Tag Archives: Doug Hoffer

Buy Local: It’s not just for pandering anymore

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One of the more persistent strains of Philpuckey is his advocacy of Buying Local. He’s made it a regular theme of his Lite-Guvship, memorably captured in a front-page article in the Burlington Free Press last November that featured Phil Scott with his famous “Buy Local — It’s Not Just for Hippies Anymore” slogan.

(Which, first of all, “Buy Local” was never “just for hippies.” And second, it misunderstands the movement. Hippies were less concerned with where they bought their stuff, than with not buying stuff at all. It was an anti-consumption worldview. But hey, it’s just convenient shorthand for “long-haired weirdos”, right?)

“Buy Local” is an attractive pitch for Scott. It’s politically appealing, it reinforces his “real Vermonter” image and his status as a local business owner. It’s no-lose all the way around.

But coming from him, it’s effectively meaningless. Phil Scott may verbally support Buying Local, but if push comes to shove, he’ll opt for expediency. Proof: More than half his campaign’s total expenditures have gone to out-of-state firms and individuals. Latest example: a series of mass media buys since October 20, totaling $85,000, all going to out-of-state companies. That includes:

— $40,000 to D.C.-based Optimus Consulting, which has managed the Scott campaign’s media buys.

— $54,000 to Spectrum Marketing of Manchester, NH for “Media — Postcards.”

— $11,000 to SCM Associates of Dublin, NH, also for “Media — Postcards.”

Perhaps he needed some Washington Big Boys to buy spots on WCAX, but did he really need to go to New Hampshire for direct mail services?

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Hey kids! It’s time for Uncle Phil’s Funny Math!!!

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So far, our political media has seen fit to abdicate its responsibility to fact-check the gubernatorial campaign. Instead, it has simply reported without comment the cornucopia of questionable numbers endlessly repeated by Phil Scott.

I do give ‘em credit for reporting Scott’s frequent non-answers and failures to give specifics on his own damn policy proposals. But they need to go farther. Especially since the Scott campaign has apparently decided not to respond to my own inquiries for substantiation.

Some of Scott’s figgers need a better man than I to assess, me not being a budget expert. But others are so transparently phony that even a muggle like me can see through them.

In this post, I’ll sometimes stand on the shoulders of Vermont’s number-one budget expert, Private Citizen* Doug Hoffer. In the absence of any oversight by the media, Hoffer has begun a projected series of essays examining Phil Scott’s favorite numbers.

*He’s also State Auditor, but he’s writing these pieces outside the auspices of his elected position.

First, let’s take Phil Scott’s constant claim that taxes and fees have risen by $700 million during the past six years of Democratic governance. Team Scott has failed to provide any documentation, but there is a little something in his economic plan.

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Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas — UPDATED with more fleas

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Hey, you know about the Mylan controversy? Yeah, the company that bought the rights to the EpiPen and then jacked up the price by several gazillion percent? It now charges nearly $500 for a gizmo that probably cost them about three bucks to make.

Well, I’d managed to forget, or suppress, its Vermont connection until I was reminded by recent accounts in VTDigger and the Burlington Free Press. To wit, the Shumlin administration arranged a peculiar land swap in St. Albans to facilitate an expansion of Mylan’s operations here.

A land swap that costs the General Fund about a half million dollars a year.

(That’s about the price tag we “couldn’t afford” to spend on an Ethics Commission. Just sayin’.)

UPDATE: As Auditor Doug Hoffer points out, Mylan is also a beneficiary of the Vermont Employment Growth Initiative (VEGI) program to the tune of $5.7 million. More on this below.

I won’t rehash all the details here; you can check out VTDigger’s 2013 story, which lays it all out in excruciating detail.  I will note one thing before moving on: this turd blossom featured the guy I’m beginning to think of as the Joe Btfsplk of the Shumlin administration.

The idea… was largely the brainchild of Lawrence Miller, the Commerce Secretary.

Mmmyeah, EB-5, the endless Vermont Health Connect reboot, and now Mylan. Quite the resume you’re building, Mr. Miller.

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Is this the most useless policy review ever?

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Hey, here’s some good news. One of Vermont’s more problematic job-creation programs is getting a policy review.

Unfortunately, that’s where the good news ends.

The program is the Vermont Employment Growth Initiative, or VEGI for short. It provides incentives to employers who grow jobs in Vermont. The most frequent VEGI beneficiary is Keurig Green Mountain, which has raised eyebrows in some quarters, (“Fascinating,” I have found myself saying with left brow cocked, “but highly illogical.”) That’s because KGM’s rapid growth was fueled, not by the state’s generosity, but by its then patent-protected K-Cup brewing system.

Since its patents expired, it has struggled to maintain market share, bungled two key product rollouts, and — VEGI grants or no VEGI grants — laid off hundreds of Vermonters.

So yeah, I’m all for a review of this program. Unfortunately, this is a fox/henhouse situation. The people doing the review are members of the Vermont Economic Progress Council, the panel that awards the VEGI grants in the first place.

Uh-huh, they’re reviewing their own work.

That ought to go well.

But wait, there’s more!

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Too Many Cooks Equals No Broth

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Sorry to do this to you first thing in the morning, but it’s time for a reading and math comprehension test!

Take a look at this table, and see if any numbers jump out at you.

AuditorTable 7.16

The abbreviations in the first column are for three departments in state government: Human Resources, Information & Innovation, and Finance & Management. And the answer, or at least the answer I’m looking for, is on the DHR line.

The Department of Human Resources has 25 supervisors and 82 classified employees. That’s a rather stunning ratio of one supervisor for every 3.28 supervisees.

