scot-free if they belatedly correct errors and omissions.)

So… how much does the party have and where did it come from?

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Is Jon Murad Really Worth All of This?

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I can’t say for sure what happened in the University of Vermont Medical Center’s emergency department last August. But I can say two things: It stinks, and it makes me wonder why Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger is so bound and determined to elevate acting Police Chief Jon Murad to permanent chief.

I mean, he’s been trying since January of 2022. And the city hasn’t had a non-interim chief since December of 2019. That’s not a healthy state of affairs.

And the ER incident, in which Murad reportedly threatened to arrest a trauma surgeon who was treating a critically wounded gunshot victim, raises legitimate questions about Murad’s temperament and respect for the law.

But even worse is how Weinberger and Murad have handled the matter since. They’ve done everything they could to cover it up and minimize the consequences. That doesn’t speak to the soundness of their position.

We wouldn’t even know about the incident were it not for Seven Days‘ dogged pursuit of the story. As it is, Weinberger managed to keep it out of sight until after the defeat of a ballot measure to create an independent police oversight board.

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