There is no absolute ideal ratio; it depends on many factors. But rarely, if ever, is 1:3 a reasonable figure.

There may be perfectly good explanations for DHR’s ratio. But to the outside eye, it looks like featherbedding.

This table comes to us courtesy of State Auditor Doug Hoffer. It’s included in his latest performance audit, which exposes a dismaying case of administrative sloppiness in state government. In those three departments, administrators routinely failed to conduct annual performance reviews with their staff.

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Hey look, Doug Hoffer may have a fly to swat

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Don’t ever accuse the VTGOP of not being generous. They’ve apparently gifted Auditor Doug Hoffer with a new toy to play with a “serious” challenger for his post. I haven’t seen a news release or anything; all I’ve seen is this Tweet from VTGOP Executive Director Jeff Bartley.

Yay! Dan “Mr. Four Percent” Feliciano! The man who can never quite make up his mind whether he’s a Libertarian or a Republican. But no matter what the label, there’s one thing you can count on:

He. Won’t. Win.

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The sun sets on the Vermont Enterprise Fund

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Hey, remember in January, when the state Emergency Board approved two grants from the Vermont Enterprise Fund? GlobalFoundries was given $1 million, and $200,000 went to BHS Composites. Well, turns out those will be the last VEF grants ever awarded. During its recently concluded session, the Legislature rejected Governor Shumlin’s bid to add new money to the Fund — and decided not to extend the program.

The Fund is empty, and in the absence of legislative action, the program will sunset at the end of the fiscal year.

“It’s disappointing,” says Shumlin spox Scott Coriell*. “The Enterprise Fund has been a useful tool, but we do have other tools at our disposal.”

*Say that five times fast.

There was some funny business around those January grants that may have sealed the fate of the two-year-old program.

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Inartful dodges and implausible denials

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Must be a new experience for Bill Stenger, having a hard time getting his calls returned. After all, he’s been a major player at the intersection of Vermont business and politics for a long time now, benefiting from sweetheart deals and inadequate oversight (see Postscript below) courtesy of at least two successive administrations.

After years of holding together his massive EB-5 project with chicken wire and spit, Stenger is now embroiled in the sales pitch of a lifetime: portraying himself as innocent in the face of federal and state investigations and an increasingly ugly paper trail.

From VPR’s Peter Hirschfeld, we learn that federal officials “had strong forensic evidence of a massive fraud” at least two years ago, and that Stenger was subjected to an intensive interview by SEC investigators in May 2014.

And from the Burlington Free Press’ Jess Aloe, we learn that Stenger’s top financial executive resigned in 2011 “after [Stenger] failed to address concerns about the use of money from foreign investors.”

It is literally impossible to believe that an experienced entrepreneur like Stenger could somehow remain clueless in the face of all that. But there he was, telling the Free Press last Monday (two days before the SEC raided his offices, seized his papers, and changed the locks) that nothing was wrong. And on Friday, two days after the raid, he doubled down.

“There was a lot of stuff in the presentation that I got on Wednesday that I was not aware of,” Stenger said. “I can’t go any further than that. I’ve got to let it go at that. I’m trying to figure this out as well. I just need to deal with it.”

Okay, I see what we’re doing here: blaming the dark-skinned flatlander.

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A little bit slow and a fair bit lacking

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This whole Stengerville fiasco presents a quandary for the three Democratic candidates for governor. On the one hand, it’s the biggest political scandal in years, ensnaring most of the state’s power elite in its icky-sticky web. You’ve gotta say something. On the other hand, well, it blew up on Governor Shumlin’s watch, and you’ve got to draw a careful line when criticizing your own party’s incumbent.

I guess that explains why it took Matt Dunne, Sue Minter, and Peter Galbraith a solid four days to issue any sort of response. And why, in the interim, the candidates’ press-release operations carried on as if nothing had happened.

There was Sue Minter on Thursday, holding a doomed-to-obscurity presser on “an aggressive plan” to address water quality issues from PFOA to Lake Champlain and beyond. A really nimble campaign might have taken notice of the Wednesday night SEC raid on Stengerville and postponed the event, but maybe that’s asking too much.

Matt Dunne did no better; on Friday he disclosed his personal financial information, as if anybody cared at that particular point. It may be unfair to conclude that the release was a double-barreled newsdump: it came on a Friday when everybody’s attention was focused elsewhere. Yes, it may be unfair, but these are cynical days.

As for Peter Galbraith, that rarest of phenomena: the sound of silence.

Finally, on Monday, all three came out with a gun or two a-blazing, but none have fully addressed the issues raised by this scandal — our scattershot approach to helping specific businesses and the lack of transparency and accountability in the process.

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There’s a gnat buzzing Beth Pearce’s head

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Oh goodie. In this campaign season full of ill-considered, no-hoper, “who asked for this” candidacies, comes yet another: a 30-year-old financial analyst with no political experience who’s only lived in Vermont for four years has decided to challenge State Treasurer Beth Pearce for the Democratic nomination.

Hahahaha.

You go to any campaign or party event, Beth Pearce gets louder cheers and more applause than anybody else. She is incredibly popular. She is not losing the primary, no way, nohow.

The financial analyst in question, Richard Dunne, is running because he favors divestment of state funds from fossil fuel stocks. He’s on the same page as Governor Shumlin among many others. And Pearce’s steadfast opposition to divestment has been a thorn in Shumlin’s side since he started tub-thumping the issue earlier this year.

But there’s no way he’s backing a challenger. There’s no way Dunne can ride this one issue to victory in the primary. And Pearce’s stand on divestment should not put her in danger of losing her post.

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